Thrive Leads The Leading WordPress Email Opt-In Plugin

Thrive Leads is our go-to email opt-in tool. It just so happens to also be an easy to use WordPress Plugin that only costs $67 a year. It makes list building easy! You can create beautiful opt-in forms of all types without needing to know a bit of code. Consider this page your Thrive Leads hub. Below you will find links to blog post tutorials, reviews, tutorial videos and more about the options of Thrive Leads. If you have a specific question about whether or not Thrive Leads is right for you email me at renee @ iteachblogg .com and I will be happy to help.

Have you heard the phrase "the money is in the list"?

There are many factors that influence how many eyes we get on our blog. Google and Bing and other search engines can decide to deliver our blog to searchers or not. Social media platforms such as Twitter also can be a great source of connecting people to our blog.

However, in the end blog and website traffic is completely dependent on others.

One thing that remains true above all things is your email list. Your email list is 100% yours and if you nurture it and grow it, it can be your biggest resource.

When I listen to entrepreneurs being interviewed on podcasts, they almost always say that their #1 regret with their business is that they didn't start building their email list sooner.

How does an email list make you money?

The first step is to provide people on your list with helpful content. Don't be afraid to be interactive and ask them what they are struggling with. Also, don't be afraid to sell to them. Don't be afraid to tell them about a product that you are an affiliate for.

Most of the time you will make money by offering products or services to your list. If you are taking care of your list, they will listen to you when you pitch them a product.

Email Newsletter's have a high view rate compared to Social Media

The image above is from an infographic from Devesh Design.

Social media is a wonderful way to reach an audience but as you can see from the image above, email is much better. Then when you factor in the click rates as seen below, there is no question that email marketing is alive and thriving.

The image above is from an infographic from Devesh Design.

What do you need to build an email list?

The first thing that you need is to sign up for an email delivery service such as MailChimp or Aweber.

MailChimp is free for the first 2,000 users and Aweber starts at $19 a month. There are quite a few options to choose from these days.

The next thing that you need is somewhere to house a signup form such as a blog or website.​

You can just create a MailChimp or Aweber account and put a simple opt-in form, (like in the image below) in your sidebar on on your page.

Or with Thrive Leads you can create something like this:

What is Thrive Leads?

Thrive Leads is a premium WordPress optin form plugin that allows you to custom design forms. It has over 376 pre-designed opt in templates to choose from. It allows for A/B Testing of your optin forms and provides 13 different types of newsletter optin forms to be created.

Thrive Leads is my go-to feature rich list building plugin that I have ever used. Combine that with the fact that it is a one-time payment and I believe that this makes it the most powerful email marketing tool on the market.

Now that you know the features, let's look under the hood.

​Thrive Leads provides a dashboard, this is where you build out and manage all of your newsletter optin forms.

Thrive Lead Reporting

When you first open Thrive Leads in the backend of your WordPress dashboard, you will see something similar to the image below.

Note: The stats that you see in this screen are just for the current day. If you click on 'View More' you will be taken to another dashboard.

If you click on Thrive Leads Reporting or 'View More' in the image above, you will be able to seen in-depth analytics. You can view who signed up when and what form that they used.

You can run reports based upon time-frame, conversions, list growth and many other options. You can even choose how to see the graph data.

Thrive Leads provides you with all of the information that you need to grow a strong mailing list.

The optin forms are separated into 4 distinct categories. In this review, we walk thru the highlights of each one.

1. ​Lead Groups
2. Lead Shortcodes
3. ThriveBoxes
4. 2-Step Short Code

Thrive Lead Groups

Lead groups are a way to create multiple forms that behave in the same manner. For example, you could create all 9 types of optin forms that appear on the same page or set of pages.

Lead groups allow you to create multiple optin types and A/B test them against one another.

There is no limit to the amount of lead groups that you can create. 

If you click on the gear, as in the image above you will be able to create optin trigger conditions and choose target options.

You can select exactly which pages an email optin appears on and you can exclude specific pages. You can also target specific categories for optins. We will revisit target options later in this post.

Note: You can create as many leads groups as you want but they are ordered by a top to bottom hierarchy. So if you want the second group to show up, you will need to exclude the first lead group from a page, set of categories or something other factor.

You can also see how each form type is performing. For example, if you look at the image below, you will see that my Lightbox has had the highest number of conversions.

hrive Leads: Create a Lightbox Pop-up

Thrive leads makes creating an email optin form simple. Let's walk thru creating a pop-up box step-by-step. In this demo you will see that it is quite easy to create a newsletter optin on your WordPress blog.

Step 1: Under 'Lead Groups' just click on add new.

Step 2: Enter a name for your lead group, as indicated in the image below.

Consider naming the load group based upon your content upgrade or target.

Step 3: Click on the 'Add' button as indicated in the image below.

