When users receive a push notification to their mobile phone through your app, they see the message regardless of whether they are using the app at the time. As a result, you can be sure that your messages aren't lost in a spam filter or buried in an inbox, increasing engagement.
There are lots of ways that you can use push notifications. For example:
to send a welcome message to your contacts.
with the abandoned cart module to send your contacts abandoned cart reminders.
Learn more in Using abandoned cart.
with our Magento connector to send your contacts order confirmations.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
To access all of the features of the Push notifications messaging node outlined below, you must upgrade to the latest version of our SDK.
Learn more in the Developer hub.
Android Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) credentials
From 20 June 2024, Android are changing the way you need to provide credentials for sending mobile push messages. If you’re currently sending mobile push through Dotdigital, you must update your credentials to re-authenticate your messaging profile.
Learn more in Update your Android Firebase Cloud Messaging credentials.
Use the push notification node in a program
To use the push notification node in your program:
In the program builder, drag the Push notification node onto the canvas.
Learn more in Getting started with the program builder.
Select the Push notification node to open the side panel.
Enter a title and a message for your push notification.
A maximum of 160 characters can be displayed in a push notification message and title. Extra characters are replaced by an ellipsis. To insert emojis into your message, copy and paste them from a website such as Emoji Keyboard 😎.
iOS devices
On iOS devices, titles are displayed only in the Notification Center. To learn more, check out Apple’s documentation.
Expand the On tap drop-down menu, and choose the action you want to happen when a user taps the push notification:
Open app - Opens the app on the user’s device.
Open deep link - Opens the app at a deep link of your choice.
You can enter individual deep links (URLs) for iOS and Android users.To make use of this option, your app must support any deep links entered. Your app developers can assist you with this.
The Open deep link action also allows you to enter a standard web URL to send users to, such as a web form or special event landing page on your site.
This option is particularly useful if your app does not yet support deep links, for example.
Pass data - For more advanced users, this lets you pass custom JSON data to perform a custom action. You must enter JSON separately for iOS and Android.
To make use of this option, your app must support receiving data via push and understand any data entered. Your app developers can assist you with this.
The Pass data option allows you to send a silent notification to your app.
A silent notification is one which makes a change or update to your app without sending a direct communication to a user.
To do this, set the Silent push notification toggle to YES before entering your data.
Open a page or form - Allows you to select a Dotdigital page or form to direct users to.
Once you select the action, expand the Page or form drop-down menu and select the page or form. Only published pages and forms are available to select.
If you want to preview your message, select Preview.
The Preview side panel opens, displaying a mock-up of how your notification will appear. You also see a confirmation of the action you have selected for On tap.
You can change the orientation of the device in the preview using the icon in the top right.
If you have used personalisation in your message and would like to preview as a particular contact, select PREVIEW AS, then select a contact. When you are finished with the preview, select CLOSE.
Select APPLY to finish configuring your notification.
View usage statistics for a push notification profile
The Push notification usage page displays reporting data for your push notification profile.
To access this page go to Analytics > Reports, expand the MORE REPORTS drop-down menu and select Push Notifications.
The page displays four headline tiles detailing the total number of message sends that have been attempted from this profile in the specified date range, and the number successfully sent. It also displays the number of clicks for push notifications sent in the specified date range, along with the number of new warnings.
Further detail on any warnings can be accessed through the Daily activity table at the bottom of this page.
Attempted sends
When a push message send is attempted, the message is added to a queue, which is managed by either Apple (APNS) or Google (FCM), depending on your app.
When a message leaves the queue, the message is sent to your contacts' devices. There is no way to find out if a push message was delivered.
The page also displays a graph which plots the total number of push notifications sent along with the total number of push clicks.
Finally, the page displays a Daily activity table which shows the following:
Date
The date push notifications were sent.
Attempted to send
The number of push notifications that the platform tried to send to your contacts.A push notification send may not succeed; this is most often due to the recipient having opted out of receiving push notifications, and therefore, when you next send a push to them it fails. Dotdigital detects this and clears the contacts PushOptin field to remove the contact from your push audience.
Sent
The number of push notifications the platform was able to send to your contacts.
Clicked
The number of clicks made by users on your push notifications.
Warnings
The number of push notifications that could not be sent. To see further detail, select [No. of] failures.
A side panel opens which displays a summary of the failure reasons for push notifications not sent. To see more information select VIEW DETAILS. This shows a list of contacts along with their specific failure reason.
Push notification drill down report
To access a more detailed report for push notifications sent on a specific date, select the date.
You are taken to a drill down of the data for the specified date. The table shows:
Push type - Standard or silent.
Message - The message text you entered, if any.
FCM/APNS - Deep links entered for Android and Apple users, respectively.
Source - Program that the push notifications were sent by.
Sent - Number of push notifications sent.
Clicked - Number of contacts who clicked on the push notification.
Avg time to click - The average time taken for contacts to click the notification.
Didn't click - Number of contacts who didn’t click on the push notification
You can select the number in the Sent, Clicked or Didn’t click columns to open a side panel which displays these contacts.
To add the contacts in the table to a list, select MORE ACTIONS.
To add the contacts to an existing list, select Add contacts to list, then select the list name. To confirm, select ADD CONTACTS.
To create a new list for these contacts, select Add contacts to new list. Enter a name for the list and then select CREATE.
You can also select the Program name under Source to go to the specified program.
Filter the Push notification usage page
To change the date range for the information displayed:
Select DATE RANGE in the top right.
Select the radio button for either Pre-defined date range or Custom date range.
Pre-defined date range
Expand the Date range drop-down menu and select the date range you want to display.Custom date range
Select the calendar icon next to Start date and End date, and select a date for each.
Select APPLY.
You can also filter the information on this page to show only push notifications sent by a particular program.
To do this:
Select FILTER in the top right.
In the side panel, select the program you want to display data for.
You can use the Search field to locate a particular program.Select APPLY.