The Most Annoyingly Successful Marketing Tactic You Can Deploy

By Luke Weigel, lweigel@lessitermedia.com
Marketing Manager, Lessiter Medi

At one point or another, I think most of us have cursed them out or slammed our mouse in frustration. They are annoying, invasive and distracting. I'm talking about pop-up ads of course.

They definitely get a bad rap, and in many cases, rightfully so. But why then, do so many companies continue using pop-up ads if the general consensus is nobody likes them?

The answer is simple. Because when pop-ups are used following industry best practices, they have proven to be extremely successful.

According to HubSpot's The Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics 2021 report, the average click-through rate for emails — arguably the most popular marketing tool at our disposal — is 2.13%, while the average open rate across all industries is 20.94%. Pop-ups, comparatively, have an average click-through rate of 3.09%, and get this, a 100% view rate!

That's the beauty of a pop-up ad — you can't ignore them. Emails can get overlooked and buried in the inbox or automatically sent to the spam folder. Not pop-ups! By displaying a pop-up ad, you are forcing the user to take action. Even if they quickly close out the pop-up box, you have still successfully delivered a brand impression.

But you've been warned — proceed with caution. As mentioned in my opening, pop-up ads can be annoying, invasive and distracting. Too much or too often can quickly take any promising pop-up campaign off the rails and lead to an extremely poor user experience and potentially lost customers.

I've put together a few tips to keep in mind when planning your next pop-up ad campaign that will ensure a non-intrusive or frustrating experience for your audience.

Want to see some pop-up ads in action? Let me know and I can share some examples from our sponsored pop-up campaigns that are running across all of our websites and in one instance, saw a click-through rate of 6.74%!