The Reader Activation wizard, located in your site’s admin area under Newspack > Engagement, includes everything you’ll need to activate the reader activation features.

Before starting, it’s helpful to have the following ready:

  1. Reader Revenue platform set to Newspack/WooCommerce, with Stripe connected and donation tiers set under Newspack > Reader Revenue.
  2. Legal pages (such as privacy policy) published.
  3. API keys for your supported email service provider, added under Newspack > Engagement > Newsletters.

RAS Setup Wizard

The following sections are required to complete the wizard and enable reader activation features:

Legal Pages

In this step, you can specify legal pages for your site , such as terms and conditions or a privacy policy, and customize the link text which will be automatically added to the bottom of sign-in modals. Please keep this placement in mind when crafting the length of the text.

We always recommend that sites have a legally sound terms and conditions page.

Note: If your site doesn’t have legal pages in place, you can temporarily publish and use the Privacy Policy page you may already have as a draft on your site, generated by WordPress. If you don’t have one, this WordPress.com resource details how to set up a privacy policy page. Jetpack’s Privacy Policy Helper also provides privacy policy language for Jetpack features.

Email Service Provider (ESP)

Reader activation adds new ways for your  readers to subscribe to email newsletters, as well as the ability to sync reader data to your Email Service Provide

To complete this step, the setup wizard will take you to Newspack > Engagement > Newsletters. If you haven’t already connected your ESP, you will need an API key to connect your Mailchimp or Active Campaign account. Once connected, you’ll also be able to confirm the Authoring/Subscription Lists settings are up-to-date.

To use reader activation functionality, you must have at least one subscription list enabled with your ESP. You can optionally add a description of each list in this step. See our guide to managing subscription lists for more information.

Transactional Emails

This is where you can update settings for your site’s transactional emails. These settings include sender name, sender email address, and contact email address.

Typically, the sender name will be the name you want to appear on emails sent from your site. The sender email address should be one that best represents your site. For the contact email address, carefully consider which inbox you want to receive replies from readers.

The Transactional Emails themselves can be customized further once the reader activation features have been set up – there’s some more information about those settings here.

reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a required step for setting up reader activation features to help prevent any spammers and scammers from using your site’s sign up and donation tools for nefarious purposes. 

Follow the setup steps for reCAPTCHA to complete this step under Newspack > Connections.

Reader Revenue

Newspack’s Reader Revenue tools allow you to easily accept donations on your Newspack site. When setup, donors will be able to create accounts, and easily manage their subscriptions and recurring donations.

If you haven’t set up Newspack as your Reader Revenue platform, ping your TAM or open a request in the help channel. The Newspack team will work with you to get this set up.

Reader Activation Campaign

The final step in setting up reader activation is reviewing and customizing the Reader Activation Campaign, which uses Newspack Campaigns to interact with your readers. 

The prompts are prefilled with our default copy, but we highly recommend that you customize the campaign’s prompts for your publication. That way, you can tailor the messages to your readers.

The default prompts include:

Registration Overlay prompt 

The Registration Overlap prompt includes the Reader Registration block and some example text. The text can be customized using the Reader Activation wizard, and the Reader Registration block’s settings can be changed by editing the prompt under Newspack > Campaigns.

By default, this prompt will appear to readers who have not yet registered, and who haven’t signed up for a newsletter.

Newsletter Signup Overlay prompt

The Newsletter Signup Overlay prompt includes the Newsletter Subscription Form block and some example text. Like the Registration prompt, the text can be customized using the Reader Activation wizard, and the Newsletter Signup Form block can be customized afterwards under Newspack > Campaigns.

By default, this prompt will appear for all readers who have already registered, but who haven’t signed up for a newsletter.

Donation Overlay prompt

The Donation Overlay prompt includes the Donate block and some example text. Like the Registration prompt, the text can be customized using the Reader Activation wizard, and the Donate block can be customized in the campaign afterwards under Newspack > Campaigns. By default the Donate block will use the default settings from Newspack > Reader Revenue > Donations.

By default, this prompt will appear to any readers who have registered and have signed up for at least one newsletter, but haven’t donated yet. 

Inline Newsletter Signup prompt

The Inline Newsletter Signup prompt is similar to the Newsletter Signup Overlay prompt, except it appears inline in news stories instead of in a popup.

By default, this prompt will appear for all readers who haven’t signed up for a newsletter, whether or not they’re registered.

Inline Donation prompt

The Inline Newsletter Signup prompt is similar to the Newsletter Signup Overlay prompt, except it appears inline in news stories instead of in a popup.

