Automatic Urgency & Social Proof: Help Guests Act at the Right Moment

Automatic Urgency & Social Proof helps you highlight timely, truthful activity on your guest page. BetterUnite uses your campaign’s live deadlines, inventory, bids, purchases, favorites, fundraising progress, and recent item-detail views to show guests relevant messages such as “Ending soon,” “Only 3 remaining,” or “Popular right now.”

Unlike a Guest Page Call to Action, these messages do not have to be written and scheduled one at a time. You choose which signals to use and set the thresholds. BetterUnite then evaluates current campaign data and displays a notice only when an offer qualifies.

Before you begin

Automatic notices complement—not replace—your organizer-written Guest Page Calls to Action. Calls to action are best for announcements such as “The live auction begins at 8:00 PM.” Automatic notices are best for facts that change with guest activity, such as remaining inventory or recent bids.

Not every guest or item will always show a notice. A notice appears only when:

Automatic notices are enabled.
The applicable notice type and display location are enabled.
Live data meets the threshold you configured.
The guest is in the percentage selected under Guests shown notices (%).
The offer supports the data needed for that notice.

BetterUnite does not manufacture activity or inflate counts. If an item does not qualify, no automatic notice is shown.

Turn automatic notices on or off

Use Enable automatic notices as the master switch for this feature. Turning it off hides all automatic urgency and social-proof notices from guests. Your thresholds, custom copy, analytics, and organizer-written calls to action remain saved, so you can turn the feature back on without rebuilding your setup.

This switch affects only automatic notices. It does not hide bidder-status messages such as “Highest bidder,” nor does it remove a Guest Page Call to Action that you created separately.

Choose the notices guests can see

Each notice-type toggle controls a different live signal. You can use any combination that fits your campaign.

Deadlines

Deadlines shows an ending-soon message when an open auction item, raffle, or purchasable offer has an end time within your configured Ending soon (minutes) window. During the final ten minutes, the notice uses stronger last-call wording.

For example, if the window is 60 minutes, an eligible offer can begin showing “Ending soon” one hour before its scheduled end. Offers without an applicable end time do not show a deadline notice. A deadline notice does not extend, close, or otherwise change the offer; it reflects the existing schedule.

Low inventory

Low inventory tells guests how many units remain when a limited buy-now auction item, raffle ticket, event item, or giving level reaches your Low inventory threshold.

For example, with a threshold of 5, an eligible offer can display “Only 5 remaining” and continue updating as inventory falls. Unlimited offers do not receive this notice. BetterUnite derives the count from current inventory; the notice does not reserve an item for a guest.

Recent bids

Recent bids shows the number of confirmed bids placed on an auction item during the previous ten minutes. The notice appears only after the item reaches your configured Recent bids threshold.

This gives guests a clear, time-bounded picture of auction activity. Unsuccessful bid attempts do not count. Recent bid activity can also help an auction item qualify for the Popular items notice.

Popular items

Popular items shows “Popular right now” when an auction item reaches either the configured Popular-item viewersthreshold or the configured Recent bids threshold. For supported non-auction offers, purchase momentum can qualify an offer after at least ten purchases.

This setting summarizes qualifying activity rather than exposing a guest’s identity. It is not the same as manually featuring an item, and items do not receive the label unless their live data meets a popularity rule.

Recent viewers

Recent viewers shows how many distinct guests or anonymous browsers opened an auction item’s details during the rolling previous hour. The message stays hidden until the item reaches Minimum recent viewers.

Loading an item card is not a view; the guest must open the item details. Repeat opens by the same recognized viewer do not increase the people count. This is a recent-view measure, not a live-presence feature—it does not claim that a certain number of people are viewing the item at this exact moment.

Favorites

Favorites shows the total number of guests who have saved an auction item as a favorite after the item reaches at least three favorites.

The count is the item’s current total, not the number of favorites added during the last hour. The notice shares aggregate interest only and does not identify the guests who favorited the item.

Campaign momentum

Campaign momentum places one campaign-wide update above the main guest content. Depending on current results, it can celebrate reaching the fundraising goal, show progress after the campaign reaches 75% of its goal, or highlight recent giving after at least five gifts are made within an hour.

Because this message describes campaign-level progress, it is displayed separately from item notices. The feature relies on the campaign goal and eligible giving activity available to BetterUnite.

Choose where notices appear

Show on cards

Show on cards places qualifying notices on auction, raffle, event-item, and giving-level cards. This lets guests see time-sensitive information while browsing without opening every offer.

Use Maximum notices per card to limit visual clutter. When an item qualifies for more notices than the maximum, BetterUnite prioritizes deadline notices first, followed by inventory, activity, and popularity. The remaining qualifying information may still be available in the item details if detail notices are enabled.

