Customer.io

Step-by-step guide to send your event data from RudderStack to Customer.io

Customer.io is a popular platform for sending automated messages and emails to your customers, with a focus on security and privacy. With Customer.io, you get complete information about your customers in one place, and use it to create personalized messages and campaigns for them.

RudderStack supports Customer.io as a destination to which you can seamlessly send your event data.

Find the open-source transformer code for this destination in our GitHub repo.

Getting started

Before configuring Customer.io as a destination in RudderStack, verify if the source platform is supported by Customer.io by referring to the table below:

Connection Mode	Web	Mobile	Server
Device mode	Supported	-	-
Cloud mode	Supported	Supported	Supported

To know more about the difference between cloud mode and device mode in RudderStack, read the RudderStack Connection Modes guide.

Once you have confirmed that the platform supports sending events to Customer.io, follow these steps:

• From your RudderStack dashboard, add the source. From the list of destinations, select Customer.io.

• Assign a name to the destination and click on Next. You should then see the following screen:

Connection settings

The connection settings required to configure Customer.io as a destination in RudderStack are listed below:

• Site ID: Enter your Customer.io site ID.

• API Key: Enter your Customer.io API key.

For more information on obtaining your Customer.io site ID and API key, refer to the FAQ section below.

• Event sent after setting device token: Enter the name of the event that is fired immediately after setting the device token.

• Account based in the EU data center?: Enable this option in case your account is based in the EU region.

Refer to the Customer.io documentation for more information on this setting.

Web SDK settings

• Use native SDK to send events: Enable this setting to send the events through Customer.io's native JavaScript SDK.

• OneTrust Cookie Category: Specify the OneTrust category name for mapping the OneTrust consent settings to RudderStack's consent purposes.

For more information on this setting, refer to the OneTrust Consent Manager guide.

Finally, click on Next to complete the setup. Customer.io will now be enabled as a destination in RudderStack.

Identify

The identify call sends the event data to Customer.io along with the properties that you pass as the RudderStack traits.

userId is a mandatory field for Customer.io. If it is not provided, RudderStack uses anonymousId instead.

RudderStack also sends the createdAt field as created_at to Customer.io to register the user signup time.

A sample identify call is as shown:

rudderanalytics.identify("userId", {
  name: "Tintin",
  city: "Brussels",
  country: "Belgium",
  email: "[e-mail]"
});

As createdAt is not present in the above call, RudderStack will append the current timestamp value and send the field to Customer.io.

Unsubscribing users

You can pass unsubscribed: true in the identify call to unsubscribe a user in Customer.io, as shown in the following snippet:

rudderanalytics.identify("userId", {
  email: "[e-mail]",
  unsubscribed: true
});

Make sure the user ID and the email values match the Customer.io attributes. You can verify this by selecting that user in the People page in your Customer.io dashboard and clicking on Attributes.

Page

If you are using a native SDK, the Customer.io JavaScript snippet is loaded and captures the page view automatically. You can also call rudderanalytics.page() that sends the page event along with any associated properties that you want to pass along with the call.

A sample page call is as shown below:

// "home" is the name of the page.
rudderanalytics.page("home", {
  path: "path",
  url: "url",
  title: "title",
  search: "search",
  referrer: "referrer",
});

Screen

The screen call lets you record whenever your user views their mobile screen, with any additional relevant information about the screen.

If you have turned on the screen views in your app implementation from the iOS or Android SDK, they will be registered as Viewed <screen_name> Screen under the Activities tab for the user.

RudderStack will also forward the event properties passed along with the screen call to Customer.io as they are received.

A sample screen call using RudderStack's iOS SDK is shown below:

[[RudderClient sharedInstance] screen:@"Main"
            properties:@{@"prop_key" : @"prop_value"}];

The above event will be transformed as Viewed Main Screen and sent to Customer.io.

Track

The track call lets you record the user events, i.e. the actions that they perform, along with any properties associated with them. You may call rudderanalytics.track()with or without the event properties.

A sample track call is as shown below:

rudderanalytics.track("Track me", {
  category: "category",
  label: "label",
  value: "value",
});

For anonymous users, Customer.io does not allow an event name of size more than 100 Bytes. RudderStack will automatically trim the event names in such a scenario.

Device token registration

RudderStack registers the device token to Customer.io for the following application lifecycle events:

• Application Installed

• Application Opened

• Application Unistalled

To use this feature, turn on the trackApplicationLifecycleEvents feature in your mobile SDK implementation code. Moreover, you will have to register your device token after initializing the SDK.

The following snippets demonstrate registering the device token for iOS and Android:

iOS Android

[[[RudderClient sharedInstance] getContext] putDeviceToken:[self getDeviceToken]];

RudderClient.putDeviceToken(getDeviceToken())

Alternatively, you can also enter the event name of your choice in the Customer.io settings in the RudderStack dashboard, as shown:

Make sure you send the event just after setting the device token in your app, so RudderStack can immediately register the device token on that event and not delay until the next lifecycle event.

The following snippets highlight sending the device_token_registered event after setting the device token in your app:

iOS Android

[[RSClient sharedInstance] track:@"device_token_registered"];

rudderClient!!.track("device_token_registered")

FAQs

Where do I find the API Key and Site ID for configuring Customer.io in RudderStack?

To obtain the API Key and Site ID, follow these steps:

• Sign into your Customer.io dashboard.

• In the left panel, click on Settings and select Account Settings.

• Then, click on API Credentials. You should find the site ID and API key for your project listed here, as shown:

Contact us

For queries on any of the sections covered in this guide, you can contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.