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How to create a push trigger automation?
How to create a push trigger automation?

Here is everything you need to know before creating a trigger automation.

Olivia avatar
Written by Olivia
Updated over 5 months ago

Trigger automations enable you to send a notification from one minute to several days after users have installed, visited for the first time or triggered a specific action in your app or website.

Trigger automations are useful to manage a wide variety of use cases, from simple welcome notifications sent shortly after users install the app to advanced abandoned cart alerts. You can find more information on how user journeys work here.

Let's look at how to create a trigger automation from the Automations tab!

Trigger event

After having carefully set up the targeting of your automation, you can focus on the trigger event part.

Native event

The trigger action is the most important part of your automation. There are two native options to choose from:

  • Installation: The "Installation" event is available by default. Users trigger it when they open the app for the first time.

⚠️ Note for 'Installation' trigger: you can use it only for automations without additional targeting conditions (e.g. country = UK or custom user id = no).

  • Installation then opted-in: For onboarding automations, we recommend using this event, which will allow you to create automations to target users who have installed the app AND who opted-in within 24 hours of installation.

Note: This event is accompanied by a "Date attribute" corresponding to the installation date (see case n°2).

Examples:

  • Case n°1

9 a.m. → The user installs the app

9:03 a.m. → The user opt-in

9:08 a.m. → Batch sends the push (= opt-in + 5min)

  • Case n°2

If you want your push timer to be counted from the installation, you will need to use the "install_date" attribute (by clicking on 'after' > 'install_date') on the push timing:

9 a.m. → The user installs the app

9:03 a.m. → The user opt-in

9:05 a.m. → Batch sends the push (= installation + 5min)

In this case, you may have some skipped push, for example:

9 a.m. → The user installs the app

12 p.m. → The user opt-in

The push is supposed to be sent at 9:05 a.m., but it is not because it will be 12:00 p.m. and between 12:00 and 9:20 am there are more than 30min ago, so Batch skips sending.

FYI the Batch rule: if the difference between the date we are supposed to send the push and the current time is greater than 30min = the push is skipped.

⚠️ Warning: if your notifications opt-in request is not made at the first opening of the app but based on a specific scenario, eg. after account creation/connection => always configure your automations with option n°1 OR the option n°2 with a push timing more than 24hours after the install date.

Custom event

You can choose any events that have been tagged in your app during the integration of the SDK (see more here). You can also apply filters to your event based on any additional data that is attached to it (Label, Attributes, Tag collection) if you want to trigger the notification on a specific action 👇

Examples of use cases:

  • Send a promotional code D+1 only to users who added a product with the shoe category to their cart.

  • Send a personalized push notification to customers who booked a flight in Business or First class with insurance from Paris.

  • And so much more!

Timer

Now that your event has been chosen, let's see how to manage the sending time.

This is the time interval in minutes, hours, or days to wait to send a notification. Batch will wait this amount of time from the chosen trigger date which can be either the date of the Trigger event or custom data attached to the event (ex: send a push notification 1h before or after said date).

The minimum push timing is 1 minute and the maximum push timing is 30 days.

Examples of use cases:

  • Send a push notification 5 days before the user's Premium subscription ends

  • For a ticket purchase triggering event, send a push notification 1 hour before the train departure, 3 minutes after the bar opens or 10 minutes before arrival!

Cancellation event and pressure

Batch allows you to set up Cancellation events and manage your marketing pressure here!

Cancellation events

First, you can add one or several cancellation events. Users who trigger one of the cancellation events before the push is sent will exit the user journey and won't receive the notification. You can use an event tagged in your app and apply filters based on additional event data too (Label, Attributes, Tag collection).

Capping

The frequency capping allows you to limit the maximum number of times an opt-in install receives a notification. This is useful to avoid overwhelming your users with the same message.

Grace period

Use the grace period to set a delay in minutes or hours between each notification sent to the same opt-in install. This is handy to avoid sending too many messages to users too close together.


For example: an add_to_cart campaign with the timer at min+1 and a grace period of 2h:

  • The user makes an add_to_cart event

  • He receives his push 1 min later

  • He makes an add_to_cart event just after (during the grace period of 2h)

  • The second event will be skipped and the second push will not be sent

Advanced settings: the multi-trigger mode

By default, if the user fires multiple times the trigger event of the automation, the timer of the automation will be reset.

You may want to parallelize journeys and allow the user to trigger several times the same automation. You can do that by activating the multi-trigger mode.

The multi-trigger mode allows you to schedule a push each time the user fires the trigger event with a new ID (Ex: Trigger a push for each trip booked by the user on the app based on the trip ID). This ID must be one of the attributes attached to the event or the event label and can only be a String.

Note: If the multi-trigger mode is activated, only cancellation events with the same ID as the trigger event can cancel the trigger. If this attribute is missing or false, the cancellation will be ignored.

You can focus now on editing your message!


This article belongs to Batch's FAQ. Need more help? Find insightful articles, documentation, case & market studies, guides, and even more in our website's Resources section on batch.com and our blog.

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