Alerts automatically send key insights about your brand, competitors, or industry trends. Access to some or all of these alerts is dependent on a customer's subscription.
Smart Alerts help PR and Marketing Professionals stay ahead of the curve through real-time insights by leveraging positive trends and mitigating potential issues before they become a full-blown crisis.
This article will cover:
Requirements
You’ll need saved searches in order to power certain alert types. Some alerts are based on companies or industries you are following within an alert. Learn more about Creating a Saved Search in Explore.
Getting Familiar with Alerts
Creating an Alert
There are a number of ways you can create an alert in Meltwater - directly from the Alerts tab, through the alerts bell icon, via Explore or Monitor, and even from your Social Connections: Monitored Page.
Create an Alert from the Alerts Tab
Select Alerts from the left-hand navigation bar
Select Create Alert
Select an alert type
Select Next.
Fill in the details required for your alert type.
Select how you would like to receive the alert. Options include:
Standard
Email
Meltwater web (in-app notifications)
Select if you would to set the alert for yourself or another user on your account.
Select Save.
Create an Alert from the Bell Icon
Select the bell icon in the upper right-hand corner
Click Create more alerts in the pop-up
Select an alert type
Click Next
Fill in the details required for your alert type
Select Save
Create an Alert from Explore
Click Explore in the left-hand navigation bar
Hover over the search you want to create an alert for
Select Create alert
Select an alert type
Click Next
Fill in the details required for your alert type
Select Save
Create an Alert from Monitor
Select Monitor in the left-hand navigation bar
Select the + icon to add searches if you have not already
Once you have a search or searches pulling into Monitor, select Create in the top right-hand corner
Select Create alerts
Select an alert type
Click Next
Fill in the details required for your alert type
Select Save
Create an Alert from Social Connections: Monitored Pages
Click the Account drop-down in the left-hand navigation bar
Select Social Connections
Select the + icon found under Competitors or Monitored Pages in the Facebook section
Click Create alert
Select an alert type
Click Next
Fill in the details required for your alert type
Select Save
Setting up Alert Integrations
Alerts can be sent in-app, on web or mobile, email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, DingTalk, and Generic Webhook. For more information on integrating Slack, Microsoft Teams, DingTalk, and Generic Webhooks with Meltwater, click below:
In-App Alerts
You can find in-app alerts easily on the Homepage. They are displayed in a section right below the 'More from Meltwater' promo card, showing the latest updates. There's also a 'mark as read' feature to help you keep track of your alerts. Any alerts shown on the Homepage will be marked as Unread (and will stay bolded) until you select them.
Mobile Push Notifications
Sending notifications through to your mobile rather than email can help to ensure you stay up to date with the latest news of importance to you while on the go. These notifications can be customized within your Mobile App to distribute coverage from selected search folders during your specified working hours.
Ensure you have the latest Meltwater mobile app from the App Store or Google Play store.
Select Settings from the bottom navigation bar
Select Notifications
Toggle Enable notifications to on
Your searches will appear under news. Toggle the switch to ‘on’ next to any searches you would like to receive notifications for.
To learn more, please review our How to Set Up Mobile Push Notifications article.
Ensure you've downloaded the latest version of the Meltwater Mobile app for your device. For Apple users, you can download the app via the App Store. For Android, you can download the app on Google Play.
Pausing or Deleting an Alert
Sometimes, you may no longer need an alert. In this case, you can pause or delete your alert all together.
To pause an alert:
Click Alerts in the left navigation bar.
Hover over the alert.
Select Pause. If the alert is already paused, you will see the option to resume.
Note: When pausing/resuming an alert, it will pause for all recipients and delivery methods.
To delete an alert:
Click Alerts in the left navigation bar.
Hover over the alert.
Select Delete
Click Delete
Reducing the Frequency of Alerts
For less frequent updates, consider setting up a Digest Report. This provides a summary of your search results in one or two daily email summaries of your search results; check out How do I Create or Edit a Digest Report.
Understanding Alert Types
Now let’s walk through each alert type. We will go over when that alert is sent, the value, examples, and FAQs.
