Webhooks explained (In plain English)

Your body automatically sends messages telling you when to sleep and eat. That way, you don’t have to manually ask if it’s hungry or tired, which would be a nightmare.

Webhooks work the same way.

In this post, we’ll explain webhooks in simple English. We’ll talk about what they are, what you can use them for, and how to implement them into your business.

What’s a webhook?

A webhook is an easy way for applications to communicate. It lets you send data in real time whenever an event occurs.

Here’s an easy-to-understand webhook example: Let’s say you’re walking home with your friend. You’ve reached your home, but now your friend still needs to walk a few miles. You tell your friend to send a message when they get home so you know they’re safe.

So your friend walks home and sends you a text. This is a real-life example of a webhook.

When you ask your friend to text you, it’s called a command. This command is triggered when your friend reaches home, resulting in an event.

Also, your friend is sending a response to your phone number, which is the unique URL. So whenever an event is triggered, a response is sent to your URL.

Now let’s use a more advanced example: Imagine you have a PayPal account and your friend sends some money. You need to know when the money is in your account, so you go to PayPal and set up an email notification.

This is the command because you’re telling PayPal, “Whenever I receive money, send me an email.” When you receive the funds, this is the event, and the unique URL is your email address.

What are webhooks used for?

Webhooks are used to communicate occurrences of events between multiple systems; they’ll share data about this event.

Say you subscribe to a data management software solution that charges you at the end of every month, and the company wants to send you an email as a confirmation after charging your account.

They’ll use the bank’s services to send a webhook when your card is charged. That way, you automatically receive confirmation after every withdrawal.

What are the benefits of webhooks?

Here are some pros to implementing webhooks:

• Improved efficiency
• Easier automation
• Increased specificity

Improved efficiency

If you’re looking to send data to several applications without setting up complex systems or missing out on important information, webhooks are the most efficient option. Unlike other interfaces that only trigger events, webhooks let you push data to the application as soon as it’s available.

This is almost like setting up email notifications for your PayPal account. Instead of having to log into PayPal every time to check your balance, you’ll receive a message saying you received funds.

This is helpful for data managers because instant transfers improve efficiency. No longer do you have to manually check for data changes.

Easier automation

If you want to automate the data management and transfer process, webhooks can help. With webhooks, it’s super easy to let users determine actions for triggering specific events. And since they transfer data in real time, you can use webhooks to create events you’d like to repeatedly happen without manual management.

Let’s say you want to create an automated notification system so whenever someone buys a product, they’ll receive an email. If you were to do this manually, it would take hours. Fortunately, with webhooks, you can automate this process in seconds.

Increased specificity

Instead of connecting multiple code elements to create a data system, you can simply make a direct connection between applications with webhooks. This increases specificity because setting up a webhook is more straightforward than other APIs.

Connecting different software parts can also create more accurate data transfer systems since you have complete control over information.

Now let’s look at how to implement webhooks into your business.

How to use webhooks to improve work processes

With the Lytics customer data manager, you can use Lytics webhooks to pair with serverless functions and create custom workflows, powering your marketing and data management campaigns.

You also have the ability to configure these webhooks and trigger push notifications, emails, and text messages.

Creating a webhook within Lytics is easy. Simply export the audience you’d like to segment and return to your Lytics dashboard. Go to Data > Integrations and choose Webhooks.

From there, select New Workflow and Segment Trigger Webhook.

You want to choose the audience you’ve segmented, then click Start Export.

After a few minutes, you’ll receive an email or text message saying your webhook was successfully created. So when users enter or exit your audience, Lytics notifies you.

Webhooks made easy with Lytics

Webhooks allow multiple applicants to communicate automatically. This improves efficiency, automation, and specificity. Webhooks also don’t have to be complex. You can create a webhook using Lytics in just a few minutes.

If you’re ready to use webhooks to automate tedious work processes, sign up for a free Lytics trial today.