What do my Push Message analytics mean?

There are three metrics tracked for Messages in the Bluebridge platform:

• Message Notifications: The number of devices that were sent a notification for a new message.
• Message Opens: The number of times a message has been opened by your users.
• Message Actions: The number of times an action in a message has been tapped on.

See below to learn how each are tracked, some reasons they might be unexpectedly high or low, and detailed explanations of how they work. 

Message Notifications

For any given message, this metric measures the number of devices (phones and tablets with your app installed) that were sent a notification. Message Notifications tracks the notifications sent. This is different than the total number of users who can see or access the message in the message inbox.

To understand this better, it is helpful to understand the path of a message and notifications for that message.

1. You create a message in the Mobile App Studio.
2. You send it.
3. We compile a list of devices that should get a notification for the Message.
4. We ask Apple and Google to deliver the notification to each device.
5. The notification is sent by Apple and Google.
6. The devices show a notification on the screen.

What is important to understand for this metric is that it is a count of devices that we send the message to.

Key Factors in Message Notification Counts

Being aware of what can influence the notification count is very important and can help you improve your ability to reach your audience effectively. Below is a list of key factors in how many notifications you will send with each message. If you keep in mind a filter or funnel as you're sending a message, the list of items below act as restrictions on that funnel, starting with your entire app audience and restricting the number of Message Notifications that will be sent.

1. Number of current installs: This is probably the biggest determining factor. You can't send messages to people who don't have your app. By increasing your overall audience, you increase the "pool" of people who can get a message and notification for that message.
2. Notification opt-in rates for your iOS users: iOS users are presented with an option to opt-in or opt-out of notifications for your app when they first launch it. If they opt-out, they will not get ANY notifications from you. They can still access the Messages in the Message Center in their app, but they won't get any notifications for those messages.
3. Using message categories: If you add a category to a message, we will only deliver a message notification to users who have that category selected in their app. This can be a great way to target messages, but if only half of your users have selected a certain category, then you should expect Message Notification counts to be about half that of an uncategorized message.
4. Over messaging: If you send way too many messages that aren't relevant to your users they might opt-out of notifications manually (iOS users) or they might uninstall the app. It's hard to track uninstalls so even if you're getting new installs you could still be losing users due to uninstalls or device upgrades (getting a new phone). 

If you have any questions about these factors, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Message Opens

Message opens is simpler than Message Notifications. It is the sum (total) of all the times that a message was "opened" by your users. An open is simply any time the message detail is seen in the app. A user can initiate an open from two sources. The first is a notification and the second is the message list. If a user opens a message multiple times, every open is counted.

Message Actions

Message actions are very similar to message opens, but they record the sum (total) number of times a message action was tapped by your users. A "tap" is exactly as it sounds - a press of the screen on that action button.

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