Accelerator 24.4.3 Release Notes

Initiatives Released 

Bulk SMS

Use Case

Marketing campaigns now support the SMS channel, allowing you to message users via text in bulk. When building a marketing campaign, simply select a template that includes SMS content, an audience that contains the recipient’s phone number, and include SMS in the campaign’s channel list. All job and campaign reports have been updated to include SMS metrics, so you can understand how that channel is performing with respect to deliverability and engagement.

Goals

• Allow marketers to send SMS messages to predefined audiences

• Provide visibility into SMS performance with deliverability and engagement metrics

Capabilities

Marketing campaigns now support SMS as a channel type

Customers with SMS configured can now select SMS as a channel in their Marketing campaigns. When SMS is included as a channel, the Marketing campaign’s audience - whether a Blueprint or Audience - must include the smsAddress field.

Additionally, customers can upload XML and CSV files containing the smsAddress element or field, in order to send text messages to static lists of users. As with email and push notifications, you can preview fully rendered SMS content directly in the campaign, and send test messages to specified phone numbers.

Quick Launch from Template

The Quick Launch modal now lists SMS as a selectable channel when the template includes SMS content, allowing marketers to quickly communicate via SMS as soon as the content’s ready.

Blueprint campaign associations

Blueprints have been updated to indicate whether associated marketing campaigns include the SMS channel. In the Planning panel, campaigns that include SMS will include an SMS icon. In the Associated Campaigns modal, marketers can now select SMS as a Sending Channel to filter for campaigns that include SMS.

Campaign and Job Analytics

Assess SMS channel performance in the Job and Marketing analytics pages. If the job or campaign includes multiple channels, you can select the SMS filter to view SMS deliverability and engagement metrics. SMS metrics are also included in the Cross channel view, allowing you to compare them against other channel metrics.

Do Not Share and Column Mapping

Use Case

• Do Not Share
  • Recipient data may include fields that indicate a recipient doesn’t want to be advertised to on a specific platform. We want to update External Campaigns so we can leverage that indication - if a recipient has a do not share flag for a given destination, do not send them to that destination.
  • If recipients do not consent to being shared to a destination, then we can prevent that sharing from happening all together and remove the burden from the user to have to manage these recipients in the destination itself.
• Default Column Mapping
  • Some External Campaign destinations require column mapping - the column(s) in the recipient data need to be mapped to the columns that the destination is expecting. Today, columns don’t have to be mapped in the UI if the column name is already in the expected format. However, in this case, column mapping reflects that nothing is mapped. The user does not have any insight into which columns still need to be mapped without being intimately familiar with their data, and any mapping needs to be repeated per campaign.

  • If a client has a consistent schema, they could save this step and prevent confusion by setting up a default column mapping that gets applied any time the destination is chosen for an External Campaign.

Goals

• Ability to configure default column mapping per destination
• Ability to use that default mapping in an external campaign, or to override/remove it if desired
• Ability to set a destination up to require a field for DoNotShare

Capabilities

Configure default field mappings and DoNotShare requirement per destination

On destinations that expect specific fields, you can now configure a default mapping in advance. If your data naming conventions are consistent, you can map them to their respective field for each destination in Admin. Additionally, all destinations now have the option to make DoNotShare a required field. DoNotShare will always be an available field to use, but making it required for a destination will force all campaigns being sent to that destination to include DoNotShare in the data.

Use default field mappings and DoNotShare in a campaign

If any default field mappings are present in the audience, those fields will automatically be mapped. If any default field mappings are missing from the audience data, we’ll let you know with a warning. If a destination requires DoNotShare and is missing that field in the audience data, we’ll let you know with a warning and prevent the campaign from being saved until the data is updated.

Web Push with Mobile Integration

Use Case

Now that Accelerator includes the ability to send Push via SDK thru Swrve, we’ve added the ability to include Web Push as well. Send targeted, personalized notifications to your website users with our web push notification campaigns. These are supported through the same templates you currently use to build your Push content, and will allow for all live preview and testing functionality - just as you would with Push.

Goals

• Allow marketers to leverage a Swrve push app to send web push messages entirely through Accelerator
• Create an easy to use web push experience that works alongside the current push campaign experience
• Allow for web push content testing using live audience data
• Support web push campaigns alongside standard push in marketing campaigns

Capabilities

Templates now support Web as a platform type in Push content

When using a Mobile push app that supports Web channel on a template, the push content screen will display an additional platform state on the right side of the screen. The web platform will use the Title, Body, Media, and Deeplink URL that can be setup alongside the rest of the supported platforms.

If the push app supports multiple platforms along with web, users will see an icon in the platform section to preview web content

Marketing Campaigns will include Web in their channel selection for Push

Within Marketing Campaigns, Web is now a supported platform when selecting a template with Push content.

General Changes

• Added the ability to create In App Messaging Campaigns from a Blueprint via the existing Create panel on Blueprints
• Resolved an issue where Global Variables displayed an incorrect validation error for fixed lists exceeding 500 characters. This is now unlimited characters.