Text Messaging Cloud Services
WP EasyCart offers a cloud based texting services that allows customers to add their mobile number after an order is placed and to receive automated alerts via Text whenever changes to the order is made. This is a great service to customers and allows shipping updates, order status changes and other regular automated text alerts be sent to each customer.
Quick Start Guide
- Purchase the cloud service by Clicking Here.
- Visit your account at www.wpeasycart.com/my-account and connect the easycart URL to your cloud service.
- Log into your WordPress WP EasyCart -> Settings -> Checkout panel to finish setting up text triggers.
Video Guide – Setup Text Notification SystemWatch as we setup the text notification service in 3 easy steps as outlined above and below. |
Step 1 – Purchase Cloud Service Credits
Text alerts are a service that offers text messaging to your customers. Each text costs a few cents and EasyCart takes care of all the technical stuff for you through our cloud based service. Current pricing can be found on our website and if you ever run across the need for more credits, just contact our support department and we can get you setup on the right plan for your usage volume.
You may purchase the cloud service here.
Step 2 – Connect Cloud to your EasyCart
Once you purchase a subscription, you simply visit your account at www.wpeasycart.com/my-account and connect your cloud service to a specific easycart site. Use the pulldown, select your registered easycart site to utilize, and update.
Note: You may manage your cloud subscription services using the side ‘Manage Subscription’ button if you ever need to update your credit card on file for these services.
Step 3: Configure Texting Triggers
Once you are connected you can log into your WordPress Admin -> WP EasyCart -> Settings -> Checkout panel. Here is where you establish your custom welcome text message, ongoing order status or shipping triggers and any custom values you wish to send out.
In this example here, we setup our first text notification, which is a ‘On New User Notification Signup’. This will trigger when the customer is on the Order Confirmation thank you page after an order and decides to enter their phone number to receive text alerts.
Set Default Country: This is nice to have a default commonly used country to start with for sign-up users. Just select your default here.
Select Preferred Country: This is where you can select multiple countries that are put to the top of the list during checkout. It’s a good idea to select 2 or 3 of your most popular international countries if you do ship internationally so it’s easier for them to access the correct country code.
Choose a Trigger: This section lets you chose the overall goal or trigger area of the text you wish to create. You may or may not want to chose all of these or some of these, it is entirely up to you and which messages you wish to send. Besides the new user signup notification, all of these triggers deal with order management changes. So when you visit your order panel and manage any order, a change will trigger a text alert IF one of these triggers is setup.
Trigger on All Order Status: This is the default choice, but you could adjust which order status you wish to also work in combination with the trigger. For example, maybe you only want a ‘Order Shipped’ status to actually send in combination with the ‘Order Shipping Tracking Update’ trigger. By default, you can leave this on ‘All Order Statuses’ and just adjust triggers.
Note: these triggers will send text once you edit an order in each trigger area. If you create an order status change trigger and change the customers order status 5 times, it will send out 5 text alerts to the user each time you make that change.
Special Note About Spam Messages:
The EasyCart cloud system can send custom messages as shown, but note that many carriers in the US can block or filter ‘spammy’ messages as well as spam behavior. While testing it can be very easy to trigger multiple text to your same phone number, thus getting those messages blocked and not received. You can also easily include the same message to the same number, thus triggering a carrier block.
Carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and other Tier 1 carriers have heavy blocking in place. For that reason, it is often a good idea to try ‘short’ messages to begin with. ‘Thank you for your order!’ is a good example, or ‘Your order has shipped!’. And then proceed to customize further if you wish, but know that some content is easily blocked but still count as sends because easycart is sending, carriers are blocking or filtering.
While testing, it is easy to get blocked yourself, but know that users may receive messages as they contain new number sign-ups.
Message Customization Tags
We offer special tags that let you inject and customize each message for users for your convenience. These tags will simply inject the data into the text message for a more personalized system. By inserting these custom tags into your message, you can personalize every text to your user.
Example Tag Message: “Thank you for your recent order. We are happy to inform you an item has shipped via {shipping_carrier} with tracking {tracking_number}.”
All Triggers
- {order_id}
- {shipping_method}
- {shipping_carrier}
- {tracking_number}
- {order_customer_notes}
- {shipping_first_name}
- {shipping_last_name}
- {shipping_company_name}
- {shipping_address_line_1}
- {shipping_address_line_2}
- {shipping_city}
- {shipping_state}
- {shipping_country}
- {shipping_zip}
- {shipping_phone}
- {billing_first_name}
- { billing_last_name}
- { billing_company_name}
- { billing_address_line_1}
- { billing_address_line_2}
- { billing_city}
- { billing_state}
- { billing_country}
- { billing_zip}
- { billing_phone}
- {title}
- {model_number}
- {quantity}
- {unit_price}
- {total_price}
- {giftcard_id}
- {gift_card_email}
- {gift_card_from_name}
- {gift_card_to_name}
- {gift_card_message}
- {optionitem_name_1}
- {optionitem_name_2}
- {optionitem_name_3}
- {optionitem_name_4}
- {optionitem_name_5}
That’s it, once you setup your triggers, the system is live and will start sending text alerts out to your customers if they sign up. So what does that sign-up process look like for customers?
The User Signup Process
For your customers, the process is seamless and already integrated into your thank you page. After every order, the thank you page allows customers to choose to enter their phone number and sign-up for text alerts. That’s it! If you have a welcome trigger setup, they will receive a quick welcome message text at this stage, otherwise, any order updates you do as an administrator in easycart that meet trigger status, will send a text alert to users as well, informing them of their order changes.
Cloud Service Credits
All text alerts run through the EasyCart Cloud service, so you are allotted a certain amount of credits per purchase. You may monitor these credits within your normal WP EasyCart -> Store Status menu. If you run out of credits and wish to upgrade to more sending limits, please just contact our support team and we will assist with this matter.