OptinMonster Plugin Review
Optin forms are a necessity for any blogger or marketer that wants to grow their business without being totally reliant on search engines.
There are a lot of different optin plugins out there, but finding a high quality one that offers a variety of options, alongside an easy to use interface is not that easy.
On the surface, OptinMonster certainly ticks a lot of boxes, so after testing out a review copy here are my findings.
What does it do?
Well, like most optin plugins, it allows you to easily create different optin boxes on your site.
The plugin consists of the core plugin and (at the time of writing) 5 add on plugins. Depending on what licence you buy, you get access to the different addons.
The core plugin only allows you to create one type of optin: a lightbox popup. The different licences allow you to access the following:
Footer
This adds a bar at the bottom of the page; it’s very simple and subtle.
Slidein
The SlideIn option adds an optin box to the bottom right of the screen that slides up.
Exit Intent
When I saw this I initially thought it was going to be one of those annoying JavaScript alert pop ups that are so commonly used by marketers. Instead the pop up only happens when the users mouse leaves the browser area, like when they go to type a new address or hit the close or back buttons.
This option appears for all the optin types, but doesn’t work with them all – sidebar for example.
Sidebar
This is a more standard approach and it uses a widget. The only thing I didn’t like about this was that there was no option to hide the form after it has been submitted.
After Post
Adds a simple optin box after each or selected posts, it’s very similar in style to the footer version in that it’s just the form fields and a button.
Templates
The different optin styles come with different templates. For most of them they are limited to one style, though the lightbox comes with 5 different versions.
The choice isn’t huge, but there are enough options built into the design system that will allow you to customise the templates to give a fairly wide variety of designs. You can change font, font size, colours and upload images.
The font selection is again fairly limited, maybe 30 fonts, when Google Fonts offer 600 or so.
I suppose the reduction in templates and fonts isn’t a bad thing, it will certainly help cut down the time spent deciding between two virtually identical fonts!
Settings
The settings within each optin you create are wide enough to allow a lot of flexibility. You can set the delay on when the optin appears (so as not to bombard your visitors when they first arrive). You can also specify which page, post or category the optin will load on. This is really helpful as you can have an “in your face” optin, but limit it to specific landing pages etc.
Split Testing
Optin Monster also provides a Split Testing option. It’s quite simple in that it will create a duplicate of the optin, which you can then modify design wise. After that it will split the loading of them on a 50/50 basis.
The stats are visible from the OptinMonster dashboard. There are no further options, such as having more than two in the split test, or automatic optin selection based on which has performed the best.
Conclusion
OptinMonster is certainly a quality product, its slick and well designed with more or less all the features you need.
It isn’t cheap though, with the Pro version setting you back $199. That being said, if email marketing is or will be part of your business, then you will want to improve your subscriber rate. OptinMonster will certainly help you do that, allowing you to test out various options and designs to find what works best for you and your readers.