Effi Sparks allow you to listen to your audience to gather their group sentiment and then react to how they are feeling in a variety of fun expressions.
If X, then Y
The simplest way to describe how Sparks work is in the form of an equation. If X, then Y. The X is an expressions what the audience is thinking and Y is an action like displaying a GIF, image, video, audio file, a poll, or any URL. For example, if the audience is angry, we’ll show them a devil face emoji 👿.
Creating a Spark isn't easy because it requires you to think ahead creatively. Using the above example, let's think through each step.
What would the audience be saying if they were angry? What kind of words, phrases or emojis would they be using to express their anger?
Now that we know they're angry, what would they want to change? Sometimes the audience wants something new to happen ( like moving onto the next segment) OR they just want the acknowledgment of being heard.
What's a good way of communicating to your audience that you heard how they feel? Is it a funny GIF? An image? A soundbite or video? A poll for them to pick the next segment? How about a devil face emoji.
Now you might be thinking, well how do I know if my audience is angry? That's where Accepted Responses comes in. Each time you add an option to your Sparks you will see an Accepted Responses field. This is how you will know how your audience is feeling.
Let's continue with the example above. In step number 1 we told you to think about what your audience might say if they were angry. You will take all of the words, phrases, and emojis you can think of and list them in Accepted Responses. Things like pass, bored, hate, yuck, 😴, ❌, and so on.
Once you connect your Spark to chat, Effi will scan for everything you listed in that accepted responses field under "Angry" and will let you know if your audience is angry at any point by displaying the devil emoji 👿 . Then you can decide what you want to do about it, like we discussed in step 3 above.
Sparks are a great tool and while they do require a bit of creative thinking and planning, the possibilities are endless. Continue onto the next article, “How to add Sparks” where we will use the devil face emoji 👿 example to illustrate how to create, build, and add triggers to your stream. See you there!