Are you looking to grow your email list, capture more leads, and convert website visitors into customers? Lead generation is critical for any online business, but it can be challenging to implement effectively.
Fortunately, if you have a WordPress website, there are many powerful plugins available to help you create high-converting opt-in forms and automate your lead generation. In this in-depth guide, we‘ll break down what you need to know about WordPress lead generation and share our picks for the top plugins to skyrocket your conversions in 2024.
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What is Lead Generation?
First, let‘s clarify what a lead actually is. A lead is any person who has expressed interest in your company‘s products or services by providing their contact information, like an email address, or taking a desired action, such as signing up for a free trial or demo.
The process of attracting and capturing leads is called lead generation. The goal is to find potential customers and guide them into your sales funnel so you can nurture the relationship and eventually convert them into paying customers.
Why Your WordPress Site Needs Lead Generation
Your website or blog is likely one of your most powerful marketing assets for attracting your target audience. But just getting people to visit your site isn‘t enough. You need a way to capture their information so you can continue to engage them.
That‘s where lead generation comes in. By offering something of value, like an ebook, whitepaper, newsletter, or promotion, you can entice visitors to provide their email address and opt-in to hear more from you. Then you can send them targeted content and offers to nurture the relationship and guide them toward a purchase.
Without lead generation, you‘re leaving money on the table. You work hard to get people to your site, so it‘s essential to convert that traffic into leads and make the most of every visitor.
What to Look For in a WordPress Lead Generation Plugin
Adding lead generation to your WordPress site is easy with the right tools. But with so many lead generation plugins available, how do you choose?
Here are some of the key features to look for as you evaluate your options:
1. Attractive Opt-In Forms
The foundation of lead generation is opt-in forms, so you want a plugin that allows you to easily create professional-looking forms that match your branding. Look for customization options and premade templates to design eye-catching forms.
2. Multiple Form Types
While pop-ups tend to convert the best, it‘s good to have options. Look for a plugin that supports multiple form types, including pop-ups, floating bars, inline forms, slide-ins, welcome mats, and more. This gives you flexibility in your lead generation strategy.
3. Advanced Targeting and Triggers
To maximize conversions, you need to show the right message at the right time. Look for a plugin with advanced targeting and trigger options so you can control exactly when and where your forms appear. For example, exit-intent popups are very effective at capturing leads from visitors as they are about to leave your site.
4. A/B Testing
To optimize your forms over time, you need the ability to A/B test different designs, copy, and offers. Choose a plugin that makes it easy to split test your forms so you can continuously improve your conversion rates.
5. Actionable Insights
To make data-driven decisions, you need analytics to understand how your forms are performing. Look for a plugin with robust reporting on your lead generation campaigns, including conversion rates, form views, top converting pages and forms, and more.
6. Email Marketing Integrations
Capturing leads is just the beginning. To make the most of them, you need to get them into your email marketing software to start nurturing. Make sure the plugin you choose integrates with your email service provider so you can seamlessly pass leads from your forms to your lists.
7. CRM Integrations
In addition to email marketing, it‘s very helpful to be able to sync your WordPress leads to your CRM platform. This gives your sales team visibility so they can follow up with high-intent leads. Check if the plugins you‘re considering integrate with your CRM of choice.
Top 10 WordPress Lead Generation Plugins
Now that you know what to look for in a WordPress lead generation plugin, let‘s explore some of the top options to consider.
1. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the most popular lead generation plugin for WordPress, and for good reason. It‘s a conversion optimization toolkit that makes it easy to create "optin campaigns" like popups, floating bars, fullscreen welcome mats, and more.
What sets OptinMonster apart is its powerful targeting and personalization engine. You can display campaigns based on a variety of parameters, including:
- Exit-intent (when a visitor is about to leave the page)
- Geolocation
- Referral source
- Device
- Previous visits
- Cart value
- User tags and interests
This allows you to show highly targeted campaigns to maximize conversions. OptinMonster also has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder, 50+ premade templates, and seamless integration with email providers and CRMs.
2. Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is another top WordPress lead generation plugin from the folks behind Thrive Themes. It was built from the ground up to get you more email subscribers.
One unique feature is "SmartLinks," which allows you to show different offers to existing subscribers to avoid annoying them with redundant optin forms. The plugin also supports a variety of form types, including multiple choice forms, two-step optin links, screen filler overlays, content lockers, and more.
Thrive Leads has a visual editor to customize forms, advanced targeting and trigger options, and a reporting dashboard to track the performance of your lead generation campaigns. It integrates with dozens of email services as well.
3. ConvertPro
ConvertPro is an innovative lead generation plugin from Brainstorm Force, the team behind the popular Astra WordPress theme. The plugin offers unique form types you won‘t find in every other solution, including info bars, slide-ins, stickies, and sidebars.
One standout feature is the ability to create multi-step popup funnels (sometimes called popup funnels), which can significantly increase conversions. With the visual drag-and-drop editor, you can build your funnels with just a few clicks.
ConvertPro also has a real-time analytics and insights dashboard so you can understand your funnel performance at a glance. And it integrates with all the major email providers.
4. Bloom
Bloom is an email opt-in plugin from Elegant Themes, the company behind the popular Divi WordPress theme and Visual Builder. The plugin makes it easy to add a variety of email optin forms to your site, including pop-ups, fly-ins, below content forms, widget area forms, and inline opt-in forms.
You can trigger your forms in six different ways:
- Timed delay
- Bottom of post
- After scrolling
- After commenting
- After purchasing
- After inactivity
There are over 100 pre-made templates to get you started, plus a visual builder to customize your forms to match your brand. Bloom integrates with 16 email marketing platforms out of the box.