This prompt will appear for all readers, whether they’ve registered, signed up for a newsletter, or have donated previously.

Once published, the text and block settings for all of these prompts will be editable under Newspack > Campaigns.

Note on donation blocks: The reader activation defaults currently assume that publishers collect donations from their readers. If you don’t collect any donations at all, disregard tweaking the copy and any other settings for the donation prompts as you go through setup. Once you have enabled Reader Activation, disable those prompts right away under Newspack > Campaigns.

Note on the registration overlay prompt: To automatically have the block sign up new registrants for a single newsletter, that newsletter should be the only one enabled in the block (and/or selected via the settings panel when getting Reader Activation set up for the first time). That should make automatic sign-up to that newsletter the default action.

Note on the registration overlay prompt: To automatically have the block sign up new registrants for a single newsletter, that newsletter should be the only one enabled in the block (and/or selected via the settings panel when getting RAS set up for the first time). That should make automatic sign-up to that newsletter the default action.

Enable reader activation

Once you’ve completed each section of the setup wizard, the final step is to click “Enable Reader Activation” to turn on reader activation on your site.

Additional Features

Once reader activation has been set up, you will be able to access additional settings by clicking the “Show Advanced Settings” button under Newspack > Engagement > Reader Activation. These settings include:

Checkout Configuration

  • Checkout configuration: This section includes a toggle for enabling forced registration at checkout. When enabled, readers will be required to create an account before completing a purchase or donation.
  • Privacy Policy text: You can configure the pre-checkout privacy policy text here, which will appear to users before they complete a transaction or donation, ensuring they are aware of your site’s privacy policy.
  • Post-checkout success message: You can also customize the post-checkout success message, which appears after a user completes their transaction, confirming that their account has been successfully created.

NOTE: If you need users to create a password at checkout, the password setup link email can be toggled off under Woo > Settings > Accounts & Privacy

Memberships Integration

If you have WooCommerce Memberships installed, you will have the option to set up a Content Gate using this section of the site. 

There’s some more information about how to set up content gating and the different available settings here.

Transactional Email Content

The Transactional Email Content lists the emails that are sent to readers at various points when they use Newspack’s reader activation. The emails are:

  • Verification
  • Login link
  • Login one-time password
  • Set a new password
  • Delete account
  • Change email notification
  • Change email confirmation
  • Non-reader account login reminder

By default, the emails will use your site’s logo and colors to match your site’s branding.

In addition to these, transactional emails related to donations or other purchases on your Newspack site can be found under Reader Revenue > Emails. The emails are:

  • Receipt
  • Welcome
  • Cancellation

You can edit each email to customize it further.

When editing the Transactional Emails, you can use the following placeholders to insert text from the site:

All emails support:

  • *SITE_TITLE* – Outputs your Site Title, set under WP Admin > Customizer > Site Identity.
  • *SITE_CONTACT* – Outputs your Site Title and the address set under WooCommerce > Settings in a nicely formatted line.
  • *SITE_URL* – outputs your site’s URL.

The other tags are only supported by specific emails:

  • *MAGIC_LINK_URL* – outputs a magic link that the reader can use to log into their site. This can be used in the in the “Login link” and “Login one-time password” emails.
  • *MAGIC_LINK_OTP* – outputs a six-digit code that can be used to log into the site in lieu of a password. This can be used in the “Login one-time password” email.
  • *VERIFICATION_URL* – outputs a link a reader can use to verify their email address to complete their account creation. This can be used in the “Verification” email.
  • *SET_PASSWORD_LINK* – outputs a link to the set password screen under a reader’s My Account. This can be used in the “Login one-time password” email.
  • *PASSWORD_RESET_LINK* – outputs a link for a reader to reset a password. This can be used in the “Set a new password” email.
  • *DELETION_LINK* – outputs a link for a reader to delete their account. This can be used in the “Delete account” email.

You can test how each email will look to your readers by sending yourself a test email using the option in the editor’s right sidebar.

You can also reset each email to its default state by clicking on the Reset link.

Newsletter Subscription Lists

The Newsletter Subscription Lists section lets you add a newsletter sign up as the final step in your reader sign up or modal checkout flow. 

To do this, toggle on “Present newsletter signup after checkout and registration”, and then select each newsletter list that you would like to show to readers in the “Add more lists” section. Once newsletter lists are are added, you can use the control arrows to reorder the ists to determine the order they will appear in the newsletter signup step Finally, you can check the “Checked by default” checkbox next to each newsletter list to determine whether a given list will be checked by default.

Email Service Provider (ESP) Advanced Settings

Sync contacts to ESP

This option lets you sync your audience data to your Email Service Provider, even if the readers are not newsletter subscribers.

