How to Use an Exit Intent WordPress Plugin to Grow Your Business

Exit intent WordPress plugins have a terrible reputation. People associate them with noisy sites such as ones with numerous banner ads. If careless, you can give visitors a bad experience when using your site.

The truth is that an exit intent plugin isn’t evil, and when used correctly, it helps both webmasters and visitors. Popups convert well, and visitors get value from subscribing to mailing lists.

The top priority of webmasters must be to use these popups without annoying their audience.

Don’t doubt an exit intent plugin’s utility—worry about the proper implementation. We researched extensively and found eight exit intent plugins that captured our attention. Before looking at them, check out the advantages of using an exit intent plugin.

Email Marketing Isn’t Dead

Email is one of the oldest marketing channels on the web, and many marketers have said it’s outdated. Despite that, email marketing still works and sometimes performs better than other channels.

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is going to be more social. Based on the rumours, publishers must invest more in paid Facebook advertising or shift their focus to other mediums, including email. There will be a fight for email subscribers, and you should start collecting them immediately. An exit intent plugin aims to collect email addresses, so it’s time to use one.

The Money Is in the Lists

Marketers say that the money is in the lists. It’s a catchy saying that is equivalent to ‘email marketing has the most significant return on investment’.

Email marketing can potentially convert better than any other channel, but you must regularly provide value to your subscribers. It’s challenging work, but it’s profitable in the long run.

Engage with Readers

Exit intent popup plugins for WordPress aren’t only for asking readers to subscribe to your mailing list; the sky is the limit with them!

You can hold a contest and invite readers to participate when they are on the verge of leaving, ask them to follow you on Facebook for a discount on their next purchase, and inform them that you are looking for a content creator—you get the idea. Convince them that leaving your WordPress site is detrimental.

Design without Coding

Thanks to its drag-and-drop editor, an exit popup is simple to set up, and you don’t have to write a single line of code. Paradoxically, even if it’s simple to configure, you have plenty of customisation options. Do you want the popup to fade away or slide in? You got it! Do you want to position the popup in the centre of the screen or the bottom right corner? You can do that too! All these options are available with just a few clicks.

Check out these exit intent popup plugins and choose the best one for your WordPress website. Don’t forget to leave a comment with your favourite one!

1. Hustle

WPMU Dev developed this plugin, which should be enough to convince you that Hustle is a quality plugin. You can download and install the free version from the WordPress repository or buy the premium version for enhanced functionality.

This exit popup plugin allows you to create an exit intent popup and any other type of form. Creating an exit intent popup requires only three steps: Basic Setup, Content & Design, and Display Settings. You can trigger the display of the popup message after a set period or when users scroll, click, or leave.

2. Popup Builder

A free version of Popup Builder is available in the WordPress repository, allowing you to create stunning modals and display popups. You can add images, shortcodes, or HTML code to your popups.

The premium version has more options, such as adding a video, countdown, age restriction, or subscription button. The popup triggers when the user leaves the site, scrolls, or after a set inactivity period.

A massive advantage of Popup Builder is the ease of use—there is no onboarding process, and the average user can create a popup at first sight.

3. Popup Maker

Any plugin with 200,000 active installs and a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars deserves your attention.

Apart from that, Popup Maker is free and jam-packed with helpful features. It has premium options but no price tag. It creates banners, floating forms, video boxes, notifications, exit intent popups, etc. It’s compatible with form-building plugins such as Ninja Forms, Gravity Forms, or Contact Form 7.

4. Ninja Popups

Ninja Popups is a VIP exit intent popup plugin from CodeCanyon. It’s been purchased more than 30,000 times and has a solid rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars. Ninja Popups has endless possibilities for creating popups. On top of that, there is no limit to the popups you can use.

You can display the popup window when the user loads or leaves the page, after a set number of seconds, after a set period of inactivity, or after the user scrolls. Currently, the plugin offers 70+ popup templates suitable for many different marketing purposes. The plugin also has an analytics section to give you an idea of the popups’ performance.

Another advantage of Ninja Popups is the ease of use. You don’t need coding knowledge to set up a popup.

5. Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads is a professional tool to create responsive popups exit intent forms, but don’t purchase it just for this purpose. It’s an invaluable resource for any marketer that lets you create any form. It would be a pity to use it only for exit popups when it has so many features.

Thrive Leads has tons of templates for any marketing activity. Talented marketers and designers have created them, but you can tailor them to represent your brand. Using its drag-and-drop interface, you can add various animation effects and conduct A/B tests to find the best design. Its complete analytics reporting provides insightful data to improve your marketing strategy.

Thrive Leads is a little pricey for tight budgets, but it’s a real bargain in the long term.

6. Optin Monster

Optin Monster is arguably the best exit intent popup plugin for growing your business. It does many things, such as boosting conversions, increasing the number of subscribers, reducing cart abandonment, and improving time on the site.

Optin Monster helps marketers conduct any campaign—from stunning exit intent popups to geo-location targeting. The drag-and-drop builder is user-friendly and lets you create unlimited popups and forms. It integrates many marketing services (MailChimp, Drip, HubSpot, Salesforce), and you get valuable data about your campaigns.

7. WP Optin Wheel

Few things are more captivating than a fortune wheel on your site. And this WordPress plugin allows you to set up one for your website to make visitors engage with you. You can display it when users are about to leave the site, and many of them will give you their email addresses in exchange for a free spin.

WP Optin Wheel‘s wheel is highly customisable in design and functionality. You can match the design and colour of the wheel to the site’s theme. You can also configure the prices and probability of success when the wheel is triggered. The plugin has MailChimp integration, so you can send all sign-ups straight to your MailChimp list.

8. Popup by Supsystic

Popup by Supsystic is another plugin that enables you to create popups and stunning forms, including those triggered by exit intent. It’s designed to perform well on mobile devices, and you have many customisable templates. If you want to test the waters, choose the free version with limited features.

Wrapping up

Let’s face it—you can’t expect all your site visitors to stay and consume your content. There are different reasons why they leave and never come back to your site. However, it’s your responsibility to keep them engaged and interested.

This is why exit intent popup plugins exist: to encourage visitors to give your content a second chance or ask them to do something else on your site. Regardless, these handy popups help maximise retention and conversions on your web pages.