EsumolingQ: hi i'm new to webhooks, so- 1) i currently have influence.
i think of switching, but i know i didnt need any webhooks with them. why do i need webhooks with you?
2) whats the advantage/disadvantage of webhooks compared to what they do (i just tell influence what is the page to capture the leads from. webhooks sound more complicated)
3) where can i see the actual process of what i need to do to set up a campaign with your system, and especially the webhooks? Do i need to make a separate webhook to every campaign? to every type of popup (conversions, live visitors etc) in every campaign?
thanks
Jarrod_Evidence
May 15, 2024A: Thanks for jumping on board with us, Esumoling!
I’ve been giving our conversation more thought and I’m really loving the idea of recognizing the webhook source (i.e. Kajabi) and immediately creating source fields, even merge fields, from sensible values like FirstName, Email, City, etc.
I hear what you’re saying about sliders. This hasn’t been any friction point with users so far. We’ll keep an ear out for that though.
I’ll double-check with our developer on hard caps for both quantity and timeframe. I know we recommend changing the timestamp from a “days ago” statement to “Recently” after 30 days. We also give you a slider if you want to do this sooner, like at 14 days.
The reason for this is the fact that “recency” has a major impact on the notification’s ability to “influence” a visitor. The last thing we’d want to see a user publish on their site is, “John just signed up...9 months ago.” It does very little to move a person to action.
We’re always looking to help our users make the biggest impact with their audience. If one of our sensible defaults or ranges doesn’t seem sensible, just let our support team know, and we can talk through your unique use case.
- Jarrod
Hey there Esumoling,
Thanks for checking out Evidence. There are many differences between Evidence and Influence. Let’s first chat about our approach to integrations. I do wish to clarify that webhooks are not the only means to integrate platforms with Evidence.
1) Your unique Evidence script is not only responsible for tracking visits to the site and popping notifications, but also for capturing data that’s submitted via webforms. Any platform where the conversion is being captured via a form will integrate with Evidence.
When webforms aren’t an option, we chose to approach those platforms with a universal webhook parser so that we could connect as many 3rd party services as possible right out of the gate (1000;s). This has allowed us to focus on features and core functionality inside of the app instead of getting bogged down by custom, one-off API integrations.
Check out this video to understand more:
🎥 https://evidence.io/t58r
Having said all of that, as our user base grows and we hear enough demand for specific platforms, we will get into writing native integrations using API keys, tokens, etc.
2) FirstName = Jarrod, LastName = Morris, City = Ogden.
👆That’s a webhook. Pretty straight forward, right? It’s basically a set of name/value pairs that is sent from one server to another. Usually, the server sending the data will provide an input field where you can paste a webhook URL (provided by the receiving server).
For example, here’s a 10-second video on how easy it is to pull new sales information from ClickFunnels into Evidence, by simply copying an Evidence webhook URL, and pasting it into the ClickFunnels platform:
🎥 https://evidence.io/1mhm
3) Visitor notifications do NOT need webhooks. They receive all of the data they need from our pixel. Announcement notifications do NOT need webhooks. Offer notifications do NOT need webhooks. Conversion and Streak notifications CAN use webhooks if a webform is not available for the script to detect form submissions on.
If you want to see an in-depth walkthrough of a campaign setup, including webhooks, watch this video:
🎥 https://evidence.io/cjbz
Let me know if you have any other questions after watching the videos above.
- Jarrod
Verified purchaser
many thanks. loved to know webhooks are easy and that forms also work. seems like there's a lot of manual work compared to influence (as per your last video)- is there a faster way in which dot need, for example, to check the fields as shown in the video (eg at 2:38 minutes)?
You’re welcome, Esumoling.
While configuring a source may take an extra minute or two, it’s only done one-time, and can then be used across multiple campaigns and notifications.
One of the many benefits of allowing our users to choose the fields they want from the webhook is the customization it allows for in the messaging of the notification.
For example, I can create a custom webhook (HTTP Post) in Infusionsoft that is sending data to Evidence from the contact record custom fields. Those values then get merged into a notification. I can even filter out and qualify the events that make it into the loop, based on the values of fields I’m passing.
We’re happy to talk about this more with you when we’re looking at a real-life scenario, just know that ultimate flexibility and customizability was our goal.
With that being said, once we begin recognizing webhooks coming from specific platforms, perhaps we can grab some sensible fields like FirstName, Email, City, etc. Thank you very much for inquiring. I might not have thought of this enhancement without you popping the question.
- Jarrod
Verified purchaser
" it’s only done one-time, and can then be used across multiple campaigns and notifications" - perfect. thanks.
very happy it got you thinking of yet another solution. Ill give you guys a chance, hopefully it'll work out much better than with influence... if your customer support is like what you're showing here, youre on the right track imho.
ps the one other thing i can think of is that your setup uses slide bars for things that are numbers (such as how many days of conversions to display. generally i find that its less easy than just typing the number (especially in big numbers- influence allow up to 1000 conversions and more than 365 days- -harder to it with a slider. btw how many days & conversions you allow to display?) and also more limited (with the slider you're only talking in one unit, eg days. in influence in can also set it to hours)