6 Email Popup Examples & Templates to Help You Grow Your List

Email popups are a great way to gather potential buyers’ contact details to nurture and convert them. But they’re only as effective as:

1. Their timing
2. The incentive they offer

After all, asking visitors to sign up just to keep in touch doesn’t really answer the question that’s top of their mind: what’s in it for me?

It’s why high-converting email popups always offer a compelling incentive to encourage people to share their email address. 

In this post, let’s look at what makes a winning email popup and how you can create it. We’ve also got six real email popup examples to inspire you and email popup templates to help you get started today.  

What is an email popup?

An email popup is a window that surfaces on a user’s screen giving them an incentive (example: free shipping or discount) to encourage them to share their email address in exchange for it.

Email popup best practices? 

Before we dive any deeper, let’s take you through proven popup design best practices. Stick by these when creating your email popup: 

• Plan a compelling incentive. Ask yourself: what would make potential buyers sign up? This could be anything from free shipping or a discount to a quiz helping them understand which product is best for them.
• Make sure it’s on-brand. A popup that doesn’t align with your brand identity would look foreign on your site—confusing site visitors, therefore, reducing its conversion rate. 
• Keep it minimal so it’s easy to read. Design your popup to be visually engaging without being busy. Use contrasting colors and plenty of whitespace. Make sure the call-to-action (CTA) button is easy-to-click and uses minimal text with command words to prompt action.  
• Use persuasive copy. Use conversion copywriting to encourage action. For example, use power words such as “free” and “limited edition” and talk about the benefit of sharing their email address.‍
• Guide shoppers to the next step. Don’t just stop at a plain ‘thank you’ after interested buyers share their email addresses. Instead, encourage them to take another step, for example, explore your new collection or the personalized product you recommend them.

Now for real-life examples of popups to inspire your email popup:

1. The Ridge’s 10% off overlay popup 

The Ridge uses an exit-intent, overlay email popup that shows up only after a site visitor has scrolled a little and heads to leave.

The popup is designed minimally, showcases the product, and leverages FOMO-instilling copy using words like “don’t miss out” and “limited time.” All of this boosts the popup’s conversion rate.  

This email popup example is also a great one because it gives visitors two exit options — the “decline offer” text below the CTA and the exit option at the top right.  

The last point worth noting: the CTA box and incentive text both use a color that’s different than the rest of the text to make them stand out and easy to read. 

2. Outer’s $100 off email and text sign-up popup 

Outer’s minimally-designed, on-brand email popup shows up on their homepage as soon as a site visitor lands there—asking for both an email address and contact number over two steps.

It’s a winner for two main reasons:

One, it gives a smart incentive of $100 off instead of confusing shoppers with an X% off which can be hard to calculate for some people. 

Two, it asks a simple question: ‘Why are you looking for new outdoor furniture?’ Interested folks can answer it using the drop-down menu, which is an easy, friction-free way to prompt them to answer. This question is helpful for segmenting the audience so that Outer sends them relevant emails from the get-go. 

One last point that’s interesting? There’s some clarifying text below the CTA button that explains that the discount is available at a certain minimum purchase value and can’t be combined with other offers. 

This bit of copy is super helpful for Outer to keep their shoppers’ trust—lest they add items to their carts only to realize the discount doesn’t apply to them. 

3. Fatty15’s money-back guarantee and free shipping  email popup

Unexpected shipping fees are the leading reason behind cart abandonment. 

And trying new products always comes with a risk. So the added 30-day guarantee makes for an effective incentives duo.

The email popup’s design is also on point with it being clutter-free and featuring a clear CTA button. 

There’s also an easy-to-spot exit option on the top right for folks not interested in sharing their email address. 

4. Hunter & Gather’s segmentation-based email popup 

This email popup shows up when a visitor heads for the exit—asking a simple question that’s uber easy to answer given there are options to choose from.

Once a person shares their answer though, they can easily get their discount by sharing their email address.

Finally, Hunter & Gather gives them personalized suggestions for products based on their answer to their question alongside their discount code. 

This is an effective way to use an email popup for not only capturing leads but also encouraging interested buyers to shop straight from the popup—minimizing the steps to checkout. 

5. Burrow’s holiday-special email popup 

Burrow makes the most of its Black Friday marketing campaign to gather shoppers’ email addresses using a popup that shows upon arrival. 

By giving people “early access,” the custom furniture retailer makes them feel special, therefore, effectively incentivizing them. Plus, the popup copy speaks to their pain: “beat the rush.”

6. Three Ships Beauty’s product page email popup 

This last email popup example is noteworthy because it doesn’t show up on the home page like the rest of these popups do. 

Instead, it shows up on product pages once shoppers start exploring products. 

This is a smart position for the email popup because people exploring products are more likely to be interested in the 10% off than site visitors on the homepage. 

Besides its clever positioning, the popup wins in all other departments: clutter-free design, clear CTA button, minimal copy, and an exit option available.

How to launch your email popup

Customize the settings of your popup box to only show it to some people to boost your conversions. For example, you can show the popup:

• Five seconds after someone visits
• When somebody visits a specific page (like a category page)
• When someone scrolls to a certain point (such as viewing 50% of the page) 
• When someone shows an intent to exit their browser tab

Each of these triggers mean you don’t have to fear annoying your visitors. You can only show the email popup box when they’ve met specific criteria. 

(Often, that criteria shows they have the qualities making them likely to sign-up. For example: Someone scrolling through 70% of your page is more interested in your brand than someone just viewing above the fold—making them more likely to enter their email address.)

And, the best part: ConvertFlow templates integrate with your email marketing tool. The popup form will collect email addresses and populate your software with that information. No copy-pasting needed.

Inspired and ready to launch your email popup? You don’t have to wait on external help to show your campaign ideas the light of day. 

With ConvertFlow’s email popup templates, you can quickly and easily create marketing popups—all by yourself. 

Simply select a pre-built email popup template and customize it to your brand’s colors and messaging. You can also choose from numerous triggers (example: exit-intent, scroll, or time-delayed) and targeting conditions (who the popup will show up to and where it’ll show). 

We’ll leave you with email popup templates to choose from: