Popup Conversion Rate by Audience: 13 DTC Brands

A welcome popup shown to new visitors had a median popup conversion rate of 2.8% across 11 DTC brands we manage. Over the last 90 days, SMS sign-up forms shown to people already on the email list converted at 4% to 15%, and one-click Black Friday forms shown to past customers got 29% to 47%. Who sees the form moved the rate far more than anything about how it looked.

This is a year of Klaviyo sign-up form data: 41 forms with at least 1,000 views, 4.5 million views and 162,000 form submits across 13 brands. It's a small sample of brands, so we give ranges and medians, not a single benchmark to hit.

Popup Conversion Rate by Audience

Submit rate = submits ÷ views, as Klaviyo reports it. Welcome popups: one rate per brand, weighted by views across that brand's welcome popups and full-page forms. Other rows: each form is one data point. Past 364 days except the SMS row, which uses the last 90 days because new SMS forms run much higher in their first months (more below). Forms with 1,000+ views. Forms with no input field are left out, since Klaviyo counts a button click as a submit.

The Black Friday row for new visitors looks higher than the welcome row, but that's mostly which brands ran one. Over the same October to December window, each brand's Black Friday sign-up form landed close to its own welcome popup: 3.0% vs 3.9%, 2.6% vs 2.8%, 5.6% vs 7.1%, and 13.1% vs 10.0% for the personal care brand. Black Friday framing on its own didn't lift sign-ups from strangers.

Welcome Popup Conversion Rate by Brand

Here's what each brand's welcome form converted new visitors at over the past year. The median brand is at 2.8%, and the range runs from 0.5% to 9.8%.

One rate per brand from its welcome popups and full-page forms only. Always-visible flyouts and sale-announcement bars are left out: Klaviyo counts a view on every page they appear on, so one brand's flyouts showed 0.1% to 0.7% on 809K views and would have dragged its rate to 0.3%.

All 11 brands offered a discount for signing up, mostly a percentage off the first order. We can't tell you which offer works best from this data. Offer size, price point and traffic source all differ by brand, and 11 brands is too few to separate them.

Two things we can say. The two brands at the top both run a full-page version of their welcome offer, not just a small popup, though a full-page form alone isn't enough: Apparel A's desktop full-page form converted at 2.1%. And in the two comparisons we have, adding a question to the form didn't cost sign-ups: the health and wellness brand converted at 5.2% with and without one, and at CPG B the version with a question did better (4.6% vs 2.8%). Those versions ran at different times with slightly different offers, so treat that as a sign the question doesn't hurt, not proof it helps. More on that in our post on adding a question to your popup.

Same Brand, Different Audience

The cleanest way to see the audience effect is inside a single brand, over the same dates: same site, same season, same products. Five brands ran an SMS sign-up form for their email subscribers alongside a welcome popup.

All five converted email subscribers at a higher rate than new visitors over the same 90 days, from about the same (1.1x) at the brand whose welcome form already converts best to 7.2 times at the brand whose welcome form converts worst. Some of that is the ask: a phone number from someone who already gave you their email is a smaller step than an email from someone who just landed.

Last 90 days (July 24 to October 21, 2026) for both columns, so each brand is compared with itself over the same dates. The personal care brand's welcome rate is higher here than its full-year 9.8%.

New SMS forms spike at launch. Three of the five ran far higher in their first months than they do now: one went from 27% to 49% a month in its first three months to 7% to 12% since July, and two others fell from 14% and 18% to about 7%. The likely reason: the first people to see a new form are the most engaged subscribers on the list, and once they've signed up, the form keeps showing to everyone else. Judge an SMS form on its rate after a couple of months, not its first few weeks. Settled, these rates sit close to the 3.95% to 9.35% range in our earlier email-subscribers-only SMS popup post.

Does Popup Design Matter? One Brand Over a Year

The outdoor goods brand changed its welcome popup several times this year. That makes it a useful look at how much design moves the number.

From late August through September, two versions of the popup, the existing design and a stripped-down minimal one, ran over the same period and got almost the same number of views. The minimal version converted at 1.40% and the existing one at 1.33%. That gap is small enough to be noise (it isn't statistically significant), so the two designs performed about the same. The brand kept the minimal one.

Now look at the same popup month by month:

The rate ran from 0.71% in February to 1.81% in November and again in October, a swing of about 2.5 times. The brand published new versions of the popup along the way (in January, February, April, May, August, September and October), so we can't pin the swing on any one cause. For the record, the last nine days of October 2025, on the old design, ran at 2.34%, against 1.81% for October 2026 on the new one.

So the one side-by-side test showed no clear design effect, while the rate swung about 2.5 times through the year. If you redesigned your popup in March and checked it in June, you couldn't tell the design from the calendar. This is one brand and not a controlled experiment, but it points the same way as the audience table: who is on your site, and when, can move the number more than the design.

