Lead Capture Popups: How to Create [+10 Examples]

Lead capture popups are a proven method for converting visitors into potential customers. In fact, 62% of Shopify stores use website popups to generate leads and sales.

In this post, you'll find all the info you need to start capturing more leads and grow your email list with lead capture popups.

In this post:

• What is a lead capture popup?

• Are lead capture popups effective?

• Lead capture popups: best practices

• Examples of lead capture popups

• How to create a lead capture popup

What is a lead capture popup?

A lead capture popup is a popup created to generate leads on a website. It contains signup fields and offers incentives such as discounts in exchange for contact details and data like product preferences. Also called lead generation popups, lead capture popups are a proven tool for consistently building a customer base for online businesses.

Are lead capture popups effective?

Lead capture popups convert around 4% of website visitors on average. The top-performing campaigns can convert even up to 25% of visitors.

If you're wondering if lead capture popups can work for your business, you'll be glad to find that online businesses in many industries are successfully using lead capture popups to grow their customer base and collect useful data.

Here are a few examples:

Quandoo, a restaurant reservation platform, accelerated email list building by 20% with a lead capture popup with bonus loyalty points: Read case study

Also—

YesPark, a parking space rental service, added 3,492 new emails to their customer list thanks to one lead capture popup campaign (see its performance below): Read case study

Next—

OverstockArt, an online art store, captures 1,000 leads/mo with lead generation popups with discounts: Read case study

Lead capture popups: best practices for conversions

To make your lead capture popup exceed your expectations, consider these best practices:

• Offer a first-purchase discount between 10% and 20%. The most popular discount sizes used by Shopify stores are 10%, 15%, and 20%

• Run a limited-time sales promotion. Consider B2GO, ("Buy two get one free"), a flash sale (a sale lasting up to 48 hours), or discounts for selected items (see discount code ideas)

• Add a countdown timer to the popup. Countdowns create a sense of urgency, so they're perfect for quick events like flash sales and even first-purchase discounts (see how to add countdowns in one click)

• Make popups relevant to leads with targeting. You can personalize your offers based on the shopping cart content and value, browsing behavior, the number of visits, geolocation, and more (see how to use targeting)

• Use mobile-optimized popups. If many of your customers visit from smartphones, mobile popups will help you capture leads while staying in line with Google's rules (here's how to create a mobile popup)

• Test multiple versions of your campaign. With A/B testing, you can try different discount sizes, images, colors, and CTA button texts to discover designs and offers that capture more leads (see how to A/B test popups)

Lead capture popup examples

• Blume — a lead capture popup with a discount

• Incu — capturing leads and product preferences

• Hub Coffee Roasters — a simple lead capture popup

• Faguo — a spin-to-win popup with a giveaway

• TOMS — a lead capture popup with a countdown timer

• Lulu & Georgia — a free shipping lead capture popup

• King Arthur Bakery — a popup to capture leads and increase average order value

• Southern Elegance Candles — a popup that captures phone numbers

• Leonce Chenal — a lead generation popup from a journal

1. Blume — a lead capture popup with a first-order discount

This is a welcome popup, meaning it's displayed to unregistered visitors, trying to convert them into subscribers or customers.

This lead capture popup is very effective: Blume converts 5% of its traffic. That's higher than the average popup conversion rate of 3.8%.

Design-wise, this campaign is great: it's got a clean layout, a compelling headline, a nice incentive, and a good image featuring Blume's products. Together, these elements result in a lead generation popup that effectively captures attention and encourages immediate action.

2. Incu — capturing leads and product preferences

This one is a bit more than just a lead capture popup.

Besides emails, Incu also captures customers' names and shopping preferences. That data will go a long way toward creating personalized email campaigns.

The list of benefits is also pretty good, offering compelling motivation for customers to sign up.

3. Hub Coffee Roasters — a simple lead capture popup

Have a minimalistic ecommerce website design and want your popups to be the same?

Then having a similar lead capture popup to this one might be a good idea. It doesn't have an image—rather a simple text promising a discount for subscribing to the brand's newsletter.

Note that the discount is valid for online purchases only, suggesting that Hub Coffee Roasters are aiming to increase online sales.

4. Faguo — a spin to win popup with a giveaway

Like most other businesses, Faguo experienced slow lead generation at some point. Then Martin, the head of ecommerce, decided to try an experiment by running a gamified lead capture campaign. After a few iterations and some A/B tests, he arrived at the design you see above.

