Whenever someone visits your website without giving their details, signing up, or checking out, you miss out on a growth opportunity. Surprisingly, most website visitors behave this way — they visit, look around, and leave without interacting.
Every visitor you fail to engage is a dent in your growth story. But with smart email collection tactics, you’re one step closer to converting potential leads into loyal customers by having access to their inboxes.
In this blog, we will share 11 best email capture tools and some best practices for starting to build and grow your email list. So, let’s get started.
Why Do You Need to Capture Email Addresses?
Capturing email addresses isn’t just about growing an email list; it’s about building relationships, driving conversions, and ensuring your brand’s voice is heard loud and clear. Think of it like getting an entry into someone’s life with the power to persuade them to give you a second thought. Here’s why you should think of capturing email addresses on your website.
- Register higher ROIs. Email communication can be personalized, making it more compelling than generic ads. According to research, email marketing offers a 41x ROI on every dollar spent;
- Build a loyal community. Emails allow you to cultivate a community of engaged subscribers. Instead of relying on fleeting social media interactions, nurture relationships in a personalized way within their email inbox;
- Re-engage & retarget. Not every visitor is ready to decide on their first store visit. Capturing emails allows you to send timely reminders, exclusive offers, or information that brings them back and nudges them toward conversion;
- Gather real feedback. Your subscribers can be a goldmine of insights. Sending survey emails can gather feedback about your products, services, or content and make informed decisions about future improvements;
- Control overreach. Unlike social media platforms, where algorithms dictate what your followers see, with emails, you control the narrative & reach. No middle-man means consistent, direct communication, ensuring your message isn’t lost or diluted.
11 Best Email Capture Tools in 2023
If you’re confused about the best email collection tools after looking at the crowded email marketing space, we’ve gathered the best tools in this list. Explore these tools, take them for a spin and pick one that suits your unique email capturing and growth needs in 2023:
- Sender – Best for ecommerce
- OptiMonk – Comes with several pre-built templates
- Hubspot – Advanced lead generation form builder
- OptinMonster – Offers a variety of lead forms
- WPForms – Drag & drop email capture form builder
- Thrive Leads – Create landing pages easily
- LiveChat – Email capture chatbot with diverse features
- Bloom – A/B split testing and reports for lead generation
- Formidable Forms – Known for lead capture tools like calculators and lead quizzes
- Sleeknote – Known for Smart triggers and a user-friendly form builder
- Yieldify – Multiple form formats for engaging prospects
Let’s look at each tool one by one.
1. Sender — Best Email Capture Tool For Ecommerce Stores
Sender is specifically built for ecommerce and empowers you to leverage online shopping behaviors to grow your email list. The marketing automation tool captures emails and automates personalized campaigns to turn leads into customers.
Sender isn’t just another email marketing tool; it’s an ecommerce partner that ensures you harness the power of email marketing for growing revenues. With powerful email segmentation, behavioral automation, automated follow-up, abandoned cart, and lead nurture campaigns, you can grow your store while building long-term relationships.
Drag-and-drop email builder, campaign automation tool, personalization and segmentation features, and popup forms allow you to capture and nurture leads efficiently. Moreover, the platform also supports SMS marketing, allowing you to run omnichannel campaigns for your ecommerce promotions.
Sender integrates with all major marketing, email, and ecommerce platforms, saving you time in building, growing, and monetizing your email list.
Are you seeking a tool for more than email capture? Sender might be the solution you’ve been waiting for. Try it for free now.
Email Collection Features
- Intuitive opt-in forms. Powerful drag-and-drop form builder with the option to create different forms like embedded forms, in-line forms, popups and spin-the-wheel forms to capture emails;
- Behavioral automation. Forms triggered based on specific browsing behaviors, ensuring timely engagement with potential buyers;
- Abandoned cart reminders. Send targeted emails to visitors who added products to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase. A nudge that often results in conversions.
- Segmentation capabilities. Group your audience based on browsing patterns, purchase histories, and preferences to send personalized emails and SMS;
- Real-time analytics. Gauge the effectiveness of your popup forms and email campaigns with real-time analytics. Tweak strategies based on actionable insights to ensure maximum ROI.
