We all know that building your email list is one of the most important things that you can do for the longterm sustainability of your business.
Once you have a list, you can make your offers to people multiple times, provide great valuable content, promote others, get people tapped into your cause, and, of course, countless other benefits.
Over the years, we've talked about multiple opt-in tools. We even shared a case study about how, when we switched to Convertbox, we doubled our opt-in rate.
Today, I want to go even deeper on ConvertBox.
This is part Convertbox Review and part Convertbox “tactical guide”.
Since writing that case study, Convertbox has released countless updates and new features. The functionality has just gotten insane. So much so that I can't really even call it an opt-in tool anymore. It's more like a dynamic, behavior-based, on-site retargeting and list growth tool (but that's a mouthful).
To prove to you how versatile this single tool is, I'm going to break down some of the obvious as well as some of the not-so-obvious uses of Convertbox.
Tools like this can cost upwards of $100/month.
Optin Monster, which we've used and talked about in the past, costs $49 per month to get the same functionality and you have to pay a year upfront, costing you $588 on day 1.
Thrive Leads, another tool that we've used and recommended in the past will run you $147 per year to get the functionality that Convertbox provides.
The cool thing that Converbox has going for it is that there are no ongoing fees. You pay once and you have access for life on unlimited sites.
Although, Convertbox is not publicly available on its main site yet, we managed to talk Dean (the founder) into hooking up our listeners with a link at the special lifetime price.
My goal is that, by the end of this, you’ll see how powerful this little inexpensive tool is and you’ll want to grab it through our affiliate link at the bottom of the post.
So, without further ado, here’s the various ways you can use the powerful tool, Convertbox, in your own business…
Create a slide-in opt-in form for your content
This is probably the most obvious way that we use it on our website. We have slide-in opt-ins on every single page.
On most of our podcast episodes, we offer the cheat sheet / companion that goes to that episode.
On some of our content, we promote our Evergreen Wisdom book.
We create different slide-ins that we feel will be most relevant to the content that someone is currently reading.
Create an exit-intent page overlay for your content
On our site, we're constantly testing 2 types of exit-intent boxes.
One is the full screen takeover event, where the whole screen is taken over with an offer when someone is about to exit. It looks like this:
And the other is a simple light box that looks like this:
Personally, I prefer the look of the clean lightbox. It's pretty and modern.
However, so far, the full screen takeover opt-in is out converting.
We'll keep testing until we find that perfect combo of cleanliness, user experience, and conversions.
The beauty of Convertbox is that you'll have the ability to test all the different variations and find out what works for you.
Create click-triggered links for content upgrades
We use this type of opt-in all over our site. You'll see it in the sidebar of podcast episodes, it's in a big button on our homepage, and it's in a link within the content of every single podcast shownotes.
You can make a text link or an image link trigger a lightbox that people can opt-in through.
These convert extremely well!
Here are some stats for two of our click-triggered opt-in boxes:
Replace opt-in CTAs with purchase CTAs after someone has already opted-in
The most powerful thing about Convertbox (in our accurate opinion), is the logic that is built-in. You can change the opt-ins people see based on previous behaviors…
The first time you come to our site OR, if you've never opted-in on our site, you should be seeing an opt-in that looks like this:
AFTER you've opted-in to our list, on future visits, you should start seeing a different call-to-action. It's no longer our goal to get you on an email list. You're already hearing from us. Now, we're asking for the sale.
Existing people on our list should see something that looks like this:
Have a welcome video slide-in for first time visitors
You can welcome first time visitors to your site with a video that tells people where to go first, how you can help them, and anything else you'd want them to be aware of.
It's super simple to do because Convertbox has super robust targeting functionality.
Overlay your opt-in form on other people's content – Share on social media and to your email list
This is pretty ninja as well.
Have you heard of Sniply?
It's a tool where you can share links to other people's sites and then add your own call to action or opt-in form overlaid on their site.
Well Convertbox built that feature in!
And here's one that we recently created to overlay on James Schramko's site after he recently featured us on his podcast:
Make site-wide announcements that slide-in from the top or bottom
As of right now, there are a handful of styles you can use for your Convertbox, with more on the way.
Here's what's available as of this article:
The “Sticky Bar” style is particularly good for making announcements about something that's coming up or limited time promotions.
If you're familiar with HelloBar, than you've probably already seen this kind of functionality…
But isn't it so nice to have ALL the features you'd want inside of a single platform, instead of them being splintered across multiple?
Create dynamic quizzes that redirect to different pages
This is a feature that we haven't personally used yet but feel like it's super powerful.
You can create quizzes inside a Convertbox and redirect them to different offers or landing pages based on what they selected.
You can also apply different tags in your autoresponder to better target future emails based on their quiz results.
Imagine someone landing on your site and Convertbox asks them, “are you a beginner, intermediate, or advanced” on the subject matter that you teach.
If they're a beginner, you ask for their email and opt-in them into your free 7-day bootcamp.
If they're intermediate, you opt them in and then link them to your low-cost offer.
If they're advanced, you opt them in and then redirect them to your high-ticket consulting…
The possibilities are endless and conversions go sky-high when you're better tailoring your content and offers to where your visitor is at.
