
Ask HN: Do those “sign up for our newsletter” pop-ups actually work? - skewart
Over the last few years a lot of websites have started showing pop-ups a few seconds after the visitor arrives asking them to sign up for the site&#x27;s email newsletter. Often these take up the entire screen or otherwise make the site unusable until the user dismisses them.<p>Do these pop-ups actually lead to more sign-ups than, say, a little widget off to the side? Are the sign-ups good quality - i.e. are they people who are likely to stay engaged and&#x2F;or generate revenue for the site?<p>I ask because I typically see these on sites I get to from a Google search. I&#x27;m usually visiting these sites for the first time and I know very little about them. I would never sign up for a newsletter   before I even know what they do and if they have useful content.<p>I would guess these popups are targeting repeat visitors, but even then it&#x27;s still annoying and just makes me dislike the site.<p>So, if anyone has any experience working with these newsletter pop-ups, do they work?
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unsquare
It's night and day.

[http://i.imgur.com/WW0uF8n.png](http://i.imgur.com/WW0uF8n.png)

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user5994461
Just a reminder that a marketing practise may aggressive and unwelcomed by
some users while also being statistically successfully on some other users and
bringing significant revenues.

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codegeek
It depends on the timing of the pop-up. If I open a site's homepage and it
immediately pop-ups that form, I ignore it. If I am browsing for a few seconds
or even minutes and then it pop-ups when I try to exit, I may sign up if the
content was interesting.

Oh and a big pet peeve. Lot of these forms try to be cute by saying something
like "No I don't want to make more money" etc for the decline option. Don't do
that. Just because I am not signing up for your newsletter does not mean you
need to tell me I am making a mistake.

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veddox
> It depends on the timing of the pop-up.

Yes, definitely. A huge pop-up before I've even finished reading the title?
Get lost. A smaller pop-up when I've read the whole article? Well, maybe I'll
think about it.

The first is just plain rude. I probably won't sign up for the second either,
because I don't want to give away my email address to all and sundry - but
I've benefited from your content, so you have a right to at least ask.

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achairapart
Of course they work. They also provide terrible UX.

They work in a "quantitative" manner, it will grow your list but many users
like me will close the entire tab at lightning speed.

I think they work mostly because of naive users who think they need to enter
their email in order to view the actual website.

So, depending on your targets, you can choose to fast grow your list with
random and candid users or have a sharper base of people actually interested
in your content.

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asdfasdfa11112
OTOH, if a site monetizes primarily through its email list, they may not care
if people who don't sign up see their content.

There are similarities in the selection criteria used by 419 scammers.

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programming
Of course these work. I am using them on my website so that visitors keep
getting new updates.

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Zuider
On the one hand, the 'subscribe' pop-ups are intrusive, and I am reluctant to
clutter my inbox with notifications, but on the other hand they provide a
subliminal advertisement that the website is a source of material that is
actually worth signing up for, along with implicit peer pressure from the
implication, justified or not, that there is already a community of people who
have signed up. It is a psychological nudge, and you seem to be saying that
the benefits outweigh the downsides?

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cm2012
All big companies that do these use extensive ab testing to determine if they
work.

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jaredsohn
As an aside, I think the slash (or at least capital letters) is pretty
important to use when writing out A/B testing. (My initial reading of the
parent post gave me a different interpretation.)

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sharmi
Most of the comments here are the experiences of highly tech savvy end users,
not webmasters who employ the pop-up technique on their site. They are not
representative of the general population. So the feedback should be taken in
perspective. That said, I have learnt a lot about usability from these
discussions and that has shaped how I design my own site. Kudos to hners.

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zer00eyz
Your not asking all the questions.

Do you want email list signups or customers who convert to cash.

Is your email marketing effective enough to cancel out the increase to your
bounce rate?

For most people email signups aren't a direct correlation to money in the
bank, you need to market to these folks. If you don't have an effective email
marketing then its automatically a bad idea.

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ohgh1ieD
It does work, I usually never ever visit them again.

They successfully lost a potential customer.

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ardaozkal
As an end user of web content, popups don't work for me, but if it is a small
box at end of page, article etc, and if the content is good, I usually
subscribe.

