What Are OptinMonster Benefits? PROS & CONS – Comparison With Other Tools

OptinMonster

8.6

Easy to use

8.5/10

Settings

9.5/10

Price

7.1/10

Overall quality

9.2/10

Pros

• User-friendly
• Lots of customization options
• Various popup options
• Mobile-friendly
• Many available templates
• Integration with many popular tools
• OnSite Retargeting

Cons

• Expensive
• Many websites use OptinMonster which mean many sites already use its ready-made templates

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Despite the rise of social media advertising and YouTube banner ads, email remains the most consistently reliable means of direct digital marketing. Social media promotion fluctuates and is often hit-or-miss. Email marketing provides far more stable site traffic and generates more recurring revenue and conversions. OptinMonster is a popular lead-generation tool, and in this post, I will discuss OptinMonster benefits.

Not into email marketing? That’s cool, but it is still recommended to collect visitor contact information to form a strong subscriber and reader base. Your regular audience will be the foundation of your revenue stream.

The first step in building a list of subscribers is creating an opt-in form on your site. These forms are a proven method for building your base and providing you with a demographic snapshot of your content target audience.

While there are many opt-in services you can choose from, I’m going to focus specifically on OptinMonster in this post and show OptinMonster benefits. Let’s take a look at how it works, what it allows you to do, and how it measures up to its competition (you can find a comparison table at the end of this post).

NOTE: I have also written OptinMonster vs Thrive Leads comparison and OptionMonster vs Convert Pro, so if you are interested check those comparisons too.

Why Do I Need a Plugin/App Like OptinMonster?

If the vision for your blog or website is going to integrate email marketing, you need a solid plan in place. Shoehorning a “Subscribe to Our Newsletter” opt-in popup box on your landing page isn’t going to cut it. It can gain you a few leads here and there, but most people are going to slam that X button like they are playing whack-a-mole at a carnival.

Sometimes these ham-fisted strategies actually cause visitors to bounce from your site entirely, something that should be avoided at all costs. Lead generation opt-in form should always decrease your bounce rate.

Crafting smart, targeted lead magnets in your content is what you need to do. Content is what draws your readers in and gives them a reason to sign up for your email list. Get this strategy together first, and OptinMonster is going to be a significantly better fit for you.

OptinMonster Benefits

The core design of OptinMonster is to provide a cloud-based lead generation app that anyone can use to build a healthy subscriber list. When you sign up, you get a refined and highly effective product for your money.

So what is OptinMonster? It’s like the Swiss Army Knife of email list building. Thanks to its versatility, it supports various opt-in forms. It provides access to nearly a hundred opt-in form templates, making it easy to find a particular style that suits your brand and site design.

Visual Editor Interface

Web designers will love OptinMonster Visual Editor for its simple click and edit format when tweaking opt-in box elements. On the other hand, veteran web-designers may feel a bit limited with options and controls OptinMonster allows when changing or removing elements of the available templates.

For example, let’s say you pick a template for your opt-in form that has bullet points. You love everything about the template except those bullet points. However, since you can’t remove this bullet points element, you are stuck with it.

Honestly, it’s only a limitation for those who prefer more customization options, or those who can code in CSS and  HTML. For anyone else, it shouldn’t be a significant issue.

In terms of speed and simplicity for adding smart opt-in forms, OptinMonster is definitely your choice. Additionally, if you are familiar with CSS, you can use the integrated CSS editor to customize your form elements independently of the Visual Editor.

You can also select the Canvas template to start from scratch and build your own opt-in form using the integrated HTML and CSS editor. It’s not a real-time editor, so you will need to close the popup editor each time you make a change to see your results.

What Pop-ups Are Offered?

OptinMonster allows you to create pop-ups that can be used to advertise discounts on certain products or services, encourage customers to continue the checkout process, collect email information and establish loyalty with customers who visit your website.

Full-screen mats, lightboxes, and slide-ins are just some of the available options. OptinMonster can even be used to create sidebar forms that don’t “pop-up.” This can be a welcome alternative for visitors who grow tired of seeing the same pop-ups appearing over and over again on the sites that they visit.

You have complete control over when and how each pop-up will be shown. You can select to have after the event, exit intent, and welcome pop-ups to appear. Your pop-ups will work on laptops, desktop computers, and mobile devices. This can help you reach more potential customers.

Target Market/Demographic Options

Here’s where OptinMonster benefits excel at building your audience and precision-targeted email marketing. OptinMonster uses rule sets to group-specific visitor conditions to maximize the potential for subscriber buy-in. Configuring these rule sets properly allows you to control when and how your opt-in form appears.

