You will learn
Learn how to use forms to collect SMS consent from new customers and your existing email subscribers.
Before you begin
Before you can collect SMS consent, you must have already:
Double opt-in is recommended when collecting SMS consent, and is required if you plan to add SMS to your abandoned cart flows.
For more information on what counts as SMS consent and best practices, see this guide on gathering SMS subscribers.
Use forms to collect SMS subscribers
We recommend gathering SMS consent from both new users and from your existing email subscribers. To do so, you’ll need to create a:
- Multi-step form for new subscribers
- Single-step form for your existing email subscribers
When collecting SMS consent, mobile shoppers are more likely to subscribe through tap-to-text buttons, also called click-to-text, while desktop shoppers prefer to input their phone numbers. Using dynamic blocks in your form when collecting SMS opt-in ensures that both mobile and desktop shoppers see the best consent collection method for their device type, which helps you grow your SMS audience all from the same form.
While creating a form that uses dynamic blocks may seem like a large task, the process itself is simple. We’ll create 1 form and configure the mobile and desktop views for the SMS Opt-in step, so that the sign-up experience is optimized for shoppers on each device.
Create forms to collect SMS consent from new subscribers
Here, we’ll walk through how to edit an existing sign-up form so that it collects SMS consent from mobile shoppers with a tap-to-text button, and from desktop shoppers with a phone number input field.
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- Navigate to Sign-up forms.
- In Browse Templates, select the Email & Numbers checkbox.
- Pick a template that has an input for email and phone number.
- Here, we chose the form called Multi-step email & SMS.
- Choose a list for your email subscribers.
- Choose a separate list for your SMS subscribers.
- Click Create Form.
- In the editor, click on Targeting and Behavior.
- Under Devices, select All Devices. This configures your form to show up on both mobile and desktop devices.
- Click the SMS Opt-In tab.
- Click on the phone number input field in the preview and set it to show on Desktop devices only. Do the same for the SMS disclosure language, and the submit button.
- Click on the text box that contains the disclosure language and replace the highlighted text with:
- Your company name
- Link to your mobile terms of service
- Link to your privacy policy
Note that changing disclosure language is not recommended.
- Using the toggle in the upper right corner of the page, click on the mobile icon to switch to the mobile view.
- Drag a new button into the preview, and set the Action to Subscribe via SMS. This creates the tap-to-text call to action.
- Customize your Subscribe Keyword and Subscribe Message. When someone subscribes via your tap-to-text form, they'll be brought to their messages app with the subscribe message. Sending the text with the keyword will add them to the specified list.
- Under Sending Region, choose the appropriate phone number for the region you'd like to target with the form.
- Now that you have your dynamic blocks configured, click Styles to change the layout, font, and colors to better match your brand.
- Optional: edit the form’s design or messaging (e.g., title and call to action) to suit your business needs.
- Once you're satisfied with your form's design, click Publish.
- In the modal, click Publish to confirm that you’ve linked to your mobile terms of service and privacy policy
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Now that you’ve done this, skip to the section on collecting SMS consent from your email subscribers.
Use dynamic blocks to add an SMS step to your form
- Navigate to the Sign-up forms tab and locate the form where you’re collecting email subscribers
- Click the +Step > SMS Opt-in to create a multi-step form that collects both email and SMS consent.
- In the dropdown, pick a list for your SMS subscribers.
- Click Add Step.
- Optional: edit the form’s design, title, and call to action to suit your business’ needs.
- Do not change the disclosure language at this time; that is discussed in the following steps
- Do not change the disclosure language at this time; that is discussed in the following steps
- Click the text box that contains the disclosure language.
- Replace the highlighted text with:
- Your company name
- Link to your mobile terms of service
- Link to your privacy policy
- Click the Back button.
- Click Targeting & Behavior.
- Under Devices, select All Devices. This configures your form to show up on both mobile devices and desktop.
- Click on the SMS Opt-in tab.
- From here, you can use the view selector in the top right corner to switch back and forth between desktop and mobile views of the SMS Opt-in step. Click the desktop icon.
- Select the phone number input field from the preview and set it to show on Desktop devices only. Do the same for the SMS disclosure language, and the submit button.
Note that when you set a block to show only on desktop devices, it will not be visible on the mobile view. The mobile view will show mobile-only and all-device blocks, while the desktop will show desktop-only and all-device blocks.
- Use the mobile icon to switch back to the mobile view.
- Click Add Blocks.
- Drag a new button into the preview and set the Action to Subscribe via SMS. This creates the tap-to-text call to action.
Because tap-to-text functionality is optimized for mobile devices, this SMS block will automatically be set to show for shoppers on mobile devices only.
- Customize your Subscribe Keyword and Subscribe Message. When someone subscribes via your tap-to-text form, they'll automatically be brought to their messages app with the subscribe message. Sending the text with the keyword will add them to the specified list.
- Under Sending Region, choose the appropriate phone number for the region you'd like to target with the form.
- Now that you have your dynamic blocks configured to collect SMS in the best way for each device, click Styles to change the layout, font, and colors to better match your brand.
- When you're satisfied with the design, click Publish.
- In the modal, click Publish to confirm that you’ve linked to your mobile terms of service and privacy policy.
Once you have this form ready, the dynamic blocks you configured will automatically optimize the opt-in experience for shoppers on each device, making it easy to grow your list.
Collect SMS consent from your email subscribers
Next, it’s important to retarget your existing email subscribers to ask them if they want to sign up for SMS.
Create a segment to target email-only subscribers
First, we’ll need to create a segment to gather everyone who is an email subscriber but not an SMS subscriber.
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- Navigate to Audience > Lists & Segments
- Click Create List / Segment
- Choose Segment
- Name your segment (e.g., email-only subscribers)
- Add the following conditions:
- If someone is in or not in list > Person is in > Newsletter
OR - If someone is in or not in list > Person is in > Preview List
AND - If someone is or is not consented to receive SMS > is not
AND - If someone is or is not suppressed for email > is not
- If someone is in or not in list > Person is in > Newsletter
- Click Create Segment
Note that you should add more lists if you are using multiple different ones, or you may just include your main subscriber list (e.g., Newsletter).
Now that you’ve created the segment, you can set up the forms to collect consent for SMS.
Target email-only subscribers
The steps to create forms that target your email-only subscribers are exactly the same for both your desktop and mobile forms. The only difference is which form you clone.
Here, we start with the desktop-only form and ask you to repeat for the mobile form.
- Navigate to Sign-up forms
- Hover over the multi-step form that collects email and SMS consent
- Click the More dropdown
- Choose Clone
- Name the form (e.g., Dynamic SMS)
- Click Clone Form
- Click Edit Form
- Next to Email Opt-In above your form preview, click the 3 vertical dots
- Click Delete in the dropdown
- Confirm you want to remove this step by clicking Delete Step
- Click Targeting & Behavior in the left sidebar
- Scroll to the Targeting section and find By Visitor
- Select Target visitors in a list or segment
- Check Show to visitors in certain lists or segments
- From the dropdown, select your segment of email-only subscribers
- Click Publish to save the changes