MailOptin Review PROS & CONS (2023) | WordPress Lead Generation & Email Automation Plugin

When it comes to building an email list and choosing WordPress lead generation plugin, people often get confused on the best tool to use because there are so many available to choose from.

Email is considered as the most common and reliable method of online marketing. Many businesses reach a large number of audiences and potential customers through email.

Taking that into consideration comes a need for proper email marketing platform and lead capture system for WordPress users. You need a responsive and straightforward email building plugin. This is where MailOptin comes into play.

In this MailOptin review, I will show what it offers and if it is the best choice for lead generation and email automation needs.

 

MailOptin Review

MailOptin is a plugin specifically designed to make list building easy, quick and result-oriented. Designing an effective optin form is a serious job. It is a significant aspect of every successful list building strategy.

Once you are able to create beautiful optin forms, determine how visitors interact with them, track the progress of the optin forms, the potential impact on your email list is enormous.

Unlike other alternatives, MailOptin ensures your email list subscribers, readers or customers are engaged continuously using its suite of event-triggered and automated emails.

MailOptin provides many features where you can understand the visitor behavior. You can also analyze the performance and perform various experiments (A/B Split testing etc.) to come up with a better option so that you get better results and conversions.

MailOptin comes in both free and paid versions. This plugin enables users to convert their website visitors into clients and email subscribers, grow email and newsletter list and execute campaigns.

With MailOptin, you are able to show targeted messages and CTAs (call to action) across your WordPress website through a variety of opt-in forms, including lightbox pop-ups, notification bars, slide-ins, widgets, and embedded/inline forms.

The plugin is equipped with a user-friendly form and template builder that allows you to create attractive and professional opt-in forms and email newsletters.

This means that whatever your approach is, you will have something to work with. It is also possible to have a combination of optin form types on your website. Nevertheless, you have to play smart when deciding how many optin form types should be triggered in your web page.

 

 

In total, the plugin has five optin form types, and they are:

• Lightbox: This is the most effective and popular way to build an email list;
• In-Post Optin: Display your opt-in forms at the top or bottom of posts;
• Notification Bar: Anchor an optin form on the top of your screen;
• Slide-in: Let MailOptin display slide-in optin form;
• Sidebar/Widget: This optin form is generally for the sidebar placement or any widget area supported by your WordPress theme.

 

Building Optin Form

I am going to walk you through the process of creating an optin form from start to finish. Firstly, you need to have the plugin installed and activated. After that, connect it to your email marketing service of choice.

MailOptin integrates with all the popular email marketing services including MailChimp, Sendy, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Drip, GetResponse, ConvertKit, and AWeber.

The integration is very straight-forward. On the “Connections” options page of the plugin, you will find the various ways to establish a connection to your email marketing service provider. For the purpose of this review, I have connected to MailChimp.

 

 

The next step is to create an optin campaign. Navigate to Optin Campaign > Add New. Here, you will see all the optin form types. Each of them has multiple pre-designed templates that can be fully customized to blend with your website’s design.

 

 

Give the campaign a name by writing in on the Optin Campaign Title text-field and select a theme. There is also a handy feature called “Lead Bank.” Here, you can view the data of your subscribers.

The name, email, user agent and the page from where the lead was generated will be displayed there. From this page, you will also have the option to export your email list.

 

Customization, Settings & Triggers

Every element of your optin form can be customized. The live editor shows your customization progress.

 

 

You can alter things like the message, the image, the image orientations, borders, effect, colors and lots more. When you are done with your customization, head back to the customization area to set up your triggers.

There are a lot of display rules you can tweak to give you different types of responses depending on your visitor’s interaction with your site.

 

 

The Lightbox optin form type has several trigger options available:

• Instant Display
• Specified time delay
• At a specific point in the content
• After scrolling down a fixed percentage of the page
• Scheduled triggers
• When the visitor shows exit intent: this is when a visitor is about to leave your website.

 

Exit Intent Feature

Popups can be intrusive and leave a bad user experience with such an approach. This is where exit intent popup feature comes in handy.

MailOptin monitors your visitor’s movements and interactions. When it determines that a visitor is about to leave your site, it will display the optin form. There are high chances that visitor will convert in this way.

Apart from showing the optin form when the visitor is about to leave the page, you can also show the optin form when the visitor scrolls down the page, or after some time of page load (i.e., after a certain period), etc.

 

Targetting Optin Forms

Take advantage of the plugin’s laser-focused targeting feature called Page Level Targeting. This is a very powerful aspect of the plugin because it can also serve in building targeted email lists.

If you want to access this feature, navigate to your customization area > Display Rules > Page Targeting. You will be able to choose exactly which pages you want your optin form to appear on.

This means you can create a system where relevant emails can be sent to your target audience which in turn improves click-through-rate.

 

 

You can exclusively display opt-in forms on specific sections of your site, prevent them from appearing on specified posts, pages, and categories of your blog. There are other display rules also that you can choose from.

