Using the Message Variable Menu
In this lesson, we’re going to cover how to use the Message Variable Menu in Chatavise.
This tool makes it easy to:
- Access saved links
- Generate trackable links unique to each contact
- Insert dynamic variables into messages, like contact, appointment, and order information
This is what makes both one-on-one conversations—and your mass text campaigns—so powerful.
Where You’ll Use the Message Variable Menu
You can access the Message Variable Menu nearly everywhere you draft a message in Chatavise:
- When sending a one-on-one text
- When creating a mass text campaign
- When building out a workflow
- When saving a message template
It’s available almost everywhere you’re creating a message.
Using Message Variables Wisely
Not every message variable makes sense in every situation. For example, in a one-on-one conversation, it’s usually simpler to type the person’s name directly:
Hi Ron, make sure to sign up for the Chatavise affiliate link. Your referral is opening their account tomorrow.
That message is clear and personal—no variables needed.
But if you wanted to automate this for 2,168 contacts, using a message variable becomes powerful.
Instead of typing each name, you’d:
- Delete the name “Ron”
- Type
Shift + 3to open the Message Variable Menu - Switch the Category from “Business Card” to “Contact”
- Choose “First Name”
Now, every contact in your list will receive a message that feels personally written—addressed by their own first name.
Exploring Categories
Let’s take a closer look at the Categories inside the Message Variable Menu.
Hit Shift + 3 to open the menu. Then click Categories. You’ll see them listed in alphabetical order.
Note: If you don’t see a specific category (like Business Card or Surveys), it may be because you haven’t created those elements yet. Chatavise only shows categories relevant to your account setup.
The Three Main Groups of Categories
To make this easier, we’re going to group the categories into three buckets.
Group One: Shareable Tools
Includes:
- Business Cards
- Feedback
- Links
- Referrals
- Surveys
These categories are easy to use. Once you’ve created the item in Chatavise, just add the message variable into your text and you’re good to go.
Examples:
- Business Card → Select a business card from the list to instantly share it.
- Feedback
- Review Invite sends a general review link tied to the business.
- My Review Invite gives credit to the individual sender and contributes to the leaderboard. (More on that in the Reviews lesson.)
- Links → Access short links you’ve added to your Chatavise account.
- Referrals → Invite your customers to refer others to your business.
- Surveys → Share survey links that collect feedback or info from your contacts.
Each of these sends a unique, trackable link—so you can monitor engagement:
- Did they start the survey?
- Are they halfway through?
- Did they complete it?
And all of these can be built and completed inside Chatavise. No integrations needed.
Group Two: Built-In Personalization
Includes:
- Contact
- Location
- User
These pull in contact or user information that’s already native to Chatavise.
Contact Variables:
- Address
- First Name
- First or Last Name
- Greeting
- Last Name
- Time Zone
Location Variables:
- Name
- Phone Number
User Variable:
- User’s Name (automatically fills in the sender’s name)
These are especially useful when sending personalized messages to large groups or creating automations.
Group Three: Advanced Integration Fields
Includes:
- Order
- Tracking
These categories typically require integrations to be functional.
Order Variables:
- Arrival Window
- Order Date
- Order Number
- Order Team Avatars
- Lead Tech Name
Tracking Variables:
- Estimated Arrival
- Tracking Link
- My Tracking Link
Not sure what each variable does? Don’t worry—a short description appears at the bottom of each one to guide you.
Final Thoughts
To recap, the most commonly used categories across industries are:
- Links
- Business Cards
- Surveys
- Feedback
Once you’re comfortable with the Message Variable Menu, your text communication becomes smarter, faster, and more personal—at any scale.
See you in the next lesson!
Let me know if you’d like this version formatted for a slide deck, turned into a script for a screen recording, or split into bite-sized lessons!
In this lesson, we’re going to cover how to use the Message Variable Menu in Chatavise.
The Message Variable Menu makes it easy to do three things:
- Access links
- Generate trackable links unique to each contact
- Insert dynamic variables into text messages like contact, appointment, and order information
This makes one-on-one text conversations—and your mass text campaigns—powerful.