Setting a time delay before the opt-in pop up is displayed,  displaying your opt-in when a visitor is about to bounce to another site, or scrolling “below the fold” are just a few of the available ruleset options. You can even configure OptinMonster to use specific opt-in forms at particular times of the year to present seasonal or limited-time offers automatically.

You probably only need to use one or two conditions to prevent visitors from playing whack-a-mole with your opt-in pop-ups (which I think we can all agree is annoying), but you do have a great deal of control over when and how your visitors see the opt-in box.

One of the best ways to advertise a national brand to different regions is by targeting people with marketing messages that are specific to certain regions. OptinMonster allows you to do just that.

Marketing, for example, ski equipment to people who live in Florida is ineffective. That customer base would likely be more interested in coupon codes for beach products than people living in Colorado.

OptinMonster allows you to customize pop-ups so that they’re relevant to where your new and existing customers are located. It’s another way to market effectively by adding a personal touch.

OnSite Retargeting Options

You can also use OptinMonster for a variety of targeting and triggering methods. OptinMonster Retargeting allows you to concentrate marketing to repeat visitors with offers for items that are related to their interests.

Information is collected from the last several times from each visitor’s site activity. It’s a new way to show clients products that they’re more likely to buy. It also saves them the hassle of seeing the same pop-up ads repeatedly.

You can also connect Dynamic Text Replacement and OnSite Retargeting to call site visitors by their first name. This is a more personalized approach that should ensure more clicks and more repeat visits.

OnSite FollowUp Campaigns use the data collected from previous site visits to display pop-up ads to customers. For instance, you can use an OnSite FollowUp Campaign on your e-commerce website to show them similar products and offers after finalizing their purchase.

You can even display relevant products to clients who have agreed to receive regular coupon offers. FollowUp campaigns can be used for content marketing by showing repeat customers different pop-ups each time they visit your site.

OptinMonster can be used to create pop-ups that are specific to certain pages of your site. People can receive different messages according to the pages of your website that they’re currently viewing. You can implement page-level pop-ups for people on your email list that can be broken down based on their interests.

List Segmentation Feature

List segmentation is essential for many businesses. You can use OptinMonster to segment your lists so that customers receive targeted messages. It’s a handy feature that can be integrated with many popular email distribution and CRM resources.

Here are a few ways that you can use OptinMonster to generated segmented email lists:

1. You can use Yes and No forms to let your site visitors segment themselves.
2. Exit-intent technology can be implemented to give people more reasons to remain on your site.
3. People who subscribe to your email list when completing orders can be enrolled in a customer loyalty program.

The possibilities are endless.

Available Templates

Most designers look at a blank screen and instantly start envisioning what different pages will look like. However, if you’re not a designer, the thought of an empty page can make you feel rather anxious – at least, that’s how I start to feel at times, anyway.

I enjoy using templates because I don’t have to worry about always creating pages from scratch. OptinMonster has plenty of appealing templates that you can use. About 12 to 25 templates will be available according to the type of form that you want to design.

Then you can use the visual editor to customize your images, text, and colors. Having ready-made templates is much easier than crafting new pages from scratch every time.

Performance Analytics & Split Testing

What good is any plugin or app for marketing if you can’t verify it’s working? Integrating Google Analytics (a requirement for measuring OptinMonster performance) lets you can check your search result rankings, conversions, and all other relevant data used to measure the success rate of your opt-in and email marketing strategy.

Some site admins and developers aren’t a fan of the fact that you can only use Google Analytics for OptinMonster, but for beginners, this isn’t much of an issue since it’s the most widely used analytics source online.

The Split Testing feature is a proven method for deciding which subscriber building campaign strategy is most effective. Whenever you choose to tweak various settings and options for your opt-in box pop-ups, you can test which option is more effective at adding subscribers by creating a split test.

OptinMonster will automatically pull analytics from your original campaign and compare it to the test campaign with the new changes. This is a handy tool when you are trying to find that ideal balance for your campaign that offers the most return for your investment.

OptinMonster Pros & Cons

Now it’s time to look at OptinMonster’s pros and cons.