Pricing
- Forever free plan with no restrictions on advanced features for up to 2,500 subscribers;
- Paid plans start at $8 per month.
2. OptiMonk — Email Capture Tool with Pre-built Templates
If you’re keen on capturing every visitor on your website, you should look at OptiMonk. The tool lets you capture emails using intuitive popups, on-page personalization, and A/B testing.
OptiMonk is a powerful solution to deliver custom experiences on websites and turn website visitors into subscribers. The best thing about the email capture tool — it’s the ability to help you create lead capture forms, popup forms, and opt-ins in just a few clicks. With a large library of 300+ pre-built templates, quickly set up an opt-in form on the website.
The solution focuses on conversion rate optimization tactics and allows you to create popups, side messages, sticky bars, full-screen overlays, surveys, gamified popups, and more.
If you want to incentivize signing up and care for zero-party data to build an email list, you should check out OptiMonk.
Email Collection Features
- Multiple formats. Design & embed opt-in forms in multiple formats — popups, sidebars, sticky bars, full screen, embedded gamified popups, and more;
- Diverse template library. 300+ unique and industry-specific design templates with the ability to customize as per brand guidelines;
- Dynamic display options. Control when and where your opt-in forms appear with triggers based on user behavior, ensuring timely and contextual engagement;
- Interactive elements. Integrate interactive components like countdown timers or quizzes to make your opt-in forms more engaging and increase conversion rates;
- Real-time insights. Real-time analytics to measure the success of your campaigns and fine-tune your strategies for optimal results.
Pricing
- Free plan supports 15,000 pageviews on 1 domain;
- Paid plan starts at $39 per month for 30,000 pageviews across two domains.
3. Hubspot – Advanced Lead Generation Form Builder
HubSpot is a marketing automation software that covers all bases — marketing, sales, support, and, more recently, operations. Its marketing features involve a powerful form builder to capture leads efficiently.
HubSpot offers dynamic automation capabilities and a robust free CRM to manage and capture leads. Want to add forms to your website? Its intuitive and advanced form builder lets you do it in minutes. Plus, you can automate form visibility based on user interactions, ensuring a timely and relevant nudge that compels users to sign up as subscribers.
HubSpot is a powerhouse designed for enterprise businesses aiming to streamline their marketing processes and engage with leads at a deeper level. It doesn’t just help you capture emails—it enables you to understand, segment, and nurture these leads, transforming them from visitors to loyal customers. But all this comes with a hefty price tag, too.
Email Collection Features
- Lead capture popup builder. Easily create and customize popup forms that not only look good but also capture leads at the right moment, enhancing conversion rates;
- Behavioral automation. Trigger specific actions or follow-ups based on user behavior, ensuring your lead nurturing process is fine-tuned and efficient;
- Deep segmentation. Categorize your leads into detailed segments. Tailor your email campaigns to these segments for increased personalization and customer engagement;
- Free integrated CRM. Seamlessly track and manage your leads, understand their journey, and optimize your interactions every step of the way.
Pricing
- Paid plans start at $30 per month for up to 1,000 contacts;
- Limited-time free trial is available with feature restrictions.
4. OptinMonster — Offer Multiple Types of Lead Forms
OptinMonster is an effective solution for capturing emails from your website. If you seek to diversify your email capture methods, OptinMonster is a worthy contender. Its emphasis on customization and targeting ensures you capture emails and build meaningful connections.
OptinMonster’s standout feature is its sheer range of lead form types. Whether you’re keen on engaging users with lightbox popups, catching their attention with floating bars, subtly inviting them with scroll boxes, or adding a fun twist with gamified spin-a-wheel campaigns, OptinMonster has you covered.
But its capabilities don’t stop at diverse forms. Advanced features like page-level targeting ensure you reach out to users with contextually relevant offers. Exit intent detection gives you one last shot at capturing a potential lead just as they’re about to leave.
Geolocation targeting makes your forms even more personalized. And, with a rich library of 100+ templates, setting up these forms is quick. Plus, you can customize the designs with the drag-and-drop editor to make them consistent with your brand aesthetic.
