This article provides you with information for setting up Inbox campaigns to user groups across multiple mobile platforms and devices.
As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Mobile Engage Inbox campaigns:
Introduction
To check the existing Inbox campaigns, go to Channels -> Mobile Engage -> Inbox Campaigns tab.
1. Inbox Campaigns tab
On this tab you can see details of all your inbox campaigns listed with their Message Name, Recipient Source, Status, App Name, Internal ID, Priority setting, number of messages Sent, the date it was Created and last Changed.
Clicking the delete is a hard delete action. It means that the delete action is irreversible and will delete the Push message permanently.
1.1. Recipient Source
An Inbox campaign can have one of the following Recipient sources:
- Automation – Sends Inbox campaigns from an Automation program.
- Using a segment – Sends Inbox campaigns to a standard Emarsys segment.
1.2. Status
An Inbox campaign can have one of the following statuses:
- In design – Some content or settings are still missing.
- Tested - Test message has been sent but not launched yet.
- Ready to launch – Not activated yet, but ready to launch.
- Launched - Campaigns that have been launched.
1.3. Internal ID
The Internal ID is an ID set by the Marketer during the campaign creation. It can be used to either set an individual campaign ID that is controlled by the Marketer for internal reporting purposes or can be an ID to group campaigns together, e.g. summer campaigns.
1.4. High Priority
An Inbox campaign can have one of the following priority levels:
- Blank - Standard priority setting.
- True - High priority. How the high priority message is displayed in the inbox of the app is under the control of the app developer and not Emarsys.
2. Creating a new Inbox Campaign
Click Create Inbox Campaign in the Inbox Campaign tab to open the campaign creation wizard. Emarsys offers a very intuitive workflow for creating new inbox campaigns. These are presented in the form of the following main steps:
Scheduling step is only available if the recipient source is using a segment.
2.1. Message settings
Define the General settings of the inbox campaign (or rename an existing one).
General settings
- Message name – You can name (or later rename) the inbox campaign to identify it on the Inbox Campaign tab.
- Mobile app – You can select the mobile application on which you want to display the inbox campaign. You can send the campaign to only to one application. Only apps already associated with your account are listed here.
- High Priority - Set the campaign priority level by checking the checkbox for high priority campaigns. The message will be tagged as high priority and how it is indicated/displayed within the inbox of the application is under the control of the app developer.
- Internal ID - An optional field that allows the setting of an individual or group campaign ID by the marketer. The ID could be used for internal reporting or for grouping campaigns into categories.
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Recipient source – Define the target audience of your message.
- Segment – You can select a pre-built segment, if you are using a segment for your recipient source.
- Apply segment criteria for devices – Optionally you can apply segment criteria for devices with various conditions
2.2. Recipient source
The options for Recipient source are as follows:
- Automation – Sends an Inbox campaign from an Automation program.
Mobile Engage Inbox Campaign can only be used in an Automation Program if the Recipient Source is set to Automation and the Inbox campaign is launched. After the Inbox campaign is launched, it can be selected in the drop-down menu of the Mobile Engage Inbox message node. If the Inbox campaign is not yet launched, then it will not show up in the drop-down.
- Using a segment – Sends a Inbox campaign to a standard Emarsys segment.
If you previously used the Broadcast Recipient source, then all subscribers will be available in the Segment drop-down after selecting the Using a segment Recipient source. You can use the segment all subscribers to send a message to all subscribers of your application.
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.
To create a Mobile Engage segment for broadcast messages, select Contacts who have linked devices for application for the segment criteria. The result is that all contacts, anonymous and known, are included in the segment.
2.3. Apply segment criteria for devices
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 an Inbox campaign.
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.
To refresh conditions from the segment, click the Refresh icon on the right.
When you are finished with your general settings, click Save as Draft to save the campaign for the first time.
Click Next step to continue to the Content Creation step.
3. Content creation
In the Content creation step you have several tabs to use for defining the content of your inbox campaign and also the Preview pane to add text/media. The tabs in the Content Editor are the following:
3.1. Adding text and rich media
To add text to the Inbox campaign, type the text directly into the Preview pane available on the right hand side of the screen.
Rich media is attached to the Inbox campaign by following the steps below:
- Click on the Media Icon above the message title.
- Click on Open Media DB.
- Click on the plus icon to the right of the image you wish to add to the Inbox campaign.
- If the image is to be different for Android, untick the "Use same URL in Android" and repeat steps 2 and 3.
- Click Apply
3.2. Personalization tab
Use the Visual Content Editor (VCE) to add new content (personalized token) to the Inbox message field.
RDS tokens created with the old UI are not converted to the new VCE-based UI. All other, non-RDS tokens are migrated automatically.
