With a mobile campaign, you can deliver personalized, interactive mobile app messages including images, video, sound, website and call links. Here is all you need to know before creating your first mobile campaign.

Types of mobile messages

Let's look at the different types of mobile app push notifications and messages:

• Use permission-based push notifications to get the mobile app user's attention when they're not active in your app.
• Mobile app inbox-only messages reach your entire app audience and provide users with the convenience to store messages for later use. Use them to deliver rich, full-page content inside of your app that can be stored within an inbox for a specified amount of time.
• When you send an in-app message, users will see it when they are actively using the mobile app.
• Data-only notifications update background data in the app. The data payload is sent to the device but is not shown to the user.
• A push notification with inbox action will open the mobile app's inbox when the user slides the notification.

Mobile user roles

In most Campaign organizations, there are different user roles that help set up, create, and send mobile app messages and notifications.

• Organization administrator
  • Sets up user accounts
  • Configures mobile user permissions 

    Note: User permissions must be set up before users can work with mobile app messages and Device Location Awareness (DLA).

• Developer
  • Builds the mobile app, including any customization for universal behavior events in the app
  • Connects the push notification SDKs
  • Registers the mobile app
  • Configures the app by providing the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS), and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) keys
  • Defines and configures the app groups and any custom actions or action categories
  • Configures the inbox, in-app, data and extensions, and simple templates
• Marketer
  • Creates mobile app messages
  • Creates HTML content blocks for certain mobile app messages

Administrator: Set up mobile app developer and marketer users

The organization administrator gives the mobile app developer and mobile app message creators permission to access areas in the product.

1. In Settings, click Organization admin and then User accounts.
2. Select a user from the list.
3. Under the User permissions section, select permissions for the user. Typically, the role or function determines what access a user needs. A single user can have both permissions enabled.
   • Choose Enable mobile app messages to allow the user to create and send mobile app message content. This permission is usually enabled for marketers.
   • Choose Enable development for mobile app messages to allow the user to add mobile apps and actions to the marketing platform. This permission is usually enabled for developers.
4. Save your changes and log in again to view the updated settings.

Set up device location awareness users

After the Provisioning team enables device location awareness (DLA), organization administrators can enable DLA access for each user account.

1. In Settings, go to Org admin and click User accounts.
2. Click Application settings and then select Device location awareness.

Users can then access DLA in the Applications menu but need to log back into Acoustic Campaign for the changes to take effect.

Developer checklist

Before you can create mobile messages, there are a few more tasks for your developer to complete:

1. Download the latest SDKs and plugins.
2. Implement the correct SDK within your mobile app. Check out the Developers Help Center for details:
   • iOS SDK
   • Android SDK
   • Apache Cordova SDK
3. Add the mobile app and create app groups in Campaign. You'll find necessary instructions in the Developers Help Center.
4. Configure any default and custom actions or action categories.
5. If necessary, create mobile app templates.

Note: The SMS or mobile app message channels in CRM integrations require customization to work properly. For more information, please contact your client service manager.

Set up a mobile campaign database

Make sure you are using a flexible database that is mobile app-enabled and has a mobile app messages custom field. Each organization can have only one mobile app-enabled database. If your organization is also SMS-enabled, you can have one SMS database and one mobile app database, or one database used for both channels. 

Note: You cannot change a mobile database after it is enabled. If you delete or purge a mobile app contact record in the database, all of the mobile app user contact records are broken and associated emails will fail.

Create a new mobile database

After you create user permissions, you can move on to creating a new database.

Tip: You can also use an existing database if it is a single opt-in, flexible database without a unique identifier. This is necessary because the mobile app message consent data is stored in the Mobile Push User ID field.

1. In Campaign, click the Databases tab and click Create.
2. Select the Regular option.
3. Name your database or list and save it in the Shared directory.
4. Choose Flexible database from the list and click Next.
5. In Field name, type the name of the field that will contain the Mobile Push User ID value. This text field becomes the unique identifier for the mobile app messages contact. The value is used to map the contact's device to the enabled mobile app user database.
6. In the Field type list, select Text and then add the field.
7. Click Create.

Enable the Mobile setting

After the database is created, you can enable the mobile app setting on the database.

1. Select the name of the mobile app-enabled database on the View data page.
2. Click Settings on the Database summary page and select Enable mobile push notifications under Mobile settings.
3. When the Enable mobile push notifications, checkbox is selected, the mobile user ID field is pre-populated with Acoustic’s recommended field name - “Mobile User Id”. Update the field name to match the field name you created in step #5 of section Create a new mobile database above, if different.