I followed a retweet to Dan Zarella’s site – he is “The Social Media Scientist”.

Given my background as a SEO and with a Social Media degree, its definitely a site I would have a look around on and see if the content was worth further following or follow Dan on Twitter.

Aggressive pop ups

I was immediately struck by the aggressive pop ups to sign up for something or other. I closed it and went to a second page – pop up again. I closed it and went to a third page – pop up again.

Normally I would have been annoyed and left that site and never come back. But I decided to ask Dan on Twitter about maybe using a different approach.

Now of course I know that numerically those goddamn pop ups give more sign ups. If you use your email list to make your money, that is a very important channel for you to maximise

The conversation was something like this:
@danzarella if i close your website pop up but still navigate your site, it means I am undecided about you content. Spamming it won’t help

@firstconversion It goes away after a few views.

@danzarrella I see now, mighty annoying, must shoot up your exits something fierce ^^ How about goes away after 1 but comes back after 5?

@firstconversion no, it actually slightly reduced bounce rates and skyrocketed subscriptions.

@danzarrella Certainly people like me may be interested enough to subscribe after a bit of info, would be turned off by the aggressiveness

@firstconversion the net effect in the end was positive

@danzarrella I know it improves your numbers, but I think may lose you a certain quality of follower as well

How do you assign a value to a follower? Only short term?

What I was trying to suggest via the stunted medium of Twitter, was that he may be harvesting low value signups via that form; people don’t know enough about his work to make an informed decision to follow him. He may be losing higher value signups by the constant harassment of the form, where more savvy people just close the site

Test Pop up cadence

What I wanted to suggest he test; after people close the first pop up, you wait for them to navigate 2 or 3 more pages, getting a good feel for your work, before popping up the signup box again

If I have more time to understand what you do, I am more likely to willingly and happily sign up, instead of ignorantly being badgered into it

I have no doubt Dan gets more signups with pop ups than without and he strikes me as the type of guy who knows how much each of his signups is worth to him in $. But not every follower can or should be measured in short term numbers or $

I just suggest a trial with a different cadence of pop ups to try catch the engaged types without annoying them