Feature Deep Dive - Banners and Broadcasts

Getting messages out to your clients can be tricky, to say the least.

There are many things that you’ve probably wanted to share with them – things like when your reduced holiday hours are, when there’s an outage, or even simply keeping them informed of news that affects their business technology.

So, in a world where emails don’t always make it through (or get read in the first place), a client portal may still be the best option to getting the messages out.

In fact, setting the expectation that these kinds of messages can be found in a single, easy-to-access spot can do wonders for making sure that people see and interact with them.

Let’s look at how to get your word out using CloudRadial’s banners and broadcasts.

Learning how global banners work

Our partners use the client portal in different ways – some solely for reporting, others for ticketing, and others still for training and intranet capabilities.

To make a message visible to all people, regardless of the scope of the portal, you need to get smart about where you put the message in the first place. Here’s an example of one in action:

Banners help you set that message exactly where you need it to be, for as long as you need it to be.

Found under the Partner > Marketing > Banners tab, you can customize these messages to fit the need.

Check out the image below and how each function correlates to a use case.

1. Set the title and core message text of the banner notification. Remember to keep it brief – people want to know what’s going on quickly.
2. Have additional reference material, such as a support article or other resource? Drop a URL link here and it will append it to the banner with a hyperlink that says “More info…”
3. Proper placement is critical. The home page, report a problem, and service request pages are common areas to place banners because they’re common spots for users to visit (and banners in ticket areas can help to reduce ticket submissions, especially in outage situations).
4. However, the log in page option may be the most useful. That places the banner on the portal log in screen, even before they’ve accessed the portal. It doesn’t abide by targeting parameters you set (after all, how can CloudRadial know the user if they haven’t logged in yet?).
5. The style and position options help to quickly give your audience a reference as to the nature of the message. Remember to use each kind appropriately to keep the message impactful. You don’t want every message to be an emergency unless you want them to start getting ignored.

Global banner targeting

There are two additional sections below that that speak to the “when” and “who”.

These are visible as run dates and audience metrics. Run dates follow three scenarios:

• A start date and NO end date (the banner will start on a day and run then indefinitely).
• A start date AND an end date (the banner will run for a set period).
• NO start date and an end date (the banner will run immediately until the end date).

The audience, on the other hand, is the control for who gets the message. This uses the same user and company group structure as is used in the entire system.

…But what about banners for a single company?

Banners aren’t intended for usage on individual clients. If you have a scenario where you really, really need to have a banner for a specific client, the best practice is to create a company group that is exclusive to them and use the same user interface as described above to get it pushed out to them.

Learning how broadcast messages work

Broadcasts offer a push notification that is best served when it is immediate and actionable for users.

The act of sending a broadcast can either be done globally or individually to a single client. Strategically, this means that you can nudge your users to acknowledge a message that requires visibility – visibility that may be too important to leave to chance.

Furthermore, using a broadcast in conjunction with the desktop app will actually trigger a pop-up from the system tray with the message. This message is “sticky”, so it will remain popped up until actively dismissed. An example:

In comparison, a broadcast received in the cloud-based and Teams-based deployment of CloudRadial will only do a push banner at the bottom-right of the screen. An example of the same broadcast, but in the cloud-based version:

Global broadcast creation

Global broadcasts can be created and pushed via Partner > Marketing > Broadcasts tab. Check out the image below and how each function correlates to a use case.

1. Set the category and core message text of the broadcast notification. Remember to keep it even more brief than banners – people want to know what’s going on quickly.
2. Enter the text of your broadcast. Think of it like a Tweet from Twitter. Short, to the point, and proving why it’s worthy of attention, with 200 characters max.
3. Have additional reference material, such as a support article or other resource? Drop a URL link here and it will append it to the broadcast message.
4. Select the author that is responsible for this. The more important the person, the more authoritative the message.
5. The priority reflects on the color of the banner. Normal will be blue, medium will be yellow, and red will be high.

The other optional steps are to choose whether to also post the contents of the broadcast in the messages area, and whether to include it in the daily digest email.

Global broadcast message targeting

There only other section not pictured above is the audience – this is the control for who gets the message. This uses the same user and company group structure as is used in the entire system.

Single-company broadcast messaging

The same exact steps as listed for the global broadcast can be applied to a single company. To send to a single company, you must navigate to their Company > Messages section and create a message.

The option to “send as broadcast” is the trigger to make the message go out as a push notification, rather than to just sit in the messages section of CloudRadial.

Make client communication a priority 

Communication is key in any business and your MSP is no exception. With CloudRadial’s banners and broadcasts feature, talking to clients is simple and effective.  

Are you Interested in giving CloudRadial a shot for yourself? Set up a trial or schedule a demo and see how you can leverage its features to build a great client experience for your clients.