Yelp Integration

Hatch's integration with Yelp helps you respond to your leads quickly and easily!

What does the Yelp integration do?

In order to protect the privacy of consumers who use Yelp to obtain quotes for their projects, Yelp has made the decision not to share the true contact information when a lead is sent through their system. While inconvenient for business users in some aspects, the goal is to maintain user trust in Yelp's platform--ultimately ensuring that users will not hesitate to reach out to businesses about potential projects. To achieve this, Yelp has developed a system of masking the contact information of both lead and business provider through secure communications channels. But this does put businesses in a position to request the lead's contact information at some point in the conversation. 

Hatch's Yelp integration interacts with their APIs to immediately receive a record of new leads and lead messages sent to your business on Yelp. Hatch works with Yelp to ensure that messages sent to contacts via the masked communication channels in Hatch will be successfully delivered to the lead and into the Hatch platform. 

If you're using our Hatch AI to manage your conversations, our bots are programmed with a new interaction that will take care of obtaining and updating the lead's true contact information. Learn more about interacting with temporary contacts and how Hatch AI makes this process easier for businesses here!

How does the Yelp integration work?

Yelp will send a webhook notification to Hatch each time a new lead or lead message is received. 

  • When a new lead event is received, Hatch will create a new Opportunity and Contact records using the temporary contact information. You can target this contact in an audience and immediately launch it into a campaign workflow (all of which will be automatically created for you!)
  • When a new lead message is received, Hatch will create an email message in the Hatch conversation history. Hatch will mark the message as read in the Yelp inbox.
  • When a lead message is responded to using the temporary contact methods, it will populate in the Yelp inbox and marked replied. 

In the Hatch UI, you can identify messages that have been sent via Yelp's masked communication channel with the Yelp icon:

It's important to note that Yelp is masking the information of both the lead and the business. After you have obtained your lead's true contact information, don't forget to provide them with your business's preferred contact information as well. This ensures that they know how to contact you after the masked communication session expires within Yelp. 

Integration Setup

  1. Navigate to the Hatch workspace in which you would like to enable the Yelp communications and campaign workflow.
  2. Navigate to the App Marketplace tab.
  3. Filtering by "Lead Source," you will find the Yelp integration. Click the Connect button.
  4. When you see the O-auth window, click to allow access to your Yelp account. See the FAQ below for notes and clarification on what you're giving Hatch access to. 
    Note: you can only connect a Yelp account to a single integration. If you attempt to provide o-auth access to more than 1 integration, the connection will break. 
  5. On the next screen, you will see a list of Yelp business IDs associated with your user account. To sync leads from a business, enable the toggle. You may enable more than one business.
  6. Once a business has been enabled, you will need to choose from the drop-down which of your Hatch workspaces to sync the lead messages with. Whichever workspace you choose is where the inbound communications will appear on the salesboard. Additionally, that workspace's phone number will be added to the business's allowlist.

    Screenshot 2024-10-25 181612
  7. Once the integration is complete, you can find an automatically created target audience, campaign, and workflow with our recommended speed to lead sequence already setup and ready to go--just turn the workflow on when you're ready to start launching leads!

Additional Hatch Configuration

Allowlist

In order to message with Yelp's leads, two things need to occur, both of which Hatch will take care of:

1. SMS & phone calls may only be placed after the number you are calling from has been added to Yelp's allowlist. Hatch will whitelist your workspace numbers with Yelp. 

2. Email messages must have a specific, unaltered footer identifying the allowed sender. Hatch will automatically append this footer to all emails sent to Yelp contacts. 

Campaign

Generally, Hatch recommends a multi-channel campaign in order to reach your contacts quickest in whatever mode they prefer. In this particular case, the Yelp messaging channel already takes care of some of that: Yelp mirrors a message from the business to both of a lead's contact methods (if they have provided both an email and a phone number). 

This means that it's really not necessary for your Hatch campaign to send both emails and texts to a lead, since every message will be delivered to the lead as both a text and email. In fact, it may lead to redundant messaging and appear spammy:

For example, if your Hatch campaign is sending an initial text and then follows with a similar email 15 minutes later: instead of getting two messages, the lead will get four messages (all saying basically the same thing--you can see how that might seem strange or annoying!). 

Hatch's recommendations:

  • Yelp requires an email address for all leads, but does not require a phone number. Therefore, it makes the most sense to create your Yelp campaign using only the email message type (which will automatically be sent as both an email and text on the Yelp side).
    • Yelp's messaging system does not enable the use of images or HTML, so treat your email messages like an sms message! Keep it simple and use plain text. 
    • Hatch will automatically append the required email footer to messages sent to Yelp emails so no additional config is required here! 
  • Campaign voicemail drops are not supported at this time (but you can still call the lead outside of the context of the campaign sequence).

FAQ

Can I connect my Yelp account to more than 1 integration?

Yelp's OAuth is only valid for a single API connection, so an individual user's credentials can be used to authorize only 1 integration. Attempting to connect to another integration instance or another service will disrupt the connection of your Hatch integration and may result in missed leads or communications. 

How long is Yelp's temporary contact information valid?

Yelp enables the masked communication session for 30 days. After 30 days, the temporary contact methods will expire and are not able to be used for communicating with this contact. This will be reflected in the Hatch contact card (read more here).

How long does it take for my phone numbers to be added to Yelp's allowlist?

Currently, it may take up to 48 hours for Yelp to add your Hatch numbers to their allowlist. Planned improvements will be coming in the future to reduce this timeframe and/or potentially allow users to self-service within their Yelp accounts. 

Will using Hatch affect my reply time that is tracked by Yelp?

Yes! Messages sent via the Yelp temporary contact methods are automatically tracked in their system as a reply made to the lead. Thus, using Hatch to instantly launch the leads into a Speed to Lead campaign will increase your reply time!

What access does Hatch require from my Yelp account?

The following permission is required in order to activate the integration:

  • Read and Respond to Yelp Leads on your behalf

  • Receive the following information from my Yelp account: business account name, email, photo, and role

  • Display listing details