Email Collection Features
- Diverse lead forms. Choose from lightbox popups, floating bars, scroll boxes, or gamified spin-a-wheel campaigns to capture emails in style;
- Page-level targeting. Customize your forms to display on specific pages, ensuring a more relevant and personalized user experience;
- Exit intent detection. Engage users just as they’re about to leave your site, maximizing your chances of capturing that crucial email;
- Geolocation targeting. Personalize your email capture strategy based on where your users are located, adding another layer of customization;
- Rich template library. Jumpstart your campaigns with 100+ ready-to-use templates tailored for various niches and requirements.
Pricing
- A limited-time free version with basic functionality is also available;
- Premium plans start at $9 monthly for up to 2,500 page views on 1 website.
5. WPForms — Best Overall Email Capture Software
WPForms is one of the most popular form builders for WordPress. It can effectively capture emails, build a subscriber list, and embed forms on a website.
It’s designed with the non-tech-savvy in mind and prioritizes ease and efficiency without compromising functionality. Create captivating email capture forms through its intuitive drag-and-drop builder. With an extensive collection of 800+ templates, you can quickly add a form to the website while resonating with the audience and brand ethos. Plus, the plugin can be used to craft contact forms, conduct surveys, accept newsletter subscribers, or simplify customer onboarding processes.
WPForms also has interesting features like smart conditional logic, ensuring your forms react dynamically based on user inputs. It also boasts advanced lead management features, ensuring every lead is accounted for and treated with care. WPForms also integrates with all major email marketing platforms.
Email Collection Features
- Drag & drop builder. Create and customize forms based on your brand colors or guidelines without coding;
- 800+ templates. Large template library to jumpstart your form creation for different email capture objectives.
- Smart conditional logic. Dynamically alter form fields and actions based on user inputs, delivering a more personalized and interactive experience.
- Advanced lead management. Keep track of every form submission and categorize them according to different needs;
- Seamless integrations. Connect WPForms to popular email marketing services for lead nurturing or marketing automation.
Pricing
- A basic version with limited features is available as a free WordPress plugin;
- Premium plans start at $49.50 per year for 1 website.
6. Thrive Leads — Easy Landing Page Creation for Lead Generation
Thrive Leads is a powerful plugin for businesses aiming to collect emails and grow their email lists.
It’s an all-in-one solution that includes themes, form builders, and more. Thrive Leads allows you to create every conceivable opt-in form type quickly. Its intuitive drag-and-drop editor ensures that design perfection isn’t just for the pros; even those with no design background can craft compelling, conversion-optimized forms in minutes.
It also offers advanced targeting features, allowing you to display tailored popups based on different attributes. This ensures visitors are always met with relevant content, amplifying conversion rates and helping you build hyper-targeted email lists that drive engagement and revenue.
Furthermore, the built-in A/B testing feature is useful for testing variations, gathering insights, and choosing the winning design to maximize the opt-in rates.
Email Collection Features
- Comprehensive form types. Popups, sticky bars, inline forms, and more—all within one powerful plugin;
- Drag & drop editor. User-friendly interface for creating unique and compelling forms without the need for coding or design expertise;
- Advanced targeting. Personalized experience by showing hyper-relevant opt-ins based on visitor interactions, categories, posts, and tags;
- A/B testing. Test form variations effortlessly, gain actionable insights, and optimize them;
- Performance overview. Detailed dashboard for a clear snapshot of forms’ performance.
Pricing
- Available as a bundled suite for $299/year with access to theme builder and multiple WordPress plugins.
7. LiveChat — Great Chatbot with Multiple Features
LiveChat lets you have real-time conversations with visitors on your website and collect their emails.
LiveChat has many useful features, such as message sneak peek, canned responses, and chat tags, ensuring you always make the most of every conversation. The best thing is that it allows you to hold conversations across Facebook, Instagram, and even SMS.
The in-chat voice, video, and screen-sharing features ensure you never miss an opportunity to connect and convert. With different customization options, you can tailor the chat experience to echo your brand’s voice, ensuring consistency in every interaction.
