Custom Rules allow you to perform Actions based on different global Triggers: when something happens with a contact in Manychat — the following action will be performed.
For example:
- send a confirmation email or update contact details in your CRM as soon as the contact's email address is changed;
- send a birthday message to your contacts or remind them about the upcoming event;
- notify Admins when someone gets a particular Tag in one or multiple Flows.
Triggers
Custom Rules allow you to use the following Triggers:
- Date/Time based Trigger — this type is triggered at the set time or date and time (note that the trigger uses a contact's time zone).
- Log Conversion Event - this trigger goes off when a contact performs a certain action on your website, integrated with Manychat Pixel
- Tag applied - performs an Action when a particular tag is applied to a contact.
- Tag removed - performs an Action when a particular tag is removed.
- Subscribed to a Sequence — goes off when someone gets subscribed to a particular Sequence.
- Unsubscribed from a Sequence — goes off when someone gets unsubscribed from a particular Sequence.
- Custom Field value changed — performs an Action when the value of selected Custom User Field is changed.
- New contact — performs an Action when someone subscribed to the bot (not working for the re-subscribed contacts).
These Triggers allow you to perform all the Actions you have in the Action Step inside Flow Builder. The cool thing is you can create automatic events in Manychat outside of your Flows, all the events will be performed globally.
To create a new Rule, go to Automations => Rules:
Create a New Rule. Done? Now select the desired Triggers and Actions. For example, let's contact them to a Sequence as soon as they get a Tag. You can apply this Tag in different Flows and everyone who gets it will get subscribed. Select your Trigger:
Select the Action that will be performed after the Tag was applied. You can perform this Action once per contact or any number of times (you can set it above the Action group).
Save the Rule and activate it. It's working now! :) You can add several Triggers in one Rule. For example, you can perform an Action as soon as any of these Tags are applied. You can also create multiple Actions inside one Rule:
Using Conditions
Some Triggers allow you to add conditions. I've set up a Zap event Action which sends a confirmation email to a contact as soon as their Custom Field value was changed. I added a Condition that will trigger this Action only for conacts who match this Condition - Subscribed before the particular date.
Date/Time based Trigger
This Trigger allows performing Actions based on Custom User Fields of Date/Date & Time types. You can also use system fields and perform an Action based on a subscription date or time of the last interaction with a bot. Here's how to set it up:
Select Date/Time based Trigger and define the time it will go off — at the exact date and time, before, or after the date from a Custom Field.
Select the desired Custom User Field (or the system one) from the drop-down menu.
And choose the time you want this Trigger to go off. You can use the time stored in the Custom Field or just select the exact time from the list.
Available Actions:
These are basically the same as you can set up inside a Flow, with two exceptions:
1) Even the Actions available on the Free plan will only be availabe on the Pro Plan for Rules.
2) In addition, there is a "Start a Flow" Action, that allows you sending a certain Flow right away.
Creating Rules through Flow Builder
You can also set up triggers directly in Flow Builder - it will create a Rule with "Start a Flow" Action under the Automation > Rules tab. First of all, click on the "Add Trigger" button on the Starting Step...
...and select one of the triggers from the "Events" section:
Finally, set up the exact event trigger:
Notes
Keep in mind that you need to check "This event repeats every year" checkbox to send messages at the date of their birthday, because this date will never happen in the future.– Also, note that the same Rule will trigger for the same contact once in 30 seconds in case it can be triggered more than once during a very short period of time.– It should also be noted that if you apply a rule trigger to a contact via Bulk Actions in the Contacts tab, the rule will not fire off. This is made in order to avoid bulk rule triggers for thousands or tens of thousands of people simultaneously which may easily overload your chatbot.