The mailing list you build with the help of your website is going to be the single biggest asset you will ever have. I had realized that even before I launched Inet Solutions last year, but up until about 2 months ago, I wasn’t utilizing my list building capabilities to the maximum.

However, after performing a deep research on the subject that basically included reading a ton of case studies and list building product reviews, I knew what my next email marketing step would be – Thrive Leads.

What You’ll Learn

• Analytics data before and after implementing Thrive Leads into this website – how many leads was Inet Solutions generating pre and post implementing this list building WordPress plugin?
• How I used Thrive Leads to more than double the daily email subscribers captured by the website – overnight.
• How I keep on improving the number of leads generated every month – changing opt-in forms, adding new opt-in forms, split testing, etc.
• Summary – wrapping it all up…

Lead Generation Analytics Data

Before I show you some real site data, I want to share with you the lead generation tactics that I was employing before I implemented Thrive Leads. Basically, there were two things generating email subscribers up until the middle of October 2015:

• BizPanda
• Sidebar opt-in form created using the WP Subscribe plugin

The latter barely generated any leads, but BizPanda was killing it with those email lockers. Now, I have talked previously about this topic, but I wanted to write a more in-depth article focused solely on lead generation as I know you guys want to make more and more money online and I know for a fact that growing my mailing list is the one thing that has been driving the revenue of my website in an upward direction.

And since Thrive Leads helped me skyrocket my email subscribers growth, I can confidently say that it is the plugin responsible for the huge increase in revenue that this website has seen in the past few months.

The way email marketing works and how it is the real hands-off money making machine is explained in this article, so I won’t delve into the details again. What I will delve into however is accurate data and analytics that show you just how effective Thrive Leads and BizPanda have been for this website.

Okay, so up until the middle of October 2015, I had only BizPanda and the sidebar opt-in form that were generating email subscribers for the website. On October 14th 2015, I first implemented Thrive Leads, but I was only testing it out.

I started with a sidebar opt-in form giving out our “A Story Of Making Money Online” e-book for free that immediately started generating leads (0 – 4 per day) which was much much better than the previous sidebar opt-in form, but that was still just the beginning. The overnight double of leads would happen in the beginning of November when I added the post footer opt-in form and the full screen opt-in form.

Here is the data from BizPanda up until November 6th, right before I implemented Thrive Leads:

So, a total of 380 email subscribers were caught by the email lockers of BizPanda with an average conversion rate of 26.12% which is not bad at all if you ask me. I don’t have any data for the leads generated by the WP Subscribe sidebar opt-in, but in the same span of time as for the data above, I would say that they were about 20.

So in total, about 400 email subscribers were generated in the span of 103 days, which equals to about 3.88 email subscribers per day. Now let me show you what happened when I implemented Thrive Leads.

As I already mentioned, I implemented the plugin on October 14th and it had already started showing promise:

So as you can see, already, on October 17th it had already doubled the daily email subscribers caught by the website. And that was just with a simple sidebar opt-in form. Let me tell you this, the sidebar is not one of the most active areas of your website and it was never meant to be one.

So to cope with that, I implemented the Q2W3 Fixed Widget plugin that would stick the opt-in form in the sidebar to always show no matter where the visitor scrolls. Now let me show you what happened once I utilized the almost full potential of Thrive Leads.

What I did was add a post footer opt-in form (at the end of each article) and a screen filler opt-in form:

You see that huge increase on November 7th? Well, that is when I added the post footer opt-in form which at that time was giving out a free PDF of our finding cheap expired domains tutorial. And then, the next huge spike on November 9th is when I added the screen filler opt-in form.

I was reluctant whether or not to add such a lead generation form since it is, well, invasive, but I do believe that the website provides some really high quality information and thus I do not reckon our opt-in forms as invasive. But hey, that’s just me.

Now, you can easily see just how much I had improved on daily email subscribers captured by the website, but let’s do the math. The leads generated by BizPanda in November were a total of 170 with an average conversion rate of 7.66%:

So that is, on average, about 5.66 email subscribers captured by BizPanda every day of November 2015. And what about Thrive Leads in November 2015? Well, we have a total of 193 leads generated with an average conversion rate of 3.24%:

So that is, on average, about 6.43 email subscribers captured every day by Thrive Leads which is more than a 100% boost on the 5.66 daily email subscribers generated by BizPanda. Keep in mind that this is the data for November.

The Grand Total Lead Generation Analytics Data

Now, I showed you an isolated example of just how effective Thrive Leads has been for my website, but I also want to show you the grand total i.e. the increase in daily email subscribers thanks to the implementation of Thrive Leads. I will count the leads from November 7th (when I implemented the screen filler opt-in form):

Just a note, the leads have gone down a bit as traffic has also gone down during the holidays (as expected), but I foresee a huge boost in February. Anyway, we have a total of 540 leads in the span of 75 days with an average conversion rate of 3.75%. So that is about 7.2 daily email subscribers captured by the various opt-in forms of Thrive Leads that I had implemented throughout the website. Now let’s look at BizPanda data:

A total of 454 leads were generated by BizPanda with an average conversion rate of 6.5%. That is, on average, about 6.05 daily email subscribers generated by BizPanda’s email lockers. So in the end, Thrive Leads has boosted my website’s lead generation efforts by about 119% since its (almost) full implementation.

