Grow Power Pack: The Subscribe Feature Levels Up

Publishers are already experiencing a lot of success with Grow’s Spotlight Subscribe, which has been awesome to see.

Newsletters are growing, websites are faster and (hopefully) pop-ups are being removed.

With our recent Zapier integration, we answered a common publisher request for automation, connecting Grow Subscribe to hundreds of different Email Service Providers (ESPs).

Mediavine is proud of how far Subscribe has come in a few short months, but we’ve been addressing more of your requests and have an exciting update for you today.

We’re rolling out a bunch of your requested features in a new pack — a pack so rad we’re throwing it all the way back to the ’80s for its name: The Power Pack.

Like the old Zelda maps and Contra cheat codes in your Nintendo Power magazine, the Power Pack’s features will help you take Grow Subscribe to the next level.

Here’s a look at all the abilities we’ve just unlocked.

1. Multiple Widgets

Let’s start with the most common request we’ve received from our publishers: The ability to create multiple different Subscribe Widgets.

Power Pack enables you to create more than one Subscribe Widget on the back end, resulting in a customized Subscribe geared toward the type of content a user is reading.

At this time, we have one default widget that is automatically placed for you. In the future, we’ll be adding the ability for WordPress publishers to target by category.

With the Allow Default Widget setting enabled, you can have additional widgets inside your post, along with the default widget.

For now, you can take advantage of …

2. Manual Widget Embed

Beneath each widget, you’ll now find embed code, which you can use to manually place a Subscribe Widget wherever you’d like.

For now, it’s a piece of HTML you can paste inside any CMS, WordPress or otherwise.

In the future, WordPress publishers running the Grow Social plugin will be able to use Gutenberg blocks to place them as well.

Whatever your method, this allows you to customize placements within your content if you don’t love where default widget is placed (although it’s optimized for highest conversion, so in theory at least, you should love it).

More importantly, manual widget placement makes it possible for publishers to deploy multiple widgets in creative ways and use them outside the content area.

Want to create a new widget and add it to your homepage? What about one specifically for your popular landing or category pages? Or a widget just below your content?

Now that Subscribe supports multiple widgets with the ability to place them wherever you like, the possibilities are endless.

But if that doesn’t get the creative juices flowing enough, how about …

3. Click to Subscribe

As content creators, we’ve all come across unique situations in which there’s insufficient room for a full sign-up, but you still want to give users a chance to subscribe.

Think about places like your header, sidebar and other navigation spots, or even just a quick button or call to action inside your text.

Previously, clicking those Subscribe-type links or buttons would take you to an entirely different page. Not with the Power Pack!

Now you can make that button, link, image or anything else trigger a Subscribe modal on that same screen with Click to Subscribe.

To see what the heck I just said in visual form, take it away Mediavine Design Team:

4. Name Fields

Hey there [First Name], we heard your request for this one, too!

As we’ve learned, many publishers use readers’ names in newsletters and automated emails in order to add a bit of personalization and boost those open and click rates.

It’s a nice touch, and thanks to the Power Pack, you can add a Name field to any of your Subscribe Widgets and mark it as optional or required.

Once you add a Name field and begin collecting readers’ names, they’ll be available in both Zapier and the CSV download for inclusion in your subscriber list for more friendly and personalized greetings.

5. Conversion URL and Widget in Export

We’ve learned that many newsletter ninjas will trigger custom automation emails depending on which Subscribe Widget they signed up for, or even from which page.

You’re now able to do this with Grow’s Subscribe features, thanks to the Power Pack.

Both the widget and URL that readers subscribed from have been added to the Zapier API and CSV download, ensuring that you can create advanced rules inside your ESP to target or segment your audience.

Even just informationally, it’s helpful to measure how each of your widgets and pages convert. This will provide those stats and help you make decisions accordingly.

Whatever you use it for, we’re excited to have this one in publishers’ hands.

6. Multi-Language Support Per Widget

While I refuse to concede that there is more than one time zone in this world (Eastern Time forever!), I do acknowledge that there are a great many languages spoken on our planet today.

We’re continuously working to improve the multi-language support of Grow to make sure that Subscribe and other features are accessible to as many global citizens as possible.

As part of the Power Pack, you’ll be able to translate each of your widgets into multiple languages.

Many More Power-Ups Still to Come

That’s all for this Power Pack, but our development of Subscribe is nowhere near finished. Honestly, we’re still just getting started.

We’re as obsessed with Subscribe as you are. Already, it’s performing amazingly well for our celebrity gossip and food sites, The Hollywood Gossip and Food Fanatic, respectively.

Overall, Subscribe is playing a crucial role in making Grow the first-party data solution we’ll all need when cookies are extinct in the coming years.

We have so much more in the works as teased above, with many new individual Power Pack features, and our long-term roadmap continues to … well, Grow.

Help us shape this product and chart a course for a more transparent, free and open web by continuing to send your feedback to grow.me@mediavine.com.

If you can’t tell from this Power Pack and everything else on our blog, Grow is driven by your input. We’re building it for you – and we can’t do it without you.