Push Action Buttons

Push action buttons provide a way for users to interact with push notifications. Think of them as personalized calls to action that enable contextually relevant next steps: visiting a website, writing a review on a third-party site, sharing content on social media, making a purchase, or unsubscribing from a list.

Incorporating push action buttons in a campaign can accelerate conversions by making push notifications as actionable as email.

This document describes how to set up push action buttons and tap actions on push notifications sent from Iterable.

# Action types

Tapping a push notification or one of its associated actions can trigger one of three types of actions:

• Open App

  • Opens the application

• Open URL

  • Calls the application URL handler. If the URL handler recognizes the deep link, then the application opens a specific screen or web page. If the URL handler does not recognize the deep link, it will open the URL in a browser window.

• Custom Action

  • Calls the application's custom action handler, defined in the application's code. Decide on a list of support custom actions with your mobile engineeres.

# Tap actions

When a user receives a push message, tapping on it triggers one of the action types defined above, as defined by the On Tap selector:

# Action buttons

In addition to a tap action, a push notification can have up to three action buttons that appear when a user long presses the notification. Configuration options associated with each action button include:

• Identifier
  • A value to include on a Track Push Open event sent from the mobile app back to Iterable after the user taps the button. Useful for segmenting on users that have tapped a particular push notification button.
• Title
  • The text of the button
• Button Type
  • The appearance of the button
    • Normal: Black text
    • Destructive: Red text
    • Text Input: A text input will display after the user taps the button. For this option, you can also specify placeholder text for the text input and the text to display on its associated send button.
• Action
  • The type of action to associate with the button: Open App, Open URL, or Custom Action, as defined above.
  • When selecting Custom Action, use the Open App checkbox to determine whether or not to perform the action in the background or to open the app.

# Examples

• Normal, Open URL action button:

  

  

• Text Input action button:

  

  

# FAQs

# Do I need to make changes to my mobile application to enable push action buttons?

To use push actions:

• You must use Iterable's Mobile SDK (at least version 5.0.0 on iOS and 3.0.0 on Android).
• An iOS app must include a Notification Service Extension. For more information, read Configure support for rich push notifications.

# How do tap actions, action buttons, deep links, and iOS categories differ?

Values in the iOS and Android Deep Link fields override any specified On Tap action.

A value in the iOS Category field overrides any push action button definitions, because a category can be used to define action buttons programmatically.

# What are some popular use cases for push action buttons?

• Maximize user engagement with your app
• Drive more users to your website or a third-party site (for example, to write a review of the app)
• Encourage users to share on social media
• Encourage users to make a purchase