Footer and Embedded Forms

Forms built into the page vary with where they sit. Footer sign-ups converted at 0.3% and 0.5% (a median of 0.4%): almost everyone scrolls past them. An inline newsletter form converted at 2.8%, and an early-access "notify me" form at 2.9%. Forms on a page someone chose to visit did far better. A sign-up page converted at 8.0%, two consultation-request forms at 5.7% and 6.2%, and a member-pricing sign-up at 5.9%. Again, the visitor's intent did the work.

Want your own forms split by audience and by month? We pull this from your Klaviyo account.

What to Do With This

1. Add forms for the people who already know you.

Most stores run one popup for everyone. Klaviyo can target forms at email subscribers who haven't given a phone number, or at past customers. The SMS forms for subscribers beat each brand's welcome popup over the same dates, by 1.1 to 7.2 times. Around Black Friday last year, two brands showed past customers a one-click form: one offered early access, the other showed the sale code with a shop button. They drew clicks on 29% and 47% of views. Those are clicks, not sign-ups, but no other form came close.

2. Compare like with like.

Don't judge a popup change by comparing this month with last month. Compare it with the same month last year, or run both versions side by side. One brand's rate swung about 2.5 times across the year, while its side-by-side design test came out about even.

3. Know what your number includes.

Klaviyo's popup conversion rate divides submits by views, not by unique visitors, and an always-visible flyout tab counts a view on every page. A flyout can show 0.1% and still collect plenty of sign-ups. Check each form on its own before you average them.

4. Don't count on the footer.

A footer form is fine to have, but it won't grow your list. Put sign-up forms where people arrive on purpose: a dedicated page you can link from ads, social and your welcome flow.

For what a sign-up is worth once you have it, see our first-order discount study and Klaviyo flow benchmarks. The conversion rate calculator shows what a change in sign-up rate means in subscribers per month.

Popup Conversion Rate FAQ

What is a good popup conversion rate?

For a welcome popup shown to new visitors, the median across 11 DTC brands we manage or managed was 2.8% over the past year, with a range of 0.5% to 9.8%. Above 5% puts you in the top three of our brands. Forms shown to existing subscribers or customers convert much higher, so compare each form with others shown to the same audience.

Why is my Klaviyo popup conversion rate so low?

Check three things first: whether the form is a flyout or teaser that counts a view on every page, whether the month you're looking at is seasonally slow for your store, and how much of your traffic is cold paid traffic. Each can push the rate below 1% without anything being wrong with the form.

Do SMS popups for email subscribers convert better?

Yes. Over the last 90 days, SMS sign-up forms shown only to existing email subscribers converted at 4.0% to 15.2% at five brands, a median of 7.1%. Each beat its brand's welcome popup over the same dates, by 1.1 to 7.2 times. New SMS forms often run much higher in their first months, so judge one after it settles.

Does popup design affect conversion rate?

Less than you'd think, in our data. At one brand, a minimal redesign and the old design converted about the same in a side-by-side run (1.40% vs 1.33%, not a significant gap), while the same popup's monthly rate swung from 0.71% to 1.81% across the year.

Methodology

• Data: Klaviyo sign-up form reporting for 13 DTC brands we manage or managed, the 364 days to October 22, 2026 (Klaviyo's form reports cap at one year). Brands are identified by vertical only.
• Forms: 41 forms with at least 1,000 views: 4.47 million views and 162,421 submits. On a form with no input field, Klaviyo counts a button click as a submit, which is how the two past-customer forms are measured.
• Submit rate: submits ÷ views, as Klaviyo reports it. Views aren't unique visitors, and teaser and flyout views count.
• Audience groups: assigned from each form's type, name and copy. Klaviyo's API doesn't expose form targeting, so a phone-only form counts as shown to email subscribers only if its name or copy says so (for example, "you're already subscribed to email"). Phone-only forms whose targeting we couldn't confirm were left out of every group (one form).
• Left out of the sign-up groups: forms with no input field (three Black Friday forms that were a single button, where Klaviyo counts the click as a submit), and always-visible flyouts and sale-announcement bars, which count a view on every page.
• Welcome popups by brand: total submits ÷ total views across a brand's welcome popups and full-page forms, so a large form isn't averaged equally with a short test. Other groups count each form once.
• Same-window comparisons: SMS forms and welcome popups compared over July 24 to October 21, 2026; Black Friday forms and welcome popups over October 23 to December 31, 2025. Windows never share a day (Klaviyo's date range includes its end date).
• Monthly case study: the same form's submit rate pulled for each calendar month, with windows that don't share any days. October 2025 is left out of the chart because only its last 9 days fall in the year of data; October 2026 is the 1st to the 21st.
• Not controlled for: offer, traffic source, device mix, price point and when each form ran. These are observed rates, not experiments.