Depending on your Email Service Provider, the other options in this section will differ slightly:

ActiveCampaign Settings

For sites connected to ActiveCampaign, there will be a dropdown to select a Master List to sync reader activity to. This will be populated by lists already created in your ActiveCampaign account.

Mailchimp Settings

For sites connected to Mailchimp, there will be a dropdown to select an Audience ID to sync reader activity to.

There will also be a dropdown labeled Default reader status to let you toggle between a default status for “Transactional/Non-subscribed” and “Subscribed”. This is the status that will be given to new readers synced from reader activation to Mailchimp. The status helps determine if you can send emails to that reader. There’s some more information about the Subscribed and Non-subscribed statuses in Mailchimp’s documentation.

Metadata field settings

In this section, you can update what’s used for the metadata field prefix – this will be added in front of any field name that’s sent to your Email Service Provider. By default, each metadata field will be prefixed with `NP_`.

You can also toggle on and off the different metadata options that will be synced from reader activation to your Email Service Provider.

Reader Activation Flows

The reader activation updates include some new flows for readers. These have been documented below to help explain how people will move through these changes.

New Readers

New readers can sign up using one of three paths:

Campaign Prompts – New readers will encounter the Sign Up campaign prompt as they navigate through your site. 

Donations/purchases – New readers will be prompted to sign up when they make a donation or a purchase only if the “forced registration” checkout toggle is enabled. If the toggle is off, an account will be created automatically behind the scenes without prompting the reader to sign up.

Clicking the Sign In button – the Sign In button is always visible in the top-right corner of your website’s header when reader activation is enabled. Curious readers may encounter the Sign Up modal by clicking it. 

When a new reader signs up:

  • They are only required to provide their email address.
  • Once that’s submitted, they will be presented with an optional “Create Password” button. When clicked:
    • An email will be sent to the reader to verify their account.
    • The reader will verify their email address by clicking a link in the email.
    • The email will bring them to their account page to set their password.
  • If enabled, a reader who newly signs up will be presented with the Newsletter Signup modal.

When a new reader clicks My Account:

When a reader has successfully registered, the Sign in button that is always visible in the top-right corner of your site’s header will become a My Account button, allowing readers to manage their new account. When this button is clicked:

  • They will be prompted to verify their account by checking their email inbox and following the instructions that were sent to them.
  • Once their account is verified, they will be able to click My Account to manage their preferences and see their purchases.

Existing Readers

Once a reader has signed up, their browser will remember them and in most cases should keep them logged into your site for 30 days. Once that 30 days is over, or, if the reader clears their browser cache or uses a different device to view your site, they will be prompted to Sign In again:

Campaign Prompts – when existing readers are not logged in, they will see the reader activation sign up campaign prompts.

Donations/purchases – When existing readers are not logged in and they make a donation or purchase, they will be asked to sign in if the “forced registration” toggle is enabled. If the toggle is off, the reader’s account will be automatically created behind the scenes without prompting them to sign in.

Clicking the Sign In link – existing readers will also be able to proactively click the Sign In button in your site’s header to log in.

When an existing reader logs in:

  • They will be asked for their email address.
  • Once submitted, the sign in process will move to the next step depending on whether a password has been set or not.
    • If a password is not set:
      • The reader will be sent an email with a one time password (OTP) code and a magic link.
      • The code can be entered in the sign in modal to finish signing in.
      • Alternatively, the magic link in the email can be clicked to open a new browser tab and sign them in automatically.
    • If a password is set:
      • The reader will be asked to enter their password to finish signing in.

When an existing reader makes a purchase:

  • If the Newsletter Sign Up is enabled on your site, they will be presented with a newsletter signup modal at the very end of the checkout process. If the reader has signed up for one or more newsletters already, they won’t appear in the prompt. If the reader has signed up for all newsletters, the prompt will not appear for them. 

Newspack Components

The Reader Activation redesign includes the first use of our new Newspack Components, a modern design system that we’ll be using for reader-facing interfaces going forward. 

Newspack Components use a clean, modern sans-serif typeface throughout and a neutral color palette so they don’t clash with individual sites’ branding. This design system will help create consistency across different reader-related screens and will help increase cohesiveness. 

Site Customizations

The Newspack Components styles will not inherit your sites’ individual colors or typography set in the Newspack Theme’s customizer settings. This is by design.

However, they may inherit styles from your Custom CSS. We’ve added some overrides that should cover most cases, but it may be necessary for you to adjust your Custom CSS to be more specific if it’s interacting with the Newspack Components in unwanted or buggy ways.

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