Do you want to build and grow your email list? Using a lead generation plugin like Thrive Leads is the best way to grow your email list faster. In this Thrive Leads review, we’ll take a look at its features and explain how the plugin actually works so as to find out if it’s the best WordPress list building plugin for your site.

Note: At IsItWP, we use OptinMonster for lead generation, an alternative to Thrive Leads. You can read our complete OptinMonster review.

Why You Need an Email List Building Plugin for WordPress?

Building an email list is one of the best ways to build a longlasting relationship with your potential customers.

With a list building plugin (also called lead generation plugin), you can turn your website visitors into leads or subscribers. The default optin forms that you can generate from your email marketing tool (such as AWeber or MailChimp) look generic and boring. With a lead generation plugin, you can create stunning optin forms quickly and easily that are proven to generate conversions.

About Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads is a powerful plugin that allows you to create beautiful optin forms on your WordPress website. By creating stunning optin forms, you can attract your website visitors’ attention quickly and entice them to subscribe to your email list. You can also create highly targeted campaigns that are proven to drive more conversions.

Types of Optin Forms You Can Create With Thrive Leads

The Thrive Leads plugin lets you build a wide variety of optin forms and display them on different parts of your WordPress site. It provides you with 10 highly engaging optin types to invite users to subscribe to your email list.

1. Popup Lightbox: A popup lightbox appears (pops up) above your content and prompts your site visitors to fill in the form and subscribe.
2. Sticky Ribbon: Sticky ribbon remains at the top of the screen even after the user scrolls down the page.
3. In-Line Forms: In-line form displays at the bottom of your posts or anywhere within the post using a simple shortcode.
4. 2-Step Optin Forms: This lets you trigger a popup when your visitors click on a link, image or button.
5. Slide-in Forms:A slide-in optin is a form that appears at the bottom right corner of your page as the visitors scroll down.
6. Optin Widget: You can display optin forms in the sidebar or any widget-ready area of your site with optin widget.
7. Screen Filler Overlay: It’s an overlay optin that covers your entire screen to convert your visitors.
8. Content Lock: Entice users to subscribe to your list by locking your content.
9. Scroll Mat: It’s a full screen form that appears at the top by pushing the content down.
10. Multiple Choice Forms: These forms offer multiple choices to the users.

Creating Forms

After you install and activate the Thrive Leads plugin, you’ll be able to see your Thrive Leads dashboard as in the screenshot below.

First thing to do is to create Lead Group. For example, we have created a lead group ‘Lead Group 1’ as shown in the screenshot below.

A lead group is a form or group of forms that you can display globally across your site or on a specific post, category. You can add multiple types of forms in a lead group.

Now, you have to first add a form type. You can choose one from 9 form types available in Thrive Leads.

For example, we have chosen popup lightbox. Next, you will be asked to add a form.

So, we created our first form and named it ‘Form 1’. Next, you can manage trigger, display frequency, animation, and design for the form.

In order to manage trigger, click on the assigned trigger option and a drop down containing the trigger options. Choose the trigger you want.

Similarly, you can set display frequency and animation.

Design Your Optin Forms With the Drag and Drop Builder

So, the next step is to design your form. Simply, click on the blue pencil icon on the right of the screen to edit the design of your form.

Now, you will find a large variety of optin templates. There are also multi-step optin templates for 2-step optin forms. All the templates are well-designed and highly attractive.

Choose any one of the templates and it’ll open the form editor page like below.

Thrive Leads has an integrated page builder, Thrive Architect. It lets you visually edit all the form elements. Aside from that, it enables you to customize your text by clicking on it.

You can manage the elements completely using the drag and drop interface. Move elements, delete or add new elements from the Thrive Architect section on the left.

Design the form as you like and save it. And, it’s now ready for use on your site.

Set Targeting Options and Display Your Optin Form

Now you just created a form that is ready to publish on your site. You can set targeting options for your lead group and publish it.

First, go to Thrive Leads menu on your WordPress dashboard. Then you will see Lead Groups section and your lead group. We had created ‘Lead Group 1’ for this example.

Next, go to the settings icon on the right side of the lead group panel and click on it.

You can now target the optin form for all pages/ posts, by categories, individual posts, and pages, archive pages, etc.

You can create different lead groups and set different targets for them. You can target your site users precisely using this feature and collect more leads.

That’s all it takes to create and display an optin form. Now you can go to your live site and see the optins working.

Other Great Features of Thrive Leads

Let’s explore some more great features of the plugin.

