There are several different prompt types: overlay, which appear as a pop-up over the site, inline, which appear inline with your site content, above header, which appear at the top of the site, in the archive pages, which appear between the articles listed in your archive pages, and custom placement, which can be placed on any page or post.
Add a New Prompt
To create a new prompt, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Dashboard > Newspack > Campaigns. The list of prompts shown by default is “Active Prompts,” or all prompts that can be seen by readers. Click the campaign filter dropdown to choose a campaign to manage. Note that if you add a prompt while viewing the “Active Prompts” filter, the prompt will be listed under the “Unassigned” filter.
- Any segments you’ve created will be listed here. To create a prompt, click the ? button next to the segment you want to assign the prompt to.
- Choose the type of prompt you’d like to create.
- Prompts are edited like posts or pages, using the block editor. For Newspack, we’ve created a Newspack Subscribe pattern that you can use to create a prompt – just keep in mind that it requires you to connect a Mailchimp account with Jetpack first. Beyond that, you can use any blocks that you already use in posts and pages to build your prompts.
Duplicating Prompts
You can also duplicate existing prompts. Duplicates are created as new draft prompts with all the same content, campaign and segment assignments, categories, and tags as the original prompt. You can create duplicate prompts in two ways:
- From the Campaigns dashboard, by clicking on the
icon next to the prompt you want to duplicate:
- When editing the prompt you want to duplicate, by clicking the “Duplicate” button in the sidebar:
In either case, after clicking “Duplicate”, you will have the opportunity to rename the duplicate:
After clicking “Duplicate” again, click the “Edit” button to go directly to the editor page for the duplicated prompt.
Prompt Options
When editing a prompt, you have a number of options that will appear under the Prompt tab in the right sidebar:
Status & visibility
Preview: The Preview will let you view your prompt in a new window as it will look on the site, without activating it. In the top-left corner, you can switch between different screen sizes to see how it will look on different devices:
Prompt Settings:
Inline Prompt: Toggling on and off this option will switch your prompt from an inline prompt to an overlay prompt.
When you have a prompt with the Inline placement, you’ll have the following options:
Placement: You can opt to place the prompt in the article content, above the site header, in the archive pages, or in a custom placement slot.
When the prompt is placed in the article content, you will have the option to set its Approximate Position (in percentage), to set roughly how far down the post body to insert the prompt.
When placing the prompt in the archive pages, you will have the option to set the number of articles to show before the prompt, whether to repeat the prompt or not and which archive page to show the prompt on.
Refer to the page on Custom Placements for more details on placing prompts manually.
When you have a prompt with the Overlay placement, you’ll have the following options:
Placement: You will be able to choose whether the overlay is centered, at the top of the viewport or the bottom.
Trigger: Whether to use a timer or scroll position to determine when the overlay is displayed.
When Timer is selected, you will be able to set the Delay (seconds), the time that passes before the overlay is displayed.
When Scroll Progress is selected, you will be able to set the Scroll Progress (percentage), the approximate distance a visitor has scrolled down the page before the overlay is displayed.
Display Prompt Title: For both the Inline and Overlay prompts, you will have the option to display the prompt’s title at the top. If you opt not to do this, the title can be used for descriptive purposes, and you can use the Header block to insert a header in the prompt’s content.
Hide Prompt Border: Inline prompts are displayed in a container with a faint border and a small amount of padding around the prompt’s inner content, by default. Enabling this option will display the prompt without the border or padding.
Frequency Settings
Frequency: How often to show the prompt. When using Inline placement, you will have the option to show the prompt Once, Once a day, or Until Dismissed. When using the Overlay placement, you will have the option to show the prompt Once, or Once a day.
UTM Suppression: a UTM code is a snippet of code that can be added to the end of a URL, to be used with prompts. You can use it in the Pop-Up setting to prevent the popup from displaying when visitors have come to the site using a specific URL. So for example, if you had a pop-up promoting your newsletter, you wouldn’t need to show it to a visitor who got to the site following a link from your newsletter.
To use it, you would add ?utm_source=newsletter to the end of the URLs in the newsletter that point to your site, and add “newsletter” to the UTM Suppression field. The word you use as the utm_source is arbitrary — using awesomeday or spatula would work just as well, as long as the utm_source and UTM Suppression field match.
Read more about UTM tracking in Mailchimp here.
Segmentation Settings
Segment: Select an audience segment to assign this prompt to. The prompt will only be displayed to readers who match the selected segment. Read more about setting up audience segmentation here. If you don’t choose a segment, the prompt will be shown to all readers.
Color Settings
Background Color: This control will let you change the background color of the prompt. The default background color is white. Changing the background color—even subtly—can help it stand out from the rest of your site’s content.
Overlay Color: When the Overlay placement is selected, you will have the option to change the overlay color. By default, the overlay uses a dark gray.
Overlay opacity: When the Overlay prompt placement is selected, you will have the option to change the overlay opacity. By default, the overlay uses a 30% opacity.
Post Types
This sidebar lets you chose which post types the prompt can appear on. If a post type in the list is unselected, the prompt will never appear on posts of that type.
By default, prompts will appear on posts, pages, and any publicly visible custom post types on your site.
Categories
When one or more categories are assigned to a prompt, that prompt will only show up on posts with those categories.
Note: If a post has only the “Uncategorized” category, it will be treated the same as posts with no categories. The Campaigns dashboard will not show the “Uncategorized” category for this reason.
Tags
When one or more tags are assigned to a prompt, that prompt will only show up on posts with those tags.
Campaigns
Campaigns are a way to organize your prompts. You can create new campaigns or assign existing campaigns from this section. You can also create new campaigns and manage existing campaigns in the Campaigns dashboard.
Activating Prompts
When you’re satisfied with your prompt’s content, click Publish to activate the prompt. You can also choose a future time and date to schedule the activation. Once activated, the prompt will be displayed to readers who match the prompt’s assigned segment.
If you’d like to save your progress without activating the prompt, click Save draft. Prompts with a draft, pending review, or scheduled status will not be displayed to any readers.
Creating Campaigns
Campaigns Table of Contents