Within Deployteq we of course have email and SMS as channels. Through the years we added Facebook Audiences, easy API calls to all platforms and call lists for your call center. All this is nice, but how to reach the customers who have installed your mobile app?

Push notifications for mobile apps can now also be integrated in all your marketing automation campaigns. Now you can send out push notifications in bulk, like "the sale has started", but as soon as we know which customer matches with what device we can also send out the personalized messages you are used to from Deployteq.

But not only can Deployteq push the messages for your customers, you can also react on the behavior your customer shows in the app. So send Deployteq the email address when a user logs in, so we know the details, send the details of a customer's search in your app, so you can follow up with an informative mail.

Interested? You can now install the app from the Deployteq Store or give us a call!

Installation in the app

For the app we have published two SDKs:

Android SDK

• The SDK can be installed with Jitpack https://jitpack.io/#evillage/evillage-android

• The demo-app can be used as a reference: https://github.com/evillage/evillage-android-demo

• Github: https://github.com/evillage/evillage-android

IOS SDK:

• The SDK can be installed with Cocoapods https://cocoapods.org/pods/ClangNotifications

• Github, including demo-app https://github.com/evillage/evillage-ios

For the app developers the instructions are to be found in a readme file and we have made our demo app available as a reference on how to use it.

Within the app you will need to authorize the connection from the app to Deployteq and back. In the SDK you can add an Integration ID and API key. This can be found when you install the Deployteq app in the Deployteq Store.

For this go to the Deployteq Store and select Mobile Messages:

In the first step, you can see the Integration ID and API key you can communicate (in a secure way,) to your app developer.

In the second step you can set the connection with your own Firebase environment. By default the Firebase environment of Deployteq will be used to send push notification to IOS and Android devices. If you want to use your own Firebase environment, we need a service-account private key to be installed on our platform. You can retrieve the service-account private key within Firebase;

And simply paste this into Deployteq;

In the third step you configure the financial details as usual in our Deployteq Store.

When you've installed the app you are ready to create push notifications and use the campaign-objects to send these.

Creating push messages

When you've installed the app you will have an extra menu item in the Content part. If it's not directly visible, you can refresh your browser to make visible.

When you select the push notification menu item, you will go to the filemanager where you can create new push messages or edit existing ones. To create new ones, you can click in the upper left corner on 'New' and select 'Push Notification'

Once you have named the message, you will automatically go to the screen where you can edit the message. The messages you or your colleagues have already created are visible in the file manager.

You can add text to your messages. You can add variable fields, like in all other modules within Deployteq. However you cannot use markup, like bold text or italic, in these texts.

Push Notification Settings

In the settings, a subject, action buttons, an iOS category, and additional data (e.g. deep links) can be added to the push notification.

Fields

• Subject: The subject of the message that is displayed in the app.

• Category: If action buttons are used in the push notification, a category for iOS can be specified. If this field is left empty and action buttons are configured, it will be automatically set to the value "clang".

• Image iOS & Image Android: It is possible to add an image to the push notification. Depending on the operating system and the app, this image may or may not be displayed. In this field, enter a URL to the image.

  • iOS has a limit of 300 KB for images.

  • Android has a limit of 1 MB for images.

• Sound iOS & Sound Android: In these fields, you can enter a URL to the audio file or specify the file path within the app.

• Action ID 1 (same for 2 and 3): The section/menu item of the app to which the action button should lead.

• Action Title 1 (same for 2 and 3): The text displayed on the action button at the bottom of the message. See screenshot of the preview-tab below.

• Format: The Format field determines how the push notification is processed on the mobile device:

  • Notification: If the notification field in the push is filled, the message will be shown by default on the mobile device.

  • Data: If only the data field is filled, the app receives a signal without automatically displaying a message. This gives developers the flexibility to decide what happens with the data — for example, to silently update content without alerting the user. This setting is configurable within Deployteq. As the sender, you can choose which format the push message should have. For more technical information, see the Firebase documentation.

Custom Fields

Additional data can be added to the push notification, such as customer information, reservation details, or a deeplink. This information can be used within the app, for example, to display more details about a reservation.

These data fields can be customized based on a name and corresponding value. Smarty can also be used to dynamically send personalized information in the push notification. See the examples below:

APNS Headers

It is also possible to add custom APNS headers to push notifications in the configuration screen. These headers are optional and are only relevant for Apple (iOS) devices. APNS stands for Apple Push Notification Service. You can find which headers are available and what they mean here.

