GetResponse just keeps getting better.
I was going through my weekly email marketing automation analysis, and I saw a new feature popping up.
GetResponse has got a new live chat feature!
For the time being, they simply call it Chats. It is a new feature by GetResponse that allows you to add live chat to your website or landing pages.
Live chat is an unusual feature for email marketing software.
Well, I don’t really identify GetResponse as an EMS. I think of it as an online marketing and conversion optimization platform. You should read our full GetResponse review to understand how it can help your business scale.
GetResponse is currently beta testing Chats.
I thought I’d give it a test spin too.
So I created a landing page, hosted it here on BforBloggers, and enabled GetResponse Chats.
GetResponse Chats
Currently, in the beta stage, GetResponse now allows you to display chat popups on your website and landing pages hosted on their platform.
It’s a live chat popup. You will have to manually reply every time someone sends a message.
You can reply to the messages in real-time and set an automated reply in case you’re not available at the moment.
So, it’s not like those A.I.-powered chatbots that work on automation. But it’s a convenient and highly effective way to boost conversion rate across your website.
You can show the chat popup on your whole website by adding a code to it. Alternatively, you can simply turn the chat feature on by clicking the toggle button under your GetResponse landing pages’ settings section.
GetResponse hosts these chat popups on a separate page of its own.
A link to these chat pages will allow your subscribers or anyone to initiate a live chat with you. This is a good thing if you’d like to use the chat as a standalone feature without adding it to your website or landing pages.
There is a bunch of options to customize the chat popup window and the chat page as well. Easily change the popup color, the background of the page.
It can match your brand perfectly by allowing you to change the popup color, chat background, and adding a custom chat welcome message. It doesn’t have any GetResponse branding, so it would feel a little more custom (though I believe there will be a badge once it’s launched officially).
Visitors can click on the chat popup and initiate the live chat with or without giving their email addresses. That’s up to you, enable it or keep it disabled as default.
I will recommend enabling it since there’s always a chance of useful follow-up emails.
How do You Read & Reply to the Chat Messages?
Visitors can initiate a conversation by clicking on the chat popup, which opens a small window. You can choose whether they will need to enter an email to connect with you or not.
When someones send you a message through chat, GetResponse will notify you via Browser Push Notifications.
Or you can download their mobile app to get instant notifications on your iOS or Android smartphone. I’ve tested both, it works fine, and the alters are instantaneous.
Push Notifications are also useful if you spend much of your time on your laptop than on a smartphone, like me. I prefer the browser version since it’s much more convenient for a blogger to write replies using a Laptop.
You can access all your chats through your GetResponse dashboard as well.
Log in to your GetResponse dash and click on the menu icon. From the dropdown menu, choose chats, and you’ll be redirected to the GetResponse chat admin.
Here’s how the chat admin and conversation window looks for you when talking to someone:
Much like typical chat software, if a visitor is online, it displays a green badge over the visitor name (Id if name not submitted).
Look at the chat dropdown menu at the bottom just before the send button.
Whenever you want to send an email to the user you’re talking to, click on this button, and you can send them an email without transitioning to the email dashboard. Talk about convenience.
Once you’re done with a conversation, you can click on the “Mark as Close” button to close the chat. Then you can download the complete conversation and export it as a .TXT file.
The column at the right hand actively shows the user info, including what platform they are using, what device, source URL, and their contact info.
By clicking on the three dots next to the visitor info, you can block a user.
I’d highly recommend turning on the visitor capture form.
That’ll allow you to put the person you’re chatting with within your email list. You can then use their email for follow-ups and further enhance the customer experience.
To enable the visitor capture form, click on the Settings link in the top right corner. Scroll down and click on the “Visitor Capture form Button.”
There are three options to decide when the visitor capture form appears:
- Always
- When away mode
- Never
Scroll down a little, and you can also type in a custom message that appears on the top of the visit capture form. And the message that appears after the form is submitted, a thank you message.
When you start a chat without collecting an email or name, you can use the capture form while chatting to instantly let the other person submit their details without leaving the conversation.
