Customers

Amazon shipped their first Kindle Fires eight weeks ago and since then we’ve seen a lot of interest in the platform from our customers. Consumers are jumping in too, making the Kindle Fire the best-selling product across all of Amazon.com since it became available. We’re also excited about the Kindle Fire, and even more excited to let you know that Urban Airship’s Helium push notifications for Android are already deployed on tens of thousands of devices: it just works.

Over the weekend we had several customers go live on the Fire using our Helium push notifications. Glu Mobile is just one of our customers who are using our push notifications for Android in all of their games for the Fire. When we asked Glu if they did anything special to activate push in their games for the Kindle Fire, Mike DeLaet, VP of Sales & Marketing said, “We just integrated the Urban Airship SDK into these titles like we do for all of our titles, which allows us to utilize push notifications on the Kindle Fire.” Our customers depend on Push to drive engagement and provide the best user experience possible for their applications. With Helium they can do that for the Kindle Fire today.

A little background: the Fire is an Android device with a few key differences. It is missing Google’s Mobile Services (Android Market, C2DM, Google IAP, etc). Additionally, your app cannot require a gyroscope, camera, WAN module, Bluetooth, microphone, GPS, or micro-SD to function. Beyond that, it’s Android 2.3.4 with a new screen size and functions just like any WiFi-connected Android device.

We know that in the world of mobile phones, tablets, PC’s, and other IP connected devices, powerful engagement tools are a requirement for success. We’re continually working to extend our services to any device and as many platforms as possible. But device and platform support only gets you so far–and that’s where our tools come into play. Urban Airship enables you to effectively address and engage with your application audience. With our recent acquisition of SimpleGeo, the future holds many exciting additions to our products, like enabling audience segmentation on a local level for the Kindle Fire and beyond. These are exciting times and we’re just scratching the surface on what we can do.

For more details on setting up an app for the Kindle Fire and selling it in the Amazon App Store, see their Developer FAQ. If you are interested in using Helium to power push on a Kindle Fire or any other Android device, check out our Pro Plans. And finally, if you want to make addressing your Kindle Fire audience easier, take a look at our FAQ on setting tags for your Kindle Fire app installations.

Apple’s Newsstand launched with the release of iOS 5 on October 12th, and by any measure, it appears to be a big win for Apple and for publishers alike. Since the iPad took the technology world by storm 18 months ago, it’s been an interesting time for publishers with several notable App Store rejections, industry confusion about how to implement tablet subscriptions, and a fair amount of criticism of Apple’s 30% revenue share. It appears now that Newsstand is the real deal, delivering on the iPad’s promise of a new dawn for publishers. Huzzah!

Not all major publishers came out of the gate with Newsstand titles, but a handful made a splash. Urban Airship customers The Guardian and Future Publishing were notable early adopters. The Guardian released a long-awaited update to its popular iPad reader, and Future Publishing launched nearly 60 new magazine titles on their custom-built publishing platform, including Future Music, Total Guitar, and Mac | Life. The New York Times, Conde Nast, Rodale, and others were all early to market as well, contributing to a great selection of Newsstand titles from which to choose.

The early success of the platform bodes well for traditional publishers that are under increasing pressure to produce big revenue gains in mobile distribution. Here at Urban Airship, we’re excited to see so many customers using our tools to achieve this success. We have been fortunate to work with many large publishers since the early days of Urban Airship, and have built a compelling product offering for this segment of the market. “Urban Airship is a Direct Marketers dream”, said Richard Walker, who oversees distribution and marketing at Future Publishing.  He also noted that, “The impact on our customers has been a better user experience, and the opportunity to discover new publications in Newsstand.”

