Creating Push Notification Templates

Push Notification templates are reusable message blueprints that you can send in campaigns and journeys to your users as mobile push notifications. Push notifications can contain text, links, and images, and you can customize them with user profile data, event data, data feeds, and Catalog data.

Additionally, you can use silent push notifications to send data to your app and trigger a background task, without displaying a message to your user.

# In this article

# Permissions

To create and edit templates, you'll need the Create and Manage Templates permission.

# Setting up your mobile apps

To send push notifications, you'll need to:

• Work with your mobile engineers to set up your app to receive and display them.
• Add information about your mobile apps to Iterable, on the Settings > Apps and websites page.

For more information, read:

• Setting up iOS Push Notifications
• Setting up Android Push Notifications

# Creating a push notification template

To create a push notification template you can reuse across many campaigns:

1. Go to Content > Templates.

2. Click New template > Push.

3. Give your template a name that makes it easy to find when you (or your teammates) set up campaigns or journeys. This field has a 150-character limit.

4. Click Create template.

You can also create templates as you're setting up a new campaign, and with Iterable's API. For more info, read Working with Templates.

# Configuring push notification template details

To update template details such as message type, title, body, media URLs etc., open it up and click Edit details. As you make changes, the preview updates. When you're done editing, click Save or Cancel.

Here are the settings you can update:

# Message type

The category to associate with your template, which affects who receives campaigns based on it. For more details, see Message Channels and Message and Message Types Overview.

# Interruption level

How and when Iterable should alert users about the incoming push notification. There are four options:

• Passive — Don't alert the user. Deliver the notification silently to the Notification Center, without playing a sound/vibration or lighting up the screen. Do not override a scheduled delivery (Notification Summary), break through a Focus, or override the ring/silent switch.

• Active (default) — Alert the user about the push notification, playing a sound/vibration and lighting up the screen as allowed by device settings. Don't override a scheduled delivery (Notification Summary), break through a Focus, or override the ring/silent switch.

• Time Sensitive — Alert the user about the push notification, playing a sound/vibration and lighting up the screen as allowed by device settings. Also, since the message is urgent, override a scheduled delivery (Notification Summary) and break through a Focus if needed (unless the user has blocked the app from doing so).

  IMPORTANT

  • Before you can send Time Sensitive notifications, your engineering team must add the Time Sensitive Notifications capability to your app in Xcode, and then release a new version.
  • Be careful with this option, since users can block your app from sending Time Sensitive notifications if they decide you are misusing them.

• Critical — Highly invasive. Only for urgent messages related to personal health and public safety. Play a sound and vibration, regardless of system settings and the ringer switch. This option is disabled by default, since it requires a special entitlement from Apple. If you need to use it, talk to your Iterable customer success manager.

For more information about interruption levels, read the Notifications section of Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.

# Relevance score

Helps iOS determine which of your push notifications to display when featuring your app in a Notification Summary:

• When iOS features your app in a Notification Summary, it displays the push notification (for your app) with the highest relevance score.

• Otherwise, the relevance score determines how iOS sorts your app's push notifications in the non-featured section of the Notification Summary (push notifications with higher relevance scores sort to the top).

If you don't select a relevance score, it's equivalent to choosing the lowest possible relevance score (0.0).

# Badge count

# Wake up

Causes the app to wake up in the background to perform a background update on the push notification's arrival. Turning this off ensures that the user doesn't wake the application and cause it to ping your system's servers.

# Deliver silently

Causes this template to be sent as a silent push notification. A silent push notification does not appear to the user. Instead, it delivers JSON data to your app, so that it can perform a background task. You might use a silent push notification, for example, to trigger an app store review request, kick off a download of some data so that it's available when your user opens the app, or to update your app's badge count (iOS).

When you enable this option:

• Unless you're just updating the badge count, you'll also need to specify some data in the Raw data (JSON) field. Iterable sends this data along with the silent push notification, and your app can use it as needed. To update the badge count, custom JSON is unnecessary — just specify a value in the Badge count field.

• You'll no longer be able to provide a message title or body, since they would never appear to the user.

Some things to know about silent push notifications:

• Silent push notifications can be sent from standalone campaigns or from campaigns in a journey.

• There's no particular SDK version requirement for silent push notifications, and you can use them without Iterable's SDK.

• Even if a user has disallowed push notifications, you can still send them silent push notifications. However, if they're unsubscribed from the message channel or type you're using for the campaign, they won't receive it.

• You can also use Iterable's API to create silent push notification templates.

• In your campaign engagement metrics, silent push notifications count as sends. However, since users can't interact with them, there won't be a corresponding increase in clicks or opens. This means that your open rate may decrease.

# Title

The title to display above the push notification.

# Body

The content of your push notification.

# Media URL

The URL of an image or video (video is iOS only) to include with your push notification. Enter the URL in the Android and iOS fields. HTTPS only.

# Data feeds

Data feeds allow you to fetch user-specific data from external URLs (your own or third-party) and use it to personalize your messages. For example, a restaurant chain might use a data feed to fetch information about locations close to the user, and then highlight them in their messages. To tell the data feed which user you need information for, you can pass query parameters in the data feed URL.

To enable data feeds, check Data feeds. Then, select an existing data feed from the dropdown or click Add a new data feed.

For more information about data feeds, related configuration options, and how to use them, read Personalizing Templates with Data Feeds.

# Open action

The action to take when a user taps the push notification:

• Open App — Opens the app associated with the push notification.

• Open URL — Passes the specified URL to the URL handler of the associated mobile app. This URL can deep link to specific content in the app or point to external content to open in a web browser.

• Custom action — Passes the specified value to the application's custom action handler (defined in the app's code). Decide in advance with your team's mobile engineers on a list of supported custom actions and what they should do.

# Action buttons

Buttons that sit below push notifications and allow users to take immediate action. Use them to encourage users to make a purchase, write a review, visit a website, share content on social media, unsubscribe from a list or take some other relevant action.

In this example, Check out now! is an action button:

To add add an action button, click Add action button. Then, configure these options:

• Button name — The text to display on the button. Click the pencil button to edit.

• Button type

  • Normal — A button with black text.

  • Destructive — A button with red text.

  • Text input — A button that displays a text input after being tapped. For this type of button, you can specify Placeholder text for the text input (appears before the user enters anything else), and the text to use on the button itself.

• Button action — Different types of button can be used to do different things:

  • Open app — Opens the app associated with the push notification. Otherwise, the option is executed in the background. Available for normal buttons.

  • Open URL — Opens an external URL or a deep link to content within the app. Available for all button t ypes.

  • Custom action — Passes the specified value to the application's custom action handler (defined in the app's code—decide in advance with your team's mobile engineers on a list of supported custom actions and what they should do). The Open app option nested under Custom action causes the app to come to the foreground to execute the action. Leaving it unchecked causes the action to execute in the background. Available for all button types.

  • Track only — Sends Iterable a track push open event with the associated button identifier, without opening the app or redirecting the user. This option is useful for buttons that dismiss push notifications. Available for desctructive and text input buttons.

# Custom sound

The name of the sound file to play when the push notification arrives. For the sound file to play, your mobile engineers must bundle it in your mobile app.

For more information, read:

• Setting Up iOS Push Notifications
• Setting up Android Push Notifications.

# Raw data (JSON)

Additional JSON data to send along with the push notification. When the push notification arrives, this data is available for your apps to process.

This data can be used to trigger custom functionality in your app. For example, a push notification that congratulates a user on reaching a VIP status of some sort might also include custom metadata that tells the app about this status. The app might use this information to change its styling or to unlock additional functionality.

You can customize raw JSON with Handlebars expressions, which output different content for different users. To verify that your raw JSON works as expected, click Preview and scroll to the bottom of the page. As you load data for different users, this preview updates. For more information, read Previewing a JSON Payload.

# Locales

Use locales to define the content this template use for users in different locales. This feature doesn't translate for you, but provides a place for you to put localized content.

For more information, read Supporting Multiple Languages.

# Previewing and sending test messages

After configuring and designing your template, preview it and make any necessary fixes. To do this, use the Preview page and send test messages.

# Previewing your template

To see what your push notification looks like when rendered with different combinations of user data, data feeds, and Catalog data, you can preview it. When previewing, you can load a user profile and see how the template renders for that user.

To preview a push notification template with user data:

1. With the template open, click Preview.

   

2. Enter the email address of a user in your project and click Load user data. That user's data loads.

   Feel free to play around with this data, modifying it as needed — your changes do not get saved to the user profile. Treat this page as a playground, and check how different combinations of data cause your template to render. Make sure that the template looks correct in all the different ways it may appear to your users.

   TIP

   If the preview doesn't update after you've edited or loaded data, click the refresh icon near the previewer.

3. To see how your template renders with a data feed loaded, click Load data feeds. Feel free to edit the loaded data feed data, to see how different data affects the template. This does not affect the data feed itself.

4. Click Exit preview to return to the template page.

For more information on previewing templates and campaign templates with data, check out Previewing Templates with Data.

# iOS and Android previews

Before sending a push notification, it can be helpful to preview how it appears on both iOS and Android devices. To do this, in the template's Design area, click the iOS and Android buttons below the device preview.

# Sending test messages

After setting up your template, designing its content, and previewing it with user data, it's always a good idea to send yourself (and other internal users) some test messages. This way, you can validate the message from the perspective of your users.

To send a copy of the push notifications to yourself or another internal user, open the template and open up design mode. Then, use the Send test messsage dropdown menu and choose To yourself, To an internal list, As random users, or To another address.

To prevent you from accidentally sending a test message to a production list, these sends are capped at 50 users.

For more information, read Sending Test Messages.

# Sending a push notification campaign

You've built and tested your template. Now, you can use it with some campaigns. To learn how, read:

• Sending or Scheduling a Blast Campaign
• Activating a Triggered Campaign
• Tutorial: Build Your First Journey

When creating a campaign (whether standalone as part of a journey), you'll select a template — or the content of another, already existing campaign — to use as the starting point for its content. The new campaign gets its own copy of the template, so you can customize it however you like. No need to worry about affecting the original template.

Similarly, if you change a template you've already used in a campaign, your changes affect the template itself, but not the already-existing campaigns.

# Want to learn more?

For more information about some of the topics in this article, check out these resources. Iterable Academy is open to everyone — you don't need to be an Iterable customer!

Iterable Academy

• Product Bite: Creating a Mobile Push Campaign
• Product Bite: Channel Optimization

Support docs

• Sending Push Notifications
• Working with Templates
• Personalizing Templates with Handlebars
• Link Parameters