Chat Availablity settings
You can set the when you are available and when you are not using the availability settings. To do that, click on the Settings link and select the Chat Avialalibty option.
There are four options:
- Always available
- Away
- During specific hours
- Disabled
If you select Disabled, the chat popup won’t be shown to the visitors. You can schedule when visitors chat live with you during specific hours. Turn on the Auto-Reply settings if your choosing to schedule the chat availability.
Chat Window Appearance
Here you can customize the appearance of your chat window and the message that appears first when visitors initiate the conversation.
In the welcome title, enter the big, bold message that will appear on the top of the chat window. The enter a welcome message that appears beneath the welcome title.
You have an option to edit the logo that will appear on top of the chat. The primary chat color and text color are also customizable. Change it to match your brand.
There are also different forms of chat icons just to make it a little more personalized and exclusive.
Chat Page Appearance
GetResponses hosts your chat popup on a separate standalone page as well.
You can share this chat page using a link, and anyone with that link can initiate a conversation.
This option allows you to customize the chat page appearance, as the name suggests itself.
Enter a big, bold title, a welcome message beneath it, and customize the page background color to match your brand.
Take a look below at how we customized it to match ours:
How to Display Chat on Your Website?
Go to the chat settings and click on the install the code option to find your code.
You need to copy and paste the GetResponse chat code in the <body> section of your website. If you would like to show the chat on a specific page only, paste it inside the page’s HTML code.
Enabling the chat on landing pages, you create using GetResponse is very easy.
To do so, go to your landing page settings and scroll down to the bottom. Toggle the GetResponse Chats button to turn on the chat.
Below the chat code, you’ll also find the link to your chat page. Share it with anyone to start a conversation without them needing to visit your landing page or website.
Adding Chat link In Your Email Messages
You don’t have to copy and paste the chat link inside the GetResponse emails.
When you’re writing or editing an email, click on the ???? (link icon) and select chats from the drop-down menu. The chat link will be automatically added to the email.
Chat Statistics
Under the Statistics section, you’ll be able to see who talks to you, chat sources, chat participants, average chat duration, response time, and the number of messages.
Statics are store forever. You can access this data by filtering it from the Today to an All-Time record.
Closed chats are moved under different sections. So that active and closed chats don’t get mixed up.
It’s a good way to understand if visitors are engaging more than subscribers and which traffic source is sending the most active chat users.
Notifications
There are two ways to get notified of new messages through GetResponse chat:
- Browser Push Notification.
- App Notifications.
The usual GetResponse EMS smartphone app won’t notify or allow you to manage the chats. For that, you need the specific GetResponse Chat App.
A Little Bug
Now I love this part of beta testing. You find problems and solutions, a marketer’s true enjoyment.
There are a few areas GetResponse chat makes it difficult to keep using it.
The primary problem I faced was in the GetResponse landing pages themselves.
I enabled the chat feature and published my landing page. Pointed it towards my domain, here at BforBloggers at /subscribe URL.
Everything works fine until you enable privacy settings. If you disable cookies, it won’t work at all.
Cookies are a must for GetResponse chat to function properly.
But the main problem isn’t that the chat stops working.
It makes the whole page unresponsive. The opt-in forms won’t work as well. When clicking on the fields inside the optin form, it simply refuses.
This isn’t surprising. We have seen chatbots and live chat software that won’t work unless certain cookies are enabled.
However, some live chat software does work even when accused under incognito mode with tracking cookies disabled. Such as LiveChat.
I did a test and confirmed the same with LiveChat support. Turns out he wasn’t too sure as well, so he did a live test, and it worked perfectly well.
Thought most other software would still need cookies, or the chat window won’t show at all.
GetResponse Chat: Verdict
One of the reasons why I call GetResponse a complete marketing solution is because of the constant innovation that happens in their backend. A year before last year, they added Conversion Funnel and then Push Notifications.
And this year, it’s live chat.
At this point, GetResponse boasts more features than a typical CRM.
With few tweaks in the interface and the inclusion of logical automation, GetResponse chat will become an ideal solution for customer support and engagement.
It is simple, very non-technical to get started—a good solution for small businesses and startups.
You should definitely try it and see for yourself.
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