User notifications (Emails & SMS)

Overview

Why are User Notifications useful?

Communication is very important in order to provide a memorable customer experience. Besides the transactional notifications (email receipts, notification of return, etc.) which are standard, you may choose to set up additional custom user notifications along the user journey, to fitting your business needs. Such notifications may include: 

  • A reminder to return products (eg. 1 day before scheduled Return): "Friendly reminder to return your equipment..."
  • Information sent before pickup (eg. 1 day before scheduled Pickup): "Here are some important instructions for your rental..." 
  • Information sent right on order placement
  • Follow-up after Return (eg. 2 days after actual Return): "We hope you enjoyed your rental experience..." 

Note: Most notifications are set to run in batch jobs, which run in every-15-minutes intervals for most of the triggers. Notifications set on trigger "Event: Order Placement" will be sent immediately after order placement.

How to set up User Notifications?

Notifications are very flexible to set up and can be configured from Admin Settings > Notifications section.

Here you can manage all custom notifications: set up new ones, see or modify existing ones already created.

In order to create a new notification, use the Create Notification button on top right and follow the instructions (see screenshot below). The notification settings will include both required and optional parameters or content:

  • Name: A name of your choice, which can be a reminder for later on what the notification does, such as "Return reminder"
  • Trigger information
    • Trigger type: Pick from options such as Scheduled Pickup, Scheduled Return, Actual Return, Order Placement, etc.
    • Time before or after the trigger specified in days, hours and minute
  • Action
    • Send email
    • Send SMS - Contact support@sharefox.no to have this enabled, if it is not in your plan already.
  • Optional 
    • Order status (Example: only send feedback follow-ups to orders that have order status Closed)
    • Delivery status (Example: only send return reminders if the delivery status is Picked-up)
    • And more: Location, Order tags, Payment method, Payment status
  • Recipient
    • Customer
    • Manager
    • Customer & Manager (BCC) - Here the notification will be sent to the customer, but an email with the content will be sent to the merchant on BCC (blind copy, the customer will not see this). Note: The merchant will in this case receive a copy on BCC email no matter if the Action was set as "Send email" or "Send SMS"
  • Email Subject
    • If the Action is set to "Send email", this field will show. This will be the subject of the email sent.
  • Message [required]
    • Here you can write the message that should be sent to the recipient.
    • If the action "Send email" is used, the rich formatting line is shown
    • If the action "Send SMS" is used, the rich formatting line is not shown, as this is not supported in the SMS standard. Note that use of many characters might trigger several SMS sent. The receiver will perceive it as one sms, but you will be charged for the actual number of SMS technically sent (or in accordance with your SMS plan).
      • 1 – 160 characters = 1 SMS.
      • 161 – 306 characters = 2 SMS.
      • 307 – 459 characters = 3 SMS
  • Note: Smart fields such as order reference, first name, etc. will be appended automatically.

  • Just click Save and your new notification will be ready☺︎

How are User Notifications sent?

Most notifications are set to run in batch jobs, which run in every-15-minutes intervals for most of the triggers, as follows:

  • Notifications are sent every 15 minutes: for all triggers except "Event: Order Placement" if this has no time delay
    • For trigger "Event: Order Placement" with time setting "0 days 0 hours 0 min": the notification will be triggered immediately on order placement

See user notification history

You can see the user notification history on Admin Order page in the Activity section on the Information tab. 

Trigger order placement notification manually:

In case you are creating a manual order, you will have to send the notification manually by going to Admin Order page and using Action > Send confirmation.

What are Smart Fields?

Smart Fields lets merchants send automated emails with personalized content. 

It also lets merchants pre-fill forms for end users, so that end users faster can fill in names, order references etc. in forms. 

Benefits

Merchants might want to send notifications like this:

“Hi Andreas, your order is booked and will be ready for you tomorrow, with ID CX96.”

The new smart fields feature in Sharefox will enable these customized values in notifications: 

  • Hello (first name)
  • (Second name)
  • This is your Order ID (order ID)
  • This is your Order Reference (order reference)
  • Click this link to log in, and see your order (User login link)

Note: The user login link needs to be turned on for your site, to work. 

How does it work?

The user writes in the “Custom Email Section”, and can click on the drop-down “Add Smart Field”. When one of the options in this drop-down is selected, a section similar to {{first_name}} will be inserted. 

When sending out this notification to a customer, the content of the smart field will be substituted with the corresponding value of the order and customer.

Remark: For the {{user_login_link}}, the feature is a bit more complex:

  • When this is inserted in a notification, a link will be inserted in the notification email/sms. When clicking it, the user will be taken to the Webshop and logged in (without having to enter a password). Especially for cases such as pre-payments that require a final payment settlement, this can be of value.
  • This might not be enabled for your shop - then it will take the customer to a "Enter new password" popup. Please reach out to support@sharefox.no if you want to enable automatic login via this smart field link.

Send notifications to everyone - even yourself

  • When selecting "Customer & Manager (BCC), the customer will receive the notification (SMS or email), and the manager will receive a copy of the message as a blind copy by email (no matter if the original notification was set as an email or SMS).

Send notifications manually

Do you want to send a notification to a customer manually?

In cases where the customer can not find the notification, or you just want to send it at a different time than the automation is configured for, you can trigger a notification, by going to:

Orders -> Order -> Actions -> Send notification

You will then see this pop-up:

Under Action, you can select what type of notification you want to send; Email or SMS.


Note that all notifications in the "Select notification" list, is from the notifications found in Settings -> Notifications.


Email: Insert the email address you want to receive the notification

Phone: Insert the phone number you want to receive the notification


Apply default notification filters: If this is enabled, then the filters set under Settings -> Notifications (e.g. filter on Delivery Status, Location, Payment method, etc.). In case you get a warning when triggering the notification saying 'Filters not matched', you can bypass these filters by unselecting this option.


See what notifications were sent

In an order, under the "Information" tab, you will see a list called "Activity". You can here see a list of the notifications that were sent out - together with other activities registered on this order.

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