Refresh Your Behavioral Targeting Popup Campaigns for Success

At OptiMonk, we eat, sleep and breathe behavioral targeting through onsite retargeting. So, it’s no surprise that our customer support team is obsessed with staying up-to-date with the latest tips and techniques. They know the best practices that combine to make a successful campaign.

Recently, when reviewing the results of onsite retargeting campaigns across a wide range of sites, they noticed that onsite retargeting campaigns which are regularly updated achieve better results than campaigns that remain unchanged for months or even years.

Of course, you might say: “that’s obvious”.


via GIPHY

Because we all know that making changes, testing and continually optimizing is the best way to improve your conversions.

Still, it can be difficult to refresh your campaigns on a regular basis – and that’s why many people simply “stick to what works”.

To help get the ball rolling and make it easy to regularly update your behavioral targeting popup campaigns, we’ve created a list of everything you need to keep in mind when you’re refreshing your campaigns. We’ll break down the most important tips and techniques for achieving better results.

Bookmark this blog post, and when you need some ideas for your next campaign, don’t get stuck – come on back and grab a few and get to work 🙂

1. Don’t be a popup spammer

The basic element of every great popup is the same: it’s NOT ANNOYING.

You don’t want to overwhelm your visitors with too many messages. Your popups should appear a maximum of two times for each visitor. This helps improve the user experience for your website visitors, ensuring a positive first impression.

But what about your repeat visitors and long-term customers? You want to connect with them but you don’t want to overwhelm new visitors. To do so, you’ll need to create campaigns for each segment.

You should apply this to visitors who have already signed up for your offer, and also those who have closed your popup without converting. If these visitors didn’t opt-in, they had a reason. 

Maybe the segmentation wasn’t fine-tuned, your offer wasn’t clear enough, or you didn’t add a sense of urgency. Either way, the offer didn’t meet their needs. Your goal is to re-engage these visitors with something different.

ZOOSHOO does an awesome job of continually renewing their popup campaigns. Check out this collage below including some of their best campaigns.

zooshoo popup examples

By creating segments for new and returning visitors, and different popup campaigns for each, you can be sure to connect with your visitors without being annoying.

2. Keep your campaigns grounded in reality

It’s important for every website to keep grounded in reality, this applies in two ways:

First and foremost, pay attention to the data and the real results you are achieving. Show visitors your best deals and top-selling products based on your sales history.

You can also use your popup campaigns to redirect visitors to your best-converting and most important landing pages. This is a great way to reduce your bounce rate and encourage more immediate purchases.

Check out this example from Soggy Doggy that redirects visitors to their best-performing offers:

Soggy Doggy popup example

The second way to keep your campaigns grounded in reality is to pay attention to the change of seasons and Holidays, as well as the latest news and events, basically what’s happening offline in the real world.

Holiday-focused campaigns can help you to boost your sales, and customers also love an end-of-season sale. You can also run promotions based on a news event, or the latest conference you are attending. Running relevant campaigns for a short period of time can be highly effective. Be sure to update your designs to reflect the campaign you run.

Let’s say you sell sports equipment. It makes sense to run a campaign for two weeks before the beginning of the Olympics with a special deal. Then, run another campaign specifically for the World Cup when that event happens. You can clearly see how these two different and timely messages would be more relevant than one simple message all the time.

Check out this popup from Lennebelle Petites for Mother’s Day. It’s right on time, and the design matches the Holiday:

Mothers Day popup example

We know seasonal campaigns are important, so every quarter, we create a whole set of new campaign ideas you can use – just like we did this Spring. If you need some more inspiration, just come back at the beginning of Q3, and we’ll have some more ideas waiting for you 😉

3. Stay up-to-date with the latest design trends

Web design is changing constantly. To keep your popups appealing, you need to keep a close eye on the latest design trends as they evolve from year to year.

And an outdated design is less attractive and will result in fewer conversions. Many visitors will simply leave your site and never come back after a bad first impression.

We always recommend that your popups are designed to fit with the style of your website. It’s important that they appear as an integral part your site. As a result, you may need to update your website to the latest design trends to ensure your sales stay consistent.

Here are a few notes to help guide you:

  • Your website has to be responsive and look good on mobile
  • Use bold, hi-resolution images
  • Look for unique images instead of typical stock photos
  • Find graphics and icons that match your brand to create a visually-rich site
  • Follow minimalism in your designs with more white space, larger font sizes, more graphics and less text

Your popups should also have a minimalist feel with a clear message and call-to-action, bright and bold colors that match your site and only one main graphic or image. Trying to add too much information to your popups will distract your visitors and reduce your conversions.

4. A/B test continuously

A/B testing is another way that you can keep your campaigns grounded in reality. Continuously split-testing your popups to see what works best is a vital part to improve your campaigns.

While you might have a gut instinct about what works, be sure to always follow-up by checking the data. Based on the data you collect, you’ll learn which design and copy changes actually lead to better conversion rates.

Here are some different elements you should A/B test:

  • Your headline
  • CTA text and button color
  • Font style
  • Percentage vs. dollar amount offer
  • Free shipping vs. discounts

Let’s take a look at an example from BootCuffsSocks.com. They tested two different offers in their onsite retargeting campaign. The A variant shown below offered a fixed dollar amount store credit, while the B variant provided a percentage discount.

After testing each variant, they found the percentage discount was a more powerful incentive, outperforming the first variant by almost 21 percent. Check out both popups below.

A/B test popup example

(Note: Would you like to learn how to create delightful shopping experiences for each customer? Click here and download our free eBook that contains over 70 pages of tips and best practices.)

5. Use new templates for your campaigns

We regularly release new templates to help you create better campaigns. Built on the latest design trends and using the best techniques for conversion, there may be a perfect match for the campaign you are creating or refreshing.

For example, have you seen our latest product recommendation template?

product recommendation template

This template has a nice, clean, minimalist feel and product recommendation is a highly effective way to reengage visitors, especially those who are abandoning their cart.

6. Don’t let your visitors get bored with your offer

The other day, I was talking to a friend who runs an ecommerce store. He was asking for my advice on conversion rate optimization.

“The conversion rate of my website is decreasing continuously” – he told me. “I don’t understand why, the offer rocked in the first few months.”

He was really surprised by the drop sales. This is another example where it helps to keep your website and popup campaigns grounded in reality. I asked him nicely: “How would you feel if you went to your favorite store once a month for half a year and you saw exactly the same clothes and offers? You would get bored pretty quick, right?”

Your website visitors feel the same way when they see the same offer month after month. You’ve got to switch up your offers to keep your visitors engaged and give your repeat customers a reason to come back again.

Conclusion

Monitoring hundreds of onsite retargeting campaigns, we discovered the ones that were continuously updated performed the best. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Refreshing your campaigns on a regular basis can seem a bit challenging.

We’ve gathered some great tips here to take the guesswork out of creating new onsite retargeting campaigns and refreshing your existing popups. 

If you’re new to onsite retargeting, you may also want to check out our Ultimate Guide to Onsite Retargeting. Always feel free to reach out to our customer support team if you’re stuck and need some ideas to jumpstart your business.

How often do you refresh your popup campaigns? Let us know in the comment section below.