Does it ever feel like you are doing everything you “should” be doing with digital marketing, but you’re still left with no leads? Generating leads online is no easy task, especially if you’re not sure which of your efforts will have the biggest impact on your business. But it’s not as hard as most people make it. Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t simply say, “I am working to improve lead generation on my WordPress website.” It’d be totally lost on them, and I’d get some really confused looks.
So instead, I say, “I am planning unique ways to attract people to my business”.
That generally sounds better, and that’s exactly what lead generation is. It’s a way of warming up complete strangers to your business and getting them on the path to finally buying.
Without lead generation, it’s virtually impossible to discover new opportunities and interact with loyal customers.
When it comes to your website, lead generation really comes down to how many people you can convert to email subscribers. They become your leads.
The great thing about the modern digital world is that literally, anyone can set up high-converting lead generation forms on their site, even if they don’t have the technical skills to do so.
This is especially easy if you run a WordPress site because there are a number of lead generation plugins that you can get set up in as little as a few minutes. Here are 7 of the best ones.
1. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the grandfather of all lead generation plugins created for WordPress. Launched in 2013 and having more than 100k+ active downloads shows its success story. It offers great features that make it easy for bloggers (marketers) to acquire new leads and customers.
Optin became famous because it features a wide variety of lead collection options depending on your own taste for pop-up boxes. It covers the traditional pop-up, a footer bar or slide-in at the bottom of the web page, or a simple widget that shows up at the end of a content.
In my experience, I have found this plugin is the best and easiest to use. I definitely recommend trying it.
Features that make it powerful include:
- A drag and drop form builder
- Integrates with popular email marketing tools like MailChimp, AWeber
- Exit-intent technology
- Show specific messages for different campaigns
- A/B Testing – To compare different versions of your lead form
- Built-in analytics
- Animated options
- Page level targeting
However, it’s not a free plugin. There are three plans available for OptinMonster, starting at $9 per month.
2. Sumo
I’ve been using Sumo for over a year now, and I must confess that it’s one of the most awesome plugins I’ve ever seen for a lead generation. It’s not just for generating leads, but also to improve traffic on your website.
Think of any type of pop-up box you want to add to your site and Sumo has got you covered. Just like OptinMonster, it is compatible with email marketing providers and also has a smart feature called – Exit intent option.
You get attractive popup forms, scroll boxes, floating bars, and something called a smart welcome mat – an opt-in form that takes up the entire screen.
Over 500,000 websites are currently using Sumo, including some famous ones such as Airbnb, Complex, Canva, The Art of Manliness, and BarkPost.
Key features of sumo:
- Easy to customize popup forms with a nice set of templates
- Customizable floating bar form
- A/B testing
- Exit-intent technology
- Smart display mode – Decide the best time to display forms to visitors automatically
- Scroll-box form
- Welcome mat – full-screen form on arrival
Sumo is quite expensive if you want to have all features enabled ($119/month), but there is a free option too.
3. LeadPages
LeadPages is more than just a lead generation plugin for WordPress, but it definitely serves that purpose well.
It comes with a new timed popup box and an exit-intent popup to repeatedly turn strangers into email subscribers.
While most plugins focus on letting you generate a couple of catchy forms to capture email addresses, LeadPages goes a lot further. The other plugins on this list are about individual opt-in forms, LeadPages helps you create landing pages as well.
LeadPages advanced features:
- Attractive lead capture pop-ups
- Integrates with popular email service providers
- Drag-and-drop customization (no coding skills required)
- A/B testing
- Hosts your landing pages for you
- Easy tracking and analytics
- Designs are mobile-friendly and responsive
- One-click triggered forms
- SMS opt-in codes & 1-click signup links
The price starts at $25/month, there are also two more plans are available.
4. Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads enables you to handle everything inside your WordPress dashboard and create new opt-in forms within minutes.
It updates its software frequently, which delivers new and better features every time.
There are multiple types of lead generating form templates available like smart pop-ups, slide-ins, floating bars, widget forms, and in-content forms. It’s a robust plugin that will allow you to generate more leads in a highly efficient and actionable way.
Key features of this plugin include:
- Drag-and-drop from editor
- A/B testing
- Exit-intent triggering
- Full-screen forms
- Fully editable form designs
- Shortcodes to save your time
- Every form is mobile friendly
- Great tracking and analytics option
- Affordable due to the one-time payment
The price starts from $67 with one full year of customer support.
5. Hybrid Connect
Hybrid content comes with a wide variety of smart options to create and configure popups form your WordPress page or blog.
This plugin can be used as a pop-up, sidebar widget, or a footer widget for you at the bottom of a post.
It has an interesting GoToMeeting integration, which is a master feature that suits the websites which contain large numbers of webinars or live events.
Another excellent feature is its Facebook connect feature, which will allow site owners to show a smart Facebook connect button only to visitors who are logged into Facebook. With the button, they can easily become your subscribers in just two clicks!
Key features of this plugin include:
- A wide variety of popup form
- A/B testing ability
- GoToMeeting integration option
- Smart Facebook connect
6. Icegram
The free version of Icegram is one of the most powerful free WordPress plugins to acquire subscribers on your website in this list.
Key features of Icegram:
- Advanced targeting and retargeting
- Simple A/B testing
- Exit intent
- Multiple message types (12 types of messages)
- High converting templates
- Actionable reports and insights
- Call to action targeting
- Geo-targeting
Beginner plans start from $9/year.
7. Popup Domination
Popup Domination comes with a wide variety of great options to create and configure popups on your WordPress page or blog. It’s super lightweight, which means a lot less load time on your website and a better user experience.
The latest version of this plugin also has inbuilt stats that let you see a whole bunch of data about what is working and what is failing with your pop up design. Extra features are the ability to show different ads to different pages.
Key features of Popup Domination:
- Countdown themes for urgency
- Exit Popups
- Popup triggers
- Responsive mobile version
- Page specific popups
- Geo-targeting
- Custom HTML/CSS
- Detailed analytics
- A/B testing
There are four plans available for Popup Domination, starting at $9 per month.
Wrap-up
Lead generation is a really important part of being a WordPress website owner.
I understand that there are still lots of other incredible lead generation plugins out there like Hello Bar, Foo Bar, leadboxer, Leadin, Gravity Forms, etc. but the smart way is to pick one immediately and start working with it.
When implementing a new lead collection method (regardless of your plugin of choice) it is important to test it against other options. For example, does a below content pop up collect just as many leads as a sidebar option? Try all possible ways and analyze which best suits your website over time.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this via the comment section, and if you like this post, please share it with your friends as they might also find it valuable.
Do you know of any other plugins that can help you generate huge leads on WordPress?