AI SMM team
Most visitors leave a small business website without a trace. They read a price, look at a photo or two and close the tab, and you never learn who they were. A well-timed popup gives those people one simple reason to leave a contact before they go. This lesson walks you through building one in AI SMM, from connecting the site to reading the leads it collects.
- A lead popup needs three things: a connected website with the pixel installed, a clear offer and rules for when and to whom it appears.
- The Go-live guide in the Popups app is a checklist that reads real data from your site, so you always know which step is missing.
- Every form submission lands in Leads; you can export it as CSV or send it onward with Webhooks.
- Judge a popup by leads and sales, not by impressions. Analytics, A/B experiments and Sales from Popups show which version earns its place.
What you will build
By the end of this lesson you will have one live popup on your website that offers something useful (a discount, a price list, a free consultation) in exchange for an email, and optionally a phone number. It will appear only to the right visitors at the right moment, and every submission will be stored in one list you can work with.
The same steps work for other popup types in the app, such as a coupon offer, an announcement or a customer review, so once you have done it once you can repeat it for any goal.
What you need before you start
- An AI SMM account with access to the Popups app. Availability depends on your plan; you can check it on the All apps screen.
- Access to your website code, or to someone who can paste a short snippet into the page header. On most site builders this is a “custom code” or “header scripts” field.
- An offer. Decide before you open the editor what the visitor gets for leaving a contact. “Subscribe to our newsletter” is rarely enough; “10% off your first order” or “the full price list in your inbox” works much better.
- A privacy policy page on your site, so people know how their contact will be used.
Step 1. Open the Popups app and the Go-live guide
Go to All apps → Popups. The menu on the left is grouped into sections: Overview and Go-live guide, then Websites, Campaigns, Templates, A/B experiments, Leads, Analytics, Sales from Popups and the integration tools.
Start with the Go-live guide. It is a checklist, and each item is read from the real state of your workspace rather than from buttons you pressed:
- Connect a website
- Confirm the Pixel
- Send a verified event
- Prepare a campaign
- Publish and observe delivery
Keep this page open in a tab. Whenever something does not work, come back here: the item that is not ticked tells you where to look.
Step 2. Connect your website and install the pixel
Click Connect website (or open Websites) and add your site’s address. AI SMM gives you a snippet of code, the Popup pixel. Paste it into the header of every page, before the closing </head> tag.
Then open your website in a normal browser window. The pixel reports back from real browsers, and the Confirm the Pixel item in the Go-live guide shows how many browser signals have arrived. If the counter stays at zero, click Check installation and make sure the snippet is on the page you opened, not only on the home page.
The third item, Send a verified event, matters for social proof widgets such as “someone just booked”: they only show real, matching events from your server, so AI SMM never invents activity. A lead form stores submissions itself, so for this lesson you can come back to events later.
Step 3. Create the campaign from a template
Open Campaigns and create a new campaign, or go to Templates and pick a starting design. For collecting contacts, choose the Lead collector type. Other types you will see include Coupon offer, Live activity, Information message, Review, a video, a social share button and a cookie notice.
The campaign opens in the Campaign studio with tabs along the top: Content, Audience, Rules, Visual, Styles and Data. Work through them left to right.
Content
Give the campaign a name you will recognise later (“Spring discount, first visit”), choose the Website, then write the Headline, the Body and the button text. Keep the headline about the benefit, not about you: “Get 10% off your first order” beats “Join our community”.
Data: the form itself
On the Data tab you set up the form. Email is always collected. Tick Collect phone number only if you really plan to call or message people back, because every extra field lowers the number of people who finish the form. Under Additional form fields you can add a question such as “Which service are you interested in?” as text, a number, a dropdown, long text or a date.
