Overview

With the Mobile SDK, if you have an iOS or Android application, you can push notifications to your customers.

Prerequisites

Subscription: Your Zaius account must have access to the marketing package and have the App Push feature enabled.
Mobile SDK: You must properly configure your Mobile SDK settings by navigating to Account Settings > Integrations > Mobile Apps in your account.

Configuration

Collect app push subscribers

To communicate with customers via app push notifications, you will need to start collecting opt-in events. Similar to email opt-ins, a customer's consent is what determines your reachable audience via the channel. Opt-in consent varies by platform:

iOS uses an opt-in model. iOS devices don’t allow apps to send notifications to their users until those users affirmatively agree to receive them.
Android uses an opt-out model. Android devices inform users that an app's permissions automatically allow push notifications. If users don’t want to receive push notifications, they can opt-out; however, doing so is a manual process, cutting down on the number of people who will choose to carry it out.

Opting in to push notifications on iOS (left) and opting out of push notification on Android (right).

Confirm opt-in events

Customer opt-ins will send an event to Zaius. The included information confirms the customer's app push subscription and consists of analytics and app push values. To see an example event of this come in, you can refer to the event inspector within your Zaius Account. Values to look for in the event inspector:

Event Type = push
Action = add_push_token
User Agent Information (UA) is included

A token for iOS and/or Android will live on the customer profile once a customer opts-in. The icon will appear next to the app's name as determined in your Mobile SDK settings. If you click on the iOS or Android icons, you will be able to see the token value for that customer.

Additionally, you will be able to see the app push events in the Activity feed of the customer profile.

Include in a campaign

Now that you have customers opted into the app push communication channel, you can include app push touchpoints in your campaigns and send messages to customers.

Review app push audience

After creating or adding a segment to a campaign, the reachable app push audience can be reviewed next to the Mobile icon in the segment card.

A customer is reachable if their app push token value is known. When a customer opts out of the app push channel, the token will be removed from their customer profile, and a “remove token” event will be captured. This behavior means you can segment based on push token attributes if you'd like to specifically target app push customers or create a campaign that only uses app push messages. For example:

Create app push touchpoint

With your campaign audience determined, you are ready to create an app push touchpoint.

To create an app push touchpoint:

Navigate to Campaigns.
Select or create a One-Time or Behavioral campaign.
Click on the Edit icon of a campaign touchpoint to access the editor.
If this is a new campaign or touchpoint, select the app push channel from the prompt. If this is an omnichannel campaign, check out this resource to add additional channels to an existing touchpoint.

Expand the Push Delivery menu accordion and select the display name of your app from the Deliver Push To dropdown menu. The platforms associated with the app will auto-populate with iOS Sandbox, iOS, or Android, depending on what has been set up for your integration; however, you can manually disable individuals platforms if desired.

Review the following options:
- Add Variation: Allows the push notification to be A/B tested.
- Load Template: Use a previously created message as the basis for this touchpoint.
- Name: Determine how you will be able to identify your content within Zaius.
- Variables: Add liquid or custom HTML to customize the push notification further. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager (CSM) if you need assistance with that.
Input the message you'd like customers to receive in the text area below the message's name and content ID. Brevity is key here and the message should be no more than 40 characters long.
Depending on the platforms selected, additional options will also need to be reviewed by scrolling to the bottom of the editor and clicking +iOS Options or +Android Options.

iOS options

More information on these options and iOS app development can be found here. Recommended minimum options are underlined.

Alert Title: The headline used when displaying the alert. A dictionary is recommended. If you specify a string, the alert displays your string as the body text — for example, title, subtitle, launch image, etc.

Key/Value Pairs: These two fields allow you to call specific values in your application if you have a dictionary. Please reach out to your developer to understand what options you have.

Custom Sound: The name of a sound file in your app’s main bundle or the library/sounds folder of your app’s container directory. Specify the string "default" to play the system sound. Use this key for regular notifications.

Badge Number: The number to display in a badge on your app’s icon. Specify 0 to remove the current badge, if any.

Mutable Content: When checked, the system passes the notification to your notification service app extension before delivery.

Launch Image: The name of the launch image file you'd like to display. If the user chooses to launch your app, the contents of the specified image are displayed instead of your app's typical launch image.

Action Loc-key: The key to a localized action. Please reach out to your developer to understand what options you have.

Loc-key: The key for a localized message string. Use this key, instead of the body key, to retrieve the message text from your app's Localizable.strings file. The value must contain the name of a key in your strings file.

Loc-args: An array of strings containing replacement values for variables in your message text.

Title Loc-key: The key for a localized title string.

Title Loc-args: An array of strings containing replacement values for variables in your title string.

Android options

More information on these options and Android app development can be found here. Recommended minimum options are underlined.

Key/Value Pairs: These two fields allow you to call specific values in your application if you have a dictionary. A title and associated title value are recommended to accompany the body of your message. Please reach out to your developer to understand what options you have.

Preview and test your touchpoint. The Preview function allows you to review the touchpoint on-screen, while the Test function will enable you to send a test through the touchpoint channel instead. Both options are available in the upper-right when viewing a touchpoint within the editor.
Select the campaign's name from the breadcrumb menu, then the Save option at the top-right.
Select the Go Live option at the top-right when the campaign is customer-ready.

Review performance

To review the performance metrics associated with an app push touchpoint:

Navigate to Campaigns.
Locate and click on the campaign containing the desired touchpoint.
Locate the campaign touchpoint containing the app push and click on the Eye icon to expand the performance metrics view. Review each metric in more detail here.