Making it Pop with a Pop-Up

From: Sports Basement
Subject Line: NA
Date: Thursday, December 17, 2009

Let me start by saying I love Sports Basement. Thanks Sports Basement, not only for your charitable support of non-profits, fantastic inventory and prices to swoon over, but also for your thoughtful pop-up opt-in box! I was frantically scouring websites for last minute Christmas shopping (I know, I'm such a cliché) and found myself browsing Sports Basement's website. As I was perusing their hiking boot selection, a nifty little opt-in pop-up appeared. It's not a new function, but a great one none-the-less.

What's nice about this strategy is that you are not passively collecting opt-ins. Users are presented with the opportunity to opt-in. As an added bonus, because the box pops up after a prospect has spent some time on the site, Sports Basement will likely collect a higher quality email address.

However, there are a couple areas that should be considered. The website does not offer any other area to opt-in. In addition to the absence of the traditional opt-in, Sports Basement drops a cookie once they've collected the opt-in in order to suppress the pop-up moving forward. This suppression is most likely implemented in order to soften the aggressive acquisition process. While this may be a thoughtful business rule, it does not take into consideration that computers and laptops may be shared. Other prospects using the same machine will not have the opportunity to opt-in. To avoid leaving dollars on the table, I recommend adding the traditional opt-in box to every page, then test the suppression business rules to get optimum acquisition results.