AP 0556: How Do I Add Forms and Pop-Ups to My Website?

AskPat 556 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 556 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.

We have a great question from Zycco, but before we get to that I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, one of my favorite companies, because it makes it very easy for me to manage my books—and it will help you too. All your income, all your expenses and even invoicing, it's all handled through FreshBooks. With invoicing, they make it real easy for you to set up and bill your clients, and it makes it real easy for your clients to pay you. If you want to check it out, you can check it out for 30 days for free by going to getfreshbooks.com and by entering “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again that's, getfreshbooks.com, enter “AskPat.”

All right, here's today's question from Zycco.

Zycco: Hey, Pat. How you doing, man? I just started my own blog, and basically I'd like to master how to do pop-ups and add in foundational programs and stuff to the ending of the blogs, just the same way you have to download your free ebook. I'd like to add a foundation program for customers and and stuff like that who sign up to me. Could you also recommend any sign-up forms that I should use for my website and my blog? I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Zycco. Thank you so much for the question today. I appreciate it. You know, when it comes to building your email list with forms, and there's a lot of different ways to do that: There's pop-ups, embedded forms on your page, there's also text messaging, and all those sorts of things. It's smart to do this, obviously, because we want to grow our email list, and giving a downloadable item like you want to do is smart because it gives people incentive, of course.

Now, you have a lot of options to make this happen. First, I'm going to give you a couple free tools that you can check out, then I'm going to give you a few more advanced paid tools that you can check out as well. Before that, I do want to suggest that you hook up with a good email service provider. If you haven't had a chance to vet one out and find one, I would recommend ConvertKit. If you go to AskPat.com/ConvertKit, that is the affiliate link for ConvertKit. I do have a relationship with them. I don't only use them; I'm also an advisor for the company. I would recommend that. They have some forms that you can embed on your website; they have the ability to do that.

There are these other tools that will give you a lot more options. On top of your email service provider, you could use the following tools. Here are a couple of free tools. The first one is called SumoMe. SumoMe.com. This is a all-in-one tool that has a lot of interesting and very useful features—not just email pop-ups and email forms and things like that, but a lot of tracking tools, a lot of social sharing items, and you should definitely check it out. You can install it if you go to askpat.com/sumome. You can go ahead and check that out. That is an affiliate link. Although it's free, there are some upgrades to things that I would get a commission for, so if you wanted to go through that route, askpat.com/sumome.

The next tool is called Rapidology. Rapidology at rapidology.com. This is a free plugin that was built by LeadPages. LeadPages is also a company that I'm affiliated with as an advisor, and they built this tool to obviously drive sales toward LeadPages. It's an amazing tool. There's a lot of options for different forms, pop-ups, web forms, often formats that you can use for your website too. Again, that's at rapidology.com. I'm not going to go into the specifics of each of these because I want to get through all these tools here.

Now, I will say that there is a pop-up tool that's been very popular and that specializes in pop-ups specifically. I don't necessarily use pop-ups in an interruptive way. I use them as a way to, when people click a button, a pop-up then shows up. That is a lightbox which fades everything else out in the background and makes it so that people focus on that one call to action I want them to take, which is subscribe to that email.

Optinmonster is the pop-up tool you can use, and it's not the Lightbox one I was talking about. It's one that is more interruptive, and that's not bad. A lot of people think that interrupting is bad. If you interrupt at the right time and for the right purpose and if it's relevant, then it absolutely makes sense, and Optinmonster has been used by thousands of people. It's also a premium WordPress plugin that you would pay for that makes it incredibly easy to set these up. And of course, in terms of delivery of your Lead Magnet, you would do that with your email service provider. When people subscribe to that particular email list, you would then deliver that via link in that email or an attachment if you will, or maybe a link to a post or page that is hidden on your website, that you would have that download with a little bit more information.

I like that last option, because bringing people back to your website, it's not only more traffic, but you get people back on a place where they can go deeper into what it is what you have to offer. You have a little bit more freedom in terms of how things look like and how things are formatted. So, having your Lead Magnet available on a website, hidden on a page so it's not public, that's an easy way to get access to it. Then you would drive traffic to that through that very first follow-up email that people get after they subscribe. Optinmonster was that other tool that just makes it really easy for you to do pop-ups. You can do pop-ups immediately when people come to a site or particular page, when they get to a certain point in that page. If they're halfway through, then you can pop it up, or a certain amount of time after they've landed on that page, for example. They do have options so that you don't get too crazy with it, so that if somebody exits out of one of those, or signs up already, they won't show up anymore, which is nice.

The last tool I want to share with you is my favorite—is LeadPages—and again, like I said, I have a relationship with them. I am an advisor, and I'm very proud to say that I'm the one who came up with the idea of doing the LeadBoxes, which is essentially a way for you to create a lightbox on your website after people click on a particular button. I don't know why I said it like that: “but-ton.” When people click on a button, you can have that button say whatever it is and you can design it in whatever way you want. Then, it would open up a form, a lightbox, similar to a pop-up, except the background is blurred. Then they would sign up with their name or email or whatever other fields you want there. What's nice about LeadPages in terms of lead magnet delivery, you actually upload your lead magnet to LeadPages, and they will send an email on your behalf to the person who subscribes. What's nice about this, especially if you start to do a lot of lead magnets, a lot of downloadables with content upgrades if you will … If you have particular posts and podcast episodes and you want to really, really drive more email subscribers into your list, you can offer a bonus, or a download for each of those things, or for many of them.

The trick is, how do you get that into the hands of people who are already on your list and not have to force them to sign up again? Or making sure they don't sign up twice? First of all, Lead Pages allows you to upload their lead magnet, but when somebody else who is already subscribed to a list puts in their name and email to get that lead magnet, they're not going to go through the whole follow-up sequence again.

LeadPages is sophisticated enough to know that they are already on that list and would just give them that download and that's it. Super.cool. I recommend LeadPages; askpat.com/leadpages is my affiliate link for that. That is a much higher-priced item but definitely worth it, especially because there's all these different templates that you can use for landing pages and different LeadBoxes. They also have the LeadDigits—that's what it's called—where you can actually say to your audience, “Text this word to this number.” And then they'll get an immediate text back that says, “Here's your download, just put in your email address.” And then you get the email address via mobile phone or device, which is really awesome.

Zycco, I hope that answers your question. Lot of options there, but that's what I would use, or those are the things that I would use and I have used before myself. Check it out. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show, and I thank you again for that. Everybody, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to askpat.com. You can ask right there. Just click the record button and ask away.

Finally, I want to thank once again freshbooks.com for just being awesome. Being a great company, making it really easy for us to manage our finances, because as entrepreneurs, we have so many other things to think about and do. When it comes to invoicing, when it comes to keeping track and organizing our finances, it can become a headache. Don't do what I did and start by just using Excel, and then it becomes a headache, because I'm not super well-versed in Excel like some people are. FreshBooks—it does all the work for you, takes away all the headaches. Check it out, getfreshbooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the, “How did you hear about us?” section. Again that's getfreshbooks.com, enter “AskPat.”

Thanks so much. I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Tim Ferriss. He said, “Think big, and don't listen to people who tell you it can't be done. Life's too short to think small.” Awesome, Tim. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it, and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat. Bye.