An SMS popup can be a great tool for your marketing. SMS popups are the popups that appear on websites to collect mobile phone numbers for future SMS marketing. If you are planning on investing in SMS marketing, this channel are a great place to start.
In this post, you’ll learn how to make SMS popups. Also, you’ll see high-performing examples from successful businesses.
Click to go to sections:
Convert website visits into SMS subscribers
Capture phone numbers with SMS popups on your website. Increase sales with AI product recommendations and CRO features. Use for free for 14 days.
Benefits of using SMS popups
Why collect visitors’ phone numbers in the first place? SMS marketing, of course. It’s a powerful tactic to drive sales and brand awareness.
Increased sales
Customers are comfortable with buying from mobile. In fact, smartphone owners are up to 50% more likely to buy on mobile right away while using their devices. So adding SMS popups to your site could be the first step towards higher sales.
Higher open rate of marketing messages
Marketing studies report the opening rate of SMS marketing at a whopping 98%. This is much higher compared to other marketing methods (even great email campaigns achieve about 20%, for example). And SMS popups are the best way to get started.
Better performance of promotional campaigns
Need to encourage more customers to use discount coupons? SMS popups can help. Research says shoppers redeem discount coupons in text messages up to 10 times more often than traditional coupons.
Related: Discount code ideas for ecommerce
SMS popup playbook
This playbook breaks down the highest-performing SMS popup campaigns we see ecommerce brands using today. Click them to see how they work.
Welcome Offer
Turn new visitors into subscribers with an instant discount + social proof
Spin to Win Popup
Gamify email capture with a prize wheel
Book a demo
Highlight any promotional offers or demos prominently for B2B
How online businesses use SMS popups
Brands typically use a few reliable formats when collecting SMS opt-ins. Findings referenced below come from a Wisepops popup A/B test study.
Multi-step popups (email + phone in two windows)
Visitors complete a simple first step (email signup) before seeing the SMS option. Micro-commitments and simplified first screens increased interactions (yes/no) up to 8–9× and doubled signups without raising bounce.
Use cases:
Welcome offers where email is the main channel
Follow-ups after quizzes or educational tools
Replenishment reminders for recurring products
Dedicated SMS popups
A single-step popup with a phone number signup field. Full-screen popup layouts, for example showed a +48% lift in email/phone capture and a +52% CTR increase on desktop.
Use cases:
Fixed-time product drops
Back-in-stock alerts
Store or region-specific updates
Combined email + SMS popups
Visitors see a single first screen that collects both email and phone number at once. This upfront approach simplifies the signup process and captures more contacts immediately.
Use cases:
Welcome offers with discounts
Early-stage lead collection for newsletters + SMS campaigns
Pre-launch or waitlist signups that require multiple contact points
Gamified SMS popups
Spin-to-win wheels, scratch cards, or advent calendar popups convert well because visitors get the outcome first, then provide their details. Revealing value immediately increased code usage and downstream revenue.
Use cases:
Welcome incentives tied to claiming a reward
Limited-time giveaways and contests
Seasonal promotions and offers with prizes
Behavior-triggered SMS popups
Shown at specific moments like exit intent, click, adding an item to the cart, or visiting a specific product. IN our study, timing personalization changes alone produced median uplifts of 39–52%.
Use cases:
Abandoned cart recovery
Restock alerts based on product views
End-of-sale or last-chance messages where timing is critical
SMS Popup Examples
To help you create great SMS popups, I’ve included 10 examples in this section. They follow the best practices of popups (design, copy, incentive, etc.) and should inspire you to create your own campaign.
Let’s dive in!
1. The Try Guys
This dedicated SMS popup example prioritizes readability. Black text on a white background creates maximum contrast and optimal clarity. Also, the headline promoting the discount is written in a larger font, which is a good idea to grab visitors’ attention.
SMS popup tip:
Set up your campaign to appear “on scroll.”
This SMS popup from Try Guys appears when the visitor scrolls down to about 60% of the homepage. It’s a good idea because it gives visitors some time to learn about your products.
2. Miss A
This brand is running monthly SMS giveaways, which they promote with this SMS popup. The window is nicely designed using Miss A’s colors and fonts, which makes it a great example of a branded SMS popup. Also, note the attention-grabbing headline (who wouldn’t want a $100 shopping spree?)
SMS popup tip:
Try Spin-the-wheel popups for contests and giveaways. They can convert up to 30.3% of visitors.
3. Soylent
This SMS popup from Soylent combines SMS and email signups. Note the beautiful custom background image featuring the product. Together with the logo, it’s a great example of a branded SMS popup design from one of the top Shopify stores.`z
See how other businesses promote products:
How to promote a product [creative ideas and examples]
4. SNOWE
This brand took a creative approach in this SMS popup campaign by combining a full-screen format and beautiful design that serves as an intro to the brand's world.
The result: a gorgeous discount popup:
5. Boll & Branch
This good-looking popup example includes email and SMS signups. Our eyes are immediately drawn to the headline promising special savings and recipes – a great way to attract visitors’ attention. A high-quality food image appeals to the brand’s target customers who are often looking for new recipes.
