Should Marketers Use Pop-Up Forms? A Comprehensive Analysis

Easily create mobile-optimized pop-up forms. Get started with HubSpot’s form builder.

As inbound marketers, we care about creating frictionless experiences for our website visitors that will also generate leads. Most of the time we can do both but in the case of pop-up forms, conflict does emerge.

Over the past few years, pop-up forms have re-emerged as a popular marketing tactic for promoting content, driving blog subscriptions, growing email lists, and fueling lead generation. The question is, do pop-up form work? We’ll cover that and more below.

What is a pop-up form?
Pop-Up Triggers
Do pop-up forms work?
Tips for Crafting High-Converting Pop-Ups

What is a pop-up form?

A pop-up form is a window that appears while a user browses a website. It can be triggered by a number of actions, including interactions with an element on the page, scrolling, and inactivity.

Pop-ups have become so prevalent that back in 2016, Google weighed in to announce it would start penalizing websites using, what they call, “intrusive interstitials.”

But here’s the thing: not all pop-ups are bad. When executed well, they can be part of a healthy inbound strategy.

However, because of the intrusive and disruptive nature of pop-ups, marketers should be careful of when and how they appear as well as the type of content they present. In other words, context.

When they’re appropriate context mixed in with added value, pop-up forms can enhance website visitors’ experience and boost conversion rates.

Pop-ups come in many shapes and sizes, but here’s a graphic that depicts the most common ones you might see on a web page:

Let’s dive a little deeper into these pop-up formats:

1. Welcome Mats

These are full-screen pop-ups that slide above the page content.

The biggest advantage to using a welcome mat pop-up form is that ig brings the offer front and center. Consider doing this if the offer is highly relevant to your content and important to your strategy.

Otherwise, a welcome mat pop-up may be a little too intrusive, as it may not be what users expect when landing on this page.

2. Overlay Modals

As close to the traditional pop-up as you can get, these are center-screen pop-ups that appear on top of page content.

Unlike the welcome mat, overlays don’t block the rest of the content from being shown, but the user will have to click out of the pop-up to continue what they’re doing. While some users do feel that overlay modals are intrusive, they often have high conversion rates if the offer is compelling.