In this step we will create your first personalization in Spotler Activate: an email capture pop-up that invites unknown visitors to leave their email address:
Watch the video for a short introduction:
An email capture pop-up helps you turn anonymous traffic into known profiles, improving match rate and the effectiveness of later journeys. If your account already uses an email pop-up, you can still follow along: the same approach applies to other simple form pop-ups.
⏩ Skip if ready: switch to another personalization
If an email capture pop-up is already live in your account, use to alternative use cases and build a variant using the same technique. You can still follow the steps, but adjust the settings based on your use case.
Let visitors select one or two interests so future emails match what they care about.
- Add a custom profile field first: create the desired Interest field in your dataset. See Data & profile fields.
- Audience: build an audience of known email profiles without a value in this Interest field. You’ll include this audience in the personalization.
- Form: no need to ask for an email address (it’s already known). Add a checkbox field so visitors can tick one or more interests.
- Trigger: don’t show the popup on the homepage. Wait until a relevant action occurs, for example viewing a category, and use the ViewCategory trigger in the personalization settings.
Ask visitors for their date of birth so you can run birthday campaigns and add a personal touch to your communication.
- Audience: build an audience of profiles that already have an email address but do not have a birthdate value. You will include this audience in the personalization settings.
- Form: no need to ask for the email address again. Add a date picker field so visitors can easily provide their date of birth. Make clear why you ask (“receive a birthday surprise”).
- Trigger: don’t ask for a birthdate immediately on the homepage. Wait until the visitor shows intent, for example by visiting their account page or progressing in the checkout flow. Configure this using the appropriate trigger in the personalization settings.
Step 1.1 Define your audience
Think about “who should see this popup?”. In this case we want to target visitors who do not have an email address known yet.:
- Create an audience for visitors without an email address and exclude visitors with an email address.
- Keep it simple for the first run; you can refine targeting later.
📚 Need more guidance?
- Audiences – Learn how to define who qualifies to see a personalization.
Step 1.2 Create your popup
Use a website overlay with a short form to request an email address. Keep copy concise and value-oriented.
- Go to Personalizations and choose Website overlay → Feedback form.
- Pick a clean theme (e.g., Venice or Sidney) and keep visual noise low so the form stands out.
📚 Need more guidance?
- Personalizations – Overview of types and options.
- How to set up a Feedback form – Step-by-step for this template.
- How to format a personalization – Tips for copy and layout.
- What’s the best way to start styling personalizations?
- Which personalization theme should I use? Venice, Sydney or custom?
- When to use an overlay or an embedded personalization?
Step 1.3 Set the right settings
Settle the essentials so your popup appears only where and when it makes sense, and attributes conversions correctly.
| Setting | Value | Why it matters |
| Name | Email collection | Clear internal label for reporting and iteration. |
| Distribution | Equal distribution | Default split; useful later if you A/B two variants. |
| Audience | Custom Audience selection | Targets “visitors without an email”. |
| Included URLs | URL contains: testSpotler
|
Limit to a safe preview/testing path first; widen after validation. |
| Excluded URLs | URL contains: checkout
|
Prevent disruption in the purchase flow; tailor this to your own checkout path. |
| Trigger | Immediately and additional delay | Shows quickly for testing, then respects a delay for real visitors. |
| Attribution | EmailOptIn |
Standard event for measuring opt-ins. |
| Schedule | Always Enabled | Keep active while testing; you can time-box later. |
| Frequency cap | Unlimited | Use for initial validation; consider adding a cap before broader rollout. |
With these settings, you can safely Save & Publish the personalization, since we have set the URL to contains: testSpotler. The next step is to test your personalization
Step 1.4 Test and publish your personalization
When your personalization has the status live, you can test your personalization.
- Go to your website and add ?testSpotler to the url or &testSpotler when the url already contains a '?' earlier in the link
- Confirm the form submit
- Verify the EmailOptIn event is captured; check your recent data to see if your form submit came through.
Does everything look good?
- Remove the url contains: testSpotler
- And adding the frequency cap so you don't show this on every page
📚 Need more guidance?
👉 Continue to Step 2: Set up your abandoned cart journey