More inspiration:
6. Dolce & Gabbana
Want to create a black-and-white SMS popup campaign? Then check out this example. It follows the best popup practices for luxury brands by displaying benefit-driven copy, a stunning branded visual, and a large CTA button. Also, the popup does a great job reinforcing the brand by matching the style of the website.
7. Nutrimuscle
Would you like to personalize your marketing campaigns with products your customers are really interested in? Then you can create a multi-step SMS popup similar to this example. It has a section where customers can provide their preferences and goals in addition to emails and phone numbers.
Case study
See an SMS popup strategy that helped increase ecommerce sales with a welcome offer:
8. Meow Meow Tweet
Meow Meow Tweet took a super friendly approach to SMS popups. This one is short, sweet, and helpful for customers. And I just love “Can we get your number?” – it’s a good way to introduce a brand as approachable and helpful.
9. Venus Et Fleur
“Yes, I would!”
That’s how many customers would answer the question from this SMS popup example. Since free delivery is a top reason to buy online for 51.1% of online shoppers, including this offer in a popup campaign is a brilliant idea.
10. Crown & Caliber
This is a Black Friday SMS popup that offers to sign up for sale update. SMS messages are definitely better than emails at informing customers about time-sensitive sales, so this is definitely a good example of how popups can improve sales.
11. Rouje
This SMS popup shows how serious this brand is about personalization. Besides collecting emails and phone numbers, (for getting exclusive offers in the brand's WhatApp group), it requests the first name, product preferences, and birthday. Why birthday? Because birthday emails generate twice the revenue of typical marketing emails to the same customers.
12. Halfdays
This three-step SMS popup design shows how to grow your SMS list without scaring visitors off. By gradually collecting information, each step feels low-commitment—our research shows this can double SMS opt-ins.
Step 1: Segment visitors with simple category buttons
Step 2: Capture email first, using benefit-focused copy. Collecting email first makes visitors more likely to give their phone number next
Step 3: SMS opt-in is the last. In this example, Halfdays wants to make sure that they categorize leads as Texas-based and non-Texas-based; this is probably because they're running localized SMS marketing campaigns
If you'd like to follow along:
No cc needed, free access for 14 days. See campaign ideas you can launch today
Step 1: Create a new campaign
In Wisepops dashboard, go to New popup campaign in the Popups main menu:
Step 2: Choose an SMS popup template
In the template gallery, choose Email & Phone category to see the templates. I'll chose this multi-step one:
Step 3: Customize the template design
Click on any popup element to customize it to resemble your website design:
Step 4: Integrate your SMS marketing app
SMS marketing apps automate the creation and sending of campaigns. So, it’s better to add one right away.
In Wisepops, you have great options to choose from:
When you’re ready to make a choice, click the phone number signup field and sync your app in Blocks > Sync.
Please note that you need to have an account in your chosen SMS marketing app to complete integration. But you can still continue making an SMS popup and add the app later.
Heads up: Be sure to check consent requirements for SMS collection in your country. You might need to add an extra section to explain how you’ll use customers’ numbers.
Here’s a Guide to US SMS Compliance Laws if your business collects numbers of US-based customers.
Step 5: Write compelling copy
Copy is what engages visitors and makes them convert. So, you need to add a title (headline) and text to encourage signups.
Click the headline and the text block to add your text.
Need some inspiration with writing your popup message?
If yes, then scroll back up to the section with SMS popup examples. There, you’ll find various examples to inspire your copy.
Also, check out our popup copy guide. It contains useful tips in popup creation, along with other ideas and examples.
Step 7: Choose a display scenario
Now, let’s make sure that you’re displaying your SMS popup at the right time.
You can choose among six display scenarios:
On landing
On exit
On scroll
On click
On hover
On custom event
For this SMS popup campaign, let’s keep the default settings: displaying after one page view and three seconds on the second page:
Timing best practices for SMS popups:
Delayed popups (by 20–50s and page views) reduced bounce up to 45% among those who engaged, and increased lead capture 20–43% in the best-performing popup A/B tests. Immediate popups (<5s, shown on the first page) increased bounce up to 5x.
Step 8: Save and publish your campaign
Congratulations!
You did a great job making your first SMS popup. Now, you have a campaign to collect subscribers for your SMS marketing. Only the last step remains: saving.
Click Save (the button is located right on top of Preview).
If you'd like to add goal or revenue tracking to your campaign, find this option under Goal in the main menu:
SMS popups: summary
SMS marketing is a proven method to market and sell, so it can be a great addition to your strategy. Start by adding SMS popups to your website and testing different value propositions (newsletter signups, discounts, etc).
Wisepops has everything for you to get started: a beginner-friendly popup creator, useful campaign templates, helpful support, and straightforward A/B testing—try our tool and grow your business!
Get started
in minutes
Start converting more visitors today.
Get started in minutes and see results right after.