Types of Alerts include:
Spike Detection
A Spike Detection alert is sent when Meltwater detects that a search volume is much higher than your saved search’s baseline. For social searches, it compares the last hour with the past 12 hours. For editorial searches, it compares one day with the past 14 days. To make sure the results are really unusual, we compare them with the previous day and week before sending you the alert.
Spike Detection includes insights such as:
AI-Powered Summary - plain language summary explanation that includes both the cause and reason for the spike
Top Source Types - the message type driving the spike (i.e. Twitter Retweet)
Top Terms - the terms driving the spike
Sentiment - the overall sentiment of the spike (i.e. positive, negative, neutral)
Top Locations - the top location driving the spike
Top Topics - the most relevant topics driving the spike (i.e. people and society)
Why Use Spike Detection?
This type of alert notifies you when there's an unusual change in volume regarding your specific search. It can help identify whether your brand, a competitor, or a topic is trending on social or has received wide news coverage. Receiving this information in a timely manner can help participate in social conversations as they happen, react to issues as they occur, stay informed regarding important topics, and help your overall PR or marketing strategies.
Here are some examples of Spike Detection:
The social mentions for a cosmetic brand average 200 hits during Saturday afternoons. This is its current baseline. One Saturday afternoon, its number of social mentions jumps to 500 within an hour. This alert will notify the user of this change.
Compared to the last two weeks, the news mentions about car safety features increased by 300% after an announcement by a major automotive manufacturer. This alert will notify the user of this change.
Why haven't I received any Spike Detection Alerts?
Spike Detection alerts only occur if there's an unusual spike in volume for your saved search.
Company Events
A Company Events alert is sent by Meltwater when something important happens in the businesses you follow, like a partnership, acquisition, or significant headcount growth.
These alerts focus on key business events, making it easier for all departments in your organization to quickly take action. For instance, a sales team can leverage a Company Event Alert to stay up to date on their prospects. This helps you stay fully informed about what's happening in your business environment.
What type of Company events can Meltwater detect?
Company events will detect the following categories:
Event Group | Company Event |
Award | Award |
| Conference Participation |
| Customer Win |
| Signs and Deals |
| High Profile Award |
Brand Crisis | Civil Law |
| Criminal Law |
| Cyber Attack |
| PR Problem |
Corporate | Acquisition |
| ESG |
| Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) |
| Intellectual Property |
| IPO |
| Merger |
| Quote |
| Restructuring |
| Strategy |
| Artificial Intelligence (AI) |
| Marketing Advertising Initiatives |
Executive Change | Executive Appointment |
| Executive Departure |
| Executive Replacement |
Financial | Fundraising |
| Insolvency |
| Neutral Financial Results |
| No Funding Anomaly |
| Overdue Funding Anomaly |
| Weak Financial Results |
Headcount | Capacity Expansion |
| Capacity Reduction |
| Headcount Growth |
| Headcount Reduction |
| Market Expansion |
Marketing | Marketing Campaign |
| Launch |
Partnership | Event Streak |
| High Profile Partnership |
| Partnership |
Valuation Change | Valuation Change |
| Valuation Decrease |
| Valuation Increase |
Filter Events Alerts by type
When creating your alert, you can select from a variety of the above event types. Choose any combination that suits your needs best, so you only get alerts about the events that are most relevant to you.
What type of content do Company Events track?
Company Events track content based on the following parameters:
Editorial content
Editorial sources must have a minimum reach of 1,000
English only
What are some examples of an Events alert?
Industry | Challenge | Event | Benefit |
Healthcare | Remaining competitive in a rapidly changing industry. | Competitor announces a partnership with a courier company to use drone services to drop off drugs and prescriptions. | The company received timely information and adjusted its strategy to remain competitive. |
Automotive | Assessing competitive landscape while operating in a volatile market. | Industry leader slashes workforce amid corporate restructuring. | The competitor's recruitment team expedited their seasonal hiring campaign. |
CPG | Low turnover in highly skilled executives. | CMO departs from a competitor company. | Organization poached a giant industry fish and add them to their C-suite. |
Marketplace Software | Strategic market expansion in a broad and complex global market. | Top competitor starts operations in Dubai. | Narrow global expansion to one region and identify potential acquisition targets. |
Why haven't I received any Company Events alerts?
Events should be rare and actionable, so there is no guaranteed amount of 'Company Events' you will receive.