Page Level Targeting gives you the ability to show unique offers and campaigns depend on upon the visitor’s location and how they interact on your website.

This provides you high customization ability, and you have total freedom to find the best approach for collecting emails and effective marketing.

 

Enable & Embed Optin Form

Now that your form has been created, the next step is to deploy it. You will need to head back to the Optin Campaign page and select your just created optin. Toggle the activated button, so it changes from grey to blue which implies that it has been enabled.

Aside from the automatic optin placements, you can go completely manual on certain optin form types by embedding them anywhere on your website. To achieve this, you can either use shortcode or template tag.

 

 

The shortcode option is used to embed opt-in forms anywhere within your posts and pages while the template-tag embeds optins anywhere within your WordPress template.

To begin, navigate to Display Rules > Shortcode & Template tag, you will find the code ready for use.

 

A/B Split Testing & Analytical Reporting

A/B testing is a crucial aspect of maximizing conversions, and every good lead generation plugin must have this feature. MailOptin comes with robust A/B testing features that make performance report very immersive.

 

 

MailOptin is an excellent conversion-focused WordPress plugin with built-in analytics that provides sufficient data like a number of impression and conversion rate.

This comes in handy when tracking the performance of your optins so you can quickly determine which optins are performing and which optins require modifications.

To create a split test, navigate to Optin Campaigns and select the optin you intend performing split testing on. Then click the More Options and create an A/B Split Test.

This will take you to a new form where you will give the split test a name and write notes about the changes you made. Once you click the “Create Split Test” button, you will be redirected to the optin form live editor where you can make changes.

 

Automated Email Newsletters

This feature allows you to create different types of emails or automatic newsletters to your subscribers. For example when you publish a new post on your website it will automatically trigger email (event-triggered) to your subscription list.

You can choose any readymade template available for this. As soon as you click on Publish button, the plugin will start doing its work.

 

 

Some of the best features of MailOptin newsletter and automation are cost-effectiveness, time-effectiveness, high conversion rate, automated email campaigns, automated newsletters, newsletter schedule, 100% responsive templates and unlimited designer email templates.

Other useful features available in the plugin include:

• After Conversion – Control what happens after you get a lead. You can redirect a user to a URL, display a success message or just close the optin automatically.
• New Post Notification – MailOptin will automatically trigger your mailing list with a “New Post Notification” newsletter in a beautiful and attractive template each time you publish a new post.
• Schedule – Determine the time or period you want your optin form to be triggered. This can also be done based on time-zone.
• Click Link Trigger: When an element is clicked on your website, you can trigger an optin form for specific purposes.
• Scroll Trigger: When a user scrolls a fixed percentage of your content, your optin from will be triggered.

 

MailOptin Pricing

Unlike many premium plugins with confusing pricing format, MailOptin has two pricing plans. The Standard plan which has a $69 price tag for a single site and $99 for three sites.

Users on this plan will have access to unlimited opt-in campaigns, exit intent, click launch trigger, year support and lots more. MailOptin Pro plan also comes with a $199 price tag. This plan has no restriction.

It unlocks all features to customers, including adblock detection, opt-in scheduling, WooCommerce integration, priority email support and more.

 

 

You can try out MailOptin Lite plan which is entirely free but limited in functionality. Lite version includes the best three opt-in form designs, the lightbox popup, before/after post and sidebar/widget.

It is as fast as the premium paid version and equally high converting. You will get the email and automation demos, as well as the opt-in forms demo.

 

MailOptin Review Summary

MailOptin provides you with all the tools and functionalities you need to generate leads and convert visitors of your WordPress websites without any manual effort.

This WordPress lead generation and email automation/marketing plugin brings to the table multiple kinds of opt-in forms to greatly diversify the way you collect leads.

You get to use lightbox popups, notification bars, slide-ins, sidebars, and widgets, embedded, in-page and call to actions to mention some. Compared to other similar software and plugins, MailOptin is designed with speed and performance in mind.

It doesn’t burden your website with insane numbers of CSS, javascript, and images. It ensures that your website visitors enjoy a smooth and seamless experience whenever they come to your website.

With MailOptin, you have a powerful drag and drop builder that simplifies and accelerates the creation of your optin forms.

If you are not keen on building your forms from scratch, MailOptin offers you a selection of professionally designed templates that are ready for launch. Tweak the templates to give it your feel and capture your leads whenever you are ready.

The plugin is very easy to use, and you can start creating optin forms without any prior knowledge of coding.

Customization is fluid, thanks to the built-in template and form builder. Every changes made in the plugin are visible as the edits are made.

When you have created your stylish optin templates, you need to maximize conversions. This is where the analytics, reporting and performance feature becomes very important.

Using MailOptin WordPress lead generation plugin, it is also very easy to track performance and instantly detect poor performing optins.

As alternative to MailOption, I suggest you check Omnisend review, AcyMailing review, Moosend review, Mailster review, or SendPulse review.