Fresh New Pop-Up Forms to Grow Your List

There are plenty of articles talking about how important pop-up forms are for your website. And if you run an e-commerce store, pop-up forms are almost a necessity. But are they really effective? Don’t they require a developer to install?

Here’s the deal: We found that users saw their list growth rate increase by 60% after implementing a pop-up form. They’re a quick way to let website visitors know about any ongoing sales or promotions and invite them to join your mailing list. Once you’ve learned what works for your site, they can act as a welcoming and effective greeter for your customers.

So without further ado, we’re excited to announce our new and improved pop-up forms. We’ve added more customization options, so you can adjust the design, timing, and placement of your form to fit the needs of your business—no coding necessary.

And the best part? They’re absolutely free.

Customize your form

We revisited the pop-up forms we first launched in 2014, making them easier to use and more effective. The first step we took involved refining the look and feel of our form. Then we gave you more design and editing options. Our new default pop-up form has a cleaner layout and takes up less screen real estate—and, because we’ve improved their proportions, images look better.

Using our editor, choose fonts and a color palette that match your brand, and create a styled, compelling call to action button. When your store is connected, you’ll see a preview of your site behind the pop-up form so you can get the design details just right.

Choose your opt-in method

These pop-up forms now give you the choice to make your forms single or double opt-in. And on October 31, the rest of MailChimp’s form options will offer that choice, too. Single opt-in has been a popular request from our customers over the years, and we want to provide you with the flexibility to choose the opt-in method that makes sense for your business. To set the opt-in preferences for your lists, log into MailChimp and navigate into your settings.

With single opt-in, your subscribers will be able to enter their email address and join your list in one simple step. We’ve also made the success message editable, so you can provide a quick message to your new subscribers after signup.

Find the perfect timing

Timing is everything, so we’ve introduced 3 triggers for pop-up forms.

• Select a time-based delay. The pop-up can appear immediately when someone visits your site, 5 seconds after arrival, or 20 seconds after arrival.
• Pick a scroll-based trigger. With this option, the pop-up is determined by someone’s activity on your website. Show the pop-up when someone scrolls to the middle of your site or the bottom of your site.
• Or, set an exit intent trigger. Show the pop-up form when a potential customer is about to navigate away from your site entirely.

Pick the right placement

Every site is a little bit different. So once you’ve chosen a trigger, you’ll have 3 different formatting options as well: default, slide-in, and fixed.

• The default form appears in the center of your site. It’s a basic pop-up that’s sometimes referred to as a modal or lightbox.
• A slide-in acts like a chat window and will slide into the bottom right corner of your site.
• The fixed form, sometimes referred to as an email bar, will remain in place across the bottom of your site until someone signs up or clicks the close link.

And when your form is shown on a mobile device, we’ll default to a banner so you’ll avoid any potential search engine penalties.

Put your form to work

We’ve made updates to our reporting features so you can see exactly how many subscribers each form is bringing to your list, which allows you to test different messaging, timing, and other variables to see how they affect your form’s conversion rates.

But don’t stop there. Pop-up forms really shine when you combine them with other MailChimp features. Trigger an automated email campaign for any subscriber added to your list through your new pop-up form. Add a birthday field in your form so you can send a special note or coupon to people on their birthday each year. Or, you might choose to reward everyone who subscribed through your pop-up by sending them an email with a promo code.

These new pop-up forms are available for all MailChimp users, and it’s easy to get started. In fact, if you connect your site with Shopify, WooCommerce, and PrestaShop, we’ll even auto-publish your form when you’re done designing it.

Need a bit more guidance? Later this week we’ll be publishing an article to our resources section that’s full of the tips and best practices you need to create effective pop-up forms in MailChimp. Stay tuned!