Why isn't the company I'm searching for appearing in the drop-down?
There are ~193,000 companies available for Events. If a company is not appearing or there is incorrect company information you have the option to "Provide Feedback" from within the platform.
You will receive updates on your feedback from our support team via email.
Industry Events
This alert is designed to alert you to high-impact business events for an entire industry (i.e. Automobile Manufactures, Health Care Services, etc.).
How does it work?
Navigate to the Alerts homepage via the left-hand navigation bar.
Click the purple Create Alert button
Select Industry Events
Type the name of the industry you would like to receive alerts for and select from the options. You may only choose one industry per alert.
You may select up to 10 companies you would like to exclude from the industry to not receive alerts for (i.e. your company).
Select the specific events you would like to receive alerts for (i.e. acquisition, headcount reduction, etc.)
Select the recipient(s) you would like to receive the alerts.
Select how and where you would like to receive the alerts (i.e. email, slack, etc.)
Click Save to save your Industry Events alert!
Example email alert:
Top Reach
A Top Reach alert is triggered when a widely-read editorial source mentions keywords from your saved search. These alerts are based on mentions that score significantly higher than your search's baseline. The baseline is calculated using data from either the last 3 days or the first 20,000 mentions, focusing on the reach of the source.
Why use Top Reach alerts?
They are crucial because mentions from influential sources about your company, competitors, or industry can have a significant impact. Top Reach alerts help you monitor key editorial sources that talk about your keywords. This enables you to inform executive leadership about high-profile press coverage or to highlight these mentions in your reports.
X (formerly Twitter) Influencers
A Twitter Influencer alert is sent when a widely-followed Twitter source mentions keywords for your saved search.
Alerts are triggered when a tweet scores much higher than your search’s baseline, which is calculated from the last 3 days of data or the first 20k mentions. Tweets are scored on the account’s engagement level and network size (number of tweets, follower count, and following count).
Why use Twitter Influencer alerts?
When an influential Twitter handle mentions your company, competitors, or industry, it can directly or indirectly impact your organization. The Twitter Influencer alert allows you to stay on top of influential Twitter handles that mention your keywords. Engage with influencers who are mentioning you and potentially create new partnerships, understand what could cause your search terms to trend, and mitigate potential risks.
Sentiment Shift
Sentiment Shift alerts help you track changes in the tone of discussions about your brand, industry, and competitor. Similar to Spike Detection alerts, which monitor changes in coverage volume, Sentiment Shift alerts focus on shifts in positive and negative sentiment. These changes are measured against a standard baseline, giving you insights into how the public perception is evolving.
Every Mention
The Every Mentions Alert keeps you updated by notifying you via email or mobile whenever new search results are added to a monitoring folder. These notifications can be set up for any Meltwater users.
These alerts are triggered each time a new mention appears in the selected search, with a maximum of 200 alerts sent each hour.
How to Set Up Every Mention Alerts
All alerts, including Every Mention, are connected to your saved searches in Explore. Before creating a new Every Mention alert, make sure you have saved the monitoring topics or keywords for the media coverage that you want to track.
Click on the Alerts tab in the navigation panel.
Select Create Alert
Report Type: select Every Mention
Select an Input. Searches are available depending on the search filters that are enabled
Select recipients. Choose who you would like to set up notifications for from the list of your users.
Protip: If you would like some recipients to have the alert delivery method of email and others via mobile, this can be done by setting up two different alerts.
Select delivery method.
Select Save
Turn off Every Mention Alerts
To stop receiving Every Mention alerts, you can easily delete the alert from your list. This also applies to alerts set up for other users, which can be managed using the 'View Alerts for' dropdown.
Remember, when editing an alert, you can change how it's delivered, but not the alert's content or its recipients.
If you're turning off instant notifications because they're not relevant, don't hesitate to contact our team through Live Chat. We can assist you in refining the search terms to ensure you get more relevant results.
Reducing the Frequency of Alerts
For less frequent updates, consider setting up a Digest Report. This provides a summary of your search results in one or two emails daily. To learn more, have a look at the help article on this topic.
Follow a Post
Follow a Post allows you to follow an X (formerly Twitter) post, directly from the Content Stream. Every time that post receives a new reply, repost, or quote, you will be notified. This will help you in both traditionally negative and positive cases.
