engaging your audience with mobile push notifications - gdc 2014

Engage Your Customers

with SNS Mobile Push

and Amazon Analytics

March 18, 2014

Jon Turow

Michael Pesce

65% of mobile apps are abandoned

within 90 days.

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/90743/App-Engagement-The-Matrix-Reloaded

“…understanding and improving user

engagement is the new currency of doing

business in the new digital world.” –Peter Farago, Flurry.com

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/90743/App-Engagement-The-Matrix-Reloaded

Mobile push notifications engage customers when your app

is not currently active.

Mobile push notifications engage customers when your app

is not currently active.

• Right message

• Right user

• Right time

Discussion Topics

• Engaging Your Users with Push Notifications

• Quick Intro to Mobile Push and Simple Notification Service (SNS)

• Getting Started with SNS

• Analytics and Targeting for Better Customer Engagement

Mobile push notifications engage customers when your app

is not currently active.

• Users opt-in to receive them

• Delivered to a specific app

on a specific device

• Short messages: read, ignore, or

acknowledge to launch the app

Push notifications drive user engagement

“Some of us have very busy lives and can’t

be checking the game 24/7. It would be great

to get a notification when a challenge starts.”

- Plumbee gaming customer

Some Use Cases

Broadcast Direct Closed Loop

Identical messages to

many players at once

Unique messages to

individual players

Targeted and optimized

with analytics

Some Use Cases

Broadcast Direct Closed Loop

Identical messages to

many players at once

Unique messages to

individual players

Targeted and optimized

with analytics

Broadcast Push Notification Use Cases

• New features/content/games

• Promotion start/ends/redemption

• Active players (active in 7 days)

• Newly inactive players

• Segmentation (geo, spend, others..)

Broadcast Push Notification Use Cases

• “New episode available now!”

• “Halloween challenge starts today.”

• “Keep the streak going.”

• “Smokey the bear misses you!”

• “New Jetpack, on sale today!”

Some Use Cases

Broadcast Closed Loop

Identical messages to

many players at once

Targeted and optimized

with analytics

Direct

Unique messages to

individual players

Direct Push Notification Use Cases

• Messaging

• Turn-based activities

• Events

• User lifecycle

• Administrative

Direct Push Notification Use Cases

• “Jon invited you to a game.”

• “It’s your turn to play.”

• “You now have full lives.”

• “Welcome to the game!”

• “Your subscription is ending.”

Some Use Cases

Broadcast

Identical messages to

many players at once

Direct

Unique messages to

individual players

Closed Loop

Targeted and optimized

with analytics

Closed Loop Push Notification Use Cases

• Broadcast push notifications

• Direct push notifications

Closed Loop Push Notification Use Cases

• Different messages

• Different frequencies

• Different segments

• Different times of day

• Different points in the lifecycle

Some Use Cases

Broadcast Direct Closed Loop

Identical messages to

many players at once

Unique messages to

individual players

Targeted and optimized

with analytics

Consider push notifications as calls-to-action: what

messages will most effectively reengage your players?

Mirrorball Slots - Mobile

Mirrorball Slots - Challenges

Mirrorball Slots - Challenges

Push 1:

Initial Offer

Push 2:

Final Offer

Push 3:

Offer Redemption

Push notifications drive user engagement

Without Push With Push

Real User Engagement Comparison

Initial Offer

Final Offer

Offer Redemption Day

Discussion Topics

• Engaging Your Users with Push Notifications

• Quick Intro to Mobile Push and Simple Notification Service (SNS)

• Getting Started with SNS

• Analytics and Targeting for Better Customer Engagement

Your cloud application directs mobile push notifications to

a specific app on a specific device

Cloud App Mobile Apps

Notifications are delivered via platform-specific push

services, which keep connections with their devices.

Cloud App Mobile Apps

Platform

Service

Developers manage tokens for each device, and must

proactively swap or disable them based on feedback.

Platform

Service

Token Registration

Token

Feedback

Each platform-specific push service works differently.

Apple APNS

Google GCM

Amazon ADM

• Different APIs

• Different Features

• Different Feedback

Push notifications get even more complex as you scale to

support millions of devices.