Step 4: A new page will open. When this happens click on 'Create Form'

Step 5: Name your form (I generally name it the same as my lead group).​

Step 6: Click to edit form, as indicated in the image below.

Step 7: Click on your chosen Lightbox template.

Step 8: Click on 'Choose Template' in the bottom right hand corner.

Note: You may have to scroll for Step 8.

At this stage the chosen optin box will appear with a visual editor. This is what makes Thrive Leads truly special. It becomes quite easy to change any aspect of this form.

Step 9: Edit form to your liking.

Just click on anything that you want to change, such as a piece of text. When you click on a piece of text a box will pop up that you will recognize with WordPress edit functions. You can change the color, font size, add links and all of the typical WordPress functions.

Thrive does offer one function that often requires hard code. With Thrive Leads you can change the margin and padding of your text and objects.

Step 10: Click on Sign Up form

Step 11: On the pop-up click on 'Connect with Service' and walk thru the prompted steps.

Thrive Leads Trigger Options

Thrive Leads offers 7 different optin display options. With this many options you will be able to build out content with the options that most suit your audience.

I highly recommend testing one trigger option at a time. Consider doing an A/B test of different trigger options. Just because you can do a lot of things with your Opt-In forms doesn't mean that you should do them all at once.

Thrive Leads allows for A/B Testing of all Opt-in forms

Once you have created a few different email opt-in forms, you may be curious which ones are the most effective. Perhaps you are even curious as to which ones are the most effective on a specific page.

Thrive Leads make A/B testing of your opt-in forms extremely easy. ​Once you have a few forms created in a Lead Group, you will see the option.

Just click on the button, as seen below, and it will walk you thru the steps. You will be able to test all of your forms or whatever number you would like.

You will be able to set the parameters for the contest and a timeframe. The system will automatically choose a winner for you and alert you when it is done.

Thrive Lead Form Animations

If you want to grab the attention of your readers, try animating your opt-in forms. Thrive Leads offers 10 different animation options for your email forms.

Check out the demo below:

Thrive Leads Targeting Options

As we discussed earlier in the post, another great advantage of Thrive Leads is their targeting options.

Target options allow you to get hyper specific with your WordPress Opt-in forms. You can create a Lead Group with all 9 opt-in form types and exclude it from a specific page or make it for a specific post.

This allows unlimited freedom for your site/blog and allows you to create post specific content upgrades.​

Below are just a few examples of your targeting options:

Once you have a set of targeting options that you like, you can create a template. This will make it easier for editing in the future.

Thrive Leads 2-Step Opt-in Box

Thrive Leads makes 2-Step Opt-in boxes quick and easy to create. Some claim that these type of opt-in boxes increase email signups by 60%.

​The theory is that each time someone clicks on something, they are more committed to following through.

These 2-Step boxes can be used for more than just newsletter signups. If you click on the button below you will be asked a question.

Go ahead and click, you know that you want to...

In the instance above, if you clicked 'Yes' you were redirected to a link to purchase Thrive Leads. If you clicked 'No' the window closes and you are right back here.

Of course, this could have also directed you to an email newsletter signup. ​

Thrive Leads Multi-Step Forms

​Thrive Leads provides 17 Multi-Step Opt-In templates for you to design around. Remember these are all customizable.

So this means that you can create a pop-up that presents Yes or No questions as in the form below.

You could change the text and direct people based upon blog category. Imagine a scenario where you have this on the front page and you ask your readers "Do you want to learn about Blank or Blank?"

Depending upon the answer, you could direct them to a specific content upgrade that would best serve them.

With Thrive Leads Multi-Step the options are truly endless. This just provides you with even better methods for connecting with your audience.

Thrive Leads Content Lock Feature

Have you ever been reading along in a blog post and then suddenly you had to sign up for an email newsletter to see a specific piece of content? This is called content locking.

Content locking is a great way to provide an extra piece of content such as a video tutorial in exchange for someone signing up for your newsletter.

Thrive Leads makes creating a content lock like the one in the image below quick and easy.

The content locking feature was one of the primary reasons that I initially chose Thrive Leads as my go-to opt-in plugin.

Thrive Leads Support

​Thrive Leads has a thriving support forum and I have received help from them at all times day and night and even on the weekends.

I have even provided them with log-in information to my blog. They logged in and figured out my problem and fixed it for me. ​

I was sold on Thrive Leads because of their diverse amount of features but really fell in love with their support.

​Should You Buy Thrive Leads?

In a word, yes. There are other options such as Optin Monster but considering the price of Thrive Leads (starting at $67) and ALL of the versatility of the plugin, I can recommend it above all others.

Thrive is improving their products on a near weekly basis and as they improve Thrive Leads you will be able to upgrade. This company is on fire and doing wonderful things.

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