Branch Product Release Updates: November 2016

The following new features have been released in November.  Click through each new feature below to learn more.

Deep Linked Feeds for Dynamic Ads
Journeys Enhancements
New Self-Onboarding UI for Universal Email
Adobe Analytics / AppsFlyer Data Integrations
New Universal Links Validator
Deep Linked Feeds for Dynamic Ads

Deep Linked Feeds is a new tool that marketers can use to easily add Branch deep links to every piece of content in your product feed. Get more purchases from your remarketing ads by linking mobile users directly to the app instead of the web. Interested in learning more? Read our latest blog.


Upload Feed.png
Journeys Enhancements
Conversion Funnel Analytics

You can now view your Journeys conversion funnel directly on the Summary page of the Branch Dashboard. View the overall performance of your Journeys or filter by specific a Journeys, channel, stage, or tag.

Journeys Dashboard

Audience Targeting Updates

The following enhancements to the Journeys audience targeting rules allow for more powerful audience targeting:

    • Value exclusion – allows you to specify one or more values for exclusion from the “Is viewing a page url” and “Came directly from a url” rules. For example, if you wanted to place a Journey on any page from your mobile website except your Careers page:
      image05.png
  • One or more values – allows you to specify the “Is viewing a page url” and “Came directly from a url” rules if any of the specified values are true. For example, if you wanted a particular full-page interstitial Journey to show only on your homepage or your shopping page:Value
New Template Picker

When creating Journeys, you now have the flexibility to either create a new Journey (or A/B testing variation) from one of the Branch default templates or start from an existing Journey creative you or your team has already built. In the Template Picker screen, you can now toggle between “Default Templates” and “My Templates,” and filter by pre-created Journeys to quickly find the one that’s right for you.

Template Picker

New Self-Onboarding UI for Universal Email

To make it even easier to configure Branch deep links from your emails, we launched a new self-onboarding experience for Universal Email. The in-dashboard tool helps you configure everything you need to get started, including deep linking for email and Universal Link support for your click tracking domain. The self-onboarding is currently available to use in beta, and will appear in the dashboard navigation bar next week. Start by choosing your Email Service Provider and we’ll walk you through the steps to get you on your way. Want to know how to best use Universal Email? We partnered with The Relevancy Group to discuss how to best deliver a seamless consumer experience from email to mobile apps.

Self Onboarding Email

The New Universal Links Validator

Apple’s introduction of Universal Links in iOS 9 allowed developers to open their app from a link click almost instantaneously. However, with Universal Links, came an all new set of configuration complications. From the long list of settings to configure in Xcode, to the setup of your Apple App Site Association (AASA) file, Universal Links proved difficult to integrate.

Since Universal Links became a deep linking standard, Branch has been committed to making it as easy as possible. This meant automatically setting up and filling in the values for your AASA. Now, we’re introducing a tool to help you make sure your Xcode project is also ready for Universal Links.

The new Universal Linking Validator checks the values set on your Branch dashboard, and the configuration of your app’s Xcode project to help you pinpoint problems that could prevent Branch links from opening your app. Using a locally run script, the validator lets you know if something is incorrectly set, and will tell you exactly what you need to do to fix it.

With this new tool in hand, you can spend less time trying to get your links working, and more time creating a great deep linking experience for your users.

You can try the new validator at https://branch.io/resources/universal-links/. To check you AASA settings, you can find the previous Universal Links Validator (now the AASA Validator) at https://branch.io/resources/aasa-validator/.

Universal Link Validator

Adobe Analytics / AppsFlyer Data Integrations

Adobe Analytics and AppsFlyer have both been added to Data Integrations, allowing you to view all of your important mobile marketing data on a single dashboard.

Data Integrations