Mobile Services | Amazon Pinpoint

Question 1

What is Amazon Pinpoint?

General

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 1

Amazon Pinpoint is AWS’s Digital User Engagement Service that enables AWS customers to effectively communicate with their end users and measure user engagement across multiple channels including email, Text Messaging (SMS) and Mobile Push Notifications.

Amazon Pinpoint also provides tools that enables audience management and segmentation, campaign management, scheduling, template management, A/B testing, analytics and data integration. It captures data to track deliverability as well as usage and messaging analytics covering a range of dimensions including user, channels and custom attributes.

Amazon Pinpoint is built on a service-based architecture. Developers can extend their applications and backend services in various ways, including: sending messages directly from their applications via the Amazon Pinpoint channels (Email, SMS and Mobile Push), accessing segmentation data to alter their application behavior for segments of users, create and run campaigns directly from their applications, and access deliverability and analytics data to improve the user engagement of their applications.The system empowers customers to send the right message, to the right audience, at the right time and on the most effective channel.

Question 2

How will developers benefit from Amazon Pinpoint?

General

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 2

Amazon Pinpoint offers developers a single API layer, CLI support and client side SDK support to be able to extend the communication channels through which their applications engage users. These channels include: email, SMS Text Messaging and Mobile Push Notifications. Amazon Pinpoint also provides developers with an analytics system that tracks app user behavior and user engagement. With this service, developers can learn how each user prefers to engage and can personalize their end-user’s experience to increase the value of the developer’s applications.

Amazon Pinpoint also helps developers address multiple messaging use-cases such direct or transactional messaging, targeted or campaign messaging and event-based messaging. Integrating and enabling all their end-user engagement channels via Amazon Pinpoint, developers can create a 360-degree view of user engagement across all customer touch points.

Question 3

How will marketers benefit from Amazon Pinpoint?

General

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 3

Amazon Pinpoint allows Marketers to create and execute a unified messaging strategy across all engagement channels relevant to their end-users. Pinpoint includes tools and services to let marketers analyze and engage users directly. The console provides marketers with campaign management tools to create, run and manage multichannel campaigns across their applications, user-base and devices. Campaigns can be scheduled or triggered on user changes and actions. Users and devices can also be grouped through flexibly defined segments which can be used to determine campaign audiences. Marketers can also leverage the multi channel templating support to personalize end-user messaging and campaign optimization features such as A/B testing, holdout testing and message caps. Marketers can also measure messaging effectiveness using Pinpoint analytics to understand the impact on user behavior.

Question 4

How will enterprises benefit from Amazon Pinpoint?

General

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 4

Enterprises can use Amazon Pinpoint as their Digital User Engagement Service. They can free developers from having to individually integrate different communication channels into their applications and instead focus on leveraging Pinpoint to learn how their end-users and customers are engaging with their applications. It enables them to measure and improve their technology investments by measuring how engaged their digital customers are across all functions of their enterprise.

Question 5

Why should I use Amazon Pinpoint to run and manage my campaigns?

General

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 5

Amazon Pinpoint makes it easy to run targeted campaigns and drive user engagement of applications using different channels: email, SMS and mobile push notifications. Amazon Pinpoint helps you understand user behavior, define which users to target, determine which messages to send, schedule the best time to deliver the messages, and then track the results of your campaign.

Amazon Pinpoint is built to scale, enabling you to collect and process billions of events per day, and send billions of targeted messages to your users.

Marketers can send targeted messages and calls to action when changes occur in their organizations or in a user’s circumstances, like a new product launch to a change in a user’s locale

Question 6

If I use another campaign management service how does Amazon Pinpoint help me?

General

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 6

Amazon Pinpoint’s architecture is services based. Companies can choose which services to use and integrate with their existing systems and processes. Amazon Pinpoint’s core services include: engagement analytics, communication channels, deliverability metrics, audience management and segmentation, template management, and campaign management.

The platform also supports data integration services to extend Amazon Pinpoint analytics and segmentation data from external data sources such as S3, as well as data exports to feed external marketing systems via Kinesis Event Streams.

Question 7

How much does Amazon Pinpoint cost?