So let’s get started.
The Message Variable Menu is accessible nearly everywhere you are drafting a text message. You can access it when you are:
- Creating a one-on-one text message, like I’m doing here
- Creating a mass text campaign, like I’ve done here
- Creating a workflow, like I’ve done here
- Creating a template, like I’ve done here
You can access the Message Variable nearly everywhere you are creating a text message.
Not every category or individual message variable makes sense to use in every scenario. For example, when sending a one-on-one text message, it’s smarter to just text the person’s name, like this: Hi Ron, make sure to sign up for the Chatavise affiliate link. Your referral is opening their account tomorrow. As you can see, it makes sense to write out the person’s name. But if we wanted to accomplish this using a message variable, we would take out the person’s name, do the hashtag, go to Categories, and switch it from Business Card to Contacts, then choose First Name. This will accomplish the same thing as the original message. However, it’s kind of silly to use the message variable in this particular scenario. But let’s say we were actually going to text 2,168 people, and I still want to personalize the text message. This is where the message variable becomes very powerful. I’m able to go to Categories, go to Contact, choose First Name, and now anything I say after this will be addressing each contact that has a first name in the first name field—by their name. That helps you personalize a text message at scale.
Now, the next thing we’re going to go through is the Categories. If I do Shift + 3 again and pull up this Message Variable box, and we click on Categories, we’ll see that the categories are listed in alphabetical order. Now, if you don’t see all the categories that you see on my screen in your account—for example, the Business Card one—it might be because you didn’t create your business card during the business card lesson. If no message variable exists, then that category will not appear. Another example: if you look for Surveys, you may not see the Survey category in your account if you didn’t go over and create a survey.
To make explaining categories easier, we’re going to break them into three groups:
Group One
Includes: Business Cards, Feedback, Links, Referrals, and Surveys
These are in Group One because, simply put, once you create these in Chatavise, all you have to do is share them by including the message variable in the text message. It’s simple. Let’s take a look.
We see that Business Card is the category that’s selected. And if we scroll down, we can see what business cards are available.
If we go back up to Category and choose Feedback, we can see the Review Invite option, which will send a generic review invite to the customer and give credit to the business. We also see My Review Invite that we can send to the customer, and this will give credit to the individual user as well as the business. This will tie it to the leaderboard as well (more on that in the review lesson).
The next category is Link. Here, we can access the short links that we uploaded to Chatavise.
The next category is Referrals. Here, we’re able to send a referral to our contacts for them to send us more business.
The next category is Surveys. If we click on Survey, we’re able to access surveys that we’ve created.
All of these categories send a unique link to the contact so that you know if the contact clicked on it. And when applicable—such as with surveys—we’ll give you some data, such as:
- Did they start the survey?
- Are they halfway through?
- Did they complete it?
Also, the thing that all these categories have in common is that you can start and complete them natively on Chatavise. No integrations are required.
Group Two
Includes: Contact, Location, and User categories.
These categories pull in information that, for the most part, is native in Chatavise to include in a text message.
Let’s go to the Contact category. Here we see six available message variables we can use:
- Address
- First Name
- First or Last Name
- Greeting
- Last Name
- Time Zone
The next category is Location. Here we have two message variables:
- Name
- Phone Number
The last category in this group is User, and this will replace with the user’s name who is sending the message.
Group Three
Includes: Order and Tracking categories.
We group these together because, for the most part, they require an integration to be functional.
Let’s go into the Order category. When we click on Order, we see:
- Arrival Window
- Order Date
- Order Number
- Order Team Avatars
- Lead Tech Name
The next category is Tracking. Here we see the following three message variables:
- Estimated Arrival
- Tracking Link
- My Tracking Link
We don’t expect you to remember what each message variable does, so we provide a short description at the bottom of each one.
Final Thoughts
The key categories to become familiar with—and I’d say the most frequently used regardless of your business—are:
- Links
- Business Cards
- Surveys
- Feedback
Now that you’ve become familiar with the Message Variable Menu, I’ll see you in the next lesson.
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