The last tab will give you a preview of the push message, with the different action buttons. As with email and SMS, you can test your variables here as well, by searching for a customer.

Nice to know

Keep in mind that different devices will show the push notification differently. It is good to test these for the most used devices for your app.

For Android, you will see the title and for most devices one line in the screen, however with different Android devices there are different interfaces. For iOS, the title will be visible with a maximum of four lines. With the SDK it is possible 'catch' these and show the full message within the app.

Push notifications in Deployteq Campaigns

Within campaigns you will have three new objects:

• Send Push Notification

• Start on Mobile Event

• Select Push Devices

Send Push Notification

The first is of course the Send Push notification.

This one is simple, without much to configure. When you drag this object within your campaign you can select the push notification which needs to be send. When an action button is set in the push notification, you will have the names of these buttons as an exit in your campaign object. So when we look at the previous example with the favorite food, you will see the exits with the names Pizza, Hamburgers and Tacos.

Start on Mobile Event

With the SDK you can configure events which will send data to the campaign. You can add data as well to use in the campaign, for example with a login of a customer you can send the email address or customerID, so you can match the device with the customer which is already known within the database.

You can add the defined event in the start object.

When this event is triggered once, you will have the fields from the app in your environments automatically. These can be used within the campaign, for example for a customer look-up or an Add-Update customer object:

Once you have defined the customer within the campaign, you can use the customer fields which you already have in the database, like a name, or a customer option.

Select Push Devices

If you want to send out your push message to multiple customers, you can use the Select devices.

You can match the fields within the database, with the fields Deployteq has received about the device, like the email in the previous example.

And send out the push notification in bulk:

Push Topics

It is also possible to create and manage Push Topics via Deployteq.

Push Topics for mobile apps are specific subjects or categories that users can subscribe to in order to receive targeted push notifications.

To get started, you first create a topic, and then you can link a push message to it via a campaign object.

Creating or Managing a Topic

In the Mobile Messages menu item under Content, you'll find the Manage Push Topics button.

Click the + to add a new topic. Select an existing topic and click – to delete it. Once a topic has been created, it cannot be edited. You can only delete it and then add it again.

The topic you create here is the one that customers can subscribe to in your app. This is recorded in Deployteq via the Subscribe to Push Topics campaign object. You can then send a single message to all subscribed devices using the Send Push Notification to Topic campaign object.

Push Topic-objects in campaigns

In the campaign designer, you’ll find three objects related to Topics:

Subscribe to Push Topic

In this object, you select the topic the customer should be subscribed to.

Send Push Notification to Topic

In this object, you select the topic and the push notification to be sent to customers who have subscribed to that specific topic.

Unsubscribe from Push Topic

In this object, you select the topic the customer should be unsubscribed from.

Using push and Deployteq analytics

In this phase of the push notification, we have no automatic analytics. But as push notifications are send out with campaigns, we can use the Campaign Checkpoints at it's best.

You can have them behind the sending of a push notification in the flow. You can use them behind the action buttons, so you can see if the button is clicked and which button is clicked most.

Within Analytics you can select these checkpoints and show the results of how many push messages you've send and how many people have clicked the action button.

Configuration of feedback loop

Within the SDK, you can determine which events you want to send back, but also what device information you want to save. Here's what you need to know.

Events

You can determine on which event in the app you want to react on. This can be the reaching of a certain page, a login action or an order. Within Deployteq you can start a campaign on this, but make sure you can identify the customer on the data you send in and make the next steps in your campaigns, for example

• userEmail

• userName

• dateLogin

The variables will be available in your campaign as soon as the first event has come trough. At this stage in the development, you need to configure this with your app developer and know the event names they've given. You can manually add this to the start object.

Device data

For the device data, it is also important that you register data where you can match the device data in Deployteq with customers. This way you can select the customers who have a device with a certain field, so userEmail for the device = email address in Deployteq.

This is something you can again discuss with your app developer. This gives you the freedom to add your own fields that you need in your campaigns.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use push messaging for web?

No, at the moment we've built our SDK's only for native apps on iOS and Android

I have an app, but have not built native, can I use this module as well?

You can't use the SDK, but you can use our REST API to set up an integration. For more information, click here,