General

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 7

Amazon Pinpoint has no upfront costs, no minimum charges, and no subscription fees. You pay only for what you use. Visit the Amazon Pinpoint pricing page for more details.

Question 8

Who owns the data in Amazon Pinpoint?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 8

Customers own their data in Amazon Pinpoint. Amazon Web Services does not own or monetize the data customers collect, and does not share it with third parties. We may use the data to improve the service, monitor the health of the service, and provide technical support to you. As with any other AWS service, customers are responsible for how they use the tools we provide; this responsibility includes providing any necessary notice or opt-outs to end users and complying with applicable law.

Question 9

What services and tools does Amazon Pinpoint provide?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 9

Amazon Pinpoint includes a console designed for marketers and developers to use. The console provides capabilities to configure communication channels, manage audiences and segmentation, manage and run campaigns, create and manage message templates, create and manage engagement schedules and analyze user engagement. Standard analytics includes: active users, user activities, sessions, user retention, campaign efficacy and user channel engagement metrics. You can create custom analytics to integrate custom attributes and drive analytics for sales conversion, funnel reporting, product adoption by segment and any other metric required to support the business.

Question 10

I already use Amazon SNS or Amazon SES. What do I gain by switching to Amazon Pinpoint?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 10

In typical Amazon SNS and Amazon SES use cases, you have to set up your application to manage each message’s audience, content, and delivery schedule. These same features are built in to Amazon Pinpoint. With Amazon Pinpoint, you can create message templates, delivery schedules, highly-targeted segments, and full campaigns.

Question 11

What data does Amazon Pinpoint store without using SDKs and instrumentation?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 11

Amazon Pinpoint can store four different types of data:

Configuration Data from which Amazon Pinpoint services are provided their rules of engagement. This includes:

Communication. Communication channels can be configured with restrictions per channel or across channels e.g. maximum number of messages a user can receive per day, maximum messages a user can receive for a campaign and quiet times. There are also channel specific configurations e.g. Mobile Push Notification Abbreviated Numbers, SMS Short Codes, Email Dedicated IP Addresses, permitted message types and lengths configured per channel.

Campaign. There are different types of campaigns. Scheduled campaigns include schedules, frequency, segments, holdouts, message templates and A/B tests. Event-based campaigns also include trigger or event rules to replace schedules.

Segmentation. That can be defined through a set of filters driven off user and user engagement data, or they can be defined through data imports and ingested as lists from files extracted from external systems.

Scheduling Configuration. Scheduling is primarily assigned to campaign-based engagement and defines the frequency and precise time of sending messages.

Custom Attributes Configuration. Defines custom attributes and events that applications can capture and return to Amazon Pinpoint Engagement Data.

User Data which provides Amazon Pinpoint with endpoint information for sending messages across any channel, device or application. User data is extensible, but includes the following per channel:

Mobile Push Notifications. This includes userID, appID, appVersion, DeviceID, DeviceModel, DeviceModelVersion, Device OS, OS version, lastTimezone, lastCity, lastCountry, lastLatitude, lastLongitude, lastPostalCode, lastRegion.

SMS. Number.

Email. PrimaryWorkEmailAddress, SecondaryWorkEmailAddress, PrimaryPersonalEmailAddress, SecondaryPersonalEmailAddress.

User data can also include:

External User Identifiers. Which map users to the IDs in external systems.

Custom Attributes. Users can add custom attributes to associate various data that is customized to their utilization of Amazon Pinpoint.

User Engagement Data which includes default data per channel as well as custom data attributes when configured. Data per channel includes:

External Data can include any user, segmentation and analytics data.

Question 12

What are the options for capturing custom application events?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 12

You can either use the Mobile SDK within your mobile application to send custom events and attributes for Mobile Push Notifications, or use the Amazon Pinpoint REST API to send events programmatically from any application.

Question 13

Does Amazon Pinpoint support cross-device/application identity management?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 13

Yes. This is captured under User ID.

Question 14

What OS versions does Amazon Pinpoint support for Mobile Push Notifications?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 14

The iOS SDK supports apps running on iOS 7.0 and higher. The Android SDK supports apps running on Android 2.3.3 and higher.

