Postscript popups are a compliant and powerful way to convert site visitors to SMS subscribers so you can nurture them with a personalized SMS program throughout the customer lifecycle. By employing a Postscript popup, you can:
- Increase your Acquisition Rate, which in turn, improves your overall Subscriber Lifetime Value and total value of your SMS program.
- Optimize your popup conversions by finding the best combination of popup creatives, timing, images, message copy, and incentives for your brand all through A/B testing.
- Recapture potentially lost revenue by incentivizing subscribers to finish their buying journey with exit-intent popups.
- Power a more personalized SMS experience for all subscribers by capturing subscriber data in Postscript popups.
In this article, we discuss compliance requirements of popup collection, guide you through how to create different types of popups, walk you through how to collect custom properties with Postscript popups, and then show you how to A/B test and schedule multiple popups.
Compliance Requirements
There are a few key elements that roll into popup compliance requirements including properly displaying TCPA disclaimer language, ensuring accessibility, employing confirmed opt-in, and collecting email and phone on two separate steps. We'll dive deeper into each in the tab system below.
Compliance is a priority at Postscript so our popups automatically include the following TCPA disclaimer language with your Terms of Service and Privacy Policy hyperlinked:
*By providing your phone number, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing text messages (e.g. cart reminders) from this shop and third parties acting on its behalf. Consent is not a condition to obtain goods or services. Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency varies. Reply HELP for help and STOP to cancel. You also agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
With Postscript popups, you can use our built-in toolkit or CSS to adjust the look and feel of your popup and match your branding.
Because you can adjust even the text color of the TCPA disclaimer language with CSS, we highly encourage you to ensure that the contrast between the font color and background color is up to ADA standards so you can provide a widely inclusive experience for site visitors and avoid losing valuable subscribers and customers due to inaccessibility.
Confirmed opt-in (also known as double opt-in) prompts subscribers to confirm their desire to opt into recurring SMS marketing messages by replying "Y" to an initial text message.
By confirming subscriber opt-ins, brands can validate phone numbers entered in popups which prevents someone from falsely opting in with a number that can't receive SMS messages (i.e., a landline).
Ultimately, this lets brands build a subscriber list that is verified and engaged, increasing potential ROI while decreasing sending spend. For more information about confirmed opt-in, check out this article.
In early 2021, Postscript was notified that carriers imposed an industry-wide regulation for what they consider to be proper SMS opt-in consent for popups, forms, and landing pages:
"Opt-in stands alone and is not displayed with other forms of communication (email, voice calls, etc)."
What this means is the email field and the phone field need to be entirely separate calls-to-actions on popups, forms, and landing pages. Because Postscript takes a product-led approach to compliance, we automatically have this two-step experience built into our popups. Learn more about this regulation here.
Create a Desktop Popup
To begin crafting your desktop popup, select Acquisition on the left-side navigation panel. Next, select Create in the upper-right corner of the page, then select Desktop from the drop-down options.
- Name. Choose a name that allows you to easily identify this popup from the list of available popups on your main Popups page.
- Phone Collection Step. In the phone collection step and the custom step cards, you can adjust the copy for your pre-headline, headline, post-headline, button, and close button.
- + Add Step/Custom Step. When you select + Add Step, you are able to add an additional step for subscribers to enter their email address. You can also use this second step to collect custom properties.
- When collecting emails, you can toggle the Forward to email app option ON and select which list you'd like to forward the collected emails and custom properties to.
- Form. This section is where you will configure your custom property collection for all steps. We discuss this in more depth below.
- Popup settings. In the Popup settings card, you are able to adjust the style and behavior of your popup for all steps. We'll discuss both in the tab system below:
- Popup type: Select if you'd like to display a modal window, full screen, or banner popup.
- Logo image. Upload a logo image by selecting a file from your device. You can also drag and drop the image file into the upload field.
-
Background style. Choose to have your popup background be a solid color or an image.
- Background color. If you select a solid color background, you can enter a specific hex code for your desired color.
- Background image. If you select a background image, you can upload the image or GIF from your device or drag and drop the file into the upload field.
- Font. Select your preferred font. This font applies to all text on your desktop popup.
-
Style. Choose whether your desktop popup will have square or rounded corners.
- Corner roundness. If you selected rounded corners, then use this field to set how round the corners should appear.
- Primary text color. Set your primary text color by entering a hex color code. This color applies to all text on your desktop popup except button text.
- Button color. Set the color of your subscribe button by entering a hex color code.
- Button text color. Set the color of your subscribe button text by entering a hex color code.
- Button style. Choose whether your CTA button will have square or rounded corners.
-
Side image. Add an image that will be featured on the left side of the popup.
