Messaging

While designing your campaign journey, you can connect with your customers on a specific channel by using the appropriate messaging trigger. The triggers you will see in the '+' or  'New Trigger' menu, will depend upon the channels you've enabled and the cloud apps you have configured for your account. The following screenshot shows an example of what this could look like.

Sending a message is the main action of a messaging trigger. A messaging trigger typically requires the following pieces of information:

1. Content (required): You will need to select the creative/ message template that will be used for messaging the customer.
   • For Live Content triggers, instead of selecting a live content template, you will need to select a Live Content campaign here. You can only select 'launched' Live Content campaigns which are configured to use audience from 'other campaigns'
   • Similarly, for Audience Sync triggers, you will need to select an audience sync campaign (aka syndication) here. You can only select 'launched' syndications which are configured to use audience from 'other campaigns'
2. Send Settings (required): You will need to specify the sender information. You can do so by specifying the app and adapter.
3. Tracking Parameters (optional): You may also optionally specify UTM or custom URL tracking parameters for the campaign so that you can measure the impact of running the campaign.
4. Expiration (optional): You may optionally specify when a message will expire.
   • Note: This is applicable for the in-app trigger only.
5. Action (required): This is a required setting for the Live Content and Audience Sync triggers. You must specify the action you want to perform with this trigger i.e. whether to show or hide the live content/ paid media campaign. 

Content

Select the creative/ message template that will be used for messaging the customer. You can also set up A/B Tests as required.

Send Settings

The send settings can vary by channel.

Here’s a breakdown of the different send settings by channel.

Setting	Description	Required?	Email	Push	SMS	In-App	Cloud App	Live Content
Promotions	Specify your promo code	No	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	x
App	Choose the app for messaging e.g. Mailguin, Twilio etc.	Yes	✓	✓	✓	✓	x	x
Adapter	Choose the adapter i.e. credentials for messaging	Yes	✓	✓	✓	✓	x	x
From Name	Sender name	No	✓	x	x	x	x	x
From Address	The email address of the sender	No1	✓	x	x	x	x	x
Reply to Address	The email address to which replies will be sent	No1	✓	x	x	x	x	x
BCC	Send a copy of the message to these email addresses	No1	✓	x	x	x	x	x

¹By default Blueshift will use the value specified in the adapter settings but you can override that here in the trigger configuration. You can specify a liquid variable with appropriate attributes to dynamically populate the fields

Tracking Parameters

Adding tracking parameters to your messages allows you to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign and identify the best ways to drive more visitors to your website or app.

Blueshift supports both UTM and custom tracking parameters.

UTM Parameters

You can specify values for the 5 UTM parameters here:

• UTM Source: the source of your traffic. For example: Blueshift.
• UTM Campaign: the campaign name. For example: Abandoned Browse.
• UTM Medium: the medium the link was used on such as: email, SMS etc.
• UTM Content: optional parameter for additional details for A/B testing and content-targeted ads.
• UTM Term: optional parameter suggested for paid search to identify keywords for your ad.

You can specify static values as explained in the examples above or you can specify dynamic values using liquid variables. So you could specify an attribute from any of the below mentioned entities or a combination thereof:

• A user
• A recommendation
• An external fetch
• An event
• A transaction

When the message is rendered, these variables are replaced with actual values for a specific customer. You can then slice and dice your campaign performance using these attributes on a third party analytics platform like Google Analytics. For example, if you use content = {{user.gender}}, you can see how your campaign performed for men compared to women using the content param.

Custom Parameters

In addition to standard UTM parameters, you can also include custom URL tracking parameters. And just like UTM parameters, you can include Liquid expressions for setting these attributes.

Note: You can add tracking parameters directly to links in your message template. Tracking parameters defined in the trigger settings do not overwrite those specified in the creative. They only get added to links if the links didn't have these parameters already.

If you specify a direct value for a tracking parameter, it is saved in both sent and non-sent UCT parameters. If you add a Liquid expression as the value for a tracking parameter, the resulting value for the Liquid expression is saved. For example, if the value of the tracking parameter is set as {{my_param}}, and if the value of the Liquid expression is rendered as "abcd", the rendered value "abcd" is saved as the sent UCT, but the expression {{my_param}} is saved as the non-sent UCT. You can obtain the rendered value in non-sent UCTs by getting it from the sent UCT that has the same message_uuid as the non-sent UCT.

