AWS Pinpoint – The most important information
If you’re looking for a way to engage with your customers through various messaging channels, such as email, SMS, and mobile push notifications, AWS Pinpoint is the service you’re looking for.
This article will cover the most important information about Amazon Pinpoint before considering using it. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
What is AWS Pinpoint?
AWS Pinpoint is a scalable 2-way marketing (inbound and outbound) communication and analytics AWS service for mobile and web apps that help customers better understand user behavior and measure the results of their marketing campaigns.
With AWS Pinpoint, customers can send targeted messages to individual users based on their past interactions with the app and gather insights about how users interact with different app features. AWS Pinpoint also allows customers to track user acquisition and engagement trends in real time through its analytics capabilities.
Amazon Pinpoint was primarily developed for marketers and business users willing to send and receive many customer communication messages (the service scales to billions of messages per day) and ensure they deliver relevant marketing content to the right audience.
The key feature of AWS Pinpoint is the ability to use Machine Learning models that can predict user behavior patterns.
Additionally, AWS provides a Pinpoint Deliverability Dashboard, which provides you with an intuitive interface for:
- Tracking your domain reputation
- Campaigns deliverability statistics
- Inbox placement testing
- IP reputation tracking
- Bounce and complaint rates statistics
- Customizable alarms
Please, note that the Pinpoint Deliverability dashboard pricing starts from $1250/month!
Terminology
There are several terms you need to understand to use AWS Pinpoint efficiently:
- Projects – a collection of information, segments, campaigns, and journeys
- Channels – a platform where you intend to engage your audience segments (emails, text messages, push notifications, etc.)
- Segments – each segment is a group of dynamic or imported users which supposed to be communicated together
- Campaigns – each campaign is an initiative for engaging users segments using tailored messages, for example, a new website feature announcement
- Journeys – customized multi-step engagements, for example,
- Message templates – as easy as the content and settings of messages you’re using repeatedly
As soon as these terms are clear, you can start creating effective marketing campaigns to target the right audience in the service.
Pinpoint Use Cases
Amazon Pinpoint is intended to use by businesses who want to gain more insights into customer engagement and marketing campaigns. It offers powerful analytics, segmentation, and targeted push notifications to help businesses understand user behaviors, create customized customer experiences, and measure the impact of marketing efforts.
Amazon Pinpoint primary use cases:
- Products or services promotion via email, SMS text messages, voice messages, or push notifications (marketing)
- Customer notifications about transaction status, e.g., order confirmation, shipping notification, delivery notification
- Bulk messaging – you can (and should) use Amazon Pinpoint instead of Amazon SES for sending emails to millions of people
- Bulk transactional messaging – your customers can reply to received messages
Amazon Pinpoint is integrated with the following AWS services:
- Amazon SNS – for two-way SMS messaging
- Kinesis Data Firehose – allows persisting event streams from Amazon Pinpoint to S3 for future analytics using Amazon Athena and QuickSight.
- Amazon CloudWatch – allows you to track Pinpoint metrics
Amazon Pinpoint vs. Amazon SNS vs. Amazon SES
In Amazon SNS and Amazon SES, it is YOUR responsibility to manage groups of recipients (audience), content templates, and delivery schedules. Amazon Pinpoint has all these features as part of the service (no extra work from your side). Amazon Pinpoint is an evolution of the previous two services for the marketing communication use case.
Reference architectures
You may find many AWS Pinpoint deployment solutions in the AWS Architecture blog. We recommend you start from:
- Location-Based Notifications Using Amazon Pinpoint
- Digital User Engagement Events Database
- Build a multi-language notification system with Amazon Translate and Amazon Pinpoint
Free hands-on AWS workshops
If you’d like to get hands-on experience and looking for an AWS Pinpoint tutorial, we recommend you the following free hands-on AWS Pinpoint workshops:
FAQ
Is Amazon Pinpoint serverless?
Amazon Pinpoint is an Amazon Web Services managed service that might be called “serverless” because you don’t have to manage servers to use it. At the same time, the “Serverless” term is traditionally related to compute resources serving your application needs. For more information, check the What is Serverless computing article.
What are the additional benefits offered by Pinpoint compared to SNS?
Pinpoint offers several additional benefits compared to SNS, including more powerful targeting capabilities, advanced analytics and reporting tools, the ability to segment users into targeted audiences, and the ability to trigger automated messages based on user behavior. Pinpoint also allows for greater customization of content and messaging with support for multiple message types such as SMS, email, push notifications, and in-app messages. Additionally, Pinpoint offers advanced features such as A/B testing, which can help optimize campaigns and fine-tune messaging.
Summary
This article reviewed the most important Amazon Pinpoint features and provided references to architecture solutions and free hands-on AWS workshops. Overall, Amazon Pinpoint is a great service for relevant advertising across many customer segments.
