Your web chat can ask visitors who they are: a name, an email address, and any other detail you need — an order number, a company, a phone number. This article explains the three ways those details are collected, where your team sees them, and what it takes to use them in a marketing email.
The short version: details given in the chat are support information — they belong to the conversation and its contact. Addresses for marketing come from people who agreed to receive it, through a lead-capture popup or a list you import. Chatonio keeps the two apart on purpose.
Three ways details are collected
| Pre-chat form | Proactive greeting | Lead-capture popup | |
|---|---|---|---|
| When it appears | Before the visitor’s first message | When the visitor replies to an automatic greeting | On your rules: exit intent, time on page, … |
| What it asks | Name, email and your custom fields | The same pre-chat form | Email, optionally name, with a consent checkbox |
| Where it goes | The contact and the conversation | The contact and the conversation | An email list (campaign audience) |
| Plans | All | Advanced, Pro, Ultimate | Pro, Ultimate |
The pre-chat form
Open the web chat channel’s settings and expand Home screen & chat flow. Switch on Pre-Chat Form. By default it asks for a name and an email; tick which of the two to show and which are required.
For anything more, use Custom fields → Add field. Each field has:
- a key — a short internal name in lower-case letters, digits and underscores, such as
order_number. It is what your team sees next to the answer; - a type — Text, Email, Phone, Long text, Dropdown (with your own options) or Checkbox;
- a label the visitor sees, an optional placeholder, and Required.
As soon as you add a custom field, the custom list replaces the Name and Email checkboxes. To keep asking for those two, add fields with the keys name and email — these two keys still fill the contact’s name and the visitor’s email. Up to ten fields.
Ask only for what your team will use. Every extra required field is a reason not to start the chat, and you should never ask for passwords or card numbers in it.
Proactive greetings
A proactive message with Ask for contact details first ticked shows the same pre-chat form inside the chat when the visitor replies to the greeting, with the greeting still above it. The answers are stored exactly as for the pre-chat form.
Where your team sees the details
- Name — becomes the contact’s name in the inbox, in Contacts and on the Live visitors list. A name an operator set is never overwritten by what the visitor types later.
- Email — shown under Channels → WEB in the conversation’s info panel and on the contact’s page, with a copy button.
- Custom fields — listed under Pre-chat details in the info panel’s Contact section, by their key. A dropdown shows the option’s value, a checkbox ✓ or ✗.
The details stay with the contact, so they are there the next time the same person writes in. If you switch on the offline follow-up email for the channel, a reply the visitor missed is sent to this email address.
Using the details for marketing emails
Email campaigns (Advanced, Pro and Ultimate) are sent to two kinds of recipients:
- Email lists on the Audiences tab — people you add by hand, import from a CSV file, or who subscribe through a lead-capture popup;
- Existing contacts — people who have written to you through an email channel.
An email typed into the web chat pre-chat form is not added to either automatically. It was given to get support, not to receive newsletters, and in many countries — under the EU’s GDPR, for example — sending marketing to it needs the person’s consent. When someone does ask to hear from you (they ticked a checkbox like “Send me offers” in your form, or asked in the chat), add them to a list yourself:
- Go to Marketing → Email campaigns → Audiences and open a list (or create one).
- Add the person by hand, or collect several into a CSV file and use Import CSV. Extra columns in the file —
company,order_number— become merge fields you can use in the email, such as{{company}}.
Custom pre-chat fields are not merge fields on their own — only the columns of a list are. For recipients taken from your contacts, {{first_name}}, {{last_name}} and {{email}} are filled from the contact.
Collecting subscribers directly: lead-capture popups
To grow a marketing list from your website, use an on-site popup with the Lead capture goal (Pro and Ultimate): Marketing → On-site popups. Its Lead form settings ask for an email and, optionally, a name; show a consent checkbox with your own wording and make it required; choose what happens after the visitor submits — a thank-you message, a coupon code or a redirect — and pick the list under Add subscribers to list.
Every submission lands in that list as a subscribed member, together with the consent text the visitor agreed to, and appears in the popup’s leads, which you can export as CSV. The list is then ready to pick as a campaign audience.
Whatever the source, every campaign email carries an unsubscribe link, and anyone who unsubscribes, bounces or reports spam is suppressed automatically for future campaigns.
Good practice
- Tell visitors what you collect and why, in your website’s privacy policy — the chat runs on your site and the data is yours to describe.
- Keep support and marketing separate: a required email in the pre-chat form is fine for follow-ups, not a subscription.