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.
- You create a message in the Mobile App Studio.
- You send it.
- We compile a list of devices that should get a notification for the Message.
- We ask Apple and Google to deliver the notification to each device.
- The notification is sent by Apple and Google.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
FAQs
- There are a few reasons this is possible, but the biggest is likely the number of iOS users who have opted out of notifications.
- Many messages you send will include a Notification that contains the core portion of your content. Users might get everything they need by just viewing the notification. It is not possible to track "views" in a literal sense because the user doesn't do anything on the screen when they see the notification. For example: A message notification might say "Building closed today after 1 pm". It's less likely a user will open that message since they now know the most critical information after seeing that message notification on the phone.
- Because it is possible for a user to open a message multiple times and only one notification can be sent to each user, it is always possible for a message to record more opens than notifications. Another possible scenario is if you have a number of people who have opted out of notifications but are still reading messages from the message center in their app.
- Message Notifications are tracked from the Mobile App Studio the moment you send the message. We record that information as we're compiling the list of devices to send to and have it in our system immediately. Message opens are recorded on the device for each user and then sent back to our system every few hours where we total them nightly. So, if you send a message in the morning and many users open it right away, we don't show that total until the next morning.
- No. We are not able to actually track how many phone calls were made or how many emails were sent from an action. We can simply count the number of times the user initiated that action from your app as a good proxy for final completion of the action. In cases like calendar events or websites, the process of tapping on the action does immediately perform the end action so in those cases, there is a direct correlation, but in the case of call, e-mail, address, and share, there are additional steps the user must take that we're not able to track due to OS limitations.
Why are Message Action counts delayed?
- For the same reason as Message Notifications, we total them nightly for the previous day so any actions performed during the day will be reported the following day.
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