Cloud App

Platform Services Mobile Apps

Developers build custom intermediaries to abstract platform-

specific APIs and manage tokens for millions of apps.

Mobile Apps Push Intermediary

Developers build custom intermediaries to abstract platform-

specific APIs and manage tokens for millions of apps.

Abstraction so your app

can engage users on

any platform

Manage tokens to

ensure messages are

delivered reliably

Operational complexity

Scalability takes work

Cost – even though the

platform services

themselves are free

Amazon SNS Mobile Push is a managed, scalable, cross-

platform push intermediary service.

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

Apple Devices

Google Devices

Amazon Kindle Fire Devices

SNS offers easy scalability, so you can just start sending

more messages as your app achieves scale.

• Go from a few messages to hundreds of millions

• Go from a few devices to hundreds of millions

...without provisioning, configuring or managing

...without sacrificing reliable, durable delivery

You can get started for free.

1 Million Free per Month • 1 million publishes + 1 million mobile push notifications

$1.00 per Million Thereafter • $0.50 per million publishes + $0.50 per million mobile push deliveries

• When you broadcast with SNS Topics, your effective price can be lower

Discussion Topics

• Engaging Your Users with Push Notifications

• Quick Intro to Mobile Push and Simple Notification Service (SNS)

• Getting Started with SNS

• Analytics and Targeting for Better Customer Engagement

SNS publishes notifications on your behalf using the

credentials you obtain from each push service.

Apple APNS

Google GCM

Amazon ADM

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

SNS encapsulates each device token inside an Amazon

Resource Name (ARN) endpoint.

Apple APNS

Google GCM

Amazon ADM

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

ARN 1

Token A

ARN 2

Token B

ARN 3

Token C

Once you register a device with SNS, SNS proactively consumes

feedback about the corresponding token from the push service.

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push Token

Registration

Token

Feedback

Cloud App

You can access

the underlying

tokens and

feedback, but you

don’t have to do

so in order to use

SNS.

ARN endpoints remain stable, even if the underlying token

is swapped or disabled.

Apple APNS

Google GCM

Amazon ADM

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

ARN 1

Token A

ARN 2

Token B

ARN 3

Token C

Token X

Token Y

ARN endpoints behave the same no matter which mobile

platform they address.

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

ARN 1

Token A

ARN 2

Token B

ARN 3

Token C

You can publish unique messages to individual devices, or

broadcast identical messages to many devices at once.

Publish

Publish

Publish

Publish

Direct Publishing Broadcast with SNS Topics

Grouping users by SNS Topic

Geography Activity Product

US – West Coast Daily Actives Flapping Bird Rio

Interest Tier Segment

49ers Premium Top 100 Players

Apple

Kindle

Fire

Kindle

Fire

Google

Publish

Apple

Kindle

Fire

Kindle

Fire

Google

Publish

SNS can reformat your message for each mobile platform,

or you can specify platform-specific payloads.

Publish Once, Deliver Anywhere Specify Platform-Specific Payloads

So let’s get started.

Step 1: Write your mobile app

• Use the mobile app platform’s

push notification libraries as you

normally would.

Step 2: Obtain Application Prerequisites

• APNs:

• Apple Push Notification service SSL certificate

• Application Private Key

• GCM:

• API Key (Sender Auth Token)

• ADM:

• Client ID

• Client secret

Step 3: Register Your Mobile App with AWS

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

Step 4: Obtain a Token/Registration ID from the device

• APNs:

• Device Token

• GCM:

• Registration ID

• ADM:

• Registration ID

Cloud

App

<e960d9b1…de43f6c0>

Step 5: Add Token/Registration ID to Amazon SNS

• For existing devices

• Use the console for .csv import

• Or use CreatePlatformEndpoint API

• For future devices

• Use a proxy server and the CreatePlatformEndpoint API

• Or use the AWS token vending service and let devices register themselves

• Receive an ARN back

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

Cloud

App

<e

96

0d

9b

1…

de

43

f6c0

>

arn:aws:sns:eu-west-1:12…1f

private String getArnForDeviceEndpoint(

String platformApplicationArn,

String deviceToken) {

CreatePlatformEndpointRequest request =

new CreatePlatformEndpointRequest()

.withPlatformApplicationArn(platformApplicationArn)

.withToken(deviceToken);

CreatePlatformEndpointResult result =

snsClient.createPlatformEndpoint(request);

return result.getEndpointArn();

}

Device Registration – Code example

Step 6a: Send Push Notifications via the Console

Hello world!

