How to Utilize Social Invites With Infobip SMS API
Social Invites is a mobile app referral solution based on SMS API. Used by the most successful mobile apps, SMS-based Social Invites allow existing users of your app to recommend it to their contacts and friends with only one tap, and without ever leaving your app.
Once added to your app, this feature will enable your existing users to invite any number of friends and contacts from their phone address book to download your app. How this feature will look like in your app, is entirely up to you. Many developers have added ‘Invite’ buttons or boxes right next to names listed in their users’ address books.
In these instances, when your user taps the ‘Invite’ button or ticks the box, an SMS message will be triggered, and we’ll deliver it to the selected contact’s SMS inbox. The message will contain the text you define, and a shortened link which can take the recipient to the download page or any other location you prefer them to land on.
All this will make it very easy for new people to download your app.
Most importantly, your satisfied user will not be charged for the recommendation. The prerequisite for integrating Infobip Social Invites is an account with Infobip and access to our cloud communications platform.
With Infobip SMS API you also get insight into how many people recommended the app to their friends, and how many of those friends viewed the app in the store.
How to add SMS invites to your mobile app
Social Invites are a built-in feature of the fully-featured textual message API method with an included tracking object in the request. The tracking object will be monitoring user activity, but it will also automatically shorten long links. Have in mind that the track parameter, listed under the tracking object, should be set to a URL:
Users that get the referral will receive a message that should look something like this: “Hey, take a look at this awesome application: http://eel.nu/EJsE/cf9ZH.”
When they open the message and click on the link, the likelihood of conversion and becoming your app users is increased, as the message can be displayed as coming from a friend.*
With Social Invites analytics, there are two processes to keep in mind; the start process, which represents a sent SMS, and the end process – the user actually clicking on a link. This is a fully automated feature and there is no need for additional API calls or other parameters.
When we refer to conversion rate processes, they are identified by a key and the first step is to get those processes linked to your Infobip account.
JSON request should look like this:
The JSON response contains all processes on a single account:
After receiving a response, using the key from the previous algorithm will retrieve the conversion rate statistics for a single process.
JSON request with the response key:
JSON response:
The response contains statistical data of a single conversion rate process: a number of sent SMS messages, the number of opened links from SMS messages and the conversion rate for the app. The statistics represent the basic data set which is collected and can be retrieved via API.
Also, it is possible to collect detailed CTR (click-through rate) stats with other useful information, e.g. the user’s mobile phone number, network and country prefix, as well as the mobile phone operating system.
*This option may vary, depending on mobile operators in your country, so be sure to check with your dedicated Infobip Account Manager what are the requirements and possible solutions.