Email Collection Features
- Chat tools. Enhance your conversations with features like message sneak peeks, canned responses, and rich messages, ensuring you’ve got the upper hand in every chat;
- Multi-channel engagement. Engage leads wherever they are, be it on Facebook, Instagram, SMS, or the built-in chat widget;
- Chat widget customization. Ensure every chat echoes your brand with customization options, agent profiles, and multiple languages;
- Reporting & analytics. Gauge the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts with detailed reports. Understand chat metrics, agent performance, and customer feedback at a glance.
Pricing
- Free trial available for 14 days;
- Paid plans start at $20 per month per agent.
8. Bloom — Great for Split Testing and Reports
Bloom is an email opt-in and lead gen plugin for WordPress by Elegant Themes. The tool offers exciting features for maximizing email opt-ins from your most popular pages.
Bloom offers a comprehensive range of opt-in forms designed to cater to various types of web content, ensuring you’ve got the perfect approach for every page, post, or scenario. Set up automatic opt-in popups triggered by user actions like time spent on a page to their interaction with content.
If you need more engagement, you can offer additional nudges that slide effortlessly from the browser’s bottom, targeting those most engaged with your content.
The split testing and reporting feature is really powerful, too. You can find what works best for you in minutes from a central dashboard and work on optimizing your opt-in strategy.
Email Capture Features
- Automatic opt-in popups. Create opt-ins based on user-defined actions like post reading, commenting, or even after a purchase, ensuring a timely interaction;
- Fly-Ins. Offer a powerful nudge for your visitors, triggered based on varied user interactions;
- Inline & below content opt-ins. Seamlessly integrate opt-in forms within or at the end of your content, capturing engaged readers right where you want them;
- Content locking. Grow your subscriber base by offering valuable content in exchange for their email;
- Custom triggers: From timed delays and page scroll percentages to actions like comments or purchases, triggers ensure your opt-ins appear at the right moment.
Pricing
- A 30-day free trial is available;
- Paid plans start at $89 per year.
9. Formidable Forms — Offer Calculator Forms and Lead Quizzes
Formidable Forms creates opt-in forms and powerful data-driven applications like calculators and lead quizzes for your website.
It offers an intuitive drag-and-drop builder to make any form with minimal effort. The best part of the solution is the ability to add visual enhancements like radio buttons, checkboxes, and steps that allow you to create detailed quizzes to engage buyers and learn more about them.
Create smart forms with conditional logic and detailed quizzes, and even use the data captured to gather insights about your audience. The platform also integrates with all major email marketing tools, payment gateways, and marketing solutions to feed the data into your marketing decisions.
Email Collection Features
- Drag and drop form builder. Create unique forms using drag and drop builder or use custom HTML code;
- Form templates. Kickstart your form creation with ready-to-use templates and customize them as per your requirements;
- Online calculator forms. Offer instant online estimates and intricate calculations for products or services;
- Polls, surveys & quizzes. Effortlessly collect feedback and data using survey and self-grading quiz builder without coding knowledge;
- Smart forms with conditional logic. Present questions based on user responses, branch out forms, and customize notifications and redirects;
- Personalize user experience. Control the narrative post form submission, guiding users to tailored messages or pages.
Pricing
- Paid plans start at $39.50 per year for 1 website.
10. Sleeknote — Smart Triggers & Easy-to-use Form Builder
Sleeknote is a powerful email collection tool that helps you create personalized conversations and experiences. It comes with smart triggers to engage visitors and compel them to opt in.
Sleeknote serves a singular goal — to treat each website visitor as a distinct individual, offering them a tailored experience. With Sleeknote, every interaction is a step towards understanding your audience better and offering them more. Whether they’re a first-time visitor or returning leads, Sleeknote understands the part and optimizes the experience for them.
Think of it as a lead generation software that switches context — from collecting email addresses from a new visitor to prompting a returning visitor to leave a review. This adaptability, fueled by smart triggers, makes Sleeknote a powerful solution.
Email Collection Features
- Intuitive drag and drop builder. Design unique opt-in forms with countdown timers and geographical merge tags with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder;
- Multi-step data collection. Capture insights like age, gender, and interests without denting your conversion rate.