5. Sumo
Sumo (formerly SumoMe) is a suite of online marketing tools that includes powerful opt-in forms and pop-ups for lead generation. You can easily create eye-catching forms and target them to specific pages or visitor segments.
One helpful feature is Sumo‘s "smart mode" which allows you to display different offers based on whether a visitor is already subscribed. It also has a unique "Highlighter" tool which creates share links for specific text that a visitor highlights on your site.
In addition to popups, Sumo supports smart bars, welcome mats, and inline forms. It integrates with most major email providers and has built-in analytics to track the performance of your campaigns.
6. HubSpot WordPress Plugin
If you use HubSpot for your CRM and marketing automation, the HubSpot WordPress plugin is an obvious choice. It allows you to add forms, popups, and live chat to your WordPress site and sync the leads directly to your HubSpot CRM.
With the drag-and-drop builder, you can quickly create attractive lead flows and forms that match your site design. You can target them to specific pages or visitor segments, and trigger them based on specific rules.
The plugin also has a convenient dashboard to view your leads, form submissions, and key insights right from your WordPress backend. So you can see exactly how your lead generation is performing without leaving your site.
7. Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms is a drag-and-drop WordPress form builder that you can use to create custom lead generation forms. In addition to standard contact forms, you can create email opt-in forms, registration forms, surveys, and more.
The plugin integrates with several email providers out of the box, including ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and AWeber. So you can automatically pass form submissions to your email lists. It also connects with hundreds of third-party tools via Zapier.
Ninja Forms has premade form templates, multi-column layouts, and conditional logic, so you can create advanced opt-in forms without any code. The form analytics addon allows you to see how your forms are converting so you can improve them over time.
8. WPForms
WPForms is another popular WordPress form builder with over 4 million active installations. While it‘s mostly known for its custom contact forms, you can also use WPForms for email opt-ins and lead generation.
The drag-and-drop form builder is very intuitive and comes with 100+ pre-built templates to save time. You can enable multiple form confirmations and conditional logic to show different messages or perform different actions based on how the visitor fills out the form.
WPForms integrates with all popular email marketing services to sync your leads. And it also connects to payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe so you can accept payments or donations through your forms.
9. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is one of the most powerful form builder plugins for WordPress. It allows you to build advanced, multi-page forms with conditional logic, file uploads, and online payments.
In addition to contact forms, Gravity Forms is great for lead generation. You can create opt-in forms, surveys, polls, and quizzes to capture leads. With the "User Registration" add-on, you can even allow visitors to create a WordPress user account after submitting a form.
Gravity Forms has a number of email marketing add-ons to integrate with services like Mailchimp, AWeber, and GetResponse. This allows you to automatically add form submissions to your email list and trigger automated nurturing campaigns.
10. Elementor Pro
Our final pick for WordPress lead generation plugins is Elementor Pro. While Elementor is primarily a WordPress page builder, the Pro version includes a powerful popup builder for lead generation.
You can build your popups with the same visual, drag-and-drop interface you use to design your pages. Elementor Pro comes with 100+ pre-designed popup templates to get you started, and you can customize every aspect of the design without coding.
To maximize conversions, you can target your popups to specific visitors and trigger them based on conditions like time on page, scroll depth, clicks, and exit intent. Elementor Pro can also automatically open popups after form submission, which is great for delivering lead magnets.
Best Practices for Lead Generation on Your WordPress Site
Choosing the right WordPress lead generation plugin is a great first step, but there‘s more you can do to optimize your forms and landing pages to capture more leads. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:
1. Create a compelling offer
To get people to opt-in, you need to offer them something valuable in return. This could be a free ebook, course, template, discount code, or something else that appeals to your target audience. The more relevant and enticing the offer, the more likely people are to sign up.
2. Use exit-intent popups
Exit-intent popups are one of the most effective types of opt-in forms. They appear when a visitor is about to leave your site, giving you one last chance to convert them into a lead. Many of the plugins we covered, like OptinMonster and Thrive Leads, have built-in exit-intent triggering.
3. Leverage content upgrades
Content upgrades are a type of lead magnet that is specifically related to the blog post or page the visitor is already reading. For example, if you have a blog post about "10 Tips for Better Sleep," you could offer a downloadable checklist with those same tips as a content upgrade. Because it‘s so relevant, content upgrades tend to convert very well.
4. Optimize your CTAs
Your call-to-action (CTA) is the text you use on your optin forms and buttons to tell visitors what to do next. Your CTAs should be clear, specific, and tap into your visitor‘s motivation for signing up. For example, instead of a generic CTA like "Sign Up," try something more compelling like "Send Me The Free Ebook!"
5. A/B test your forms
As with anything in marketing, it‘s important to test and optimize your lead generation forms over time. Use the A/B testing features in your lead generation plugin to try out different offers, designs, and copy to see what converts best.
6. Nurture your leads
Finally, generating leads is just the beginning. To turn leads into customers, you need to nurture them with relevant content and offers. Use the email integration features in these plugins to automatically add leads to specific email lists or campaigns based on their interests and behavior. Then have a system in place to follow up and guide them closer to a purchase.
Boost Your Conversions With the Best WordPress Lead Generation Plugins
Lead generation doesn‘t have to be rocket science. With the right tools and tactics, you can create an automated system to turn your website traffic into subscribers and customers.
The 10 WordPress lead generation plugins we covered are some of the best options available, with powerful features for creating high-converting optin campaigns. Whether you choose a dedicated lead generation solution like OptinMonster or Thrive Leads, or a multi-purpose tool like HubSpot or Elementor, you‘ll be well on your way to growing your email list and your business.
Just remember that lead generation is an ongoing process. Continue to test and tweak your campaigns, and deliver value to your leads, and you‘ll develop an engine that consistently drives new leads and sales for your business.