Link tracking and iOS 17

Apple's iOS 17 contains a major privacy enhancement called Link Tracking Protection. This feature offers increased user-level tracking safeguards in Messages, Mail, and Safari Private Browsing. It detects user-identifiable tracking parameters in link URLs, and automatically removes them.

Does this enhancement impact emails sent from the Blueshift platform?

No. These changes will not impact your ability to track links or how you measure campaign performance on the Blueshift platform. 

The Blueshift team has thoroughly reviewed and tested the upcoming changes and here are our takeaways:

• Only known ad link tracking parameters might get impacted depending upon how a customer accesses the link. Examples of such parameters include Google Adwords (gclid), Facebook (fbclid), Twitter Advertising (twclkd), Mailchimp (mc_eid), and Instagram (igshid).
• There will be no impact to UTM or custom tracking params or redirect params.
• Your campaigns and reports will continue to work just the way they did in the past.

Message Expiration

This setting is available for in-app messages only.

• It allows you to set an expiration date for the message.
• Users logging into your app after the expiration date will not see the message. This ensures that infrequent users of your app don’t see messages that are old or stale.
• You can specify that an in-app message expires based on one of the following:
  • The amount of time that has passed since it was first sent.
  • A specific date and time (available for one-time sends only).
• The default setting to expire in-app messages is 30 days. The maximum expiration time can be set as 90 days (2160 hours or 13 weeks).

Note

• If you set criteria for users to re-qualify for the campaign, make sure that the message expiration period is equal to or shorter than the re-qualification period. This prevents users from getting the same message multiple times due to re-qualification.
• For recurring campaigns, the message expiration period should fit within the campaign's repeat cycle. This prevents users from getting the same message multiple times if they don't open the app during that time.

Action

• This setting is available for Live Content and Audience Sync triggers only.
• It allows you to specify whether you want to show the selected Live Content/ Paid Media campaign to the customer or whether you want to hide it from the customer.
  • The default action is to show the selected Live Content /Paid Media campaign.

Live Content Trigger vs Live Content Campaign

A campaign journey can only perform actions which are of the push type, for example send a message, make an API call etc. Once a journey has completed the action for a given customer, it moves to the next one. A campaign journey cannot be used to fetch content on demand. That is the job of a Live Content campaign.

The main reason why you would want to use a Live Content trigger in the journey builder would be to plan and visualize all your customer touch points across all channels in a single location. The job of the Live Content trigger is to control the audience of a Live Content campaign. If a customer meets all the delay and trigger criteria specified in the Live Content trigger, the trigger will instruct the selected Live Content campaign to show/ hide the content (based on the configured 'action') to/from the customer the next time they visit your website. This is why you still need to create a Live Content campaign and launch it first in order to use a Live Content trigger in a journey.

Metrics

Since the job of a Live Content trigger is to add/ remove a customer to/ from a Live Content campaign, you will not see any engagement stats (sends, opens, clicks etc) for this trigger. All engagement stats will be tied to the Live Content campaign that is actually responsible for displaying the content to the customer.  Customer flows through Live Content triggers will be tracked with 'action' = 'journey'  and 'action_type' = 'live_content' in  campaign activity reports.

Audience Sync Trigger vs Syndication

The main reason why you would want to use an Audience Sync trigger in the journey builder would be to plan and visualize all your customer touch points across all channels, including paid media, in a single location. The job of the Audience Sync trigger is to control the audience of a Syndication. If a customer meets all the delay and trigger criteria specified in the Audience Sync trigger, the trigger will instruct the selected Syndication to add/remove the customer to/from the destination (based on the configured 'action'). This is why you still need to create a Syndication and launch it first in order to use an Audience Sync trigger in a journey. Additionally, the syndication will run at the time and cadence specified in the syndication setup, independent of when the syndication trigger gets evaluated. For example, if your syndication job runs every day at 9 AM and a syndication trigger sends customer A to the syndication at 12 PM on Monday, customer A won't be syndicated until the syndication job runs again on 9 AM on Tuesday.

Metrics

Since the job of an Audience Sync trigger is to add/ remove a customer to/ from a Syndication, you will not see any engagement stats (sends, opens, clicks etc) for this trigger.  Customer flows through Audience Sync triggers will be tracked with 'action' = 'journey'  and 'action_type' = 'syndication' in  campaign activity reports.