How to Hide Popups from Your Existing Subscribers (4 Methods)

Do you want to turn off popups for the people who have already subscribed to your email list? Popups can start to annoy your visitors if they have opted-in already. In this post, we’ll share 4 methods to hide popups from existing subscribers (step-by-step).

OptinMonster allows you to add highly effective popups, welcome gates, slide-in scroll boxes and other optin forms that significantly increase your subscribers, and our users love us for that.

One of the most common requests that we’ve gotten from our users is for the ability to hide popups from existing subscribers.

All OptinMonster popups are smart, and it will never show the same popup again if the user has subscribed through our campaigns.

optin cookie settings

But what if the user was already a subscriber before you got OptinMonster, or what if you have multiple campaigns running?

Well, we have 4 solutions for you!

Why Should You Turn Off Popups for Subscribers?

We wanted to give our users the ability to create popups that not only increase their conversions but also facilitate a good user experience on their site and improve sales.

The problem with most popups is that they show up regardless of whether the visitor has already opted in or not. Even if the visitor is a long-time subscriber, the site doesn’t recognize them as such.

It’s akin to if you owned a restaurant, but you could never remember who your regulars were. That would be pretty poor customer service, huh?

Contrast that with a restauranteur who greets his regulars by name and remembers their “usual” order. With OptinMonster, you can be that friendly restauranteur: you can ditch those “dumb” popups and greet your subscribers with intelligent popups instead that know what they’ve already opted in to or rejected.

Especially if you use content marketing to nurture your leads, you’re probably sending out a weekly, or even a daily, email newsletter to your subscribers containing links to your blog posts. To ensure positive user experience for those warm leads and customers, it’s important to hide popups from existing subscribers or popups that visitors have already interacted with.

If you are an OptinMonster user, there are 4 different methods that you can use to hide popups from existing subscribers:

  • Method 1. Set Global Success or Interaction Cookies
  • Method 2. Use a Specific URL Parameter in Your Email Campaigns
  • Method 3. Display a Different Popup with Campaign-Specific Cookies
  • Method 4. Prevent Popups with Your Own Cookie

Using these features, you can rest assured that your subscribers won’t get annoyed. You can even take these features one step further to enhance their experience, so they’ll love you even more.

Ready to learn how to do it? Let’s dive into the 4 methods…

Method #1: Set Global Success or Interaction Cookies

The first method is to add a global cookie so that all of your popups will stop appearing once a visitor has either successfully opted in or has interacted with a popup by exiting out of it.

Cookies are text files that are stored in your browser containing information about a specific website visit. You can set these to be stored in your visitor’s browser whenever they interact with one of your popups, so your popups will be intelligently displayed (or not displayed) the next time they visit your site.

To set your global cookie settings, go to your OptinMonster dashboard and click on Sites.

account settings

From there, click on the site you want to edit and set the global success cookie and/or the global interaction cookie.

The global success cookie is the number of days that all optins will be prevented from loading after the visitor has successfully opted into any optin.

The global interaction cookie is the number of days that all optins will be prevented from loading after the visitor has closed out any optin.

Enter your preferred number of days in one or both form fields and hit the Save button.

set global cookiesIf you want a quick and easy way to automatically hide popups from existing subscribers, this is the best way to do that. There are only two downsides to using this method alone:

  1. It does not cover existing subscribers who opted in before you installed OptinMonster.
  2. Since this method relies on browser cookies, it doesn’t work if your subscribers view your site from a different device than the one they opted in with.

Let’s proceed to method #2, which will allow you to exclude ALL existing subscribers from seeing your optins, no matter what device they are using, and even if they were on your list before you had OptinMonster…

Method #2: Use a Specific URL Parameter in Your Email Campaigns

This method does not rely on cookies, so it works no matter what desktop, laptop, or mobile device the subscriber is using to view your site.

All you have to do is create a specific URL parameter that you will use when you do not want the popup displayed.

There are two ways you can accomplish this.

First is to use our built-in parameter ?omhide=true.

If you add it at the end of any URL, it would hide all OptinMonster campaigns on that page.

Example: yoursite.com/blog-post/?omhide=true

The second way to do this would be to create your own custom URL parameter and adding them inside OptinMonster’s Display Rules.