Step 6b: Send Push Notifications via the API

MyMac:~ glez$ python

Python 2.7.2 (default, Oct 11 2012, 20:14:37)

[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.0 (tags/Apple/clang-418.0.60)] on darwin

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> import boto

>>> import boto.sns

>>> boto.sns.connect_to_region("eu-west-1").publish(

... message="Hello world!",

... target_arn="arn:aws:sns:eu-west-1:979463966312:endpoint/APNS_SANDBOX/Push2reInvent/fc1234a1-67ef-4f62-b31a-ac320bf7631f")

{u'PublishResponse': {u'PublishResult': {u'MessageId': u'1893fa9d-7478-5137-be1d-b06928d999d0'}, u'ResponseMetadata': {u'RequestId': u'c3c26267-92af-50b3-b529-2893ce0e4854'}}}

>>>

Step 7: Receive and Close the Loop

Demo

Discussion Topics

• Engaging Your Users with Push Notifications

• Quick Intro to Mobile Push and Simple Notification Service (SNS)

• Getting Started with SNS

• Analytics and Targeting for Better Customer Engagement

Amazon offers mobile Analytics and A/B Testing

services.

• Amazon Analytics – Simple, free, cross-platform mobile analytics

• Amazon A/B Testing – A free, cross-platform way to run in-game

experiments

Analytics

Analytics - Tabs

Analytics – Dashboard

Analytics – Details

Analytics – Custom Events

A/B Testing Experiment Dashboard

A/B Testing Experiment Dashboard

A/B Testing Experiment Dashboard

What are some questions to ask about Push

Notifications?

• How many of my push notifications result in app

opens?

• Are users who I send push notifications doing X

more often?

• Are there differences between users that opt in

or out of push notifications?

Example 1: How many of my push notifications

result in app opens?

• Simple!

• Two Steps 1. Create custom event that is recorded any time your game is

opened from a push notification

2. Check dashboard for rolled up data

Example 1: Sample Analytics code (iOS)

• Import SDK #import <AmazonInsightsSDK/AmazonInsightsSDK.h>

• Initialize AIAmazonInsights* insights = [AIAmazonInsights insightsWithCredentials: credentials];

• Record a custom event when app is launched

from a push notification id<AIEventClient> eventClient = insights.eventClient;

id<AIEvent> appLaunchFromPush = [eventClient createEventWithEventType:@"appLaunchFromPush"];

[eventClient recordEvent: appLaunchFromPush];

Example 1: Sample Analytics results

Demo

Example 2: Are there differences between users that

receive push notifications and those that don’t?

• A bit more involved

• 6 Steps: 1. Create an A/B Test and a target Segment

2. Create custom events to support the test and deploy game

3. Start the A/B test

4. Filter push notifications to those in the test group

5. Send push notifications

6. Check dashboard for results

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Sample A/B Test setup

Example 2: Event Code

• Create 2 custom events to support the A/B Test 1. “appLaunched”

2. “IAPEvent”

• Send notifications to the variation group – Flag the endpoint for each player that receives the

“sendPushNotifications”=“true” variation

– Send push notifications to this group

Example 2: A/B Test results

More Advanced Targeting and Analytics

Amazon

Redshift

Amazon

DynamoDB

Amazon

S3

Simply and cost

effectively analyze all

your data for <$1k/TB/yr

Serve any level of

traffic with single-digit

millisecond latency

Store and retrieve any

amount of data, at any

time, from any device

Amazon SNS

Mobile Push

Quick Review:

• Cross-platform push to Apple, Google and Amazon

• 1m free per month, and $1.00 per million thereafter

• Seamless scalability with durable, reliable deliveries

• Easy token management

For More Information:

• SNS Detail Page and Docs: http://amzn.to/179ee7r

• Getting Started + Sample Apps: http://amzn.to/15rs1DV

• Email: aws-sns-mobile-push@amazon.com