The Best WordPress Plugins for Growing Your Mailing List

If you’re looking to build any top of business online, growing a mailing list should be a priority. However, with so much spam and unwanted email in most inboxes it can be a challenge to convince your website visitors to subscribe to your list. Fortunately, there are some really effective tools that can make your list building efforts exponentially more effective.

If you’re a WordPress user there are a number of quality plugins available that have been created specifically to help with building a mailing list. In this article we’ll take a look at some of the best plugins that can turn your list building frustrations into success.

PopUp Domination

PopUp Domination is probably the most popular WordPress plugin specifically created to help with list building. A big reason why this plugin has become so popular is simply the fact that popups can be very effective for getting visitors attention and for getting them to take action. Of course, there is a downside. Popups can sometimes become annoying to visitors, so you’ll need to consider your specific audience to decide if this could be a good option for your site. Fortunately, PopUp Domination includes loads of features, including the ability to limit how frequently your visitors will see the popup, which helps to avoid annoying them, and you can even choose to show or not show the popup on specific categories and pages.

PopUp Domination includes a variety of different templates to use as starting points for your popups, and some customization is possible. In my opinion, the pre-made templates from PopUp Domination are better looking than the default templates from other popup plugins.

I’ve personally used PopUp Domination for several months on this blog (only on specific pages and categories) and I’ve also used it on some client’s website design Singapore as well. I’ve found it to be very effective at significantly increasing optin rates. The reason it is no longer being used on this site is that we chose to use a notification bar to promote our newsletter instead, as we felt the notification bar is a bit less intrusive to visitors. However, if you’re looking to maximize optins from your site you should consider popups.

Viral Optins

Viral Optins is a new plugin with some really interesting features. Like PopUp Domination, it allows you to create popups, but you can also create other types of optin forms as well. This includes forms for your sidebar are for within page/post content.

But what really makes it unique is the viral aspect. After someone has subscribed to your list they are given a unique URL that they can share with their friends. If they refer a specific number of subscribers through their unique URL they can get access to some sort of bonus or exclusive content.

So, for example, if you are already using an e-book as an incentive for people to sign up to your list, you can also offer them another bonus like an exclusive interview or a special report if they refer a set number of people to your list. Of course, you can control all the details, so you can set it to require 3 referrals, 5 referrals, or whatever number you want.

With so many people being active on social networks like Facebook and Twitter they can easily share their unique URL with their friends, which means more subscribers for you, and a free gift for them. This type of exponential growth makes it possible to build a large list very quickly.

Pippity

Pippity includes a lot of the same features and functionality as PopUp Domination. Some people prefer the look of the popups from PopUp Domination and others prefer those from Pippity. Like PopUp Domination, Pippity gives you extensive control over your popups and where/when they are shown. You’ll also be able to do A/B testing to determine which popups get the best conversion rates so you can maximize the impact.

Hybrid Connect

Hybrid Connect is another plugin that allows you to easily create optin forms to be used on your website or blog. You can create popups, forms for sidebars, forms to be shown in post/page content, squeeze pages, and more. It comes with more than 30 templates that you can customize to suit your needs. Hybrid Connect will also perform split testing, and it will then automatically eliminates the forms that aren’t converting and instead uses the more effective ones.

OptinSkin

OptinSkin takes a bit of a different approach than the other plugins that we’ve looked at so far. Instead of creating popups, OptinSkin creates forms that will be shown within your page/post content. One cool feature is that you can set it to fade in, which will draw the attention of visitors without having the same annoyance factor as a popup. With OptinSkin you can also do A/B testing to determine which forms are most effective. It comes with 18 pre-designed templates that you can customize, or you can create your own custom skin from scratch. The default templates are well-designed and easily customizable.

MaxBlogPress Subscribers Magnet

Subscribers Magnet is a plugin that allows to to create optin forms and place them at specific locations on your blog. You can add the forms to your sidebar, within post/page content, and you can even create footer bars that will get noticed instantly. One unique feature of Subscribers Magnet is that you can set it to autofill with visitors data (name and email), which can make it that much easier for visitors to subscribe.

Optin Revolution

Optin Revolution is another plugin that will help you to create popups. You’ll have full control over where and when your popup is displayed, and you can customize the default templates to suit your needs. Optin Revolution can also do split testing to help you determine which popups are most effective.

WordPress Popup

WordPress PopUp is a free plugin that lacks most of the advanced features found in other options on this list, but it is free and is an option if you are working with a very limited budget. It allows you to create your popups from the WordPress dashboard, but it does not have built in integration for creating forms that will work with the leading mailing list managers like AWeber and MailChimp.

Foobar

Although it is not specifically a plugin for increasing optins I wanted to include it in this list because that is how we are using it on this blog. Foobar allows you to add a notification bar to your site, and you can promote whatever you want from that notification bar. In our case we use it to promote our newsletter and the free gift for subscribers, and it has been very effective for us for quite some time.