Boingnet

Ad Blocking Happens For A Reason

Dennis Kelly

Ad blocking technology is rapidly being deployed by consumers who are tiring of too many “in your face” offers cluttering up their online experience. Digital advertisers, and the networks that deploy those ads, are getting nervous. In fact, Facebook just announced that it will deploy new techniques to help its advertisers get around ad blockers. [UPDATE: Google announces search penalty for content blocking ads]

An Ad, Blocking An Article About – Ad Blocking

As purveyors of marketing tech tools & services, we at Boingnet monitor the ad-tech space, and try to stay ahead of trends for our clients. When an email arrived (that we opted in to) from eMarketer with the subject line: eMarketer Daily – Why More than a Quarter of US Internet Users Block Ads – we opened and clicked through to fully digest the data. To our dismay, here’s the first thing we saw:

An Ad, Blocking An Article About Ad Blocking…

The Scale Of Ad Annoyance

Seriously. An ad popped up and blocked an article detailing the explosion of ad blocking technology. To top off the mounds of irony being heaped upon us, THE AD CTA WAS TO SIGN UP FOR THE EMAIL WE JUST CLICKED ON. After figuring out how to clear the screen from this incredible annoyance, we were able to dig in the specific types of ad that are most annoying to consumers. Of course, those that block content were rated most annoying, with a score of 4.31 out of 5 on the annoying scale. eMarketer, you’re driving ad blocking downloads!

Email Subscription Pop Ups Really Work…Sometimes

In an effort to increase the reach of email marketing efforts, brands are deploying pop up subscription forms on all or parts of their websites. There are many companies selling these tools, usually with a “Freemium” notion – deploy the disabled product on your website, then buy the upgraded version. Sumome, Optinmonster, Bloom and Pippity are just a few companies that are out there promising things like “600% increases in subscription sign ups in 1 month”.  Pretty compelling stuff – every marketer would like a 600% increase in subscriptions. The approach makes sense, especially for organic or paid new traffic. Why not ask for the subscription when someone arrives at your site?  

But what happens after they subscribe? Do you really want to scream SIGN UP NOW!! at your existing audience every time they click through an email to your content? Do you want your subscribers to think that you’re clueless – that you don’t know they’re already on your list? Isn’t marketing supposed to be getting more, not less personal?

A Simple Solution – Segment Your Audience


The easiest way to take advantage of the list growing benefits of email subscription pop ups without completely embarrassing yourself with your existing audience is to create two segments:

  • Leave the pop ups on your primary blog that you optimize for SEO, drive traffic to via social media, paid ads and via website navigation.
  • Set up a separate page for the audience you’ve already captured. You can block it from web-crawlers & bots so that it doesn’t mess up your SEO, and leave it off your site’s primary navigation. Email your audience & drive them to the link with no annoying pop up content blockers.

Better – Segment With A PURL Landing Page

If you really want to look smart (and get better performance from your content), rather than sending your email audience to a generic blog page (sans pop ups), send them to a PURL Landing Page. By creating a PURL version of your blog content for your email subscribers, you get:

  • Much more detailed data about how each member of your audience interacts with your content
  • Easy personalization wins using Variable Data like: %First Name% – Here’s Our Latest Blog Post, or pre-filled forms for consultations and other upsells
  • Segmented Calls To Action sprinkled throughout your content. With a PURL, you can identify audience segments using codes in your list, then display different CTA buttons, forms, links and other content to each audience. Boingnet has a simple tool called Variable Logic that makes segmenting content & CTA’s easy.

Here’s a simple example of how variable logic can further segment your audience with custom CTA’s:

Here’s how variable logic can further segment your audience without a huge amount of work.

{{IF %Variable Data 1%=Customer}} %First Name% – Login To Learn More {{ENDIF}}

{{IF %Variable Data 1%=Lead}} %First Name% – Sign Up For A Demo{{ENDIF}}

This will generate a CTA button asking the email recipient by name to either login if they are a customer or sign up for a demo if they are a lead. Think about how much more compelling this experience is than the eMarketer example.

Here’s How To Do It In 15-30 Minutes:

  1. Write your base blog post in WordPress or any other popular blogging CMS.
  2. Login to your Boingnet account, create a simple page template with a header, content block and footer.
  3. Copy the blog HTML from your CMS into the “Source” feature in the Boingnet content block. Save & make minor edits for formatting. Add variable data & logic for personalization.
  4. Upload your email list into Boingnet, map any custom fields (such as Customer/Lead, or other demographic/behavioral status codes).
  5. Create a Personalized Campaign & Generate Your PURLs.
  6. Create your email template in Boingnet, using the %pURL% variable in the CTA button.
  7. Add an email send as a Channel in your Personalized Campaign with the scheduled send time, subject line, etc.

Compare this audience experience to the eMarketer example. It’s a no-brainer. Instead of bombarding your email audience with annoying pop ups, treat them like you’d like to be treated – with a streamlined, personalized experience that says “I value your subscription”.

Minimize Your Unsubscribes…

If you deploy pop up, content blocking email subscription forms to build your email list, then follow through with a thoughtful approach to delivering content to your captured audience. With a twist on your ordinary workflow, you can optimize the audience experience and your content ROI. Spend a few extra minutes on a segmentation strategy, and you’ll get better performance and minimal list churn. Don’t contribute to the explosion in ad blocking tools.

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