Customer, interrupted: Second-guessing digital marketing’s most effective tactic

Most sensible marketers — and everyone but the worst of the worst — left pop-up windows behind ages ago. While that move was welcome news to, well, everybody, similarly intrusive tactics still exist in modern marketing playbooks. While interruptive tactics can be effective, marketers must first weigh short-term benefits with long-term costs. Full-screen overlays, modal windows, and interstitials, for example, could do more harm than good. They might be highly visible, but they can damage the overall user experience and leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths. These modern pop-ups are simply a new breed of interruptive marketing that prioritizes business needs over the experience we’re creating.