Create a Popup Form

Add stylish forms to your website and reach new contacts with Mailchimp's popup form builder. Popup forms can be an effective way to collect email addresses, phone numbers, and other information to grow your audience and build your brand.

In this article, you'll learn how to create a popup form in Mailchimp.

Things to know

Here are some things to know before you begin.

• The popup form is single opt-in by default.
• Before you can send marketing text messages, you'll need to submit an application and be approved.
• You'll need to connect a site or Shopify store before you can enable your popup form.
• At this time, you can only send text messages to subscribed SMS contacts from the country that’s associated with your SMS Marketing program. If you have registered senders in multiple countries, you can send messages to subscribed contacts in each country you’re registered for. For example, if you have a sender registered in the UK and one registered in the US, you can send text messages to subscribed SMS contacts in the UK and the US.
• Your popup form design must comply with GDPR requirements. To learn more, check out Collect Consent With Popup Forms.

How it works

Popup forms can be a good way to connect with potential customers, get email addresses, phone numbers, and other information. After setting a goal for your form, you’ll select customizable pre-built templates that offer incentives to get visitors to sign up. Create as many popup forms as needed per audience and tailor them to suit your marketing needs.

Choose if you want to engage with customers via email, text message, or both. Data fields provide an opportunity for you to collect information about visitor preferences. Before you can collect SMS contacts, you’ll need to submit an SMS Marketing application and be approved. SMS marketing consent is different from email marketing consent, so make sure you send marketing texts only to people who’ve opted into them.

Use advanced targeting, geotargeting, and trigger capabilities to optimize your marketing strategy. When you’ve completed customizing your popup form and publish it to your website, we’ll automatically add the form to your connected site, Shopify store, or provide the code you need to connect your site.

We'll collect and display overall performance metrics on the homepage, overview page, and you'll see individual metrics on the forms details page. You can collect important data directly from subscribed contacts and then use it to build personalized emails and text messages to help grow your business.

Access the popup form builder

Use the new popup form editor to create and design your form. Choose specific offerings to incentivize visitors and grow your audience.

1. Click Forms, then click Popup forms.

You’ll navigate to the Popup forms Overview page where you can create your form.

Create a popup form

There are three main steps to create a form. Select an incentive to get visitors to signup, choose a template, then set up your form.

1. Click Create popup form.
2. On the Offer page, select the incentive you’ll use to get visitors to sign up, then click Continue.
   
3. On the Template page, browse the template library and select a template, then click Apply.
4. Click Preview if you want to see a live preview of how the template could look on a site.
5. On the Setup page, enter a name for your form, choose your audience, and type of data you'd like to collect. Collect email addresses, phone numbers, or both.
   
   Before you can send marketing text messages, you'll need to submit an application and be approved.
6. Click Create form. Your information won't be saved if you exit the setup flow before you click Create form.

That’s it! Your popup form is ready. You'll go to the Forms Editor to customize your form.

Design your popup form

Design your layout, choose colors, add a logo, animations, and much more to customize your form and complement your website. To learn more, check out Design Your Popup Form.

Review popup form checklist

When you’ve setup and added design elements to your popup form, you can review and update your settings before you publish. The popup form checklist displays a checkmark next to all completed settings. We'll create default settings but you can adjust to suit your needs.

1. In the popup form editor, click Save and review.
2. Click the button next to each setting to edit.

Here are the settings you’ll see on the checklist page.

• Where should it show?
  The website you want your popup form to appear on. If you haven't already, connect a site or Shopify store to enable your form. You can set rules to target specific pages if you don't want the form to show on every page.
  Default setting: Enable on all pages. This grants full visibility across your site.
• Who should see your form?
  Set visitor rules for who should see your form. Effective targeting helps you give people the right content. If a person meets the conditions of your rules, they’ll get the popup form. Our pre-built rules are based on New visitors and All visitors. You can add conditions or rules, such as Traffic source, or Geolocation to better target website visitors.
  Default setting: Show to new visitors. This targets new visitors who haven’t interacted before. This helps prevent your form from displaying to known or returning visitors with the same offer.
• When should it show?
  Set specific actions that triggers when the popup should show on your page, such as time on page, inactivity, quick scroll, or exit intent. You can show on all devices or target by device type, phone, tablet or desktop.
  Default setting: After 2 seconds on page (all devices). This ensures engagement while visitors are still active and alert.
• What should it look like?
  From this section, navigate to the popup form builder where you'll edit and add content to your form. You can also A/B test your draft form to find out what resonates with your website visitors.
  Default setting: Customized branding such as the logo, colors, font, and more. Match your site’s style to build trust and consistency.
• Advanced settings?
  This is an optional step. You can refine your targeting and control how frequently your popup appears. You can also decide how your form interacts with other popups, indicating whether it should replace them.
  Default setting: Use recommended defaults. These settings control frequency and session logic. Only adjust with expert guidance.

After you’ve reviewed your settings, and connected your site, you’re ready to publish your form. If not, you’ll need to connect your site. We'll show you how in the next section.

Geotargeting for forms

You can create multiple popup forms based on your customers geographical location. This helps you tailor your marketing based on their location. For example, you can display different popup messages for international vs domestic visitors.

1. On the All popup forms page, click Edit or View to choose the form you want to work with.
2. In the Who should see it section, click Edit targeting.
3. Click Add condition.
4. In the Traffic source drop-down, select Geolocation.
5. In the Country drop-down, set the parameter to is, then select the country you want to target.
6. Set additional country parameters as needed, for example by region or city.
7. Click Save.

Connect your site

Before you can publish your form, your site needs to be connected to Mailchimp. You can connect your site before you create your form from the Overview page or right before you publish. If you’ve already connected a site, you’ll be able to move to the publish flow.

Connect with Shopify

1. On the Where should it show? step, click Resolve.
2. Click Add a site.
   
3. Click Use Shopify, then click Add integration. You’ll navigate to the Shopify app store for the Mailchimp integration.
4. Login and complete the steps to add your Shopify store.
5. On the Theme settings page, make sure the Mailchimp for Shopify app embed is enabled. If the setting is gray, toggle the switch to turn it on.
6. Click Save.
7. Once you're done, click Refresh and close on the Connect through Shopify modal.
   
   You’ll see your site listed if the connection was successful.

Connect Manually

1. On the Where should it show? step, click Resolve.
2. Click Add a site.
   
3. Select Manually connect site, then click Manually connect.
   
4. Enter your site URL and choose the audience you want to work with.
   
5. Click Get code snippet.
6. You’ll need to copy and paste this code between the tags on your website, or add to your site using Google Tag Manager.
   
7. Click Check connection to make sure you’ve connected successfully.
8. If you don't want your form to show on all website pages, click Add or exclude target pages, then click the Currently viewing page drop-down to set page rules.
   
9. Click Save to save your settings.

That’s it! If your connection is successful, you’re ready to publish.

Publish your form

After you've designed your form, connected your site, you can publish and make changes live on your website.

1. Click Publish or schedule.
2. Click Publish now to have your form immediately appear on your site.
   
3. Click Schedule to publish your form later. Enter a start and stop date to indicate when you want the form to start and stop showing on your site.
   

Next steps

After your form is live on your site, we'll collect metrics to help you gauge performance and make adjustments. You’ll want to make sure you’re collecting the right information to meet your marketing goals. To learn more, check out Manage Your Popup Form.