Twilio and SendGrid activation
Enable your Twilio SMS and SendGrid email programs for Airship.
Prerequisites
Your Airship contract must include Email and/or SMS. Depending on purchase date, your contract may require an amendment. Contact your account manager for details.
To enable Twilio for your Airship SMS channel, you must have a Twilio account or Subaccount. While not required, we recommend using a separate Subaccount within your Twilio account to isolate Airship messaging campaigns and sender configurations from any existing campaigns.
You must also have the following prerequisites in place:
| Prerequisite | Detail | Resource |
|---|---|---|
| Account SID | This is a unique key that is used to identify a specific Twilio Parent Account or Subaccount and is a credential that acts as a username. | What is a Twilio Account SID and where can I find it? |
| Auth Token | This acts as the password for API authorization requests. The Auth Token must be a Primary or Secondary token, though we recommended using a Secondary token to avoid interference with existing API integrations. | REST API: Secondary Auth Token |
| A registered SMS Sender | The SMS sender must be one of Short code, Long code, or Alphanumeric code. | SMS Senders |
To enable SendGrid for your Airship Email channel, you must have a SendGrid account or subuser. While not required, we recommend using a separate subuser within your SendGrid account to isolate Airship messaging campaigns and sender configurations from any existing campaigns.
You must also have the following prerequisites in place:
| Prerequisite | Detail | Resource |
|---|---|---|
| API key | The key must have Full Access permission. | API Keys |
| Sending domain | Domain authentication must already be completed for the sending domain with proper DNS configuration. | How to Set Up Domain Authentication |
| Marketing and transactional IP pools | IP pools may be either shared or dedicated. We recommended provisioning separate pools for commercial marketing messaging and transactional messaging. | IP Pools: All You Need to Know |
| Webhook verification key | Configure your SendGrid webhook using the Post URL https://go.urbanairship.com/api/email/twilio/events/, with all Engagement and Delivery Actions enabled, and with Signature Verification enabled. | Add an Event Webhook |
Requesting Airship integration
Once your prerequisites are met, contact your Airship account manager or Support and request integrating your Airship account with Twilio.
Then Airship will:
- Prepare your account for the integration
- Request that you provide details about your prerequisites
- Assign a dedicated technical consultant, who will complete the necessary project configuration
- (For Twilio SMS) Provide a unique Mobile Originated Callback URL to add to your Sender or Messaging Service configuration in Twilio
Importing your audience
There are several methods available to import your existing audience into Airship, and your Airship technical consultant will recommend the best method for your specific needs. A common method is SFTP upload. You can upload to Airship using this method after exporting from Segment Engage or another CRM/CDP. See Download your Audience as a CSV file in Segment’s documentation.
You can also enable email and SMS audience syncing via Segment integration, which is our recommended method. Synchronization automatically associates audience members to Named UsersA customer-provided identifier used for mapping multiple devices and channels to a specific individual. based on your existing track events in Segment.
Our technical consulting team will work with you to import your mobile device IDs using our import API endpoint. See Register and associate in our Segment integration documentation.
Importing templates from Segment Engage
Email and SMS templates built in Engage use a scripting language called Liquid for personalization and dynamic content. Your Airship onboarding team will help with converting your templates to use HandlebarsHandlebars is Airship’s templating language for personalization. Handlebars expressions use double curly braces wrapped around a content template, ranging from a simple variable, e.g., {{first_name}}, to complex evaluations of personalization data. instead of Liquid.
First, export your templates from Segment Engage. Your Airship onboarding team will ask you to copy and paste your template content from Engage to a shared document. Airship will use a script to convert your templates and add them to your Airship projects for you to test and validate.
From there, you can use Airship’s WYSIWYG editor to create new templates or upload your own HTML templates personalized using Handlebars.
Migrating your Segment email campaigns
The method of migrating your email campaigns from Segment Engage to Airship will depend on the types of campaigns you have configured.
For triggered messaging, recreate the messages as Airship JourneysA continuous user experience of connected Sequences, Scenes, and/or In-App Automations.. You can use many of your existing events and properties already tracked in Segment via our pre-built integration. See Segment in our integration docs.
For ad hoc or recurring campaigns like newsletters, recreate the messages using the Message ComposerA tool for creating messages in the dashboard. Composers are defined by what you can include and control: message types, delivery, and automation. and configure delivery according to your preferred channels and schedule. See Create a message.
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