If you’re using live chat on your website and it always greets people with “Hi there! How can I help you?”—you’re missing a trick. People who come back to your site don’t want to feel like strangers every single time. If you’re using HubSpot Chatflows, you can actually make your chat messages way more personal for returning visitors.
This guide is for folks who want their live chat to stop sounding like a robot, and start feeling like a real, attentive human—without making things messy or overcomplicated. Let’s walk through how to set up better, smarter chat messages, what actually works, and what’s just marketing noise.
Why Personalize Chat Messages Anyway?
Personalization isn’t magic, but it does work—when done right. People are more likely to talk to your chat widget if it sounds like it remembers them. Maybe they left off in the middle of a conversation, or downloaded a guide last week, or just poke around your pricing page a lot. If your chat can reference that, it feels less like spam and more like help.
But here’s the thing: Personalization only works if it’s accurate and doesn’t get creepy. “Welcome back, John! I see you checked out our pricing at 2:17pm on Tuesday…”—that’s too much. The goal is to be helpful, not weird.
What Does HubSpot Chatflows Actually Let You Do?
First, quick reality check. HubSpot Chatflows is HubSpot’s built-in chatbot and live chat tool. It’s solid, but it’s not magic. Here’s what you can personalize for returning visitors:
- Known Contact Info: If someone’s filled out a form or chatted before, you can use their name, company, or other details in messages.
- Visitor Behavior: You can customize messages based on which page they’re on, whether they’ve visited before, or if they’re a customer.
- Targeting Rules: You can set up different chatflows for different audiences. For example, returning visitors see a different greeting than first-timers.
What you can’t do: HubSpot won’t, out of the box, greet someone by name unless it recognizes them as a contact (e.g., from a previous form fill or session cookie). If someone is incognito or cleared their cookies, they’ll look new again.
Step 1: Know Your Visitors—and What Counts as “Returning”
Before you start tinkering in HubSpot, figure out what “returning” really means for your site. Some folks visit once a month, some come back every day.
- Returning visitor (to HubSpot) = someone who’s been cookied and/or is a known contact in your CRM.
- Anonymous visitor = someone your site doesn’t recognize (new device, cleared cookies, etc.).
Don’t stress about making this perfect. Aim for messaging that feels right for most repeat visitors, and don’t obsess over the edge cases.
Pro tip: If you have lots of anonymous traffic, focus on page-based or behavior-based targeting instead of using names.
Step 2: Plan Your Personalized Chat Messages
Just because you can use someone’s name doesn’t mean you always should. The best chat messages are friendly, relevant, and direct.
A few ideas: - “Welcome back! Any questions since your last visit?” - “Hey again! Need more info on our pricing?” - “Good to see you again. Want to pick up where we left off?”
Avoid: Overly formal or robotic language, and anything that promises more personalization than you can deliver.
Step 3: Set Up Targeted Chatflows in HubSpot
Let’s get to the nuts and bolts. Here’s how to actually set this up:
3.1 Create a New Chatflow
- In your HubSpot dashboard, go to Conversations > Chatflows.
- Click Create chatflow and choose Website.
- Pick Live chat or Bot (most people use Live chat for this).
3.2 Set Display and Targeting Rules
This is where the personalization magic happens.
- Target Returning Visitors:
- In the chatflow editor, go to the Target tab.
- Add a filter: Contact property > Last seen or List membership (e.g., create a list of returning visitors).
- Or use Website history rules (e.g., “Number of sessions is greater than 1”).
- Target by Page or Behavior:
- Show different chatflows on your pricing page, support section, or blog.
- Example: “Need help choosing a plan?” only appears on the pricing page for returning visitors.
3.3 Personalize the Greeting
- In the Welcome message or Bot message step, use personalization tokens.
- Example: “Welcome back{{ contact.firstname }}!” (If you want to get fancy.)
- If no name is available, have a generic fallback: “Welcome back! Anything we can help with?”
Tip: Always test your chatflow as a new visitor and a returning one. You don’t want visitors seeing blank spaces where their name should be.
Step 4: Use Personalization Tokens (But Don’t Overdo It)
HubSpot lets you insert tokens like {{ contact.firstname }} anywhere in your chat messages. But it only works if the visitor is a known contact.
- To add tokens: In the chatflow editor, click the Personalize button (wand icon) where you type your message.
- Fallbacks: Always have a backup message if the token is blank.
What works: Using a first name, referencing their company, or mentioning a recent download—if you actually have that data.
What doesn’t: Trying to force personalization for anonymous users. It’ll just show “Welcome back, !” or similar, which is worse than a generic message.
Step 5: Segment Your Audience for Smarter Messages
You don’t want to bombard everyone with personal chat messages. Segment your audience:
- Existing customers: Offer support or upsell options.
- Leads: Point them to resources or a demo.
- Frequent visitors: Ask if they want a callback or tailored info.
Use Lists in HubSpot to group contacts, and tie different chatflows to each list. If you’re not sure how to do this, start simple: one chatflow for returning visitors, one for everyone else.
Step 6: Test It—Like a Real Visitor
Before you pat yourself on the back, test your chatflows:
- Clear your cookies, visit in incognito mode, and see what a new user sees.
- Log in as a known contact (or use a test contact) to see the personalized experience.
- Try coming back after a day or two—does HubSpot still recognize you as a “returning visitor”?
- Make sure fallback messages work. Blank tokens = rookie mistake.
Pro tip: Don’t rely on your team to test. Ask someone unfamiliar with the setup to try it and give honest feedback.
Step 7: Measure and Tweak
Don’t just set it and forget it. After a week or two, look at:
- Chat engagement rates: Are more returning visitors starting conversations?
- Drop-off points: Are people bailing mid-chat? Maybe the message is off.
- Feedback: Are your team or users giving you clues that the messages are working (or not)?
If you’re not seeing improvement, scale back the personalization and focus on relevance—sometimes a simple “Welcome back! Anything we can help with?” beats a message with their first name.
What to Ignore (For Now)
- Third-party chat tools: Stick with HubSpot Chatflows unless you have a strong reason to switch. More tools = more complexity.
- Creepy tracking: Avoid referencing too-specific behaviors. No one wants to feel stalked.
- Over-customization: If you’re spending more time tweaking chatflows than actually helping visitors, you’re overthinking it.
Keep It Simple—Iterate Over Time
Personalizing live chat isn’t about making every visitor feel like royalty. It’s about not sounding like a robot, and being a little more helpful every time someone comes back. Start simple, watch what works, and tweak as you go. If you do it right, your chat messages will feel more like a friendly “Hey, good to see you again,” and less like a cold sales script.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Set up your personalized chatflows, keep things human, and improve as you learn what your visitors actually respond to.