To set your URL parameter, so that it prevents your page from loading a popup, simply go to the Display Rules for your optin form and set a condition to if the URL query arg key exactly matches and value exactly matches and enter the query strings you wish to use. Then hit the green Save button in the top right corner of the screen.

url parameter

You can choose to only show when a user has a specific parameter or when they don’t have that parameter.

Now, you can use this URL parameter in your email campaigns. So whenever you link to a blog post or any page on your site, you can append your query string to the link and your existing subscribers won’t see a popup on that page.

The only downside to this method is that it only works when your subscribers are accessing your site via a specific link. That’s why we’ve also included the global cookies feature (from method #1 above), and the additional features below…

Method #3: Display a Different Popup with Campaign-Specific Cookies

The third method is to display a different popup to those who have already opted in to one of your offers.

For instance, you may have several lead magnets to offer. You may want to prevent your visitors from seeing the same popup over and over, but you still want them to be able to optin to another one of your lead magnets. So once they optin or exit one popup, you can show them a different popup, and so on.

Another practical application of this feature is to create a popup funnel to move your visitors further along the sales process.

For example, the first popup could be an optin form. Once they have successfully opted in, then they would see a different popup that offers a discount code. Once they have successfully grabbed the discount code, they would see a popup that reminds them that they haven’t checked out yet, etc. until finally the sale has been made.

For the purpose of this tutorial, let’s say you want to display Popup B after someone opts into Popup A. Then after someone opts into Popup B, you want to display Popup C.

popups with campaign cookies

To do this, you’ll need to add a campaign-specific cookie to your popups. Simply go to your OptinMonster dashboard and edit Popup B. From there, click on the Display Rules tab.

Set a condition to visitor has opted in to and choose the optin from the dropdown list (or you can also set it to be displayed for several other options).

visitor interaction with optin

In our example from above, you’d select Popup A from the campaign dropdown menu, and hit the green Save button at the top of the page.

Next, edit Popup C and repeat the same steps. This time, set it to be displayed when the visitor has opted into Popup B.

That’s it! You now have a dynamic popup campaign that you can use in so many ways: to enhance the user experience, move your visitors further along your funnel, or anything you can imagine.

Method #4: Prevent Popups with Your Own Cookie

The final method we are going to discuss in this post is using your own, specific cookie to prevent popups from appearing. This feature gives you the ultimate control.

(Consequently, you can also use this feature to display popups with a specific cookie, but that’s a topic for another time.)

First, go to the Display Rules tab for your optin form and set a condition to display your optin if a cookie does not contain (since you’re preventing the optin from loading), and then enter your cookie key and value.

set optin cookie

Hit the green Save button. Now you can prevent popups from appearing based on any cookie that you want. The possibilities are endless!

The only downside to this method is that you may need to hire a web developer to help you create the cookie. But that’s why we have the other 3 methods for you to choose from.

That’s it! 4 methods to hide popups from existing subscribers. As you can see, each of these methods has its merits and its shortcomings. There is no single catch-all method for preventing your existing subscribers from seeing popups. However, if you use a combination of these methods, you can be pretty sure that they won’t.

What’s even more exciting, however, is the possibilities that these features afford you for enhancing the user experience on your site. Not only can you use these methods to hide popups from existing subscribers, but you can also use them to display more targeted popups–and even popup funnels–that give your users more value, and move them further along your sales funnel.

Do you have any questions about preventing existing subscribers from seeing your popups, welcome gates, or slide-ins? Let us know in the comments below!

Mary Fernandez
Mary Fernandez is a professional blogger. When she’s not at her desk, you can usually find Mary exploring sunny San Diego, CA with her laptop, husband, and three kids in tow.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

Comments

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  2. Hello! Here’s what I want to do: I want to create a different subscribe pop-up for different pages based on categories.
    For example, I have one post related to Sports and I want a pop-up which would subscribe the users to the list called Sports on Mailchimp. On the other hand, I have a different category called Politics, and I want a pop-up which would subscribe the users to the list called Politics on Mailchimp. Can I do that? Please let me know.

