To get started, click Create In-app Message in the In-app Message tab, to open the message creation wizard and select Overlay Message. The main steps of creating a campaign are:
Scheduling step is only available if the recipient source is using a segment. Also by default, the new campaign receives the highest priority.
1. Message settings
Define the General settings of your brand new In-app message campaign.
General settings
- Message name – You can name (or later rename) your In-app message to identify the campaign on the In-app Messages tab.
- Mobile app – You can select the mobile application on which you want to display your message notification. You can send your message only to one application. Only apps already associated with your account are listed here.
Source Settings
The options for Recipient source settings are as follows:
- Broadcast - Send to all contacts on mobile devices.
- Audience - Send to contacts that are part of an automation program or you can select a pre-built segment if you are using a segment for your recipient source.
- Push message - Activate the campaign then create a push message linking to it.
Updating audience from segment
Select the pre-configured segment-based audience from the drop-down list.
Optionally, you can check the Update audience from segment option to select the frequency when the segment is going to be updated by In-app.
In In-app, an audience is a subset of the target segment, because an SDK event (user action) must occur for the message to be sent. A segment only determines the eligibility for the message, but the audience determines whether the contact receives it.
One should use this checkbox to update an audience from a segment periodically according to audience's wish. For example, a Marketer wants to change the segment every 12 hours for a push campaign, but would rather leave the chance for different audiences to receive In-app campaign from the original segment to improve In-app campaign result.
You should consider the following when using the "Update audience from segment once every X hours" setting:
- The use case of your segment
- Do you expect your segment to change within a day?
- Doing a workout once a day vs clicking a link
- Do you expect your segment to change within a day?
- Expected usage frequency of your app
- Do you expect your users to interact often with your app in a day?
- A sport tracker app is likely to be used once a day
- It is enough to set the update frequency to every 24 hours, your targets are likely to be using the app and doing a workout once per day
- Setting it to more frequent might cause unnecessary runs
- A news app is likely to be used multiple times a day
- It is recommended to set the update frequency to 1-3 hours to get everyone using your app
- A sport tracker app is likely to be used once a day
Mobile Engage segmentation is included in the universal segmentation feature of Emarsys, available in the Contacts > Segments menu. For details, see Creating Mobile Engage segments.
Apply segment criteria for devices
Optionally, you can apply segment criteria for devices with various conditions.
Tick the Apply segment criteria for devices checkbox to enable device level filtering. By ticking this option, the Conditions drop-down list is appearing.
Conditions
In the Conditions drop-down list you can select a segment criteria for mobile devices. If you initially created the segment and you added device level criteria here you can select that segment. The earlier set device level condition will be taken into consideration when sending a push message.
If you want to specify a device level condition you can do so by creating Mobile Engage segments. Here you can only verify that device level conditions specified when created a segment and these conditions are really taken into account.
An example of device-level conditions is to target a specific OS platform. Therefore if the contact has 2 registered devices, e.g. iPhone and Android, the contact is only received the message on the targeted OS device. Device-level conditions are also useful as the contact list does not display device information like OS platform, OS version etc.
Click Save & Next to save your message for the first time when you are finished with your general settings.
2. Content creation
In the Content creation step you have 3 tabs and a Preview pane to use for defining the content of your In-app message campaign. The tabs (and the Preview pane) in the Content Editor are the following:
Template tab
In-app messages can be created based on predefined templates. The In-app Mobile Engage campaign templates come with a preset design that is easy for you to adapt to your brand and content.
The template options are full screen, modal or multistep templates. Select the most appropriate template by clicking on it.
Multistep messages
For multistep messages, it is possible to edit the ordering of the individual steps in the left pane. In the Preview pane on the right, use the drop down box at the top of the preview to switch between the steps when editing.
Preview pane
The Preview pane on the right shows how your message will appear. On this section you can directly modify the text, fonts, images and action buttons of the campaign.
Personalisation is not presently available for In-app messages.
Editing Text
To edit the text, click on the text box and perform the update. When doing so, the text formatting options appear to allow customisation.
Editing Image
To edit the image, click on the image and then the Edit image properties. When doing so, the image properties box appears to assign the image.
We recommend using a CDN or our MediaDB server for the fastest rendering. The given URL must use HTTPS.
If the template chosen allows changing the background image, the option is available on the Styles tab.