Step 4. Decide when and to whom the popup appears
This is the step that separates a helpful popup from an annoying one. On the Audience tab, under Audience triggers, you can combine:
| Setting | What it does | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| URL contains | Shows the popup only on matching pages | A discount only on product or price pages |
| Device | All devices, desktop or mobile | A shorter version for phones |
| Visitor type | New or returning visitors | A first-order discount only for new visitors |
| Referrer contains / UTM campaign | Targets people who came from a specific source | A special offer for visitors from your Instagram bio |
| Delay (seconds) and Scroll (%) | Waits until the person has actually looked at the page | Show after 15 seconds or 50% scroll |
| Minimum page views | Waits until the visitor has seen several pages | Offer a consultation to people comparing services |
| Exit intent | Appears when the visitor is about to leave | A last-chance offer instead of an interruption |
On the Rules tab you protect the visitor: choose the Position on screen, the Max displays per person, the Cooldown (hours) between displays and One campaign per session, so a visitor never sees three popups in a row. These rules run in the pixel on the live site, not just in the preview.
Step 5. Style it, test it and publish
Use Styles to pick a preset (clean, gradient, warm offer, minimal and others), then fine-tune colours, corners and the button on the Visual tab. Match your site’s colours so the popup looks like part of the page, not an ad.
Click Save draft. The studio runs its release checks on the saved draft and shows what, if anything, still blocks publishing. Use Test website to see the popup on the real page. When the checks pass, publish the campaign. The last item of the Go-live guide then waits for the first real display and counts them as they come in.
If the popup does not appear, open Test Popup visibility in the settings section of the menu. It helps you find out whether the cause is the pixel, a targeting rule or a frequency limit.
A worked example: a nail studio’s first-visit offer
Say a nail studio gets most of its site visitors from Instagram and local search. Many of them look at the price page and leave to “think about it”.
- Offer: “15% off your first manicure: we will send the code to your email.”
- Type: Lead collector, email only, plus one dropdown field “Which service?” with three options.
- Audience: URL contains /prices, visitor type: new visitors, delay 20 seconds or exit intent.
- Rules: max 2 displays per person, cooldown 72 hours, one campaign per session, bottom right corner.
Leads appear in Leads with the answer to “Which service?”, so the administrator knows whether to follow up about gel polish or a pedicure. The same studio could later add a second campaign, a Coupon offer with a countdown, for a seasonal promotion.
Common mistakes
- Showing the popup instantly on every page. A popup that covers the page in the first second trains people to close it without reading. Use a delay, scroll or exit intent.
- A vague offer. “Stay in touch” gives no reason to type an email. Name the concrete benefit.
- Too many fields. Ask for the minimum you need to follow up. You can learn the rest in the conversation.
- No frequency limits. Without Max displays and Cooldown, returning customers see the same first-order discount every visit.
- Leaving leads unanswered. A contact that nobody writes to within a day or two is mostly wasted. Decide who checks Leads and how often.
How to measure the result
Look at three levels, in this order:
- Delivery. Is the popup shown at all? The Go-live guide and Analytics show real displays.
- Leads. How many submissions per week, and how many of them are real, reachable people. The Leads page shows email and phone contacts and recent submissions; use Export CSV if you work with leads in a spreadsheet, or Webhooks to send each confirmed lead to your CRM automatically.
- Sales. Conversion tracking and Sales from Popups connect a popup to the orders that followed, so you can see which campaign brought money rather than only clicks.
Once a popup works, improve it with A/B experiments: test one change at a time, such as the headline or the offer, and let the numbers decide. In our experience, the offer itself usually matters more than colours or animation.
FAQ
Do I need a developer to add popups to my site?
Only to paste the pixel snippet once, before the closing </head> tag. After that you create, change and pause popups in AI SMM without touching the site again.
Where do the collected contacts go?
Into Leads in the Popups app. Popups store submissions themselves, so Email Marketing is not required. From there you can export a CSV or send leads to other tools with webhooks.
Can I show different popups on different pages?
Yes. Use URL contains on the Audience tab to limit each campaign to its pages, and One campaign per session so visitors do not see several at once.
My popup is published but I do not see it. What should I check?
Open Test Popup visibility. The most common causes are a pixel missing on that page, a targeting rule that excludes you (for example “new visitors” when you have visited before) or a frequency limit you already reached.
Next lesson
Popups catch visitors while they are on your site. To bring them back later without asking for an email at all, continue with the web push lesson and set up browser notifications. For a quick overview of all three site tools, see the help article Email marketing, popups and web push: first steps, and when you are ready, open Popups in AI SMM and launch your first lead form. Leads you collect can later receive your email campaigns and discounts in your online store.
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