    1. Yes, you can definitely do that, Anamol!

      Also, if you are using WordPress, you can use our WP plugin to set each of your campaigns to be displayed for specific categories of blog posts. So anytime a user is reading a post in the Sports category, they will see a different pop-up than if they were reading a post in the Politics category.

      Each of your campaigns are integrated with your MailChimp lists, so anytime someone opts in with the Sports pop-up they can be automatically added to the Sports list on MailChimp, and so on.

  3. Katharine Di Cerbo August 31, 2016 at 2:10 am

    THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to figure this out.

    1. You are so welcome, Katharine! I’m glad this helped. 🙂

  4. Hi Mary,

    Thanks for the good info. In the 4th paragraph, you mention how these pop ups are smart and will never show up for an already subscribed user.

    What is used to make this happen? Cookies? Browser cache? Other?
    How long do these last? As in, if I subscribed to the campaign a few days ago, will it still recognize me? What of a month ago? a year ago?

    Thank you.

    1. Sharon Hurley Hall August 17, 2017 at 7:35 am

      Great question, Nemo. 🙂 Here’s our documentation on how OptinMonster uses cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors, and to recognize people who have already opted into a campaign. Hope this helps.

  5. Hi,
    I will use a livechat in my website. And I want to know if I use OptinMonster, is there a way to hide pop-ups when user give me his email in live chat (in the form before starting chat).

    Because, it will boring for it, if after chating he reseive my popups to give his email.

    I’m looking for connect live chat tool and OptinMonster. Maybe with zapier. But if I do that, when user give his email in the live chat tool, his email will be send to OptinMonster, I’m not sure that cookie change in GlobalSuccess (method 1) automatically.

    Please let me know if you have an idea…

    Thanks in advance

    1. Sharon Hurley Hall February 2, 2018 at 9:22 am

      Hi Mathieu, the best way to achieve this is if the live chat can set a cookie when someone signs up. Then you could hide the campaign if that cookie is present. Please contact support if you need more help with this.

  6. I’d like to avoid serving pop-ups to people who have arrived on the website from an email campaign. We use mailchimp, so they will have this parameter in their URL:

    mc_cid=

    I think that stands for MailChimp Campaign ID, and it’s followed by a unique code for each campaign. But the mc_cid= is always present.

    I see how I can serve a different ad to anyone with this parameter, but I don’t see how I can exclude anyone with this parameter.

    1. Sharon Hurley Hall April 24, 2018 at 9:06 am

      Hi Dave, here are a couple of options:
      1. Use the parameter rule but you say “url parameter key is not mc_cid”
      2.If you add custom code to your site, then you could set a cookie if somebody arrives with that URL parameter, and then you could target that cookie to exclude the campaign from showing

      Hope this helps 🙂 Please feel free to reach out to our support team for more guidance on implementing this.

      1. I think I see what you mean – like this?

        Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/F76W0uL

        However, if a visitors comes to the website without any URL parameter, will they be shown a pop-up? This logic makes it sounds like “only serve a pop-up if they have a URL parameter (but not if the parameter is mc_cid).”

        1. Sharon Hurley Hall April 30, 2018 at 5:24 am

          Hey Dave, glad you found that helpful. Our support team will be happy to help with fine tuning. 🙂

  7. I understand #4 but why do we need to hire a developer to do this? Why can’t we do this through Optinmonster? We have a whole series of “Ifs” for the campaigns. In the “Then” portion why can’t we then have it set the cookie we want there. Sort of like a backup to the omSuccess cookie. So if people are matching a certain URL but don’t have a cookie (maybe cleared, etc.) then in the “Then” we can re-establish the cookie again and they wont be bothered? Seems like a very valuable thing to be able to do within the system and not through third party developers as the use case is common (i.e., people clear cookies, use different browsers, etc.).

    1. Nathan Thompson
      Nathan Thompson April 6, 2020 at 11:16 am

      Hey Geoff, thanks for commenting! You’re right! You certainly don’t need a developer to do this if you know how to set it up. We have many clients with various ranges of technical skills, so I believe the author of this post was simply saying some people may want to hire a developer if they get stuck in the process. Though, as you said, it’s always simpler to do without using a 3rd party if you can! But perhaps we’ll incorporate your suggestion in a future update of the post. Thanks again for commenting 🙂

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