- Do more with opt-ins. Promote online bookings, gather post-purchase feedback, or assist visitors in real time;
- Interactive lead collection. Offer more than a traditional discount offer for opt-in and engage visitors with a spin-to-win feature;
- Online bookings & product demos. Efficiently schedule meetings or demos, capturing essential details and routing them to the apt salesperson.
Pricing
- 7-day free trial available;
- Paid plans start at $49 per month for up to 25,000 visitors.
11. Yieldify — Offers a Wide Selection of Form Formats
Yieldify is a smart engagement platform with intuitive tools that help you capture leads online and focus on personalization.
The platform is a great lead capture tool with adaptive intelligence, which means that the right form is shown at the right moment for maximum chances of lead capture. Yieldify helps you personalize the ecommerce user experience by adapting and resonating with every unique customer journey.
Offering a plethora of form formats, it stands as a beacon for marketers who value precision, personalization, and performance. If you’re looking for a tool that offers multiple form formats and best-in-class behavioral features, you should look into Yieldify.
Email Collection Features
- Adaptive Lead Capture. Multiple form formats, designed to engage visitors at different stages of the buyer’s journey;
- Precision Targeting. Audience targeting and segmentation rules for personalizing form opt-ins and improving collection rates;
- AI-Powered Testing. A/B testing powered by artificial intelligence to find top-performing opt-in forms and messaging;
- Customer Profiles. Capture details like names and birthdays as well as custom fields from the audience.
Pricing
- Pricing plan details are available after you book a demo from the website.
Enhancing Email Capture: Best Practices for Building Your List
Now you know the best tools to capture emails, your hands must be itching to build your email list. But wait and have a look at these email list-building best practices that’ll give you better results and more incoming subscribers:
1. Offer an Incentive for Visitor Sign-Ups
People love to get something in return for their actions. When they perceive that they’re getting something of value, they’re more inclined to reciprocate the gesture, in this case, by providing their email address.
Offering an incentive for sign-ups involves sharing a reward for their email address. This could include a discount coupon, a sneak peek into an upcoming product, access to exclusive content, or a free ebook.
By offering an incentive, you’re not just asking for their email address; you’re exchanging value. It’s a mutual exchange where both parties feel they’re benefiting, increasing sign-up rates and setting a positive tone for future communications.
This builds trust and increases the likelihood that they’ll want to hear from you, turning a simple visitor into a potential loyal customer.
2. Ensure Non-Intrusive Popups for a Better Experience
No one likes being interrupted, especially when engrossed in reading or browsing online. Popups that are too aggressive can annoy visitors and even push them away.
Your goal should be to strike a balance, ensuring that while the popup is noticeable, it doesn’t overshadow or hinder the user’s primary purpose on the site. Focus on making the popups add to the user experience by offering value at the right time.
By ensuring that your popups are designed with user experience in mind, you capture their attention and respect their browsing journey, leading to more positive interactions with your brand. This will also help you maintain brand integrity and ensure users leave a positive impression.
3. Use Double Opt-ins
Your focus should be on an engaged and interested audience, not just having a long email list. Double opt-ins improve your subscriber quality by ensuring your email campaigns reach people who want to hear from you.
What’s double opt-in? It’s just making sure folks really want to join your email list by having them click a confirmation link.
With double opt-in, you’re not just dodging pesky bots entering your email list. You also ensure that every subscriber on your list is genuinely keen on reading your content. That means better engagement and a higher shot at conversions. Smart move, right?
Key Takeaways
Picking the right tool to collect emails should be your topmost priority as an ecommerce or online business. When at it, always remember that the tool you choose will impact your lead gen strategy. So, be wise and remember to:
- Use opt-in forms on your best-performing and top-traffic pages to capture emails and start building your email list;
- Never place opt-in forms where it hampers the user experience on your website;
- Test different email capture tools using a free trial account before you integrate it fully into your email list-building plans;
- Always use email capture tools that have built-in behavioral automation and email nurturing automation capabilities to get the best results.
Author Bio
Anmol Ratan Sachdeva is a content marketer and small business consultant who has a strong grip on topics like marketing automation, email marketing, and content marketing. He loves to write about building, improving, and growing a business.