Show in details

Show in details places all qualifying auction-item notices inside the item detail panel. Turn it off if you want automatic notices to appear only while guests browse cards.

This toggle does not control personal bidder-state messages such as “Highest bidder” or “You’ve been outbid.” Those messages communicate the guest’s auction status and remain independent of automatic social proof.

Set your thresholds

Thresholds determine when a qualifying notice becomes visible.

Minimum recent viewers is the smallest number of distinct viewers in the previous hour required before the recent-view count appears.
Popular-item viewers is the recent-view count that can qualify an auction item as popular.
Recent bids is the number of confirmed bids within ten minutes required to show bid activity and potentially mark an item as popular.
Low inventory is the remaining quantity at or below which an eligible limited offer shows scarcity messaging.
Ending soon (minutes) is how far in advance an eligible deadline notice may begin.
Maximum notices per card limits how many automatic notices can appear together on a browsing card.
Guests shown notices (%) determines the share of guests assigned to see automatic notices.

Choose thresholds that are meaningful for the size and pace of your campaign. A large event may need higher activity thresholds than a small gathering. Avoid setting every threshold very low: too many notices can make truly urgent messages less noticeable.

Use a control group

Guests shown notices (%) lets you measure whether notices influence guest behavior. At 100%, all eligible guests can see notices. At a lower percentage, BetterUnite assigns the remaining guests to a stable control group that does not see automatic notices.

For example, setting the value to 80% shows notices to the treatment group while reserving approximately 20% as a comparison group. A guest remains in the same group rather than changing groups on every page load. Setting the value to 0% effectively hides automatic notices while retaining eligibility measurement; use the master switch when you want the entire feature off.

Customize notice wording

You can customize four types of guest-facing text:

Ending-soon copy for offers inside the deadline window.
Popular-item copy for offers that meet a popularity rule.
Inventory copy for limited offers at or below the inventory threshold.
Recent-view copy for auction items that meet the viewer threshold.

Use {count} in inventory and recent-view copy wherever the live number should appear. For example, Only {count} left—reserve yours can become “Only 3 left—reserve yours.” Keep the wording short, specific, and easy to scan on a phone.

Custom wording changes only the presentation. It does not change the eligibility rules, counts, deadlines, or inventory. Avoid absolute claims such as “last chance” unless the configured data supports that meaning.

Preview and save your settings

The preview demonstrates the visual treatment and priority of common notices. It is an example, not a live list of the offers that currently qualify.

Automatic Urgency & Social Proof uses the campaign editor’s regular Save Campaign button. After changing a toggle, threshold, or custom message, use the normal save action for the page. There is no separate save step for this section. If you leave without saving, your changes may be lost.

Understand the analytics

The Last 30 days table helps you compare notice performance. Results are separated by notice and experiment group and may include:

Eligible views: Opportunities where the live data qualified for a notice, including the control group used for comparison.
Item opens: Guests who opened an item after an eligible notice opportunity.
Conversions: Tracked accepted bids or successful instant purchases associated with the experience.
Dismissals: Dismissible campaign-level notices that guests chose to close.

An impression is recorded only after a notice is at least 50% visible for at least one second. BetterUnite also limits repeated impression recording during a session and deduplicates short-window events to improve reporting quality.

Analytics show directional engagement and should be read alongside revenue, attendance, offer mix, and other campaign results. A conversion near a notice does not necessarily prove the notice was the only reason for the action.

Privacy and accuracy

Automatic notices are designed to provide social proof without exposing individual guest behavior. Viewer messages use aggregate, deduplicated counts. Recognized guests or a server-issued anonymous browser identity help prevent repeat opens from inflating the count. BetterUnite does not display a list of who viewed or favorited an item.

Recent viewers means viewers during the rolling previous hour. It does not mean “viewing now,” and the feature does not use live-presence tracking. Bid, inventory, deadline, purchase, and goal messages are generated from the corresponding campaign records available to BetterUnite.

Recommended starting setup

For a balanced first launch:

Enable automatic notices.
Turn on deadlines, low inventory, recent bids, popular items, and campaign momentum.
Use recent viewers and favorites if your event expects enough guest traffic to meet privacy-friendly minimums.
Show notices on both cards and details, with no more than two notices per card.
Start with conservative thresholds that indicate meaningful activity.
Show notices to less than 100% of guests if you want a control group for comparison.
Save the campaign, then review the guest experience on both desktop and mobile.
Return to the analytics after the event has generated enough activity to compare results.

The best notices are timely, verifiable, and useful. Configure the feature to focus attention on genuine deadlines and momentum—not to place a badge on every offer.