- Recommended dimensions are 400px wide, 600px tall, and less than 500 KB for optimal sizing and resolution.
- Step order. Choose if you'd like to collect site visitors' phone number first or last.
- Countries. Choose which countries should see the popup.
- Popup trigger. Choose time delay, exit intent, or custom trigger (see our Developer Docs for more options on custom triggers).
- Popup delay. Define how long a popup should wait before appearing on your homepage. We recommend a 3-second delay. The longer the delay, the lower the conversion rate.
-
Close action. Choose what happens when a customer exits out of your popup.
- Exit closes the popup entirely.
-
Bubble minimizes the popup to a small image in the bottom-left corner of the page. Visitors can access the popup later if they change their minds about subscribing. You can preview this by selecting the Collapse/Expand button below the preview.
- Close action text. Edit the text that appears on the minimized bubble popup.
- Include pages. If you wish for the popup to display on specific sub-pages (aside from your main webpage), you can enter those pages in this field
- Exclude pages. If you want to ensure the popup doesn't display on specific pages, you can enter those pages in this field.
- Subscriber status. Configure subscriber status to show your onsite popup to unknown site visitors only, known subscribers only, or both.
- New subscriber success message. If a brand new subscriber completes the sign up form, they will see this message.
- Existing subscriber success message. If an existing subscriber completes the sign up form, they will see this message.
Collect Custom Properties
Under the Form card within the popup editor, you can customize the questions for your popup. Subscriber responses will be saved as custom properties within a subscriber profile.
- Under Phone question, you can change the placeholder text.
- Under Welcome message, you can craft the message your subscribers will receive once they opt into your SMS program via desktop popup. You can customize this message with photos, gifs, merge tags, coupons, discount links, product links, or a contact card.
- Select Add Question to add a question to your popup. Choose if you'd like subscribers to answer this question via freeform text, multiple choice, or by entering a date. Their response will be added to their subscriber profile under Custom Properties.
- Within the first field, craft your question copy (for example: what's your main skin concern? or when is your birthday?).
- If adding a multiple choice option, be sure to add the options. You can add up to four.
- Under Subscriber property, add the property name you are collecting by either creating a new property or selecting an existing property. You can think of the subscriber property as the main subject of the question (for example: if you ask subscribers what their main skin concern is, the subscriber property would be "skin_concern").
- Select the Switch Order button to change the order of questions. For compliance reasons, you cannot change the order of your question and phone input field on the Phone collection step. The phone input will always be the second question listed. On the Custom step, you can switch the order of the questions.
A/B Test Your Popups
Note: Shops on Postscript's Professional and above have access to A/B testing popups. Learn more about Postscript Plans.
- Select Acquisition in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard.
- Select Create in the upper right corner, then select A/B Test.
- Select if you'd like to test your mobile or desktop popups. Then select Create Test.
- Name the A/B test. Choose a name that will allow you to easily identify and track this test in the future.
- Under Choose popups, select the variants you'd like to test. You'll need to choose at least two variants and each popup variant must be activated in order to be added to an A/B test.
- If you'd like to select more than two popups, select the + Add Variant button below Variant 2.
- Set the distributions for each variant by entering a percentage into the Distribution field next to each select variant. Remember, the distribution of all variants must equal 100%.
- Under Pages, indicate which pages of your site that you'd like the popups to be included and excluded on (note: Updating these included and excluded pages on this step will update the original popups as well).
- Under Ending the test, select Run until the test is stopped manually. You can end this test at any time.
- Once you've selected the popups you'd like to test and added the website pages you'd like to include and exclude the popups on, you can start your test by selecting Start Test in the upper right corner.
Schedule Popups to Activate or Deactivate
- Select Acquisition in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard.
- Locate the popup you would like to schedule and select the Actions dropdown on the right side of the page.
- Select Schedule or Edit Schedule (note: If there is not an existing scheduled event for a popup, the link will say Schedule. If there is an existing event, the link will say Edit Schedule).
- Set a time to Enable popup or Disable popup this popup.
- By choosing Enable Popup, you are choosing to show the popup on a specific date at a specific time.
- By choosing Disable Popup, you are choosing to remove the popup from showing on a specific date at a specific time.
- Select the Schedule button to schedule your popup and save your changes.
Additional Resources
- Just getting started with designing your desktop popup? Check out this tutorial for how to customize your popup font, text size, text color, and more.
- Need some inspiration for A/B testing your desktop popups? We've got you covered with this guide.
- Interested in identifying the various HTML and CSS elements present in our popups? Check out our CSS Glossary.
Get Support
Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!
Need ongoing channel strategy guidance? Please fill out this form and we'll connect you to one of our certified partners.