Create special countdown promotions on products – Deploy them site-wide
Every 2 or 3 months, we do a special promotion on our affiliate marketing course. We do 1-day 25% offer to get the entire course.
With Convertbox, we can make sure that every visitor to our site knows that the promotion is currently happening and put a countdown timer in front of them to drive home the scarcity.
Show a special message based on the where someone came from
Make location-based announcements
Every year, around Traffic & Conversion Summit, we put on an event called Overtime. We hold it at a brewery near where T&C is being held.
For next years event, we're going to make a site-wide announcement, while T&C is happening that Overtime is coming up.
We'll make it so the box only shows to people that are currently in San Diego and visiting our website.
I bet we'll squeak out a few extra attendees by doing it too. 🙂
Offer time-expiring coupons
I'm sure I'll be updating this list from time to time with new ideas as we experiment as well as when new features roll out.
However, the last one on the list is SUPER powerful.
Create a lightbox that offers an expiring coupon code.
When someone lands on your site, offer a 10% off coupon for one of your core products and have a countdown give them like 20 minutes to use the coupon.
You'll be surprised by how many sales get squeezed out by using this technique.
And your countdowns can be evergreen or they can have a fixed date to them…
Convertbox is one of the most used tools in our business.
I just gave you about 12 ideas on how you can use Convertbox in your business.
We actually use it every single day in our business. Admittedly, we don’t use every single strategy I listed every single day but we’re using some of them every single day.
Chances are, if you visit our site frequently, you're seeing these boxes constantly. 🙂
The possibilities with it are pretty limitless.
Now, here’s the deal…
Convertbox is not publicly available yet. When it is, it will likely be a monthly or annual fee like the competition.
However, we know the creator of Convertbox personally. His name is Dean and we've been talking to him a lot lately. Although it's not publicly available, we asked if we can make a special offer to our audience. We obviously use and love the tool ourselves and we never hesitate to spread the word about our favorite things.
He was hesitant but he agreed.
Basically, while it's in its early-stage, Dean agreed to offer this to you guys at a one-time price.
Once you have it, you've got it for life. No monthly or annual re-ups.
And he's hooking you up for just $395!
But you’ve got to grab it from this blog post. If you go to his main site (ConvertBox.com), you’ll see that it is still not available to the public.
Now, we’ve never been shy about the fact that we earn a lot of revenue from affiliate marketing. The links in this post are our affiliate links and we will earn a small commission from anyone who purchases from this page. However, we honestly use it daily in our business and it’s become an integral part of our daily processes…
…And, since we’re affiliates, we like to sweeten the pot and add some bonuses.
If you do decide to grab ConvertBox from us, you won’t only get an unlimited license at a lifetime price, you’ll also get these…
- ConvertBox Tutorials
It's our mission to make sure that you hit the ground running when you get into ConvertBox for the first time. So we're including tutorials around how we use ConvertBox in our business, including a step-by-step walkthrough of the exact opt-in forms that we used to more than double our opt-in rate from out blog.
- Rapid Lead Magnet Creation
Once you have ConvertBox, you're going to need a Lead Magnet (or freebie) to collect leads with. In this tutorial series we walk you through how to create a lead magnet super quick that's going to blow your leads away. After all, what's the point of having ConvertBox if you don't have something to give away to collect emails? - Email Conversion Secrets
Once you've got the people on your list, you want them to actually respond to your emails. In this training series, we break down exactly how to ensure the highest responsiveness from your email list, including a little “secret sauce” that no one really talks about when it comes to email marketing. - The Best Traffic Strategies To Grow Your Site
Traffic is really what we've always been known for. We're some of the best in the world at driving highly-qualified traffic to offers. One of our flagship courses was on driving loads of traffic. In this training, we'll break down the methods that we used to ensure the best of the best leads are consistently flowing to our website. - Conversion Funnel Case Studies
Want to see some flows in action? We're sharing some case studies of exactly what's worked for us, including a really killer strategy where we essentially built an entire course using a simple survey (functionality that ConvertBox has). I'm still blown away that no one else teaches this or talks about it.
(More details about our bonus package are available here)
It’s a pretty stellar package that’s valued at way more than the cost of Convertbox itself.
Now, I always feel a little weird when I promote products like this inside of blog posts. People obviously assume I have a huge bias, due to the fact that we’ll earn a little something on sales. However, as you’ll quickly see with the bonuses, we actively use it ourselves. The Convertbox guys didn’t ask me to write this and it’s not sponsored content or anything like that…
I genuinely wanted to share my excitement around this tool and all of the possibilities. However, it’s pretty damn hard to make a post with this much depth about how to use a tool without including a little bit of an offer to grab it through us.
Anyway, the product comes with a full 30-day money back guarantee, which I imagine no one will actually use at this price point but, at least you know you’re covered if you need it.
Also, if you’ve discovered a cool way to use this tool that I might have overlooked, PLEASE share it in our Facebook group. I will add your suggestions to this post and give you full credit for the suggestion. Just jump over to the group, where we discuss content on this blog, and let us know. We’ll make it worth your while.
