Introduction to broadcasts
UpdatedWhen you set up a broadcast, we give you two options: Newsletter and Messages triggered via API. These two types of broadcast are fundamentally different!
If you’re new to Customer.io, checkout Campaigns, broadcasts, and transactional messages to make sure you’re creating the right kind of automation.
How it works
A broadcast is a message or workflow that you trigger (or schedule) for a group of people. It’s not “active” like a campaign: you’ll send, schedule, or trigger your broadcast for a group of people. Anybody outside that group won’t get the broadcast unless you send it again.
When you set up a new broadcast, you pick your Broadcast Type: Newsletter or Messages triggered via API. These two things are fundamentally different, but we can help you choose the right one.
A Newsletter is a single message that you want to send to a group of people. You can schedule a newsletter or send it immediately. Newsletters provide a simple way to broadcast a message to your audience without setting up a complex campaign.
Messages triggered via API are what we call an API-triggered broadcast*. This lets you set up a complete workflowA series of actions (messages, attribute updates, etc) that people progress through as a part of a campaign or broadcast.—like an event-triggered campaign, except that the trigger call that you send to our API supports multiple recipients. API-triggered broadcasts are highly customizable, and give you precise control over workflows from your backend integration, but are certainly more technical than newsletters or campaigns.
What type of broadcast should I choose?
You should send a newsletter if:
- You need to send or schedule one message to a group of people
- The data to personalize your message already exists in Customer.io
- You don’t have development resources
A newsletter is the easiest way to accomplish a simple broadcast. You might send a newsletter to alert your audience to changes in your terms of service, or to a group of people when you onboard people belonging to an account.
You should set up an API-triggered broadcast if:
- you want to send more than one message
- you want to send custom data with your message(s)
- you want to trigger a workflow for a group of people from your backend
API-triggered broadcasts provide a way for you to trigger workflows directly from an outside service and pass custom data to the workflow. It’s like an event-triggered campaign but the event can represent a group of people. For example, you might trigger a broadcast for people who are interested in an event when tickets go on sale for the event, or students who are interested in a particular online course when registration opens.
Newsletters
Newsletters provide a simple way to send a single message to a group of people. Learn more about newsletters.
When you set up a newsletter you’ll:
- Determine your audience
- Set up your message
- Schedule or send it
It can take a few minutes for us to process changes to your snippet.
This means your customers may receive outdated content if, for instance, your campaign is active, you update a snippet in an email, then 30 seconds later we send that email. This could also happen if the message is at the beginning of your workflow, you update a snippet in the message, then immediately activate a campaign or trigger a broadcast, newsletter, or transactional message that contains it.
Newsletters do offer a few powerful options that aren’t available for other campaigns or broadcasts:
- Send to Everyone: you can send a message to everyone in your workspace if you want, without setting up a segment or assigning attributes, etc. This helps you send important messages, like changes to your Terms Of Service or company-wide alerts.
- Send rate: You can limit the send rate to deliver your message in batches.
- Scheduling: You can schedule your newsletter to send at a specific time!
API-triggered broadcasts
API-triggered broadcasts provide a way to send a one-to-many campaign on demand. It may help to think of API-triggered broadcasts like event-triggered campaigns, except the event comes from your backend integration and represents a group of people. For example, you might use an API-triggered broadcast to:
- Send news alerts to a group of people interested in a specific topic
- Alert users interested in an event when tickets go on sale
- Alert students when registration opens for a new online class
When you trigger a broadcast, you can set a custom set of recipients and custom data that you reference in your campaign with liquidA syntax that supports variables, letting you personalize messages for your audience. For example, if you want to reference a person’s first name, you might use the variable {{customer.first_name}}..
Learn more about API-triggered broadcasts.
It can take a few minutes for us to process changes to your snippet.
This means your customers may receive outdated content if, for instance, your campaign is active, you update a snippet in an email, then 30 seconds later we send that email. This could also happen if the message is at the beginning of your workflow, you update a snippet in the message, then immediately activate a campaign or trigger a broadcast, newsletter, or transactional message that contains it.
