For developers, building an app is hard enough. Actually getting people to use a product is another story.
That’s why Amazon today debuted Amazon Pinpoint, a new mobile marketing analytics feature within Amazon Web Services that helps app makers run targeted push notification campaigns.
Speaking at AWS re:invent in Las Vegas on Thursday, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels said that Pinpoint will help developers better understand and analyze the preferences and behavior of their mobile users on a granular level so to improve the quality and timing of push notifications.
“To really drive engagement for customers with push notifications, you need to be really careful about who you are targeting and when you target them so you can really optimize engagement,” Vogels said.
Pinpoint includes dashboards that show real-time analytics; the ability to create targeted campaigns based on external data; an A/B testing tool for different messages; and more.
Amazon charges developers based on the number of users a campaign targets, the number of messages sent, and the events collected. There are no upfront setup costs and no fixed monthly costs. Pricing breakdown can be seen here.
Amazon already offers Simple Notification Service (SNS) on AWS, but Pinpoint seems to offer more analytics and targeting capabilities. The new service will compete with other push notification platforms like Mixpanel, Amplitude, OneSignal, and others.
You can read more about Pinpoint at this FAQ page and this blog post. The service is available today in the US East (Northern Virginia) region, with expansion coming soon.
Pinpoint is one of many analytics features offered on AWS that include Redshift and Athena, a new SQL query service product revealed Wednesday.
“Analytics is in the hands of all of you,” Vogels told the crowd on Thursday. “It really allows you to transform your business and get detailed information about how your business is operating, how customers can be targeted, and how you operate.”
Amazon made several other AWS-related announcements today, including AWS Shield, which offers protections from DDoS attacks, and new integration with Seattle software automation company Chef. See our full coverage here.
