How to set up a multilingual popup

If your webshop speaks several languages, your popups should too. The recipe is always the same two moves:

1. Build one campaign per language — the popup's copy language is decided in the conversation.

2. Split them by URL — each campaign is shown only on the pages of its own language.

Three different "languages" — don't mix them up

A common misunderstanding: writing to the assistant in Hungarian does not make the popup Hungarian. The popup's language is a separate decision — that is what the next section is about.

Step 1 — create a campaign in the language you need

1. Click New campaign in the left sidebar and describe what you want, as usual.

2. The assistant works out the popup's language for you. It reads your site and uses the site's own language for the copy — not the language you happen to be typing in.

3. If your site is available in more than one language, it stops and asks before designing anything:

   
   One more thing — your store is available in more than one language.
   What language should the popup speak?
   

   Pick a language from the chips and the round continues.

4. You can also just say it. An explicit instruction always wins over what the site detection found — for example:

   • "Make the popup German."

   • "Write all the copy in Spanish."

   You can say it at the start, or later while refining the concepts — the next round is rewritten in that language.

5. From that point every concept, the built popup and every later AI edit are written in that language. Pick a concept with Build it as usual and let it build.

6. Repeat for the next language. Start another new campaign with the same brief and name the other language.

💡 Name your campaigns by language. Something like Welcome 10% — DE and Welcome 10% — FR saves a lot of squinting later in the campaign list and in reports.

Step 2 — show each campaign only on its own language pages

This is the part that keeps the German popup off your French pages. It works when all the languages sit on the same domain, and the language shows up in the URL (/de/, /fr/, /es/ …).

1. Open Campaigns, click the German campaign, and open its Settings tab.

2. Under Who should see the popup, click Add new rule.

3. Choose Current page / URL (Show or hide on specific pages).

4. Fill in the Include side — Show campaign only on these pages.

   • Click Add pages.

   • Leave the row on pages, set where the URL to contains, and type the language segment: /de/.

5. Fill in the Exclude side — Don't show this campaign on these pages. Add one row for every other language on your site (/fr/, /es/, /hu/ …), each with contains.

6. Click Save changes.

7. Do the same on the other campaigns, swapping the segments around: the French campaign includes /fr/ and excludes /de/, /es/, and so on.

How the two lists work together

Include rules are OR-ed (the campaign shows if any include matches). Exclude rules always win: if any exclude matches, the campaign is hidden on that page. Leave Include empty to allow all pages.

That last sentence is the trick for your default language, which usually has no prefix at all (yourshop.com/products rather than yourshop.com/en/products): leave Include empty and list all the other language segments under Exclude. The campaign is then allowed everywhere except the translated sections.

Once a rule is in place, the campaign's settings summary reads it back to you in words — for example, Only show where the URL contains /de/, or Never show where the URL contains /fr/.

You can also just ask

The campaign's Settings page has a chat next to it, and it is often faster than the form:

Use the chat to change triggers or targeting (for example: show to Slovaks too). Values below update automatically.

So "only show this on pages whose URL contains /de/, and never on /fr/ or /es/" does the same job. Check the cards that appear, then Save changes.

If your languages live on different domains

Some shops use yourshop.de and yourshop.fr instead of URL segments. Then you don't need URL rules at all:

1. Add both domains under Settings → Domains.

2. Build the German campaign while the German domain is selected in the sidebar's workspace switcher, and the French one on the French domain.

3. A campaign's domain is shown under its name on the campaign page — click it if you need to move the campaign to another domain of yours.

Each campaign then only ever runs on its own site.

Targeting by country instead of by language

If what you really want is "Germans see the German offer", add a Country rule (Geographic targeting) instead of, or on top of, the URL rule: Visitors who are from → add the countries. Country is detected from the visitor's IP address.

Keep in mind these answer different questions: the URL rule follows the language the visitor chose on your site; the country rule follows where they are. A German-speaking visitor in Austria browsing your /de/ pages is caught by the first and missed by the second.

What changed compared with the classic admin

• There is no template library with a language selector. You don't pick a pre-translated template — you say which language the popup should speak, and the copy is written in it. The Library in the sidebar is an inspiration gallery, not a translated template list.

• There are no Experiences and no "Start Personalization". That concept doesn't exist in this version of OptiMonk.

• A/B variants are not the tool for this. Variants inside one campaign split your traffic by a weight — every visitor can get any of them, which is exactly what you don't want for languages. Use one campaign per language.

• Duplicating helps with the design, not the words. Duplicating a campaign copies the design as it is, in its original language — you would still have to get the copy rewritten. Starting a fresh campaign and naming the language is usually the shorter path.

Checklist before you go live

• Each language has its own campaign, with the language named in the campaign name.

• Each campaign has a Current page / URL rule: its own segment under Include, every other segment under Exclude (or empty Include + all other segments excluded, for the default language).

• Each campaign is switched on.

• Open one page per language yourself and check that the right popup — and only that one — comes up.