There are several different prompt types:
- Overlay — appears as a pop-up over the site
- Inline — appears inline with your site content
- Above header — appears at the top of the site
- In the archive pages — appears between the articles listed in your archive pages
- Custom placement — appears only where you use a Custom Placement block
- Manual placement — appears only where you use a Single Prompt block
The three most common uses of a prompt are to encourage:
- Newsletter signups
- Donations or subscriptions
- Reading other stories on your site, in a recirculation prompt
Add a new prompt
To create a new prompt:
- Navigate to Newspack > Dashboard > 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, it will show up under “Unassigned.”
- Any segments you’ve created will be listed here. To create a prompt, click the “Add New Prompt” button in the segment where you want to assign the prompt.
- Choose the type of prompt you’d like to create. You can change your mind once you start building the prompt, so don’t worry too much about your choice.
- You’ll edit prompts like posts or pages using the block editor. You can include nearly any block and nest them inside one another.
- To make a newsletter signup prompt, use the Newsletter Subscription Form block as the base, and put Heading and Paragraph blocks around it as necessary.
- To make a donation or subscription prompt, use the Donate block as the base.
- To make a recirculation prompt, use a Content Loop block and apply the grid view.
- Click “save draft” in the top right of your screen.
Duplicating prompts
You can also duplicate existing prompts. Create duplicates 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 several options that will appear under the Prompt tab in the right sidebar:
Summary
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. Here’s a preview of an overlay donation prompt.
Settings
Inline and Overlay buttons: Switch your prompt from your original choice.
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, in a custom placement slot, or manual placement.
An inline prompt, left, and the same prompt placed above the header, right.
When you place the prompt in the article content, you will have the option to set its Insertion Position by percentage or by block count using the dropdown and slider.
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:
Size and Position: Four size options range from “extra small” to “large.” Place any size in one of nine spots on the screen. The Full-Width option lets you choose from top, middle, or bottom.
Trigger: Use a timer or scroll position to determine when to display the overlay.
When you select Timer, you can set the Delay (seconds), the time that passes before displaying the overlay.
When you select Scroll Progress, you can set the Scroll Progress (percentage) — the approximate distance a visitor has scrolled down the page before displaying the overlay.
Frequency
Frequency: How often to show the prompt.
- When using Inline placement, we recommend showing the prompt every pageview because it’s less intrusive than an Overlay, though you can choose any option shown.
- When using the Overlay placement, you have the option to use “once a day,” “once a week,” and “once a month.” We don’t recommend using every pageview for this placement type.
For either placement, you can also set a “custom scheme,” which provides several options.
UTM Suppression: a UTM code is a snippet of code you can add 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. 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 works just as well, as long as the utm_source and UTM Suppression field match.
Read more about UTM tracking in Mailchimp here.
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 you select the Overlay placement, you have the option to change the overlay color. By default, the overlay uses a dark gray.
Overlay opacity: When you select the Overlay prompt, you have the option to change the overlay opacity. By default, the overlay uses a 30% opacity.
Post Types
This sidebar lets you choose which post types the prompt can appear on. If a post type in the list isn’t selected, the prompt will never appear on posts of that type.
Advanced settings
The field for additional CSS classes lets you add specific styling.
Prompts appear by default in every Category and Tag. The next two fields allow multiple entries and will not show the prompt there.
Categories
When one or more categories are assigned to a prompt, that prompt will show up only on posts with those categories.
Note: Posts that only include the “Uncategorized” category will be treated the same as posts with no categories. The Campaigns dashboard will not show the “Uncategorized” category for this reason.
Tags
When you assign one or more tags 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.
Segments
Select an audience segment to assign to this prompt. Only readers who match the prompt assignment will see 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.
Featured image
If you add an image using this prompt, it will appear at the top of the prompt, with no space in between. And it will only appear on desktop views, not tablet or mobile.
If you have an image you want to appear everywhere, add it to the prompt itself. Don’t use the Featured image setting.
The images are always 280 pixels tall, but the width varies based on the size of the prompt. A smaller size will render more of the image. This can cause some odd cropping, so be sure to preview any prompts with a featured image.
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 you activate it, the prompt will display to readers who match the prompt’s assigned segment.
If you’d like to save your progress without activating the prompt, click Save draft. Readers won’t see prompts with a draft, pending review, or scheduled status will not display to any readers.