Overview
About Mobile Push
A mobile push message is a message that appears on a mobile device without a specific request from the recipient. Such messages are related to an app that the user has on his device and are received and displayed by that app. Typical use cases for mobile push include shipping status updates and appointment reminders.
This article explains how to set up Optimizely Campaign and your app for sending mobile push messages.
Preparation
Prerequisites
To use mobile push with Optimizely Campaign, you need:
- An app that you created and manage.
- A user account for Firebase Cloud Messaging Service (FCM), a free cross-platform solution for sending push messages.
- An authentication token that allows your app to use Optimizely Campaign’s Push REST API. You get this from Optimizely customer support
Setup by Optimizely
Optimizely support needs the following information to prepare your Campaign client for sending push messages:
- Name of your Optimizely Campaign client.
- Your app’s icon as a PNG file (512x512 pixels and not greater than 1 MB).
- Your app’s name and ID/package name
- Your Service Account File for FCM. For information on how to get this file, see Firebase Documentation.
- The sender ID with which the app registers at FCM.
- The recipient list fields you plan to use.
Implementation
Basic Process
The basic workflow for using push messages is as follows:
- A user installs your app.
- Your app requests a user registration token from Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM).
- Your app sends the user registration token and additional information to the Push REST API of Optimizely Campaign. → The app user is now a recipient in Campaign.
- Your app communicates with your own services to process the user's actions
- When appropriate, your app or your servers communicate with Campaign to trigger push messages.
- Campaign communicates with FCM to send the messages.
Technical Recipient Registration
The app user must be added to a recipient list in Campaign. You can use Optimizely Campaign's Push REST API to add push message recipients. For details about the API, see the article The Push REST API.
The recipient list for push messages must offer fields for the user registration token and all additional data that you want to use. You can only have one recipient list per app in Optimizely Campaign.
When a user installs your app, the app should:
- Request a user registration token from FCM. The registration token is used for identifying the user of the app as a recipient in Campaign.
- Send the user registration token and additional information to Optimizely Campaign. Often, the following additional information is useful:
- User email address (available if the user is registered in the app). Caution: Email addresses that are transferred with customer data are not a valid opt-in for email marketing! However, you may still use these email addresses for reconciliation with other recipient lists.
- Device language and time zone
- Device model and operating system
- App version
Legal Recipient Registration
Opt-in
- In Android 13, an opt-in model for push messages was introduced, see Android documentation.
- iOS requires users to consent to receiving messages.
Opt-out
If users disable push notifications in the app settings or delete the app, they must no longer receive push notifications.