For example, a contact data token, which was added to the campaign using the old UI will be converted and will look the same as other tokens added using the new, VCE-based personalization UI.
You can add a personalized token to your Inbox campaign, as follows:
- Use the dynamic search field to find the required personalized token.
- Alternatively, you can select a token from the following categories:
- Capabilities: Contact data (General, Personal, Company, Other)
- Use Cases: External, First Name, Voucher
- Alternatively, you can select a token from the following categories:
- Drag the selected token over onto the Preview pane and drop it to the field where you want.
3.3. Actions
Please keep in mind that action buttons are only available for mobile applications using SDK version 2.16.0 or higher.
Actions allow you to add links or application events to be triggered. How the links are displayed is under the control of the app developer. A common way to display the links would be as a button. For the purposes of the preview, any links added using the Actions feature will be displayed as a button.
There is a limit of 3 action buttons for both iOS and Android
You can add Action Button to your push message, as follows:
- Click on Add button on the Action tab.
- Choose the Button type. The options are:
- Deep Link - To fire a deep link using a deep link ID and URL.
- Application Event - To trigger an app event using key and value pair.
- External URL - To send the contact to an external URL in the browser.
- Click Apply
- Update the test of the action button directly in the Preview pane.
For the event types Application Event, and Deep Links, the app needs to be preconfigured to understand how to handle the event. Please find below additional information that would be useful for the developers when updating the SDK configuration:
- Application Event - the payload will be passed into the
eventHandler.handleEvent()with the name App Event. - Deep Links - the payload will be passed into the
eventHandler.handleEvent()with the name DeepLink.
The developer documentation for Android and iOS SDK's, as well as payload examples is available on our Help portal.
3.4. 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.
3.5. Inbox Settings
This tab is for advanced users. Here, you can add additional data to the message that is passed in the root parameters.
The format of the additional data has to be in JSON format and it is possible to use personalisation token within the JSON payload.
When adding an ESL/JSON snippet to your content, the code is being validated. The editor automatically checks if your code is valid or not. Unless the script is valid, you cannot save the token.
3.6. Contact preview
The contact preview feature allows marketers to preview the campaign with the inclusion of the personalisation tokens replaced with the appropriate contact data. To utilise the feature, click on the contact icon.
In the search bar at the top left of the screen that is displayed after clicking the contact icon, enter the email address of a contact within the account. As the email address is typed, available options will be displayed. Click on the contact email address to move them to the Recent contacts section. It is possible to repeat this process to list the test contacts in the Recent contact section of the screen, this will expedite previewing using multiple contacts.
Once all test contacts have been listed, click on the eye icon to the right of the email address. The preview screen will now be updated with the campaign and the personalisation tokens replaced with the appropriate contact data.
It is not possible to use the contact preview feature with external event based personalisation, only with contact data housed within the Emarsys account.
3.7. Testing a Inbox campaign
Click Test Message button at the top right of the page.
In the appearing Send Test Message window, you can specify an email address, contact list or segment to which a test message will be sent.
The test email address must be a valid address in your Emarsys database, associated with a known device.
For sending the test message to a contact list, the maximum number of contacts allowed in the contact list is 50. This is to mitigate the risk of sending to a large audience by accident.
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.
To test your message, click Save & Send.
Click Next step to continue to the Scheduling step.
Scheduling step is only available if the recipient source is using a segment.
4. Scheduling
When you have tested your message, and the recipient source is using a segment you can continue to the Scheduling step.
On this screen, the number of users in the applied segment are displayed.
In the Scheduling section, it is possible to set an message expiry date. If the message is not fetched by the contacts inbox by the expiry date, it will be deleted. Additional options for launching the campaign include either selecting Launch now for immediate action, or you can define a specific date and time in the future and click Schedule.
- When a message is scheduled for launch, the contents of the message are still editable right up until launch and can even be deleted. If the message content is deleted for any additional language, the default language will be used; if that is empty no message will be sent.
- By default the app users can get up to 25 messages in their inbox without pagination.
5. Campaign recall
If an inbox campaign is sent in error and needs to be removed from recipients inboxes, use the campaign recall feature. It can be used on campaigns where the recipient source is either using a segment or automation.
To recall a campaign where the recipient source is Automation, the Automation program must have the status of finished.
To recall a campaign, navigate to the campaign edit screen and click the Recall Campaign button.
If there are no Automation program dependencies, click the Recall Campaign.
Recalling a campaign cannot be undone. If the campaign is recalled, it will be remove from all of the recipients inboxes.
If the campaign has Automation program dependencies, e.g. it is in an active/frozen Automation program, you must first remove the campaign from the Automation program and then recall the campaign.