Frequency Capping for Push

In the article you can know:

1. How to configure frequency capping (FC)
1. Types of FC
2. How FC works
3. Minimum Delay between two push notifications

Frequency Capping is a feature that allows you to limit how many push messages your users will get during a particular period of time. 

How to enable and configure

To enable Frequency Capping go to Settings-> Push ->FC & DND

Set the value to desired number to control the communication being sent out.

 The frequency capping has been implemented on two levels -

- Channel i.e. You can control the maximum number of Push being sent out to one user via MoEngage

- Product use case i.e. You might want to limit the ad-hoc promo push notification to 1 by setting General Push FC as 1 while you may not want to limit the highly relevant Smart Trigger push.

Say for example above,

When the Total Push Notification FC is ON, you are limiting the Total Push Notification being sent out by MoEngage to 2 in 1 days.

With General Push FC or Smart Trigger FC as ON and set as 1 in 1 day, you are limiting your General Push Campaigns and Smart Trigger campaigns to 1 in 1 day. 

You can choose to Ignore FC on a campaign level if some campaigns should be served irrespective of Frequency capping.

You can also reset the Frequency Cap at 00:00 GMT daily, useful when you send your campaign late on a day and want to send an early morning campaign the other day.  Also don't forget to Save your settings once you change them.

Smart Triggers also have a DND Setting. Read about DND Setting for Smart Triggers here.

How this works?

Case 1: Marketer has switched OFF all (Global FC and Individual Product FC) the capping
Effect: There won't be any capping in place and customers will get whatever notifications are sent to them

Case 2: Marketer has set Global Total Push Notification FC as 2 in 1 day while has switched OFF all the other Product wise capping.
Effect: The customers will get a maximum of 2 notifications in 1 day (combined total for General Push/Smart Triggers/Geo-Fence Pushes/ Transactional Push) in order in which they were sent.

Case 3: Marketer has switched OFF Global Total Push Notification FC but has set Smart Trigger FC as 2 in 1 day and Geo Fence FC as 1 in 1 day
Effect: Customers will receive a maximum of 2 Smart Triggers and 1 Geo fence campaign while there won't be any cap on General Push/Transactional Push etc.

Case 4: Marketer has switched ON both Global and Product level FC. Say Global Total Push Notification FC is set to 3 while Smart Trigger Capping is set to 1.
Effect: Customers will receive a maximum of 3 Push Notifications in the order they were sent in the day. If more than 1 Smart Trigger conditions are fulfilled, only 1 Smart Trigger campaign for which customer qualified first, will be sent.

Case 5: Marketer has Global Total Push Notification FC  set to 2. Customer receives 2 notifications and then

• Global Total Push Notification FC  is set to 3
• Global Total Push Notification FC is set to 1 

Effect: 

• Global Total Push Notification FC is set to 3 - Customer can receive one more push
• Global Total Push Notification FC is set to 1 - As 2 pushes have already been received by customer, no further push would be send to customer till FC gets reset.

For the sake of simplicity, we have shown only 1 level capping i.e. Cap only on 1 time window.

You can have 2 level capping like below:

Note: Frequency Capping is an App level setting and will only function for upcoming campaigns during the given period once it is switched ON.

Minimum Delay between two notifications (feature is WIP)

Marketers on MoEngage create multiple campaigns in a day, spaced by 5-10 mins. As much as marketers try to create the campaign which have non-overlapping segments, they cannot ensure that there is zero overlap. Because of this, end users receive more than 1 notification with-in a span of 5-10 mins which deteriorates their app experience.

To improve this notification delivery experience, using this setting, marketers can ensure that two or more notifications are not delivered in quick succession to any device.

Marketers can configure a delay between two notifications delivered to an end user's device from any of these campaign types viz. General Push, Smart Trigger Push, Geo Fence Push, Real Time Trigger Push (Online/Offline Mode), Push sent via Flows. 

Note 1: Minimum Delay settings are not applied on push notifications sent via MoEngage's Transaction Push API.

Examples

Assume marketers want that end users should not receive two notifications with-in 30 minutes, they would need to set Minimum Delay between two notifications as 30 minutes.

Example 1:  If a user's device is eligible to receive notification N1 (sent via General Push campaign C1) at time 1:00 pm UTC and N2 (sent via General Push campaign C2)  at 1:15 pm UTC. If the Min Delay setting is OFF, user's device will receive a campaign as per their Frequency Capping status. If Min Delay setting is ON (and set as 30 mins), user's device won't receive N2.

Example 2: If a user's device is eligible to receive notification N1 (sent via General Push campaign C1) at time 1:00 pm UTC and N2 (sent via Smart Trigger campaign C2) at 1:15 pm UTC. If the Min Delay setting is OFF, user's device will receive a campaign as per their Frequency Capping status. If Min Delay setting is ON (and set as 30 mins), user's device won't receive N2.

Q. But there might be certain campaigns which have to be sent urgently even if they are spaced closely?

Ans. MoEngage provides a capability to skip this setting on campaign level i.e. marketers should be able to create the campaign that may not abide by these settings of Minimum Delay. You can find it in Advanced Setting (for General, Smart Trigger and Geo Fence push) OR campaign Delivery Control (for Real Time Trigger push)

Q. Given that FC is evaluated on user level and then minimum delay settings are applied on devices, will there be cases where users will not receive the notifications because of minimum delay but their FC will still be incremented?

Ans. Yes. Say your FC is 2 notifications in 1 day. Your user is eligible for campaign C1 and received it. FC bucket is incremented to 1. Now with-in 15 mins, user become eligible for campaign C2 which is not sent because of Minimum Delay setting. FC bucket will be incremented to 2. Not if you try to send another campaign in the same day, it will not be delivered to user since the FC bucket is already 2.