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How to create a triggered message

Launch emails, pop-ups or chat messages to communicate with your users automatically


Go to the “Triggered messages” section and click the "Create new message" button at the top right corner of the section. 

💡 Content

Choose the type of triggered message you want to create: 

  • Chat message

  • Pop-up

  • Pop-up builder

  • Email

  • Webhooks

  • JavaScript

Then you can choose a template you like or create a design yourself ("Create a triggered message from scratch"). You can also save any triggered message as a template and use it later.

The first 4 types of triggered messages are basically default Dashly triggered message types you can send to your visitors/users, however, Webhooks and JavaScript are a bit more tricky to implement. 

Webhook — sending HTTP POST-requests to a URL the moment the necessary conditions have been met. Find more information about webhooks here.

The JavaScript triggered message may help you with the following:

  • Displaying pop-ups with unique layouts;

  • Social media retargeting;

  • Tracking events in Google Analytics;

  • Inserting forms into your website.

You can find more details here.

If you are already using a HTML or JavaScript template in some other platform (like MailChimp), you can use it in Dashly as well. Here’s how you can do it with an HTML template:

  • Create and save an email template in any service you like;

  • Find its HTML code and copy it (press "Export as HTML" in MailChimp);

  • Open the saved file in a text editor;

  • Copy this text and paste it into Dashly (Triggered messages – My messages – Create new message – Сontent – HTML);

  • Don't forget to add the Unsubscribe link;

  • You can also add an A/B test to any message you want.

💡 Conditions of sending

At this step, all the basic message settings are applied: you need to select a trigger, set up an audience, sending conditions, etc.:

💡 When to send (trigger)

A trigger is any user action (event) used to initiate an triggered message sending. 

❗ Important: If you’ve set up several triggers to a triggered message, the message will be sent once ANY of these triggers work.

You can create any event to use as a trigger with our Tracking master. If you need to track user activity recorded in your backend (like Registered, Signed in, Made an order, etc.), look for the details here and here.

❗ Important: when you pick "Opened a page" as a trigger, it won't record the event of visiting this page in the user's card. Accordingly, it will not be displayed in the event history in the lead card, funnels, etc. If this event is needed not only to trigger a message, then it can be created from the “Another event” tab.

-Send after a while

Choose when to send the triggered message after the event is completed: right after the event is completed, or after a time lag.

Restrict sending on pages

This option is available unless you picked Opened a page as a trigger. 

If you want to show a triggered message or a leadbot on specific pages, you need to select the "Select pages" option. You can select a page with an exact address or include a part of the address - in this case a message it will appear on all pages that contain a combination of entered symbols.

The logical "OR" operator works here - in other words if you select several pages, the message will appear on any of them.

- Select pages

If you want to show a triggered message or a leadbot on specific pages, you need to select the "Select pages" option. You can select a page with an exact address or include a part of the address - in this case a message it will appear on all pages that contain a combination of entered symbols.

The logical "OR" operator works here - in other words if you select several pages, the message will appear on any of them.

- Exclude pages

You can also configure the exclude pages. In this case, the logical "AND" operator will work. If the user chooses not to show triggered message or a leadbot on pages A and B, then it will not be shown on both.

The message will not appear on https://example.com/pricing/ and on all pages that include "price" in the URL.

❗ Important: you can choose to either show on certain pages or exclude pages, but not both options at the same time.

- How to include utm tags and all parameters

If you need to set the exact address with utm tags, use the "With address and all parameters" option. It will be enough to enter the address of the page on which you want to show or not to show the triggered message, and utm tags or anchor links will be taken into account automatically.

The message will be shown on https://www.example.com/shoes, https://www.example.com/shoes?utm_source=google and https://www.example.com/shoes/#brogues as well. 

- How to use * symbol

If you want to select multiple pages, use * as a wildcard. It (*) matches any number of characters (including -, _, -). You can use it (*) anywhere in a line.

Example:

The combination ma* will include the words marketing, margin, mathematics, but not German, barman.
The combination *away will allow for the words takeaway and getaway.
The combination m*ing will allow you to include the words marketing, making, masking, etc.


💡 Who to send to

You can limit what audience receives your triggered message, as you may not want to address it to every lead who triggered it.

Configure filters

On the Audience step, select the lead segment you want to send this message to. 

- Show to leads who satisfy filters

"All" equals logical "AND". In other words, all conditions must be met for a user to count as the audience of the triggered message.

"Any" equals logical "OR". In other words, if at least one condition is met, the lead will match the triggered message audience.

- Lead properties

These are property requirements leads must meet before triggering the message.

- Lead events

These are event requirements leads must meet before triggering the message.

❗ Important: If a triggered message has a timeout (which you can set on the "Trigger” tab), then events and properties from the “Audience” tab will be reviewed after this time period has passed.

On the left side of the tab you may see the segments you have. If you have one ready and fitting for the audience of your triggered message, you can just choose it and properties and event conditions will apply automatically.  

Set a control group

The control group option is used for experimenting on how communications affect user behavior. A control group is a percentage of people who will not receive the message despite falling under the sending conditions. The leads to be excluded from the triggered message receivers are selected randomly.

Consider visitor's status at the moment of sending

If a pop-up or a chat message is sent when a user is not on your website, they will see this message next time they visit the website, which in some cases may be considered faulty automation logic. To make sure that doesn’t happen, you can send messages depending on the user status. For example, you can set a triggered message to only be sent to users with the “Online” or “Sleeping” status.


💡 Sending settings 

Select time to send

If the user performs a trigger event outside the set time frame, the message won't be sent.

Resend

If the user executes the trigger again and matches the audience criteria you specified in the previous step, the message will be shown to them again. With this setting, you can limit the display of the message to only once or show it no more than once in a certain period of time (for example, no more than once a day).

Also, you can stop the message from showing to users who replied to it.

Delete if there's no reply

If you launch some temporary campaign (a Christmas campaign or a notification about maintenance works on your website, for example), you can set the time to stop the message from being sent and to be deleted for users who didn't reply (clicking on a link or pressing a button in it also counts as a reply).

By default, any triggered message (except email) is set to auto-delete if the user read it but didn't respond.

If you specified the exact date for deletion, at that time the message will be deleted from chat history of all users who didn't respond to it, and the message itself will be disabled (since it's assumed that after this date the message is no longer relevant).

If a site visitor reads a pop-up, it won't appear in the chat history. If the pop-up is not read, the visitor will see a red indicator above the chat widget. After the user has viewed / read the pop-up, it will also disappear from the chat history.

A message created in the standard editor will be deleted only if there was no response to it. 

❗ Please note: you can only configure this condition for pop-ups and chat messages.

💡 Data transfer and goal

At this step, you can set up email notifications if your trigger message contains buttons or fields for entering data.

Select the goal you want to achieve with the message. Read more about goals in this article. 


💡  Events for message sequences

To create a sequence of messages, activate custom events for preceding messages of the sequence. After that you'll be able to choose these events as a trigger for the messages that are supposed to follow. 

💡 Folder

Finally, you can choose in which folder the trigger message will be located, for easier access. You can select the folder in the "Triggered messages" section:


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