Are you looking for the best WordPress lead generation plugins for your website? Whether you run a blog, online business, or a full-blown eCommerce shop, gathering contact information from those showing an interest in what you have to offer (e.g., anyone that visits your site!) is crucial to the growth of your business.
Not to mention 75% of people that land on your site will leave and never return. That’s a lot of lost opportunities if you ask me. And since most of your site’s traffic is anonymous, it’s safe to say, you simply can’t market to those you don’t know.
In this post, I will be sharing 10 powerful WordPress lead generation plugins that can help you collect leads, grow your email list, run timed offers, build long-lasting customer relationships and more.
Why Lead Generation is Important
Before jumping into the plugins, let‘s first understand why lead generation is so critical for the growth of your online business:
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Lead generation is the start of sales: Leads represent potential future customers. Capturing lead information like email addresses allows you to nurture leads into buyers.
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Lead generation builds your audience: Collecting leads grows your email subscriber list. This allows you to build an audience to market and sell to.
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More leads = more sales opportunities: The more leads you generate, the more sales opportunities you create for your business. Even if only 20% of leads convert to sales, more leads = more customers.
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Lead generation improves conversions: By collecting lead information with opt-in forms, you can reduce bounce rates and keep visitors engaged longer to improve conversions.
Now that you know why lead generation is invaluable, let‘s explore the top plugins to help you capture more leads!
1. Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is a popular lead generation plugin that helps you grow your email list – all inside the WordPress dashboard.
With the pre-designed templates and easy to use drag and drop editor, you can create highly converting opt-in forms like:
- Lightbox popups
- Sticky ribbon bars
- Slide-in forms
- Full screen welcome mats
- Scroll boxes
- Content upgrades
This flexible plugin gives you the freedom to create mobile-optimized forms, multi-step opt-ins, and even widgetized forms placed throughout your site.
Thrive Leads makes it easy to create mobile-friendly opt-in forms. You can show/hide entire forms or just certain elements per device. There’s also the option to style your mobile forms differently with custom fonts, sizes, and more.
Key Features
Some other great features that make Thrive Leads a top choice:
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A/B Testing: Easily split test different form types, design, content, and special offer combinations.
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Smart Links: When users click a link, you can send them to a designated page and encourage them to sign up right away. You can target different segments this way.
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Smart Exit+: Thrive Leads offers exit intent technology that works on both desktop and mobile devices.
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Analytics: Get real-time analytics on the performance of your opt-in campaigns. Track opens, conversions, etc.
Pricing: $99/year for standalone product or access all Thrive suite products for $299/year
2. Convert Pro
Convert Pro is a blazing fast lead generation and email opt-in plugin. It uses a drag and drop editor to create mobile-friendly opt-in forms that convert.
With highly optimized code, it loads quickly without slowing down your site. And thanks to the cloud storage, you only load the campaigns you need.
Convert Pro makes it easy to target visitors with relevant offers using advanced triggers like:
- Exit intent
- Countdown timers
- Scroll depth
- On-site retargeting
- Traffic source
- And more
Some other notable features include:
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Email Integrations: Connects with all the popular email services like AWeber, Constant Contact, MailerLite, etc.
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Multi-Step Forms: Guide visitors through a multi-page funnel before they opt-in.
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Personalization: Display tailored messages based on device, traffic source, cookies and more.
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A/B Testing: Easily test different variants to determine the highest converting form designs.
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Real-Time Analytics: Get instant analytics on campaign results right inside WordPress.
Pricing: Starts at $87/year
3. Bloom by Elegant Themes
Bloom is a simple yet powerful lead generation plugin for building email opt-in forms. It comes with over 100 mobile-friendly form template designs to choose from.
Using Bloom is as easy as picking a template, customizing the design, connecting your email service and embedding the opt-in. No coding needed.
Some unique features that make Bloom stand out:
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Bottom of Post Trigger: Display opt-in forms when visitors reach the bottom of posts.
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After Commenting: Show opt-in forms to those engaging with your content.
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After Purchasing: Upsell buyers with more offers post purchase.
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Inactivity Trigger: Re-engage inactive visitors to reduce bounce rates.
More reasons why Bloom is a great choice:
- Intuitive drag and drop editor
- Retina-ready responsive design
- A/B testing built-in
- Real-time analytics
- Integrates with all top email services
Pricing: $89/year standalone or access to all Elegant Themes products for $89-$249/year
4. Elementor Popup Builder
The Elementor Popup Builder lets you easily create popups and opt-in forms using Elementor’s drag and drop page builder.
With over 100 different widgets, you can build promo popups, email opt-in forms, content upgrades, surveys and more – all without touching code.
The popups load fast and seamlessly blend into your pages for a smooth user experience.
Design-wise, you have total creative flexibility. Customize colors, fonts, shapescorners and add animations as you wish.
For functionality, Elementor Popup Builder comes packed with powerful features:
- Exit intent technology
- Scroll depth targeting
- On-site retargeting
- Traffic source targeting
- Schedule campaigns
- Real-time reporting
- And all the email/CRM integrations
Pricing: Requires Elementor Pro starting at $49/year
5. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is an intuitive lead generation plugin trusted by over 1 million users worldwide.
It helps you easily create high converting email opt-in campaigns like exit popups, fullscreen welcome mats, floating bars, spin a wheel, slide in forms and more.
Each campaign can be tailored to match your brand with custom fonts, colors, content blocks and design elements.
OptinMonster comes equipped with powerful targeting and personalization features:
- Traffic source targeting
- Cookie targeting
- Site behavior targeting
- Location-based targeting
- And user persona targeting
This allows you to serve hyper-relevant campaigns tailored to each visitor for maximum conversions.
Other useful features include:
- Real-time analytics dashboard
- A/B testing
- Lead management system
- Popular email service integrations
- WordPress user sync
Pricing: Starts at $29/month billed annually
6. WP Subscribe
WP Subscribe is a freemium lead generation plugin perfect for simple opt-in forms.
The free version lets you add a basic subscribe widget to your sidebar. It works with MailChimp, Feedburner, AWeber and more.
With the premium upgrade ($19), you unlock more robust features:
- Exit intent technology
- Scroll box triggers
- Cookie targeting
- Popup forms + animations
- Timed delays
- Custom designs
- Detailed analytics
It’s an easy to use solution for those needing basic opt-in functionality.
Pricing: Free or single site premium for $19
7. Kali Forms
Kali Forms is a WordPress form builder plugin that also doubles for email list building.
While it‘s mainly a contact form plugin, thanks to its deep integrations with top email marketing platforms like:
- ConvertKit
- MailerLite
- ActiveCampaign
- AWeber
- SendFox
You can use it to grow your subscriber lists as well.
With Kali Forms, you can create all kinds of online forms from basic contact forms to complex multi-page order forms.
Each form can have an email subscription checkbox added. So as visitors fill out your forms, their details get sent right to your connected email tool.
Other notable features:
- Drag and drop form builder
- Multi-page forms
- File uploads
- Conditional logic
- Spam protection
- Form analytics
Pricing: Single site plans start at $29
8. Mailchimp for WordPress
The Mailchimp for WordPress plugin helps you integrate your site with Mailchimp seamlessly.
It adds opt-in subscription forms to your site and automatically syncs email signups with your Mailchimp audience lists.
No more manually exporting CSV files and importing subscribers. It handles everything automatically behind the scenes.
With Mailchimp for WP you can embed opt-in forms anywhere or enhance your existing WordPress forms using the available shortcode and widget.
Your email lists will always stay up to date as new leads trickle in from your website.
Other features include:
- Customizable opt-in widgets
- Single/double opt-in support
- Detailed subscriber analytics
- Activity timeline tracking
- Access to full Mailchimp dashboard
Pricing: Free
9. Tawk.to Live Chat
Tawk.to is a free live chat plugin for real-time conversations with website visitors.
It lets you interact with prospects via chat widget and provide instant support.
The best part?
You can leverage these live chats to capture lead information like emails and phone numbers.
Just gently direct the conversation towards getting their contact details before wrapping up the chat.
This allows you to gather leads without being too pushy like typical opt-in forms.
With Tawk.to you can have natural conversations that build trust and rapport. This helps improve conversion rates when you eventually pitch an offer.
It‘s completely free to use on 3 sites with unlimited agents.
10. Sumo
Sumo is a suite of free tools to help grow your site’s traffic. It includes several lead generation offerings like:
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Welcome Mat – Get visitors to signup as soon as they land with a customizable full screen optin
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Scroll Box – Encourage signups by triggering a scroll box after scrolling past a certain point
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Site Search – Capture lead emails by replacing default search with Sumo’s smarter searchbox
The best part about Sumo is that it‘s 100% free and super easy to setup. You can create and embed opt-ins without dealing with code.
Each tool comes packed with beautiful templates, custom designs and integrations with CRMs like Mailchimp.
For those needing basic yet effective list building functionality, Sumo is a great free solution worth trying out.
So there you have it – the 10 best WordPress plugins for generating more email subscriber leads!
Which is the Right Plugin for You?
All the options covered excel at capturing leads, but have slightly different standout features:
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Thrive Leads – Extremely powerful with the most campaign types and conversions optimization features.
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ConvertPro – Blazing fast performance and killer targeting options.
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Bloom – Easy to use while still being highly customizable. Plus unique trigger options.
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Elementor Popup Builder – Complete design flexibility to match your brand.
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OptinMonster – Robust personalized targeting and automation features.
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WP Subscribe – Simple, effective and budget-friendly (freemium).
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Kali Forms – Multi-purpose form builder that doubles for list building.
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Mailchimp for WP – Best-in-class Mailchimp integration.
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Tawkto – Free live chat software for natural lead capture.
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Sumo – 100% free tools including lightbox popups and scroll boxes.
I recommend testing out the plugin that most closely matches your needs. All options come with a money back guarantee so you can trial them risk-free.
Once installed, focus on continually testing different opt-in form placements, designs and offers to maximize conversions. A good goal is to convert at least 2-5% of your overall website traffic into leads.
What are you waiting for? Go grab any of these superb WordPress plugins and accelerate your customer lead generation today!
This blog post was written by John from WPBeginner – where we believe in helping small businesses by creating free software tutorials that actually work. Learn more at WPBeginner.com
