Manual message are set up manually and sent only once to all of your customers or a group of customers that you choose basing on certain criteria: (User ID, Name, Email, Company, Phone, First Seen, Last Seen, Visits, Country, City, Locale, Timezone, Source, Referrer, Last page, Has Communication, OS/User agent).
Such messages are perfect for sending product announcements, updates, one-off deals, special offers, promotions etc.
Compose a manual message
Go to the corresponding section in the main menu and click the 'Add new manual Message' button at the top right of the page.
Most of the settings are pretty self-explanatory, but if you're still unsure what they mean, little tooltips next to each setting will help you get right into it.
1. Choose a manual message type
There are two types of manual messages that you can send using HelpCrunch —chat and email. We suggest you use chat messages to connect with your active users and email messages work cool to re-engage inactive users. But really, both these types are quite versatile in their purposes.
All the texts in your message can be fully customized with formats, fonts, styles, images and more.
2. Configure a delay
Select the delay type and specify time in seconds, minutes, hours, days...
• Without delay - will be sent immediatelly
• With a delay - Will be sent after the delay specified in Wait time.
• Only to conversations with no activity for a certain time - This message will be delivered only when there are no new messages in the conversation between an agent and a client for a specified period of time (Wait Time).
3. Compose your message
Basically, you can choose one of our pre-made message templates or create and save your own ones. Just write a text, add an image or two and tweak with editing options. You can also read how to compose your message in the visual email editor here.
Also, consider being more specific as to what can potentially interest you visitor.
For example: “Hey, Sam! What kind of skis are you looking for? I’d be happy to help”
Rather than just: “May I help you?” (read more)
4. Send a test email
It's always a good idea to send a test manual message to yourself before sending it to customers. You can specify one or multiple email addresses for receiving a test email.
Note that user variables (e.g. {first_name} parameter) won't be substituted in your test email. Basically, you'll receive an email with a {first_name} parameter and not its meaning.
Don't worry though as this is only the case for test emails.
In order to test an email with customer attributes, you need to send a real message to yourself by filtering out the audience bellow and choosing your chat.
5. Choose your Audience
Finally, set the rules to select your manual message's recipients (read more about Advanced search criteria). You can combine several rules to filter your list of contacts and segment them more precisely.
Below, you can see an example of customer criteria for the manual message:
• 'Email has any value' means that a manual message will go to all customers that have their email addresses specified in your database.
• 'Had chats — true' means that you should have a previous communication history with a visitor (e.g. via chat).
We also recommend enabling HelpCrunch User Authentication Mode. This feature lets you automatically display all users who registered/logged into your website in the 'Contacts' section of your HelpCrunch account.
This way, customers will apear in your 'Contacts' section even if they have not chatted with you before.
You’ll be able to send your own custom attributes, which you set for your website or application, to your HelpCrunch account. This will let you apply filters for quick search and send targeted messages to users who meet criteria you set for your business.
See also:
