At a glance: Sendios, an email delivery and analytics platform, embeds AppsFlyer OneLink branded links within emails. Email recipients clicking on the link are deep-linked into an app.
Email service providers (ESPs) are excellent sources of segmented user traffic. They wrap deep linking URLs with their own click recording domain. In some cases doing so breaks iOS Universal Links. To overcome this, Sendios uses Universal Links on top of their click recording domain. They integrate with AppsFlyer and by using OneLink branded link capabilities enable deep linking and click recording.
Set up Sendios
Configure Sendios and the AppsFlyer SDK, to send emails containing OneLink branded links.
Prerequisite
Mobile SDK versions:
- iOS: V4.9.0 or later
- Android V4.9.0 or later
Step 1: Set up a Sendios account
To set up your account at Sendios:
- Create a new Sendios account by contacting Sendios at sales@sendios.io.
- In Sendios, create a new project and enter a valid DNS record for the email sending domain.
Set up AppsFlyer
Step 2: Configure links for your email campaigns
- Create a OneLink template for your email campaigns.
- Create a Branded link.
When requested to add a CNAME to your domain, use yourdomain.esplinks.appsflyer.com, instead of the URL offered in the Branded link creation page:
Example:Subdomain CNAME click.example.com example.appsflyer.com
Note that when clicking Verify to verify the brand domain, a failure message regarding the AppsFlyer CNAME displays.
Ignore this message and change the CNAME as instructed above.
Create emails and testing links
Step 3: Send emails
- Create a OneLink URL in the Link Management page (or manually). You must URL-encode parameter values.
- [Best practice] Use the following parameters:
- pid (media source): Use a media source that signifies this usage such as Email.
- c (campaign): Campaign name
- af_dp : The deep link URI scheme you want to deep-link your users into.
- af_web_dp: Where to redirect users clicking the link on desktop.
- af_ios_url : Where to redirect users that don’t have the app clicking the link in an iOS device.
- af_android_url: Where to redirect users that don’t have the app click the link in an Android device.
- In Sendios, create an email template and insert the OneLink in the template.
- Go to Account > Customize and mark AppsFlyer links domain.
Example
For the sake of readability, URL parameters are not URL-encoded in this example.
https://yoursubdomain.com/abcd?pid=Email&c=Spring_Newsletter&is_retargeting=true&
af_dp=testapp://path/to/content&af_web_dp=https://www.example.com/path/to/content&
af_ios_url=https://www.example.com/path/to/content&af_android_url=https://www.example.com/path/to/content
Test your links
To test the integration:
- Set-up Sendios.
- Create a OneLink URL.
- Insert the URL in an email.
- Send a test email to yourself.
Expected result:
- If you have the app installed, it should launch and you will be deep-linked into the defined app page.
- A click reflects in:
- The AppsFlyer dashboard, attributed to the media source and campaign.
- Sendios data.