1. Powerful A/B Testing Engine

A/B Testing feature allows you to compare between different types and variations of optin forms and provides you with an automatic winner. This technology allows you find out the most impressive optin form so that you already know that it’s going to capture the eyeballs.

With this plugin, you can compare between:

• Different types of optins: eg. Popup vs. In-line
• Different triggers: eg. Show a popup after 5 seconds vs. exit-intent popup
• Different design and content: eg. change the headline, color, or icons and compare.
• Optin bribes: eg. Optin incentives vs. a free webinar course

Create forms, clone or create variations, compare and use the best one.

For example, we compared between different types of optins. Below is the screenshot:

2. Advanced Targeting Options

This feature is really amazing and efficient to turn visitors into subscribers. You can now precisely target whom you want to show an optin form. This lets you show the most relevant and attractive offers to the most suitable people.

You can target and show optin forms by:

• Category or tag
• Post or page
• Custom post types. URL, page type etc.

As you show the right optin to the right people, conversion hikes.

3. SmartLinks
A smart feature of Thrive Leads is SmartLinks which enables you to show different offers to different users.

Displaying Subscribe Us optin to a user who is already subscribed to your site is not just annoying but also disrespectful.

Thus, Thrive Leads has a smart option called SmartLinks which lets you treat different users differently. You can specify what offer to be shown to a new visitor, subscriber, and customer each.

You can find SmartLinks in the Advanced Features option in the Thrive Leads dashboard.

4. Advanced Trigger Options

With Thrive Leads’ advanced trigger options, you can show an optin form at the right time when your visitor is likely to subscribe to your list.

It features mainly 4 types of triggers to display forms on a WordPress site:

• Exit trigger – appears when a user is about to leave your site
• Time trigger – triggers an optin after a specified timeframe like 5 seconds
• Scroll trigger – shows an optin after user scrolls to specific part of the page
• Click trigger – shows an optin on clicking a link or button

These triggers let you display optin forms very strategically.

5. Detailed Reports and Analytics

The Thrive Leads plugin also gives you insights into how your forms are performing, which pages are sending you more leads, conversion rate, and more.

With a precise idea of how your optin forms are performing, you can make some changes and improve their performance even better.

The reports you can access are conversion rate, comparison report, list growth, lead referral report, lead tracking, and content marketing report.

6. Email Marketing Service Integration

The plugin provides seamless integration with all the major email marketing service providers. Its direct API integration with popular email marketing services makes it super easy to send emails to your email list.

Pricing and Support Options for the Thrive Leads Plugin

Thrive Leads is a premium plugin that comes with 3 different pricing plans.

1. 1 site license: $67
2. 5 licenses: $97
3. 15 licenses: $147

Alternatively, you can become a Thrive member for $19 / month that gives you immediate access to all the themes and plugins developed by Thrive Themes.

Their documentation is extensive that helps you walk you through every aspect of building high converting optin forms with Thrive Themes. Support is provided via ticket based support system.

Thrive Leads vs. OptinMonster: Which is the Best Email List Building Plugin

OptinMonster is the best email list building solution in the market.

Our Thrive Leads review would be incomplete if we don’t compare Thrive Leads with OptinMonster.

Compared to a hosted solution like OptinMonster, Thrive Leads tends to consume more server resources, leading to slow down your site.

Unlike Thrive Leads, OptinMonster is a hosted solution. This means OptinMonster consumes fewer server resources than Thrive Leads and doesn’t slow down your site. Plus, Thrive Leads lacks many useful features and its targeting options are also limited.

When it comes to pricing, OptinMonster is totally free if you don’t mind displaying OptinMonster branding on your forms. The premium pricing starts at $29/ month. On the other hand, you’ll have to spend at least $67 per year, if you want to purchase the Thrive Leads plugin.

If you’re looking for an optin builder that fits your budget, OptinMonster is the best choice. However, if you’d rather go with a WordPress-specific optin plugin, then Thrive Leads is worth trying.

Read our complete OptinMonster review.

Our Verdict on Thrive Leads for Email List Building

Thrive Leads is undoubtedly a powerful WordPress plugin for list building. Its features and functionalities are both impressive and efficient.

The plugin interface is user-friendly and simple. It doesn’t require any coding skills to configure the plugin settings and options.

This is a great pick if you want an easy and quick way to build optin forms on your WordPress site.

The post Thrive Leads Review 2018: Is It the Best WordPress List Building Plugin? appeared first on IsItWP – WordPress Technology Lookup Tool.

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