Question 15

For mobile push notifications is data cached when a user’s device is offline?

Product Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 15

Yes, when using the AWS Mobile SDK, data is cached on the user’s device and is uploaded when a network connection is next established.

Question 16

Are network channels optimized when sending events via the SDK?

Analytics

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 16

Yes, the events are batched, and sent once per minute. You can also specify the transport to send the events: cellular and Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi only.

Question 17

How are metrics calculated for the same user using multiple devices?

Analytics

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 17

A user with the same app on two devices, such as an iPhone and an iPad, is counted as two users.

Question 18

How is a “session” defined?

Analytics

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 18

A session is one use of an app by the user. A session begins when an app is launched (or brought to the foreground), and ends when the app is terminated (or goes to the background). To accommodate for brief interruptions, like a text message, an inactivity period of up to 5 seconds is not counted as a new session. Total daily sessions shows the number of sessions your app has each day. Average sessions per daily active user shows the mean number of sessions per user per day.

Question 19

When an app goes to the background does its session end?

Analytics

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 19

Yes, the session ends. When the app comes to the foreground, a new session begins.

Question 20

How are daily and weekly retention defined?

Analytics

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 20

Daily retention is measured by determining the number of users that first used your app on a specific day, came back and used your app in the next 7 days (7-day retention), fourteen days (14-day retention), and thirty days (30-day retention).

Question 21

How is sticky factor calculated in the User Engagement tab?

Analytics

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 21

Sticky factor is calculated by dividing DAU by MAU. It is the fraction of monthly users using the app on a particular day. For example, if an app has 100K DAU and 300K MAU its sticky factor is .33. A high sticky factor can indicate strong engagement, appeal, and potential monetization opportunities.

Question 22

What are demographics in Amazon Pinpoint?

Event Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 22

The Demographics tab provides a breakdown of the device attributes for your app users. You can also see custom attributes that you define.

Question 23

What are Events?

Event Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 23

Custom events are defined entirely by you. They help track user actions specific to your app or game. The Events tab provides a view of how often custom events occur. Custom events can be filtered based on attributes and their associated values.

You create custom events by naming them, such as “Item Bought” or “Button Pressed”, and then adding context by specifying attributes (for qualitative measure) and metrics (for quantitative measure). For example, if your business goal is to track purchases of items from within the app, you can use “Item Bought” as a custom event, “Item XYZ” as an attribute, and “Item Price” as the metric. The custom events report enables you to search and filter for each attribute or metric. For example, you can find how often “Item XYZ” was purchased or how often “Item Price” was $1.99. You can also review the weighted average of metric values (per session) and track minimum, maximum, or average metric values. As a best practice, we recommend that custom event names be broad and attribute names be specific.

Question 24

What are the benefits of using custom events?

Event Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 24

Custom events help you understand user actions specific to your app. A game developer might want to understand both how often a level is completed and how much health each player has left at the end of that level. With custom events, you can create an event called “level_complete”, with “add_level” as an attribute, and “health” as an attribute value. Each time a level is completed, you can record a “level_complete” event with the name of the level and the player’s health. By reviewing the data in the Events tab, you might discover that level 3 is too easy because players always finish with maximum health. You could then adjust the level’s difficulty to better challenge and engage players, which might improve retention.

Question 25

Are there limits for using custom events in my app?

Event Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 25

You can have up to 1,500 unique custom event types per app and up to 40 attributes and metrics per custom event. For more information on these and other limits affecting custom events, see the Amazon Pinpoint documentation.

Question 26

What are segments?

Event Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 26

Segments are defined with usage attributes. These attributes include usage criteria (such as when the app was last used), device attributes (such as app version, platform, and country), and custom attributes that you define. You use these attributes to define a subset of users from within your total user base. Segments can also be a static list of pre-defined users.

Question 27

What are custom attributes?

Event Details

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 27

Amazon Pinpoint provides 40 custom attributes. You can use these to customize your segmentation for your unique use cases. Each custom attribute can store up to 50 values.

Question 28

How do I create segments?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 28

To create a segment, you can build a segment or import a segment.

