One of the great functionalities of Instabot is the ability to ask and capture a user’s information, such as an email, which is then automatically saved onto their profile. Here’s how you can further leverage this capability using Zapier to send automatic follow up messages when a user interacts with a chatbot and gives their contact information!

Instabot Auto-Email Use Cases:

Lead Generation: Set-up Instabot to gather the e-mail address and then automatically trigger e-mails to gather additional information,and setting up meetings or appointments.

Customer Support: After someone responds with a question to Instabot that is better left to a person--first have an e-mail generated to your support team, and have a follow-up e-mail to the user who asked the question, letting them know that their question has been delivered and is being handled.

Onboarding: As users sign-up for the service or run into problems on the platform, have your Instabot e-mail training videos, documentation, and other long-form materials to help them better use your product.

Step by Step Directions for Setting up Auto-Emails:

Here’s how you can leverage this capability further using Zapier to send automatic follow up messages when a user interacts with a chatbot and gives their contact information!

STEP 1 - SETTING UP GOAL NODES

First, you must set up a 'goal' in your Instabot conversation. On our platform, 'goals' are defined as a specific point in the conversation or action that you want a user to reach and/or accomplish! The Zap (which we will set up later) will use the goal node to know that a user has reached a destination in the conversation, and trigger an automatic response!

Mark the node in your conversation that asks for a user’s email as the Goal - you can name it whatever you like. We recommend naming the Goal something universal like “Email Collected” so that you may use it later on in different bots!

STEP 2 - CUSTOM PROPERTIES

In addition to setting up Goals, make sure to create a Custom Property for when a user enters their email information.

Custom Properties - Within the Instabot portal, user information is easily stored as custom properties and can be viewed as well as utilized whenever you want!

To create unique custom properties, under the USERS tab on the Instabot Portal, go to:

Settings → User Properties → Click New Property → Name your property with the type set to “String” → Save

Add the custom property to the same node you just added a Goal on! Now Instabot will not only automatically save a user’s email address, but Zapier will also be able to capture that information.

STEP 3 - SETTING UP THE ZAP TRIGGER

Now that your Instabot is updated with the proper Goal node attributed to the place where a user would input their email address, it’s time to create the Zap!

Go to Zapier.com & click on “Make a Zap”

• After choosing Instabot, select “New Goal Completed” as your trigger.

• If you haven’t yet connected Instabot to Zapier, you can do so by inputting your API key found under your Instabot profile settings.

• Select your account & then select the Goal you just created!

This will ensure that when a user reaches your Goal and gives his or her email, Zapier will be triggered.
 

STEP 4 -  CREATE EMAIL TEMPLATE

In the “Action” step of creating your Zap, select the email App of your choice. At Instabot, we chose Gmail since we use it the most.

You have the choice of selecting either “Create Draft” or “Send Email”. For the purposes of these instructions, select “Send Email”, which will create and send a new email message when the Zap is triggered.

After connecting your account, it’s time to write your email template!

Remember - Each field will involve using the Custom Properties you had set in your Instabot!

• Sending To : Add the email custom property you previously set up - This ensures that the Zap will not only know a user has reached the email adding Goal in the conversation, it will pull the email address via the Custom Property attached to it.

• Adding Cc/Bcc : This step is optional, however we found that Bcc-ing an internal contact can help keep track of emails being generated

• From : Add the email address or alias that the message will be sent from

• Subject : Write your universal subject line

• Body : This will be where the email template will be written. If you would like to add any other custom properties, such as a user’s name, company, etc. you can do so by clicking the “+ block” to the right of the text box. Just make sure that those custom properties are added to your chatbot & that they come before your goal!

STEP 5 - TEST AND LAUNCH!

Now that you’ve completed all the steps and have written your template, have Zapier run a test to see if it will successfully launch the automatic emails to a user! We also recommend testing out the Zap yourself by interacting with your chatbot.

If everything looks good, you can launch your Zap + your Instabot takes over!

Need help or have further questions? Feel free to shoot a note over to [email protected]!