This Little Tool Quadrupled My Signups

After my recent push for Robert Plank’s Speed Copy Secrets copywriting special report on how to write copy in under an hour, I wanted to test a few other things from Robert, since he’s a gifted programmer and offers some neat scripts.

(Actually, I recently bought everything from Robert I could get my hands on, and so far I’m thoroughly impressed. Specifically, his “Full-​​Blast PHP” and “Sales Page Tactics Volumes 1–3″ products are fabulous.)

I’m testing just a couple of Robert’s scripts on this blog, and early results are stunning. Let me share with you a few test results…

After reading Darren Rowse’s eye-​​opening blog post, where he reported his optins multiplying after integrating a popover optin box, I wanted to test one, too.

In fact, I wanted to test a lightbox-​​like popover optin form. What “lightbox” means is, the popover appears over the web page, while the background around it darkens and blurs so that emphasis is placed on the optin form.

Granted, Aweber does offer something similar. But I use GetResponse. I also wanted one specifically for WordPress, and I wanted more control over the look and feel — especially the color of the faded background.

(You’ll see why in a moment!)

To that end, I decided to use Robert Plank’s WordPress plugin “Action Popup,” which you can use with most autoresponders out there. (It even comes with step-​​by-​​step instructions and even a video!)

Results? Well, check this out…

I typically get around 40 unique subscribers a day. Sometimes I get more, other times a bit less. This is from straight, organic traffic, as I don’t advertise my blog at all.

First day, 124 subscribers.

Second day, 188.

Third day (today), 137 and still growing!

Pretty impressive — and the day is not over yet. If you do the math, getting an average of 150 new subscribers a day will grow my list by 50,000+ in one year. And that’s without any advertising at all.

Here’s the interesting part.

Throughout the day, I was testing various colored backgrounds for the fade-​​out effect around the pop-​​up. Lightbox is typically gray and dark, but Robert’s plugin allows you to pick different colors.

(It also allows you to choose either “on entry” or “on exit attempt,” as well as the appearance effect — such as bouncing, flying, fading in, etc — and the frequency. I have mine set to once to reduce as much friction as possible.)

What I’ve found is this: using a color that matches and blends with the blog’s color scheme generated the best results. (About 18–20% more.) Why? Maybe it’s a consistency or branding issue. I don’t know. But here’s an example…

Overall, I literally tripled (and sometimes even quadrupled) my daily optin rate strictly from my blog. So my results seem to parallel Darren Rowse’s.

However, one caveat: results are still too early to tell since it’s been only three days — plus, it’s the weekend and traffic is usually a bit lower. But I’m eager to see the results over a period of 2–3 weeks. I’ll report them back here, or via Twitter.

Also, another thing to note is that Darren also compared pageviews and time spent, meaning that, while the popover may be a bit intrusive, it did not deter readers.

Granted, this should be done on a case-​​by-​​case basis, as every blog has its own readership, and every blog and every market is different — hence why I’m eager to see the results over a period of time to avoid jumping to a premature conclusion.

Nevertheless, it looks promising to say the least.

Another interesting stat: Robert also offers a variety of other plugins. One of them is Action Optin. This plugin uses Ajax to refresh the optin box alone so that no new web page needs to be called when the optin is filled out.

It refreshes right there, on the page.

Plus, a customizable confirmation message appears in the place where the optin form used to be, indicating that the subscriber’s request was processed.

This is great if you have sales copy and you don’t want to push your readers away — they stay on the page (and the page doesn’t reload), so they don’t lose their place or the momentum in the sales process.

(It’s also a separate script, so you don’t have to use it with WordPress exclusively. Any web page will do, including salesletters. And it’s perfect if you prefer unobtrusive, on-​​page optin forms rather than pop-​​ups.)

But the one plugin I’ve been testing for a while now (you’ve probably seen it on this blog already) is Robert Plank’s Action Comments.

It adds an extra checkbox to the blog’s comment form that asks commentators if they wish to subscribe to my list. In other words, as they comment, they can join my list at the same time. All in one fell swoop. Nifty, eh?

(Check out the comment box at the bottom of this blog post for an example. Better yet, leave a comment!)

This one boosted my blog’s subscribers by about 34%. (However, this is not an empirical number by any stretch, because it’s totally based on how many comments I get.)

But overall, these are very interesting stats.

Plus, Robert’s customer service is also very impressive. I had a glitch using one of his plugins, and he was quick and eager to fix it for me.

Again, I’m thoroughly impressed by Robert Plank and his many scripts. And this is just the beginning — there are a few more scripts I’m going to test on salesletters and other, non-​​marketing blogs I own.

Click here to visit Robert Plank’s blog.