PROS

• Ease of use: The campaign builder’s drop and drag interface are very intuitive. It shouldn’t take much time to get started. You’ll soon be creating your own customized pages in a matter of minutes.
• Non-interruptive pop-up options: User-friendly pop-ups can improve your conversion rates and help you gather more customer email addresses. They won’t interfere with site visitors’ activities or annoy them enough to want to stop using your site.
• Plenty of customization choices: OptinMonster allows you to create almost any kind of pop-up. The ability to have pop-ups display precisely when you want them to is just one of many customization choices that you can enable.
• Adaptive pop-ups: You don’t have to show the same pop-ups to every customer every time they visit your site. OptinMonster allows you to add personalized messages to your customers in targeted pop-ups, thanks to their smart technology. You can also make sure that clients who have placed orders, been added to your email lists, or have performed other specified tasks don’t see pop-ups.
• Mobile-friendly: Because many people use their smartphones, it’s important to have pop-ups that are mobile-friendly. These pop-ups are optimized to look great on any device customers may use to access a website.
• Pre-designed templates: OptinMonster simplifies page creation. You can use any of their ready-made templates to create unique, appealing web pages.
• Unlimited pop-ups: You can create as many pop-ups as you want. There is no restriction.
• Integration: OptinMonster connects with several of today’s most popular digital marketing tools.
• Special effects: To create more interest, you can add eye-catching animations.

CONS

• Familiar pop-ups: OptinMonster is already being used by over 700,000 websites worldwide. This means that many of your customers are probably already accustomed to seeing some of the same pop-up templates regularly. Having new templates to use every once in a while would be an excellent idea so that users could start with something different.
• Pricing: Unfortunately, some of OptinMonster’s best features are only available at higher pricing levels. For instance, OnSite Retargeting is available with a plan that costs $80 per month (the plan is billed annually).
• Confusing setup: You’ll have to start the setup on OptinMonster’s SAAS website. From there, the setup can only be completed on your WordPress site using their API plugin. This can be somewhat confusing and frustrating for some users.

OptinMonster Comparison With Other Tools

Convert Pro vs Thrive Leads vs OptinMonster vs SumoMe Comparison

• Name
• Price
• Drag and Drop Editor
• Real Time Editor
• Customizable layouts
• Responsiveness
• Mobile View Editing
• Lightbox Popup
• Info-bar
• Slide-Ins
• Content locker
• Full screen optin form
• After blog post form
• In-content form
• Widget box
• Write Custom HTML
• Mobile specific form
• Yes/No type form
• Multi-step forms
• Event Countdown Timer
• Evergreen Countdown Timer
• Welcome Mat
• Multiple form fields
• Before blog post form
• Phone Field & other fields
• WPML Compatible
• White Label
• Welcome Popups
• Exit Intent
• After scroll trigger
• On-click trigger
• Load when you reach ID/Class
• After reading Post trigger
• User Inactivity trigger
• Referrer Detection
• Device Detection
• First Timers detection
• Logged-in users detenction
• Converted visitors detenction
• AdBlock Detection
• Geo-Location Targeting
• Testing Designs and Content
• Test Triggers
• Test Different Design/Form Types
• Ready-made Templates
• Integration with email marketing and other services
• Analytics

  How well each form performs
• Import/Export

  Export desired call to actions and import them to any other website

• CONVERT PRO
• $99 / year (unlimited sites) or $399 one time payment for lifetime updates and support (use on unlimited sites)
• Around 62+
• Around 33+

Read more >

• THRIVE LEADS
• $67/year for one site, $97/year for 5 sites or $147/year for 15 sites

  Updates are lifetime but support is for 1 year. After year if you need support you can renew.
• Around 561+ (according to their site)
• Around 39+

Read More >

• OPTINMONSTER
• $99/month if you want all features (for 5 sites)
• Around 175+
• Around 31+

Read More >

• SUMOME
• It has free plan for one site which is basic and very limited and Pro for $468+ /year for 3 sites and 100k visitors per month
• Around 40+
• Around 33+

Read More >

Benefits of OptinMonster Final Thoughts

OptinMonster is an excellent product for beginners and those who are looking to collect a subscriber list for lead generation and to grow their base. It’s easy to use and simplifies an otherwise complex process.

There are a few things I think that more advanced users would change about it, but on the whole, it works well and offers beginners a great place to start with an email opt-in for their blog or website.

What’s the bottom line? OptinMonster offers the best value with the most straightforward interface and is excellent for beginners and those new to web design, lead collection, and email campaigns.

OptinMonster is an excellent pop-up resource! It’s well worth considering, especially if you need something that has a nice variety of different pop-up templates, is flexible, and also incredibly easy to use.

As alternative to OptinMonster, check Brave or Getsitecontrol (check Getsitecontrol review) which is also SaaS tool and has affordable pricing plans.