Onsite campaigns

An onsite campaign is a short message your chat shows on its own, above the chat button on your store, to visitors who match conditions you set: a first visit, a minute on one product page, a cart just under your free-shipping amount, a pointer heading for the browser's close button. It can carry a discount code, up to three products and an email form. The visitor can close it or reply, and a reply opens the chat with your message already in it.

Campaigns live under Convert, in the menu you open from the area name in the top-left corner. Overview shows whether campaigns are showing and the last 30 days in figures, Performance has the full figures, and each chat has its own Campaigns and Set up pages.

What a campaign needs before it shows#

The chat's Set up page in Convert ticks off three things:

1. The chat is on your store. Campaigns travel in the chat's own script, so there is nothing else to install. The helpdesk counts the chat as installed once it has had a conversation or shown a campaign. To add the script to your theme, see Put chat on your store.

2. The chat shows campaigns. With several chats, you choose which ones show campaigns in Convert > Set up.

3. Onsite campaigns are switched on. This switch, also in Convert > Set up, covers the whole helpdesk and starts off on every helpdesk. While it is off, visitors see no campaign whatever its status, so you can build and preview campaigns before anyone sees them.

After that, a campaign shows when its status is Active and today falls between its start and end dates, if it has any. Only admins change the switch and the campaigns; the rest of the team can open them and read the figures.

What the visitor can do#

The card appears above the chat button in your chat's colors, with its buttons in the visitor's chat language. In a chat with several languages, a campaign shows only to visitors whose chat is in the campaign's language. The visitor can:

• Close it. That campaign then stays hidden from this visitor for the number of days set in Convert > Set up (7 to begin with).

• Copy the code, or open one of the products.

• Leave an email address. The helpdesk finds or creates a customer with that address. It sends nothing to it; follow up from your email marketing tool.

• Reply. The chat window opens with your message at the top. When the visitor writes, the conversation becomes a chat ticket tagged campaign, with an internal note naming the campaign, the version they saw and its code.

A campaign never opens while the visitor has the chat window open.

How often one visitor sees campaigns#

Three limits in Convert > Set up keep a visitor from getting one campaign after another:

• Campaigns per visit, 1 to 5 (1 at first). A visit lasts until the visitor closes the browser tab.

• Minutes between two, 10 at first.

• Days hidden after a close, 7 at first.

When two campaigns are ready at the same moment, the visitor gets the one whose name comes first in alphabetical order.

What is kept about visitors#

The chat script keeps a random visitor id, the number of visits and the campaigns the visitor closed in their own browser. Each event the helpdesk records (shown, opened, closed and so on) stores that id only as a keyed hash, which cannot be turned back into the browser's id. A visitor's country comes from their connection. Store customer conditions use the customer data the helpdesk already keeps from your connected Shopify store; the store page passes the signed-in customer's id, and the helpdesk answers only with which campaigns apply.

Not built yet#

• Sales after a campaign. Performance counts orders that used a campaign's code. Other sales that followed a campaign are not tracked, and neither are clicks on links sent in chat.

• A code for each visitor. A campaign shows one code that you create in your store.

• Products picked automatically. You choose up to three products for each campaign.