Sign-up Pop-up: Grow Your Mailing List With Consent You Can Prove

Overview

The sign-up pop-up asks visitors to your store to join your mailing list. You choose when it opens, on which pages, how often a visitor sees it, and what it says. When someone signs up, BestWebby emails them a link to confirm, and records their consent when they confirm it, the way Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) expects you to be able to prove it.

It is off until you turn it on, under Marketing → Sign-up pop-up. It is on every plan.

Turning it on

1. Go to Marketing → Sign-up pop-up.
2. Write the heading, the message and the button text. Add an incentive line if you offer something for signing up, in your own words. Only offer what you can honour.
3. Choose when it opens. Any of these, whichever comes first:
4. After a delay, counted from when the page has finished loading.
5. When the visitor scrolls a share of the page you choose.
6. When a desktop visitor moves to leave (exit intent): the pointer heads for the tab bar. Phones and tablets have no such gesture, so this one never fires there.
7. Choose how often: once every so many days per visitor and device. Someone who signs up is not asked again.
8. Choose the pages: home, product pages, collections, blog posts, your own pages, search results, everything else. The pop-up never opens on the cart, checkout, account, payment or order-tracking pages.
9. Tick Show the pop-up on my store and Save.

The preview on the right shows the pop-up as visitors will see it, in English or French, with the consent sentence your store will show.

To turn it on, your store needs a business address and a public contact email or phone in your billing profile. The consent sentence names them, and BestWebby will not collect consent that does not say who is asking.

What the visitor sees

A short form with an email field and a consent box that starts unticked. Beside the box is a sentence that names your business, its address and how to reach you, and says the visitor can withdraw consent at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email. The visitor has to tick the box themselves before they can sign up.

After signing up, the visitor is asked to check their inbox. Your store emails the address a link to confirm, in the language they signed up in. The link opens a page on your store with a Confirm my subscription button, and works for 24 hours.

If your store shows a cookie banner, the pop-up waits until the visitor has answered it.

On a phone the pop-up is a panel along the bottom of the screen. It can be closed with its close button, by tapping outside it, or with the Escape key, and keyboard and screen-reader users can use it fully: focus moves into it, stays inside while it is open, and returns to where it was when it closes. Visitors who ask their device for reduced motion see it appear without animation.

Welcome code

You can give each new subscriber a discount code. It is off until you turn it on in the pop-up's settings, and it needs a plan that includes discount codes.

• The code is issued only when the visitor confirms their sign-up from the email link, never on the first submit.
• Each customer gets one welcome code, ever, and each code works once.
• The code is shown on the thank-you page and sent in a welcome email that carries your store's footer and an unsubscribe link.
• The pop-up's incentive line is still your own words: write what the code gives, so the promise matches the discount you set.

What is recorded

Nothing is recorded when the form is sent. Anyone can type any address into a form, so a sign-up only counts once the owner of the address confirms it from their inbox (double opt-in). Until then the address is not on your list and gets no marketing email from you.

When they confirm, the customer is created (or updated) with marketing consent, together with:

• the exact consent sentence they were shown, word for word;
• your store's identity as it appeared in that sentence: name, address and contact details;
• the time they confirmed, the IP address they confirmed from, and the source pop-up.

The same details go into the customer's consent history, so you can still show what they agreed to after they unsubscribe. If you change your address after a visitor opened the pop-up, their sign-up is refused once and the pop-up shows the new sentence for them to agree to. If you change it after they signed up but before they confirmed, the confirmation page asks them to sign up again: nobody is recorded as agreeing to words they did not see.

Someone who already agreed to your marketing email keeps the consent they gave; signing up again through the pop-up does not overwrite it, and no email is sent. Someone who unsubscribed after a confirmation link was sent stays unsubscribed even if they press that older link.

Someone who unsubscribed from your store earlier and then signs up again is subscribed again once they confirm: their confirmed sign-up is newer than the unsubscribe, so your marketing email reaches them again. The change is recorded in your audit log with the time and address of their confirmation. Addresses that bounced or marked your email as spam stay blocked whatever they sign up for.

Speed and safety

• It does not slow your store down. Nothing of the pop-up is in the page when it loads. A small script waits for the page to settle, and the pop-up itself is downloaded only when it is about to open, so it does not move anything on the page or delay what visitors see first.
• Bots are kept out the same way as the newsletter section: a hidden field only bots fill in, and a limit on how often one connection can submit.

Tips

• Pick one or two triggers. A delay of 10 to 20 seconds, or exit intent on desktop, is usually enough.
• Keep the frequency generous. Every 14 days is a sensible start; a visitor who closed it once rarely wants to see it on every page.
• The newsletter section stays. You can keep a newsletter section on your pages as well; both add to the same customer list, and both ask the address owner to confirm by email first. The newsletter section, and the "email me news and offers" box at checkout, show the same consent sentence as the pop-up (your business, address and contact), in English or French, and the confirmation records that sentence the same way.
• A new subscriber is a new customer. When someone who was not a customer yet confirms, your New customer flows and welcome drips start for them, once.