Emarsys is using the following ratios in our templates, but the templates are responsive, so you can check what they do to your images, just try it out in the preview, you don't have to stick to the exact ratios:
- Fullscreen template: The image is close to square ratio, the sample ones have a ratio of 339x329, 393x392
- Background images: The images are 466x826, this should fit the 16:10 screen ratio
- Modal images: 209x209, 506x337
- Supported image file types: JPEG, PNG, GIF
Please note that the Media DB has a limit of 1MB max size (bigger pictures can also slow down the download and rendering time, especially for devices with degraded network).
Editing Action Buttons
To edit the action button(s), click on the action button and perform the update. When doing so, the text formatting options appear to allow text customisation. In addition to text formatting, it is possible to configure the action performed when the button is pressed. The options are as follows:
- Application Event - To trigger an application event with a button click. Use a key=value format to send a payload. For more information, see External event and custom mobile event personalization. Use it for example after the contact finishes a review or a profile update.
- Deep Link - To deep link to a particular area within the app. For example, link to a product on sale in your shop.
- Custom Event - To fire a custom event for tracking, to be used in segmentation or to launch another campaign. Use it for example after the contact finishes a review or a profile update. For more information, see External event and custom mobile event personalization.
- Open External Link - To open a URL in the browser.
- Request Push Permission - To request push permission from the contact. Use this to request again the user to enable in-app or push messages.
- Close - To close the In-app message. Tapping anywhere in the message will close it.
- Close with click - To close the In-app message with the click of the button.
- Copy to clipboard - To copy any value or voucher code with the click of this button.
The Close with click option also registers the close event for reporting.
Copy to clipboard button
To effectively use this feature, make sure you are following these steps:
- This action is only available for Emarsys SDK version 3.3.0 on iOS and 3.4.0 on Android.
- Any Copy to clipboard button that will be sent by a sooner SDK version will not show any reaction to the end user.
- To use this feature for different SDK version users, use Device filtering in the Message Settings tab, that separates between an updated SDK device and a not updated one.
JSON Editor for custom events
In the Button Editor, you can select between the following button editing options:
- Button-based editing: Edit your new button by entering the "key" and the "value".
- JSON-based editing: You can paste a complete JSON snippet from your app developer into the field, if you feel more comfortable with writing a code.
Styles tab
In the Styles tab on the left, you can customise the settings, so the In-app messages appear native to the app.
The In-app style customisation options available include:
- Background image.
- Background opacity.
- Button background colour.
- Button border colour.
- Button border radius.
- Button border thickness.
- Close button background colour.
- Close button font colour.
- Close button position.
Languages tab
You can add and remove languages. Use the dynamic search field to find the requested language or select it from the drop-down list then click Add.
Add any new languages and write the message content in that language. Languages which are not shown here will receive the content in the app's default language.
You can delete languages as well, but a default language is mandatory.
If you add a language, but it has no content, those customers will also receive content in the app's default language.
Testing an In-app message
To send a test In-app message, click Test Messages.
In the appearing Send Test Message window, you can specify an email address to which a test message will be sent.
Important:
- The test email address must be a valid address in your Emarsys database, associated with a known device.
- Test message is not available for inline In-app message type.
- Test messages cannot be sent to email addresses that exist multiple times in the contact database.
When sending test messages, please consider that the In-app service is limited to 1 test In-app campaign per minute to prevent throttling errors.
If sending of the test message fails, a red warning message appears on the screen. The reasons for this could be the following:
- No contact has been found in Emarsys database with the given email address.
- The email address has been found, but there is no device associated to it.
- More contacts have been found with the external Id: 3.
To test your message, click Save & Send.
3. Scheduling
In the Scheduling section, you can define the campaign trigger.
Can be triggered by a push message toggle button- When you enable this option, the in-app campaign can be targeted from a push campaign, which means it is available for Push-to-In-app action. Learn more.
You can set the frequency of displays and the desired outcome after a click. Also, you can define a specific date and time in the future.
The Deliver this campaign with no end date toggle button is always switched on, if a campaign is open-ended, so it can be triggered by a Mobile Engage Push message. This behavior is because the end date is set by the Mobile Engage Push message. You should avoid a situation where a Mobile Engage Push message is scheduled, but the paired Mobile Engage In-app message has an end date.
In the event trigger section, if event trigger is selected, enter the event name and event attributes conditions that need to be matched in order to trigger the message.
Click Save and Launch once the schedule has been configured.
Canceling a scheduled launch
Click the Cancel scheduled launch button to call off an already launched campaign.
Canceling a launched campaign is irreversible and the campaign cannot be re-launched at all, later on.
A canceled campaign cannot be edited. First, you have to copy the campaign and make modifications on the copied version of it.
An already launched in-app message campaign cannot be canceled if it is used by an active Automation Center or Interactions program.
