Love 'em or hate 'em, popups can dramatically increase conversion—when used correctly.

If you show people the exact same popup each time they visit your site, you're missing out on opportunities to either 1) push leads closer to a purchase or 2) increase LTV.

Try this: use dynamic popups to meet visitors at their current stage in the buyer's journey.

Most marketing messaging tools offer the ability to target individuals with different popups. So split your audience into three segments and show a popup that resonates with each:

1. First time traffic - people who haven't subscribed yet.

Provide a discount, giveaway, or exclusive piece of content gated by an email capture.

2. Returning subscribers - people who have subscribed but not yet purchased.

Include a subscriber-only discount to encourage purchase. Tip: include a countdown timer on the popup to create urgency.

3. Customers - anyone who has already made a purchase.

Feature new products and greet people with a "welcome back" message.

CRO is about optimizing high-leverage touchpoints with customers. Popups are no exception.

More people read emails on mobile as opposed to desktop.

If you're not truly creating mobile-first emails, your campaigns aren't fully optimized. 

The good news is that it's easy for email clients & ISPs to automatically adapt mobile-first designs to desktop whereas the opposite is not true. So if you optimize for mobile, your design looks sharp regardless of the device.

Here's how you create great mobile-first emails:

1. Write short subject lines to prevent them from getting cut off on mobile.

2. Keep the design clean to make it easy for readers to engage the content:

• Narrower design with plenty of negative space.
• Bigger, legible fonts.
• Larger, easy-to-click CTAs.

3. Use small files only. Many mobile devices are running weak processors. Prevent people from bouncing due to slow load times by compressing your image files.

4. Send a test and read it on your own phone before scheduling.

There's often a disconnect—marketers use desktop platforms to create and send emails. It's easy to overlook mobile when you're working from a computer.

Startups that stand out are those that get creative.

Here's an example:

Brooklinen "leaked" a time-bound discount and had one of their best days of the year.

Winning startups experiment not only with copy and creative, but also with their framing.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.