By building a segment, you can define a segment with criteria for usage, device attributes, and custom attributes.

By importing a segment, you can import a static list of users from a CSV or a JSON file that is stored in Amazon S3.

Question 29

What are campaigns?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 29

Campaigns are targeted push notification messages sent to a subset of users on a predefined schedule. You can use targeted push notification campaigns to increase app user engagement and retention. You can create push notification campaigns for use cases such as welcoming new customers, informing customers of new features, and sharing offers and deals with customers.

Question 30

What is a standard campaign?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 30

Standard campaigns define a target audience, the message to be sent, and a schedule for sending the message. You can also reuse previously defined segments or define a new segment while you create a campaign. For every scheduled instance of a campaign, Amazon Pinpoint recalculates the current audience size based on segment filters defined.

Question 31

What is an A/B test campaign?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 31

A/B campaigns are campaigns with more than one treatment. Each treatment differs from the other based on the message or the sending schedule.

Question 32

What are silent push notifications and in-app notifications? How do I use them?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 32

Silent and in-app notifications are messages delivered to the device that are not displayed in the notifications center of the user’s device. These messages have a header that enables developers to manage app configuration or create an in-app message center for their apps.

Question 33

What metrics can I track for standard campaigns?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 33

For standard campaigns, you can track messages sent, messages delivered, direct app opens, sessions per user, purchases per user, delivery rate, open rate, user devices messaged, and campaign sessions by time of day.

Question 34

What are my scheduling options for campaigns?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 34

Campaigns can be scheduled to run one time immediately or at a time you designate in the future. They can also be scheduled with multiple runs – hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. Just set up a start date, start time, specify whether you want to deliver on local time, set an end date, and set a time to define your recurring campaigns.

Question 35

How does local time delivery work for campaign scheduling?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 35

Local time delivery enables you to create campaigns and deliver messages to your users in their local time. Local time delivery can be set up by choosing the local time option and then selecting the time zone to start your first send.

Two-way Text Messaging

Question 36

What is two-way text messaging?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 36

Two-way text messaging enables customers of Amazon Pinpoint to receive text messages from their users. When a user sends a text message to a customer’s leased number, Amazon Pinpoint passes the text message to the customer, and the customer can use this message to trigger an appropriate response. Depending on the country and the local telecommunication regulation requirements, the customer can use long codes (10-digit phone numbers) and short codes (5 to 6-digit phone numbers).

To receive text messages from their users, the customer enables two-way text messaging in the Amazon Pinpoint console and selects an Amazon SNS topic to receive the text messages. Amazon Pinpoint provides the telephone number of the user and the customer’s message ID if the text message was sent to the customer as a reply.

Question 37

What are the advantages of two-way text messaging?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 37

The use of two-way text messaging enables many additional use cases for customers of Amazon Pinpoint to be able to engage with their users, especially for transactional situations where a customer can alert the user to information and the user can respond and the customer can initiate additional workflows or other processes. For example, in a healthcare scenario, a pharmacy could send a text message to a user that their prescription is due for a refill. The user can respond to have the prescription fulfilled or not, and then the customer can take appropriate action based on the response, such as initiating the re-fill at the user’s designated pharmacy pick up location and then informing the user when the prescription is ready for pickup.

Question 38

Why do you require a dedicated number for two-way text messaging?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 38

Receiving text messages from the same company through multiple numbers makes it hard for users to associate a number with a single business with which they regularly interact. A dedicated number makes it easier for users to participate in two-way text messaging.

Additionally, Amazon Pinpoint delivers text messages using numbers that are shared by multiple customers. Since these numbers are not exclusive to a sender, it is not possible to accurately route the text message to an appropriate customer when a cellular subscriber texts a number that is owned by Amazon Pinpoint. Because of these reasons, Amazon Pinpoint requires companies to lease a dedicated number for two-way communication.

Question 39

How can a customer disable two-way text messaging?

Amazon Pinpoint Campaigns

Amazon Pinpoint | Mobile Services

Answer 39

Customers can disable two-way text messaging from the console, and from that point forward, they will stop to receive incoming text messages from their users.