About AMPAC Systems
AMPAC Systems is a global provider of software, technology and business process automation services for associations and non-profit organizations.
The Challenge
AMPAC Systems was looking for a flexible and easy to use system to communicate with their existing clients as well as their prospects. Their objectives were as follows:
- Implement a solution which maintained a low operating costs.
- Allow the solution to be used/maintained by non-technical professionals.
- Allow the recipient of any messages to control how/when communication will occur.
- Notify appropriate AMPAC personnel/teams in real-time of any important communication events, e.g. when a particular person opened a message or clicked on a link within a message.
The Solution
Kickstep was able to meet AMPAC System's needs through the use of AWS Services, AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model) and the application of AWS Well Architected Framework principles.
- Utilize Amazon Pinpoint to address all email, SMS and push notification needs of the project.
- Manage all releveant communication preferences and actions for each user with Amazon Endpoints. This allowed for the creation of dymanmic communication segments based on messages received and actions taken by users in the past.
- Integration of Amazon Pinpoint campaigns into Amazon Kinesis. Leverage Amazon Kinesis stream event processing to handle real-time actions, e.g. notification of an AMPAC account lead via push notification when a client of theirs clicked on a link within a received message.
- Operationally manage all aspects of the solution through AWS SAM which allows for consistent and repeatable development, testing and deployment practices.
The Benefits
Benefit 1 - AMPAC Systems marketing team can craft and reuse messaging templates via a web interface. The team can configure all aspects of who receives which messages, when those messages are sent, and what actions are to be taken upon receipt.
Benefit 2- AMPAC Systems teams are able to test and monitor campaign and messaging performance through a detailed campaign dashboard. Tools such as A/B testing of message content and dynamic segment creation allow AMPAC Systems to test various messaging content and strategies before launching full campaigns.
Benefit 3 - The solution is entirely based on a serverless architecture and has a total operating cost of under $50/month. This DevOps model has a variety of benefits such as infrastructure-as-a-code deployments, rapid deployment (and rollback) of new features, local testing and debugging of application logic, and adherence to AWS DevOps best practices.
Solution Architecture Overview
1 - Amazon Pinpoint maintains a set of user endpoints, segments and campaigns which facilitate communication with end users via email.
2/3 - As emails are sent, received and opened, messages are sent back to Amazon Pinpoint which routes the Campagn and Email events to an Amzon Kinesis Stream.
4 - Lambda functions monitor the Kinesis Stream for certain events and and use information from the Pinpoint Endpoints to send targeted messages to employees at the client based on Lambda function paramter values, e.g. If a C-level person opened the email, notify VP of Sales via SMS with the specific endpoint information. Thus allowing the VP of Sales to initiate communication with the endpoint while they are currently reading the message.
5 - Links contained in the email will open certain pages on the clients website. Clicking a link within a message will also trigger steps 2 - 4.
6-9 - Javascript code on the web page may interact with API Gateway to perform certain actions
such as:
a. Retrieve user endpoint information to personalize the website content.
b. Send messages to Kinesis for further action, e.g. trigger follow-up communication requests.
About Kickstep Technologies, Inc and Amazon Web Services
Kickstep Technologies is a leading technology firm providing cloud consulting, software development, data analytics and machine learning services. We use our experience to ensure clients have the best technical solutions to solve their business challenges and deliver value for their organization. We are fully committed to the success of our clients and commit to always putting their needs and interests before our own.