Crisis Management: real-time monitoring of a post to track engagement and reach, to see if intervention is needed, or comms is required from the brand.
Campaign Tracking: monitor the traction of a post to track real-time reception, organic growth, and ad spend opportunities
RSS Feed
RSS Feed will alert you every time a new document appears in your RSS Feed(s). This alert works the same way as an Every Mention alert but only for your select RSS feed. Learn more about adding RSS Feeds.
Page Engagement
Page Engagement alerts are sent when there is a noticeable increase in interaction on your Facebook page. You'll receive this alert when activities like reactions, comments, shares, clicks, and video views on your posts are substantially higher than usual. This 'usual' level, or baseline, is measured over a rolling 7-day period, with the metrics updated daily based on the past 24 hours.
Note: Page Engagement alerts are exclusively available to users of Engage and Social Analytics.
Likely Boosted
Likely Boosted alerts notify you when it's predicted that a competitor's Facebook post has been promoted to target audiences for a fee. This is based on the level of engagement the post receives, including reactions, comments, and shares.
If you're an Explore customer and have authenticated a Facebook profile under your monitored social connections, you can monitor up to 10 Facebook pages for such boosted posts.
The system checks posts from these monitored pages every 6 hours for 7 days to track engagement updates. Importantly, a Likely Boosted alert is only sent once for each post.
Breakout Post
Breakout Post alerts are issued when a post on your Facebook page receives more engagement (reactions, comments, and shares) than the average of all your posts in the last 7 days.
To enable these alerts, you need to connect at least one Facebook page. You can then select up to 10 of your connected Facebook pages for monitoring. These posts are reviewed every three hours over a period of 7 days, comparing their engagement to the rolling average of the last 7 days for your page.
Note: Your page should have regular daily engagements to set an accurate baseline.
System
System Alerts keep you informed about various actions and statuses within the system. You'll receive notifications for:
Completed actions, like a download is completed.
Tasks have been assigned to you.
Disconnections of an owned or paid social account.
These alerts are automatically activated for all users, but you can choose to opt out of any specific alerts through the Alerts page:
Select System
Deselect the alerts you don't need.
Types of System Alerts:
Assignments in Publish: Get alerted for new assignments, approvals, rejections, or drafts in Publish Engage.
Downloads: Receive notifications when your CSV export files are ready.
Social Account Connections: Stay updated on the status of your social accounts. You'll be alerted 10 days, 5 days, 1 day before, and on the expiration date. This covers Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn owned connections, and Facebook and Instagram Paid connections, alerting you if they are about to expire, have expired, or are marked invalid.
Sending to External Users
You can send Smart Alerts to external users (non-Meltwater users). Simply enter any email address you wish as shown below:
Important to note:
There’s added context in the email itself. For example:
External users can unsubscribe on their own within the email.
There is an external users dropdown in the Alerts table where you can manage all alerts for external users.
FAQs
What customer types receive Alerts?
All packages receive Alerts
How long can I pause an alert?
As long as you wish
How many users can receive an alert?
Up to 10 users can be added as recipients per alert
What happens when a user who set up an alert leaves the company?
If the user is deleted, we receive a message through warp-zone and remove them from the alerts, and if there is no one else in the alert, you will see a message in the UI
What happens to users on the recipient list if they leave the company?
Meltwater User: we remove only the deleted user
Non-Meltwater Recipient: As we will not know if a non-Meltwater user leaves the company, the Meltwater users within that company will need to delete the recipient from the alert
What happens to the alerts when a company leaves Meltwater?
Subscriptions are deleted, and the alerts will no longer exist
How long is the alert data retained?
Up to 6 months for subscriptions. 3 months for notifications.
What happens when a saved search, Facebook Page, Company, or RSS Feed that is correlated to an alert gets deleted?
Results will show as “Search Not Found” in the Crud table
What data does Meltwater receive when connecting the different integrations?
It is a one-way integration. The only permission Meltwater has is to be able to post messages to a channel. We cannot read any data back. The only information we receive from the apps is the information necessary to post the message to the channel they hook up to.
💡 Tip
Need more help? Feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat or check out our Customer Community.
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