How To Grow Your Email List By 40,000 In 10 Months With A Giveaway

Do you ever browse the internet for products with multiple tabs open?

Do you ever forget to re-open those tabs after you get distracted?

With so many cool websites on the web, many of us have “TMTS” aka “Too Many Tabs Syndrome.”

It’s easy to jump from page… to page… to page.

But what if you could turn those people who are about to leave into email subscribers? Customers? Lifelong fans?

In this case study I’m going to show you how Hemper used a Sumo exit intent popup to get insane results:

  • Collected 41,008 subscribers
  • Generated a 22% popup conversion rate (11x higher than average)
  • Convinced readers who were just about to leave to give their email

Screenshot showing Sumo popup stats

Hemper has grown their email list to 41,008 (so far) email subscribers in ten months by using one simple “exit intent” popup that shows up when people are getting ready to change tabs.

When a user mouses out of the Hemper website, the exit intent popup triggers.

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup and the address bar

To create an exit intent popup like this for your eCommerce business — and get a 22% conversion rate — there are 5 key conversion elements you need:

  1. Giveaway offer. We talked about this in Hemper’s discount code case study, but giveaways perform gangbusters. Or, you can use any free opt-in “carrots” like ebooks, software, and more to convince people to subscribe. Go crazy!
  2. Countdown timer. If you’re doing a giveaway, update it monthly to show scarcity.
  3. Description. Tell people when the winner is announced if you’re doing a giveaway. Or, write some mouth-watering explanation text on why the thing you’re offering is worth their email.
  4. Picture. Show people what they can win or what they’re getting.
  5. Exit intent technology. Click here to use Sumo.

If you’re using the free Sumo tool, here’s how you can set up the same exact popup as Hemper:

1. Log into Sumo and create a new List Builder form

2. Set your Goal to “Collect Emails”

Screenshot showing Sumo popup settings

3. Set your Form Type to “Popup”

Screenshot showing Sumo popup settings

4. Set your Design to Sumo’s “Impress” template (Hemper used this template so they didn’t need to pay a designer to do design work).

Screenshot showing Sumo popup design settings

5. If you’re doing a monthly giveaway, add a “Countdown” to your design, then set your End Date to be at the end of the current month.

Screenshot showing Sumo popup settings

6. Set your Visibility to “Manual Mode” and only show it to people who haven’t seen a popup in 1 month (Hemper does this so repeat visitors don’t get annoyed).

Screenshot showing Sumo popup settings

7. Connect your email service provider so you can email your leads with content, offers, and more giveaways. Or, use Sumo Message Center to send autoresponder emails or manual emails to your subscribers without buying an email service provider.

Screenshot showing Sumo popup email settings

With this one simple exit intent popup, Hemper gets thousands of new emails leads EVERY month.

The best part...

All they have to do is change the countdown timer at the start of each month to reset the giveaway and generate more email leads.

The rest of the popup works automatically in the background while Hemper sleeps. Woohoo!

To get access to the same exit intent technology and template Hemper used to build this popup, click here to get your free Sumo account.