Help Scout Beacon

Conversion Bridge tracks what visitors do in the Help Scout Beacon, the help and contact widget that sits in the corner of your site. When someone sends you a message or starts a chat through the Beacon, it's recorded as a conversion in your analytics and ad platforms, along with the visitor's email and name for enhanced conversions. You can also track each time the Beacon is opened.

Setup Instructions

Step 1: Add the Beacon to Your Site

If the Beacon is already showing on your site, you can skip this step. Otherwise, copy your Beacon's embed code from Help Scout and add it to your site with your theme or a plugin that adds custom code. Help Scout's Add Beacon to Your Website or App guide walks through it.

You can also paste the embed code into Settings → Conversion Bridge → Custom → Scripts. If you do, set its category to None (always load), because a script set to Analytics or Marketing waits for cookie consent, and the Beacon would stay hidden (and untracked) until the visitor accepts. Scripts added there also don't load for user roles you've turned off under Disable all tracking by role, so if you've excluded your own role, you won't see the Beacon while you're logged in.

Step 2: Enable the Integration

The Beacon is added with a code snippet rather than a WordPress plugin, so Conversion Bridge has no plugin to detect and you turn the integration on yourself.

1. In your WordPress admin, go to Settings → Conversion Bridge → Integrations.
2. Scroll down to the Additional Plugin Integrations list and find Help Scout Beacon.
3. Click Enable. Help Scout Beacon moves up into your main list of integrations and is switched on.

Step 3: Choose What to Track

Click the settings icon next to Help Scout Beacon to see its events. Each event has a checkbox to turn it on and an optional field for a custom conversion label.

• Track messages sent (on by default): Default label "Help Scout Message Sent"
• Track chats started (on by default): Default label "Help Scout Chat Started"
• Track Beacon opens (off by default): Default label "Help Scout Beacon Opened"

Step 4: Save Settings

Click Save Help Scout Beacon settings to start tracking your conversions.

How It Works

• Messages sent are tracked when a visitor fills in the Beacon's contact form and sends it. This is recorded as a form submission, so each platform counts it as a lead (for example, generate_lead in Google Analytics and Lead in Meta).
• Chats started are tracked when a visitor starts a live chat. They're recorded the same way as messages. You'll only see these if chat is turned on for your Beacon in Help Scout.
• Beacon opens are tracked each time a visitor opens the Beacon, whether they send anything or not. They're recorded as a popup open.
• Tracking happens right away in the visitor's browser, with no page reload.
• On pages where the Beacon doesn't load, nothing is tracked and nothing extra runs.
• The text of the visitor's message is never sent to your analytics or ad platforms. Only their email and name go along, as enhanced conversion data.
• Messages and chats also show up in your Conversion Journeys, so you can see which pages someone visited before they reached out.

Tracked Data

Every event includes a conversion label and conversion value. Beacon events don't carry a value.

Messages sent and chats started

Enhanced conversion data

Conversion Bridge includes the visitor's details from the Beacon as enhanced conversion data. Each platform decides whether to use it based on its own enhanced conversions setting.

• _email: The email address the visitor entered
• _first_name: The first word of the name the visitor entered
• _last_name: The rest of the name the visitor entered

The Beacon asks for a single name field, so Conversion Bridge splits it at the first space to get a first and last name.

Beacon opens

Beacon opens only include the conversion label. No visitor details are sent, because the visitor hasn't entered anything yet.

Custom Event Labels

Each event has its own label that you can change in the integration settings:

• Message label: Default "Help Scout Message Sent"
• Chat label: Default "Help Scout Chat Started"
• Open label: Default "Help Scout Beacon Opened"

Custom labels help you tell Beacon conversions apart from your other forms in your analytics reports.