Device location awareness (DLA) is a mobile app messaging service that lets you send location-based mobile app messages. You can use it to send relevant, timely, and personalized mobile app messages that are based on a mobile user's location.

The DLA service integrates with Acoustic Campaign. It is divided into two components:

• A geographical user interface that location administrators use to define locations of interest
• A mobile app messaging SDK that developers integrate to make mobile apps aware of location

With device location awareness, marketers can send location-aware mobile app messages based on mobile users' current and past behavior. For example, when a mobile user enters a location, such as a coffee shop, a message is sent to the mobile device that notifies them of a sale on a brand of coffee. Six months later, the mobile user is messaged again as part of a campaign that targets loyal coffee shop customers.

Site

In device location awareness, a site is a location of interest. There are two types of sites available in Acoustic Campaign: traditional and personal.

A site can be a place of business, an area where an event or activity occurs, or a personal location, such as a mobile user's home or place of work. 

You define traditional sites for locations with known coordinates, such as a department store with an established address.

Personal sites are locations that are derived by the Mobile App Messaging SDK and are based on individual mobile users' home and work locations. Before the SDK can start monitoring location patterns for personal sites, the mobile user must configure appropriate permissions on their mobile phone. When you enable personal sites, the Mobile App Messaging SDK monitors mobile device movement patterns, and, after about a week, identifies mobile users' home and work locations. The Mobile App Messaging SDK builds personal sites dynamically so that marketers can quickly target mobile users with mobile app messages without manually setting up an entire site hierarchy.

Personal sites

When you enable personal sites in device location awareness, the Mobile App Messaging SDK monitors mobile device movement patterns, and after about a week, identifies mobile users' home and work locations. Before the SDK can start monitoring location patterns for personal sites, the mobile user must configure appropriate permissions on their mobile phone. Location coordinates are not known by the location administrator.

The Mobile App Messaging SDK builds personal sites dynamically so that you can quickly target mobile users without manually setting up an entire site hierarchy. To get started, the location administrator can check the Home or Work checkbox on the sites map page or sites list page and configure the corresponding geofences. Geofences define areas around personal sites where the presence of mobile devices is detected. Personal sites do not support zones, custom location attributes, or beacons. To disable personal sites, the location administrator can clear the Home or Work checkbox.

Personal sites allow marketers to contact mobile users at home and at work with the right mobile app message at the right time and place.

Note: Information about the user's actual home and work locations remains on the user's device and is not shared with Acoustic Campaign. Marketers and location administrators never know the actual address of the user's home and work locations.

Be aware that telling the customer that you know they are at home or work might be interpreted as invasive and prompt them to uninstall your app. Create your campaigns cautiously and with no indication of work and home location, like:

Good morning! Get going with 10% off coffee at CityCool Coffee House.

Zone

A zone is a location covering a specific space associated with a site. For example, a site might be a CityCool store and an associated zone might be the parking lot around the store. Another zone might be a department in the store.

A site hierarchy supports multiple layers of zones, child zones, and grandchild zones. A zone cannot be associated with more than one parent.

You can add location attributes to a zone that describe the zone's characteristics. For example, you can use a climate attribute to describe zones in cold climates. Zones inherit location attributes from the site and from parent zones, including the site's latitude and longitude. The following example shows how the Office Supplies zone inherits attributes from the site and a parent zone.

Site: CityCool Store [attributes: lat, long = 33, -111, CityCool_office]

Zone: Floor 1 [attribute: adminContact]

Zone: Office Supplies [attribute: numberOfWhiteboards:5]

Beacon: Beacon in Office Supplies Department

In this example, the Office Supplies zone has the following attributes: [attributes: lat, long = 33, -111, CityCool_office, adminContact, numberOfWhiteboards:5]

You can add child zones to the site or to zones by clicking the site or zone in the site hierarchy and then repeating step 2.

When you delete a zone in device location awareness, all associated child zones, geofences, and beacons are deleted. If the zone contains custom location attributes that are associated with other sites or zones, the attributes are not deleted from the other locations and continue to be mapped to location universal behaviors events.

Geofence

Geofences are virtual geographic boundaries around latitude and longitude coordinates. Coordinates are inherited from the site, and the radius is defined in the geofence. Location administrators add geofences to sites and zones to define areas where the presence of mobile devices is detected. 

For traditional sites, the latitude and longitude coordinates are configured by the location administrator when the location administrator sets up the site in device location awareness. For personal sites, latitude and longitude are derived by the Mobile App Messaging SDK.

To determine device location, geofences use the location service of the operating system on the mobile device, which is typically GPS. Thus, it requires access to satellite GPS systems and restricts the smallest practical geofence radius to 100 meters. Apart from that, geofences use wifi triangulation and cell tower triangulation, so users must enable location services on their mobile device.

Beacon

A beacon is a Bluetooth low energy device that is physically placed in a location. Each beacon broadcasts an identifier to the area around it using a low-power radio. When a mobile device is near a beacon, the mobile device receives the identifier and detects that the device is near the beacon. Location administrators add beacons to sites and zones to define areas where the presence of mobile devices are detected.

Acoustic Campaign supports iBeacons. When you configure an iBeacon in device location awareness, you specify a Proximity UUID, major number, and minor number that mobile devices use to identify the beacon.

Location event

A location event occurs when a mobile app user interacts with a geofence or beacon. When triggered, location events are sent to the mobile app messaging server. The events are then converted into universal behaviors and sent to the Acoustic Campaign servers.

Three types of location events are supported for geofences and beacons:

• The Location - Enter event
• The Location - Exit event
• The Location - Dwell event

Note: Exit and dwell events are disabled, by default. You can have location events enabled one at a time and only after each subsequent event has obtained explicit approval. For details, contact Acoustic support. Also, be aware that programs and the query builder display all location events, regardless if events are enabled or disabled.

Universal behavior

You can implement location-based mobile app messaging in Acoustic Campaign by adding location universal behavior events to queries and programs.

Marketers can build queries that segment contacts based on location universal behavior events. Marketers can also add contacts to programs that use location data. Location universal behaviors can be used to send targeted mobile app messages when a user interacts with a location of interest.

Add a geofence (enter, exit, or dwell) universal behavior with the following configuration to configure location universal behavior events for personal sites:

• For personal home location events, use Site Id is equal to site - Home.
• For personal work location events, use Site Id is equal to site - Work.

Location administrators enable personal sites in device location awareness to track mobile users at home and work.

Select the Home and Work checkboxes on the Sites list page or Sites map page to enable personal sites. After you enable personal home and work sites in DLA, the mobile app messaging SDK derives the home and work locations of mobile users and starts generating home and work location events after about a week.

Site hierarchy

In device location awareness, a site hierarchy is a traditional site and the zones, beacons, geofences, and custom location attributes that are associated with the site. You can set up as many site hierarchies as you need. Here are the guidelines for organizing a site hierarchy:

• Only one site is allowed in a site hierarchy.
• Multiple layers of zones and child zones can be associated with a site, but each zone is allowed only one parent.
• Location attributes can be associated with a site and zones.
• Zones inherit location attributes from the site and parent zones.
• Zones inherit the site's longitude and latitude.
• Geofences and beacons must be associated with a site or zone and can be associated with only one location, either a site or zone.
• Location attributes are not associated with geofences or beacons; however, you can add location attributes to a site or zone that contains a geofence or beacon. In this case, geofences inherit the latitude and longitude of the site.