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Smart online entrepreneurs are well aware of building an active email list as a long term strategy to keep the visitors around for a more extended period.
In this post, we will be covering an in-depth ElegantThemes’ Bloom Plugin review, and all its features and functionalities.
Why you may need Bloom WordPress Plugin?
Bloom WordPress Plugin for WordPress helps users create colorful and feature-rich opt-in forms to improve conversion rates and grow their email lists. As we all know, expanding an email list is one of the crucial steps to achieving online success.
With the vast number of features paired with visually attractive opt-in forms, fulfilling this task will be as easy as possible.
Recently, we created an extensive list of best WordPress Popup Plugins, which received tremendous response. Many of our readers asked us for detailed reviews of each popup plugin from the list.
Bloom WordPress Plugin Review – Features
Over the years, Bloom from ElegantThemes has become of the most popular and powerful opt-in plugins in the market. And all its credit goes to its fantastic collection of features which makes email collection a piece of cake.
Let’s take a look at all the bell and whistles tucked away inside of the plugin:
#1. Six Email Optin Form Types
Depending on your website, the content, the web pages, and the posts, your conversion rate will depend on different targeting configurations.
With Bloom Plugin, you will get access to 6 different display types for your email opt-ins. So pick one that you like, and start gathering more and more email leads.
You will get access to opt-in forms including pop-up, fly-ins, inline forms, below content forms, widget area forms, and lastly content locker forms. The pop-up and fly-in forms can be automatically triggered based on time delays, after a period of inactivity, after commenting, after purchasing, after scrolling, and so on.
All these variations give you a lot of control over how you wish to collect user emails and allows you to be more flexible with your strategies.
#2. 100+ Form Templates and Customization Options
Besides the different display types for the opt-in forms, you get access to over a hundred pre-made form templates to help you get started. All the form templates are professionally designed and ready to use with a single click.
However, if you wish to make some customization before applying them to your site, that too can be handled courtesy of all the settings and options bundled in.
To start, you get unlimited colour options, so you can properly design your opt-in form to reflect your brand. If you are planning to include images inside your opt-in forms, then you can orient the images to look good with the text content.
There are also multiple variations to tweak around with the border style and edges. And finally, you will have three different opt-in form orientations – namely right, left, and bottom, to configure where you want the form to appear in your opt-in.
#3. Easy A/B Split Test
With so many different opt-in form display types, coupled with customization options, it can be hard to understand which will work best for your business. You might think that a content locker opt-in form might increase your subscriber count, but in reality, your desired results might require you to put up in-line opt-ins.
This is why the plugin provides users with Split Testing options to see which opt-in form in performing better.
The plugin will allow you to clone a form, make minor changes, and start testing it against the original to see which one is performing better. This can help you slowly make adjustments to your opt-in form until you get the optimal design to get more email subscribers.
#4. Email Marketing Service Integration
The main purpose of using Bloom is to get users to subscribe to your email list or sign up for your newsletter. Likewise, the plugin offers seamless integration with many popular email marketing services and email list management solution to provide a more lucid email marketing experience.
Some of the popular email marketing services include Mailerlite, AWeber, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and many more – in total 16. The plugin can gather information from all these services which include getting access to your email list, subscriber count, and so on.
How to Setup Bloom WordPress Plugin?
Now that we have gone over all the different features and functionalities the plugin brings to the table, let’s discuss how to use them.
After you have installed the plugin, a new Bloom option will appear in the sidebar of your WordPress dashboard.
It is from here that you will get to create different opt-in forms, customize them, and gain a statistical overview.
Step 1: Connect Your Email Service Account
Before creating your first opt-in form with Bloom, you will have to connect the plugin with one of the 16 email marketing services we have mentioned above.
To access the screen, go to Bloom -> Email Accounts -> New Account.
A dropdown menu with all the compatible email marketing services will appear. Select the one which you use and fill in your account name, along with all other profile information as shown below:
Once done, click on the Authorize button, and you will have successfully registered your email marketing service with Bloom. Now it is time to create your first opt-in form.
Step 2: Choose Your Form Type
To create an opt-in form with Bloom, you will need to head on over to Bloom -> Optin Forms.
Clicking the option will open the Bloom dashboard area for the active opt-ins. You will notice a NEW OPTIN button at the upper right corner. Click it, and the following screen should appear:
Now you will have to choose between the six different opt-in form display types we discussed earlier.
Pick one, and the opt-in configuration screen shows up.
Here you get to give a name to the opt-in form you are creating. Once you have given it a name, it is time to design it.