Here’s a bit about each of the components we provide that make up our complete offering:

• Newsstand library support. Via our iOS library, Newsstand apps are configured to handle Auto-renewable subscriptions and single-issue purchases via Apple’s In App Purchase, integrating with the Newsstand framework easily.
• Content Delivery. Urban Airship hosts & delivers the physical magazine & newspaper content and verifies purchase receipts with Apple, making that content available to the end user on multiple iOS devices and restorable in the event that a device is reset.
• Push Notifications. Push is a key piece of the puzzle for a properly functioning Newsstand experience. Notifying subscribers of new available content, breaking news, or live in-app discussions is a key engagement driver, bringing end users back to your app again and again. Push Notifications also wake up the app and trigger background downloading when new issues are available, eliminating the need to wait around while the new issue downloads. Content is preloaded while you sleep and available for you right away.
• Audience Segmentation. Our flexible APIs allow publishers to collect preference information from end users, e.g., alert settings for Political & Entertainment stories, location information, “Quiet Time” preferences, and more. By allowing users the ability to opt in only for the most contextual alerts at the most appropriate frequency, volume, and times, publishers maintain optimal access to this communication channel. Use our Tags & Aliases features to run drip campaigns, associate mobile users with profiles in your CRM, and offer a highly personal and contextual user experience.
• Free (seed) content. It’s important to include a suitable amount of free and/or preview content for non-subscribers, or as our customers like to think of them, “future subscribers.” If a free app has no useful function without requiring a purchase, then it will most likely be deleted faster than you can say Qwikster. Urban Airship supports “free” content, such as back issues, that can be listed alongside single-issue sales and subscription options.
• Reports. Know thy users. Understand how your users are interacting with your app, which types of messages are most effective for which constituencies, peaks and valleys of app usage, and more. Our reporting tools round out the third pillar of any successful digital distribution strategy. Engage, Monetize, Analyze! (Rinse and repeat, naturally)

It’s been 18 months since the iPad was announced. Some called it a big iPhone. Publishers held out high hopes but ran into early disappointments, and even today, struggle with their digital content strategies. Today, Newsstand is paying off, and visionary companies like Future Publishing and The Guardian are taking the lead.

Contact us if you are interested in adding Newsstand and Subscriptions to your app.

Swirl, an established online sample sale site created in partnership with DailyCandy, wanted to grow its already successful email based flash sale business by adding an offering built for mobile. They created an app to host daily flash sales and utilized push notifications to deliver alerts each day to notify users when new sales begin.

This new daily call to action, sent directly to customers’ mobile devices, resulted in a significant increase in traffic and sales and also added new life to previously slow weekend and holiday time periods.  Swirl’s daily Push is driving a 60% increase in mobile traffic and a 20% increase in total mobile orders.  Push also drives a 40% higher conversion rate than email driven, mobile browser.

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“We don’t want our customers to miss out on a great deal. So we need a stable
platform that we can rely on to engage with our customers on a daily basis.”

-Janis Leahy, Senior Product Manager, Swirl

We are thrilled with the success that Swirl is finding and hope that other retailers can find the same success.  With the holidays right around the corner, there’s never been a better time to explore what Push can do for retailers.

Download the Swirl app in the itunes store here or visit the Swirl site.

Want us to share your Urban Airship success story?  Contact us.

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Push notifications and location updates are proven engagement drivers for mobile apps so there is strong incentive to maximize opt-in rates. Like it or not, most users will not give you a second chance open these valuable lines of communication. Asking for permission to send push notifications and to track location is a pretty big ask for most people. This is why every app developer should consider taking a look at how their app treats the opt-in moment and upon seeing the request, answer these two questions.

1. Have I had a chance to experience this app? Building trust is essential and building trust takes time. Instead of asking a user to opt-in right as they open the app (which is the default approach) let them explore the app and see all of the cool features and content that it offers.  Then link the opt-in to an action – whether it be posting their first comment, creating a user account, or beating the first level of a game. Even looking to delay the ASK to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th time that they open the APP is being tested, and working successfully. After experiencing the cool features and great content that you’ve developed you will have increased your chances of getting permission to message, while providing context as to why you may track location of your users to provide valuable content tied to geo.
   
2. Is there compelling value exchange if I accept push notifications and location sharing? The term “push notification” can mean something different to every end user. While the term describes a technology ,that many people still do not understand, your users associate it with the inherent value that notifications will provide them. When you ask a user to opt-in to notifications and location sharing, think about how you can demonstrate a value exchange by telling them how notifications will benefit them.  What will they get in return for saying yes?  If you can put together a compelling case then you will have increased your chances of winning the opt-in moment and help increase the success of your app. In the end you must show with the value of the content and context to keep the relationship. 

Get it here: Guide to Push: Five Ways to Engage and Maintain Your Audience

The Jelli music app began promoting community and game features with a social strategy using push notifications to revitalize social sharing and rating functions.  Their real-time alerts highlighting the app’s unique features drove a measurable increase in engagement, repeat app opens, and usage of key social features.

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“We didn’t pretend that we’d build push for a nanosecond. We were looking for something that would get us started fast and grow with us. Time and money were the key factors in choosing Urban Airship. We knew that we could go to market in no time and run huge volume for little cost. It would have taken us a couple of months to build our own Push, with Urban Airship we did it in no time.”

- Sarah Bacon, Director of Product, Jelli

Download the Jelli app in the itunes store here or visit the Jelli site.

Want us to share your Urban Airship success story?  Contact us.

Download the Case Study

Urban Airship chats with Steve Benoit (@studionumber9), about his latest mobile app, for the Newport Folk Festival.  This companion app includes event alerts, performance schedules, customizable schedule, artist profiles, a venue map and the latest updates about this year’s Newport Folk Festival – all right in the pockets of festival-goers. In the words of one reviewer, “like being there when you are there.”

UA: Tell us about your app. It sure makes us wish we were going to Newport.
The Newport Folk Festival is one of the premier folk festivals in the country, and one thing that sets it apart from the others is the feeling that everyone in attendance is sharing something special and unique. The festival organizers go out of their way to encourage that feeling of community and sharing by providing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for the artists and their fans. Pop-up performances and guest appearances are just a few of the pieces of the puzzle for Newport Folk.

The goal of this app was not only to be a companion to festival-goers in a traditional sense (with schedules, artist bios and festival map) but also to be that little angel on their shoulder that lets them know their favorite artist just grabbed his or her instruments and is playing a few acoustic tunes down by the water’s edge.

Can you describe how you used our products in your app. What were you trying to do or solve?
Newport Folk Festival is the grand-daddy of folk festivals, and one of the most endearing traits of the weekend-long celebration is the spontaneous and organic way in which things happen. You could be watching a set from one artist and another decides to jump in and join. Or one of the groups could decide to pass some time by playing a few songs from the top of a construction crane. The main goal of this app was to let people know when one these one-of-a-kind events is happening, so UA’s push notifications became the cornerstone of our development.

What level of engagement do you think that push notifications will provide to your app? Will it help to drive better use?

Festival apps are a fickle beast to begin with; we really don’t want people staring at the application the whole time! A festival app is really only aimed at being used for that time during the festival when people are walking around and taking in the entertainment, so we’ve been focused on making the app as useful for that time as possible. We know that if everything goes well the push messaging we’ve instituted, we may draw the users’ attention away from the music for a brief moment but with a reason that hopefully allows them to enjoy the festival on an entirely new level.

Why did you choose Urban Airship?
At the beginning of the process we were faced with a decent-sized smartphone project with little time to complete it. We ended up choosing PhoneGap as a platform to save development cycles and UA is a featured partner of PhoneGap. Our app’s differentiating feature is the frequent updates sent during the festival, and after reading about UA and the ease of integration, the choice was a no-brainer.

To quote Gabi Schaffzin, our developer:

HighHolburn “Things that make my life better: @phonegap, @urbanairship, and this sunshine. My wife is probably on that list somewhere, too. I guess.”

Ed note: aw-shucks.

What goals you were trying to achieve by integrating with us?
We had about a month and a half to design and build the application. Given that tight turn, we needed to leverage as many good partnerships as we could to make sure the app maintained value for the user. The app would have been half as useful without the functionality UA put at our fingertips.

Going to the festival? Download the free iOS app right now.

Have an app you’d like to chat about for our blog series? Drop us a line to sign up for a Q&A.

The mobile app is getting some notice because it delivers a big impact.

After a few years of the daily deal emails owning your inbox, it looks like mobile is growing up and immediacy around push notifications is being broadly adopted by the consumer audience. Digital research and reporting companies, including comScore are starting to notice the impact as well. TechCrunch had a nice write up on the results two of our customers are seeing as a result of using push in their mobile apps. According to comScore’s State of Retail Webinar, push notifications are driving significant sales for Groupon and Living Social. We are thrilled to see in the report that 14% of subscribers engage with the app after receiving a Push Notification.

Personally, I am not surprised. I spent years developing email and marketing campaigns for start ups to major brands. And while email is still the leading driver, well executed apps, with their ability to get offers into the “hands” of targeted buyers, will continue moving the needle in the app direction.

It is not just in these daily deal or flash shopping businesses where we are seeing this trend, but all over the app ecosystem. I have watched some amazing enterprise and start-up brands develop a serious channel in a short amount of time using user-centric push strategies. Mobile and apps are about delivering valued relationships that are intent-driven by the user and not by the brand. Retention in apps starts at hello and not at please come back. Retention is not back loaded in this world nor an afterthought. This is a powerful medium that is quite personal and taking the right approach from install to open is all about the delivery. That is what push notifications are delivering.

Approaching this with user-defined and controlled communications up front, coupled with “quiet time” systems layering additional control while not losing the message helps tip that balance. I can only imagine the impact our rich push and future product releases will bring.

All of us Urban Airship are proud to be the Push engine behind Groupon and LivingSocial, as well as many of the leading apps on your iPhones, Android and Blackberry devices. Check out the article to learn more about this comScore report.

Engagement is everything. Without it your app sits idle and is just one step closer to a hold and delete.

Push Start.

Today we announced the availability of Embedded Push for Android. As more platforms crop up and as more devices running different versions of Android come to market, developers are challenged to build and maintain the significant infrastructure needed to support mobile features across multiple platforms. We are excited to offer Embedded Push, an alternate push notification solution to C2DM that will help Android developers and users. Our Embedded Push product is more robust than C2DM and works on versions of Android from 1.6 and newer; C2DM works only on devices running Android 2.2 (also known as Froyo) and newer and requires the installation of the Android Market and a Google account on the device. Future versions will automatically give you the option of using either C2DM our our push solution.

As part of this announcement we’re excited to be powering the ESPN ScoreCenter app, the shopkick app and Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge apps with this initial release.

Our Embedded Push solution operates entirely outside the Google stack, which allows developers using Embedded Push to offer richer features and the ability to do more with notification delivery and also making it so you don’t need a signed-in Google account on the device.  Examples of such features in development include “quiet time” customization, allowing end users to define times not to be interrupted, an inbox of past notifications, guaranteed Quality of Service, and return receipt. Additionally, this solution gives each app its own open connection that is synchronized to save battery life. The direct end-to-end connection between each app and end user devices allows near-instant message delivery. The platform will also support in-app purchase on the Android platform, so developers can offer additional content to users within Android apps by offering simple, one-click billing. Urban Airship will provide a single library for Android that includes support for all our product offerings, as well as direct support for C2DM in addition to Embedded Push.

If you are interested in signing up for the Android Embedded Push Beta please sign-up below:

*Beta Signups Closed*

To learn more about the detailed features and behaviors of our push messaging platform across the mobile operating systems we support, reference the table below.