Welcome to Part 4 of the Performable series! Today’s feature is dedicated to marketers and developers who are interested in taking their data-driven marketing to the next level. In the last post, we told you about how HubSpot's new advanced marketing automation tool can trigger emails to leads or customers based on their activity across channels. Today we'll introduce you to how you could also use the tool to trigger internal notifications and other advanced communications through webhooks.
What on earth is a webhook?
Think of a webhook as a simple message. When you submit a webhook, all you’re doing is sending a message somewhere…but instead of sending a message to a person, you’re sending it to a web site or application. In other words, when you send a webhook you’re telling a software program to do something.
We’ve compiled a few examples of ways that you could use webhooks with our advanced behavior-driven communication tool.
- Internal Chat Alerts: Send alerts to your company’s internal chat stream that lets employees know something interesting/important has happened. For example, notify sales when a lead has looked at the pricing page, or mentioned a competitor on twitter.
- Send SMS Alerts: When a hot lead returns to your pricing page, send a text message to a sales team member.
- Push In-app Notifications: When someone does something interesting on your website, send a push notification to them through an iOS native app. (This is what happens when you request a free sample chapter on the Amazon website…they send the chapter to your portable device)
- Auto-Follow-Back: Auto-follow users who follow your account on Twitter (uses Performable pre-integration with Twitter).
- Trigger Offers: Trigger a special on-site offer for qualified returning customers.
- Follow Up: When someone leaves a support ticket (Performable integrates with Zendesk, Assistly, and Tender) leave them a voicemail saying that their support ticket has been received.
- Twitter to Facebook Posting: Post to someone’s Facebook Wall thanking them for mentioning you on Twitter.
There are a lot of options out there. It's important to note, however, that webhooks that send external messages should be used with a clear strategy. Make sure you are thinking of what would be most beneficial for the lead or customer when you set one up. They also take a bit more set-up than the standard out-of-the-box behavior-driven emails. But if you've got a clear strategy, they could make your marketing much more agile and responsive to customers needs over time. If you're interested in taking on messaging through webhooks, make sure you talk with someone at HubSpot about how to get started.