Step 3: Selecting a Form Template
The design section first asks you to pick a template to get the form creation process started. Once you have selected a template, it is time to customise it. Scroll down, and you should see the customise button.
Step 4: Customizing Form Design
Here you can customize the opt-in message, opt-in title, include an image, change image orientation, tweak around with the colour, and much more.
There is even the option for you to enter your custom CSS. You will also get an option to preview your opt-in form before finalizing.
Step 5: Select Form Display Settings
Once you are done here, it is time to head on over to the DISPLAY SETTINGS section.
It is here that you will get to ‘define when and where to display the opt-in on your website.’
Step 6: What happens on Form Submission?
And finally, there is the SUCCESS ACTION section. This is where you get to define an action as to what happens after someone successfully subscribes to your mailing list using the opt-in.
You can either:
- Show a success message, or
- Redirect the user to a predefined URL.
Step 7: Measuring Conversion Rates
7.1. Opt-in Stats
As you start creating more and more different opt-in forms, you need to keep updated as to how each of your opt-in forms is performing. To help you out in this area, there is the OPTIN STATS section which gives you a detailed overview of how your opt-ins have been performing.
Right off the bat, you will get to see your conversion rate, subscriber count, and weekly subscriber growth. This is followed by a detailed breakdown of the stats of your opt-in forms with info about impressions, conversions, and conversion rate. There is also a section which shows you how many new signups you have over the select period.
7.2. Do A/B Using Split Testing (Optional)
After you have set up an opt-in form, you can begin A/B testing by clicking the corresponding icon. It will allow you to create a variant.
You will be restricted to using the same template, but have the option to customise the individual elements, including colour, button text, and so on. You can even set different triggers.
Once done, you can start the test and compare which variant is performing better. You can even set multiple variants for the selected form, so you can evaluate which trigger, color, or button text is generating better conversion rates.
Bloom WordPress Plugin – Pros and Cons
Positives about Bloom Plugin
- Supports more than 16 reputed email marketing integrations, including Mailchimp, AWeber, and Campaign monitor.
- Six eye-catching different opt-in forms; fly-in, inline, below content, widget, and content lock.
- More than 100+ premade Templates with highly customizable options so you could design the opt-in forms just like your brand’s color scheme.
- More than three options to display your opt-in forms on the page; Right, Left or at the bottom
- Bloom plugin gives a full authority to trigger your opt-in forms based on multiple options such as ‘when the visitor is scrolling down’, ‘after commenting’, ‘based on time-delayed’, ‘once the customer makes a purchase’ or ‘if he remains inactive for a certain time on your page’.
- You can select global options to display your opt-in forms on selected categories or specific pages.
- A/B Testing lets you figure out which opt-in variation is working out most for you and which variation is winning in terms of the highest performing variation.
Missing Features
- No drag and drop builder option.
- No option to create custom templates.
- No exit intent triggers. You have to select other triggers based on a time delay, scrolling down, or after purchase sort of triggers.
Pricing & License Options
Bloom WordPress plugin comes from the talented team of developers over at Elegant Themes. And so, much like all other products offered by Elegant Themes, Bloom is not available as a standalone purchase. The plugin comes bundled with Elegant Themes membership.
To get your hands on this powerful tool for creating and managing your opt-in forms, you will have to subscribe to Elegant Themes membership club at a yearly subscription of $89. There is also an option for lifetime access for $249.
Granted, this might seem expensive for an opt-in plugin, but you are not simply getting access to an opt-in plugin. Instead, you are also getting your hands on other all 87+ popular products from ElegantThemes including Divi theme, Extra theme, Monarch plugin and more.
Download Bloom Plugin
Bloom Plugin Review – Should You Buy or Not?
Almost all optin plugins offer squality features, and you have to dig deeper while selecting the one that works best for you. Bloom has some exclusive features like content locking features that hide the content behind unless the visitors choose to sign up, and also it comes with an ability to add forms using shortcodes.
Apart from that, Bloom pricing is quite reasonable as compared to other optin plugins such as ThriveLeads or Optinmonster. It comes bundled with Elegant Themes membership that provides access to over 87 WordPress themes plugins.
Pricing wise, Bloom could be a far better choice in terms of reasonable pricing and exclusive features. We have been using Bloom on a few of our other sites, and the results so far have been phenomenal.
But feature-wise, Bloom lacks some of the advanced features that get in Thriveleads.
Final Verdict: For basic users, Bloom is a great choice. However, for advanced users, Thriveleads is recommended.
I hope my review would help select the best opt-in form WordPress plugin. It’s better to keep in view the pros and cons of Bloom plugin before locking on a decision to buy.
Your thoughts about Bloom plugin?
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