Now that you know just how effective Thrive Leads can be, let me show you exactly what I did in order to achieve these results. Keep in mind that I have not yet utilized the full potential of Thrive Leads’s list building power. There are types of opt-in forms that I do not currently use (for one reason or another), but when everything gets implemented a person could be looking at a phenomenal increase in daily email subscribers.

Here’s what I did though.

How I Used Thrive Leads To Boost Leads By 119%

As I already mentioned, the first thing I added after implementing Thrive Leads was a sidebar opt-in form which went solo for about 3 weeks. I won’t delve into the details of creating Thrive Leads opt-in forms and the such as there is a video tutorial for everything you would ever need to do with the plugin here.

Now, after I saw just how good everything went with the sidebar opt-in, I decided to take advantage and place opt-in forms on other areas of the website i.e. the post footer and a screen filler. Exactly 75 days after I implemented them, here is the analytics data from Thrive Leads for these forms:

So you have impressions, then leads, and then conversion rates. Now, an important thing I want to note here is that I have done quite a lot of customization on the pre-designed opt-in form templates that come with Thrive Leads. You do have a lot of options, and while they look great, I had to tweak every single one of them to make them match the theme of my website.

However, that has not been a lot of work since you can edit these templates via the Thrive Content Builder (which comes with Thrive Leads) which is basically a drag-and-drop editor for landing pages and opt-in forms.

To summarize the initial implementation of Thrive Leads:

• Sidebar widget – giving out our “A Story Of Making Money Online” e-book for free.
• Post footer – giving out a PDF of our “Finding Cheap High PR Expired Domains Tutorial”.
• Screen filler – at first this form did not give out a report or an e-book or whatever, but simply stated “Online Marketing Information You’ll Actually Use” with a nice sub-headline.

Now, even though these performed great initially, as I expanded the topics covered by the blog of this website, I had to make some changes. So as you can see, nowadays, I have added more generic opt-in forms in the sidebar and the post footer and now, the screen filler gives out a PDF of our case study portraying the traffic generation strategies we used in the first 4 months after the launch of this website.

I had to change the sidebar and post-footer widgets since now I was writing articles on different topics and that meant lower conversion rates for these opt-in forms as they would become irrelevant content for most of our readers.

However, the chance of our visitors being happy with what they read and then subscribing to our mailing list for more content like the one they just read is much higher and thus, the more generic opt-in forms you see today.

As for the screen filler opt-in, it was vice-versa. In the beginning it was a generic opt-in, but now it gives out the website traffic generation case study. I have done split tests before all these changes which has helped me choose the opt-in that performed best. Here’s a view of the split test I did for the screen filler and how the new one that gives out the traffic generation case study for free won the battle:

I knew right from the get-go that the new opt-in will perform much better, but I still gave it a few days to split test. Now, one thing that I have always kept in mind while creating all of these opt-in forms is how invasive will they be in the eyes of my website’s visitors.

That is why I have put any popups to exit intent display (they will only show when the visitor goes on to leave the website) as opposed to displaying them after a few seconds or immediately after a person lands on the page.

And that’s basically all that I did to get those 119% boost in daily email subscribers. No more than a day’s worth of work. That is the power and simplicity of Thrive Leads.

How I Keep On Improving Lead Generation With Thrive Leads

As I already told you, the mailing list is the single biggest asset you can ever have, so I am constantly thinking of new ways to increase my daily email subscribers growth. That means:

• Constantly split testing new opt-in form designs.
• Constantly split testing new forms copy.
• Adding new types of opt-in forms.
• General review and edition of existing opt-in forms.
• Looking for new ways to generate leads such as contests and giveaways.

It takes me no more than 30 minutes every day to keep this process going, but it sure as hell is worth it as our mailing list has exploded in the past two and a half months. And that is where the money is guys.

1. You build a mailing list.
2. You write valuable high quality helpful content that includes state of the art products/services that have helped you achieve something and will help other people do the same.
3. Then you send this content to your email subscribers via a great copy that will make sure they read the entire thing.

Easy as one-two-three eh?

Summary

If you have a website guys, you absolutely need to be utilizing its lead generation potential to the maximum. I have found BizPanda and Thrive Leads to work the best for me, which is why I am sharing my experience and results using these plugins with you.

I expect a burst of traffic in February as I got my eye on a few new traffic channels, which I will surely write about as soon as I get some decent results. And more traffic, means more leads and ultimately more revenue. The idea is to not shift your focus from value to revenue as that is when things go to downstairs.

At the end of the day, all I’m trying to do here is test out, find something that works, and then share the results with you. Maybe it will help someone, maybe it won’t. The point is I am doing what I feel will help people in the online marketing world grow and as they grow, me and my business grow with them. Some might even call it good business.