The idea is simple: share your data for a chance to win a pair of expensive Faguo sneakers. The campaign worked amazingly well, capturing 48,160 emails and names of customers:

5. TOMS — a lead capture popup with a countdown timer

Creating a sense of urgency is a time-tested—and effective—marketing tactic, and we see TOMS using it in this lead capture popup example.

To further inspire visitors to buy, the brand offers a 15% discount on the first order along with the latest promos and special offers.

6. Lulu & Georgia — a free shipping lead capture popup

Discounts are great at collecting leads, but sometimes free shipping will do the trick well, too. This lead capture popup uses this incentive to get more emails, and of course, sales.

Note also that the offer is limited to three days. Limited-time offers are another great idea for speeding up lead capture for online businesses.

7. King Arthur Baking — a popup to capture leads and increase average order value

What's interesting about this lead generation popup is the condition to receive the discount. To get 15% off, customers have to place an order above $60.

With this lightbox popup, King Arthur Baking Company achieves two goals: capturing emails and increasing the average order value.

8. Southern Elegance Candles — a popup that captures phone numbers

This lead capture example collects phone numbers, which is another popular lead generation tactic among online businesses.

The text "We send exclusive deals via SMS!" also helps to create a feeling of being in a closed group that gets the best offers—a great example of a strong popup message.

9. Leonce Chenal — a lead gen popup from a journal

Leonce Chenal is an online French fashion and lifestyle journal, which uses this campaign to capture leads for the newsletter.

Their popup asks for an email in exchange for insider knowledge and exclusive updates, capitalizing on the readers' interest. The beautiful design also complements the journal's website, ensuring the message is not intrusive but rather feels like its natural extension.

How to create a lead capture popup

If you want to display a lead capture popup campaign on your website for free, let's use Wisepops (rated 4.9 on Capterra and Shopify) to create one.

Follow these steps:

1. Create a new campaign

2. Pick a template

3. Customize the design

4. Add the discount code

5. Choose when to display the popup

6. Publish your campaign

In this tutorial, we will create a lead capture popup that collects emails and gives a discount for signing up.

Grab an account to get started:

Unlimited free trial, no cc needed. Learn more about Wisepops popup builder or see ideas to use Wisepops for online stores

1. Create a new campaign

In Wisepops, go to Create campaign to enter the template gallery:

2. Pick a template

Let's pick a template now.

This one below is great—it has a big heading to catch attention, plenty of room for supporting text, and collects data with two fields (names and emails). Scroll down just a bit on the template page to find it:

3. Customize the design

The popup editor is very easy to use—to change or customize the element, you just need to click it. The text formatting menu is at the top while the rest of the settings are on the left, appearing as you click corresponding elements.

Tip:

When you finish customizing, choose Apply this design to all steps and Wisepops will finish customizing the second popup window ("Step 2") in seconds.

Note:

Your popup comes with a tab, a tiny window that stays in the left bottom corner of the website after the visitor closes the popup without getting the discount. Using tabs is popular among ecommerce stores to make discounts more available to visitors who change their minds about the discount.

Also, use this 5-min video to get help creating and customizing your lead capture popup:

4. Add the discount code

Go to Step 2 (right above the campaign preview in the editor)—this is the window that will open when the lead provides their data and clicks Get my coupon:

There—

Click the CODE element to customize it.

Next, change the code in the menu that opens on the left:

Note that the visitor can click the button below the discount to both copy the code and close the popup—that's very convenient.

5. Choose when to display the popup

We want to capture as many leads as possible, so our popup needs to be displayed to all unregistered visitors. At the same time, we don't want to be very spammy.

So let's do a popup that shows:

• 5 seconds after landing on a page

• on all website pages

• to all unregistered visitors

• once in two days if closed

Even though those might sound like a lot to do, setting everything up actually takes a few clicks. In fact, most of these are the default settings in Wisepops.

The only thing you need to change is the first display setting: the number of seconds after landing when the popup appears.

To do that—

Go to Display Rules > Trigger and change the default three settings to five:

6. Publish your campaign

Your popup is ready to capture leads!

You can preview it and visualize how it will appear on your website (hit Preview in the top right corner of your screen).

To show the campaign on your website, simply add the Wisepops code snippet in a few clicks: add Wisepops to your website.

Also, to have the collected emails sent directly to your email app, connect it to Wisepops: Integrations

Summary

Lead capture popups are a valuable tool to hook potential leads and grow your business. Implementing the best practices and examples discussed here can lead to significant improvements in your lead generation efforts.

And one last thing: you'll see that the best lead capture popup is one that is refined through continuous A/B testing, so don't hesitate to experiment and optimize your campaigns to get the best results.