| Category | Question | Answer |
| Events | What type of events should we send? | We recommend sending at least the following: identify (the event that passes the email/customer id of a user upon login and sign up), viewed page (essential for everything else to work, should be on every page), viewed product, add to cart, checkout, purchase |
| How does Blueshift identify a user and corresponding activities? | For the identify call, we recommend sending customer_id (preferable), email and/or device_id. For non-identify events, we need customer_id or device_id. We capture cookie on the web by setting up a first party cookie | |
| How does Blueshift track conversions/revenue? | By setting Attribution parameters here: (https://app.getblueshift.com/dashboard#/account/other). Additionally, you need to use the standard Purchase event in order to track revenue. | |
| How can we ensure events we sent are processed in Blueshift? | You can view event logs including errors (by dates) here: https://app.getblueshift.com/dashboard#/click_stream/index | |
| Are there specific field types we should be using? | For dates, please send us data in iso8601 format | |
| Product Catalog | What should I include in the Product catalog? | At the very least, we need product id, product name, product url, image url, price, and sale price. However, we also recommend sending us category, on sale, in/out of stock fields. |
| Do you accept multiple product catalogs? | Yes, we do. However, product ids must be unique across all catalogs. | |
| How do you set a product to out of stock? | You can set rules in the catalog settings to set a product as OUT_OF_STOCK or IN_STOCK based on one of the fields in the catalog file. For example if "inventory" was a field you can use "0" to set it to "OUT_OF_STOCK" and leave default to IN_STOCK. Or you can use a field like 'status' with Active/InActive as values mapped to IN_STOCK AND OUT_OF_STOCK. | |
| How do I expire/remove a product? | For each product you can send "start_date" and "end_date" fields in the file. The expected format is iso8601 for these two fields. We will use them to automatically set a product to OUT_OF_STOCK if the current_date does not fall within that range. | |
| What happens when we reimport or update a catalog? | We use INSERT/UPDATE logic to INSERT new products and UPDATE existing products as identified by SKU/product_ID. | |
| Data Upload | Can I use the dashboard to upload CRM data? | Yes. However, we recommend uploading no more than ~500K rows at a time. For larger data, you may split the file into smaller segments and/or work with the Blueshift team to upload via S3. |
| What information should I provide in historical data? | We only need order/purchase data and not other events. In the csv file, please provide a separate row for each transaction. | |
| Can I add user attributes on an ongoing basis? | Yes. You can upload as many (and as often) user attributes through the dashboard as long as you map them to an email | |
| How do I unsubscribe users manually? | For small set of users, you can search for the user via Customer Attributes and edit their status manually. For a larger set, you can create a csv file (email, unsubscribe = true) and upload via Customer Attributes process | |
| Segments | What data can I use for segments? | All data provided by you (event, user attributes, product catalog, historical) is available for segmentation. However, we only expose last 90 days of event data for segmentation. |
| How often do Segments get refreshed? | Depends on the campaign but for triggered it gets refreshed every 3-5 minutes | |
| I have campaigns (ex. Reactivation) where I need to segment users based on events greater than 90 days. How can I accomplish that in Blueshift? | There may be other options available and please contact the Blueshift team to discuss | |
| Can I get a csv file of users in the current Segment? | Yes, you can click on the Export User List icon to get the csv file via email | |
| Templates | How do I personalize an email template? | It can be achieved by first selecting the appropriate product algorithm (Abandoned search, add to cart, etc.) followed by embedding user and product attributes in the html |
| What level of personalization is available in a push notification? | You can use the same process for email personalization. However, given the limited real estate, you may only want to select a few attributes in the template | |
| Can I preview the email in a browser? | Yes, but inserting the variable {{email_preview_link}} in your template | |
| Can I preview my templates prior to launching a campaign? | Yes there is a Test Send feature for each messaging channel. You can send the test user’s personalized email to your email address. However, personalization preview is only available for Email at the moment. | |
| Campaigns | Can I overwrite UTM parameters in email template? | Yes by defining it in campaign trigger |
| Do you host a preference center for us? | Please contact Blueshift team to discuss options | |
| Reporting | How are push messages tracked? | For push, opens = sends/users, click = app opened and an event was generated within 15 minutes of open |
| Can I get a detailed user activity report per campaign? | Yes, we provide summary, detailed and user activity report for each campaign | |
| How are bounces tracked? | We show hard bounces on the dashboard. For soft bounces, Sendgrid (or your vendor) will retry up to 72 hours | |
| Do you track deliverability of push messages? | Once we send a message to GCM/APNS, it is upto their service to ensure deliverability. | |
| Push Setup | Do you support deep-linking within mobile app? | Yes |
| How does a push message get delivered? | Whenever an app is installed (or re-installed) by a user on the device, a device_token gets created and is sent to Blueshift. Blueshift will send a push message to this device_token. If multiple users sign into the same device, they will all get assigned the same device token | |
| Do you store multiple device tokens per customer? | Yes, we append any new ones. device tokens only get removed if Apple or GCM notify us that a token is no longer in use. Also, we will send a push notification for each device token registered in Blueshift | |
| Can you tell me more about the last_device_token? | 1) By default last_device_token is set to false in Admin settings 2) if set to true, we would message only the last device even if a user has multi mobile devices 3) if we set the last_device_token to false and if the user has multiple devices, then for Android we always only send to 1 device token. For iOS, we send to every device (iPad, iPhone, etc.) |