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How to Launch a Bot with a DriftLink

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In addition to the host of targeting and display conditions you have access to through your Audience settings, you can also use a DriftLink to ensure a lead or prospect sees a specific bot when they reach your site from a link in your email!

DriftLinks are hashed identifiers that informs Drift which bot Playbook to fire. If you append them to any URL on your site, your Playbook will fire.

Some use cases include

  • sharing a link from your social media to drive a whole new pool of traffic to your website and bots!
  • append a DriftLink to a link to your site from an email campaign and serve a personalized message when a prospect or customer lands on your site!

In this doc, we'll go over

  1. Setting up your DriftLink
  2. Using your DriftLink
  3. Firing a bot from a button using a DriftLink

Plan availability: 

Bot Playbooks and DriftLinks are available on the Pro plan and above.

Here’s how to set up your #DriftLinks...

Select your Playbook

Click the Playbook icon, then New Playbook and Chat Playbook.

Build out your bot flow as you like.

Create Your Unique DriftLink

Head to the DriftLink tab along the top navigation bar. In the composer, select a unique tag to use for your DriftLink.

Keep your names short and sweet so they’re easier to remember!
If you only want your Playbook to fire with this DriftLink, check the box that says "Only fire when #DriftLink is present." Otherwise, your bot Playbook will also use the targeting conditions you've set in "Audience."
Keep in mind that should you change your DriftLink after deploying your Playbook, any links you'd previously shared with the prior DriftLink will no longer fire the Playbook.

Using your #DriftLink

Your Drift Link can be added to the end of any of your page’s URL and the selected Bot will be set up on that page!

For example, www.drift.com/signup#example

Two important steps when using the DriftLink:

1. Make sure there is a # before the DriftLink's name

2. If you've built your DriftLink into a button, avoid the page refreshing on every click by remove the trailing slash within the URL. This video goes into more detail about avoiding this refresh.

A customer can be brought to the same Bot multiple times if they click on the link more than once.

Firing the DriftLink from any button

A great usage for the DriftLink would be to add it to the href of a button that you already have on your website, so that it will cause the conversation sidebar to pull up right on the side of the page instead of having a page refresh. An example of this would be Drift's "Get a Demo" button on our homepage (click here to access):

Make sure that when you're inserting it you only have the #DriftLink itself, and not the entire URL!
For the full technical instructions for firing a Playbook from a button, check out our developer documentation here!

Firing an Online/Offline Playbook from a Button using DriftLinks

If you've enabled "Only fire when #DriftLink is present," you will lose the ability to edit or customize Audience settings, as they are ignored. However, if you're using the DriftLink to fire a Playbook from a button, you can use Conditional Branching to fire one flow if Drift is online and another if it's offline!

Your targeted business hours can be set here!

Still stuck? Email us at support@drift.com. Not using Drift yet? Get your free account here.

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