PII Tokenized Sending

Overview

PII Tokenized Sending is a paid feature. To enable it for your account, contact the MoEngage support team.

PII Tokenized Sending is a patented MoEngage feature that allows you to engage with your customers without storing their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) within the MoEngage platform.

PII data includes:

• Customer contact details: Email ID, mobile number.
• Customer personalization information: First name, last name.

Tokenization replaces this sensitive data with non-sensitive, anonymous tokens. This feature enables you to segment, personalize, and run campaigns while MoEngage remains fully compliant with data privacy regulations like GDPR.

For more information about MoEngage’s data privacy compliance, refer to GDPR Compliance and PII Masking.

Use Cases

• Enhance Data Security: Engage your audience through targeted campaigns without storing sensitive PII, such as email addresses or phone numbers, in MoEngage.
• Ensure Compliance: Meet stringent data privacy regulations by anonymizing customer identities in your marketing platform.
• Maintain Personalization: Continue to use personalization in your campaigns by fetching data in real-time.

Prerequisites

Before you configure this feature, ensure you have the following:

• PII API Endpoint: An API endpoint on your server that can receive an anonymous ID from MoEngage and return the corresponding PII (email or mobile number).
• Anonymous ID: A unique, anonymized customer identifier maintained in your database that serves as the common key between your system and MoEngage.

Configuration

You can configure a PII API to retrieve customer email IDs or mobile numbers during campaign dispatch.

• PII Tokenized Sending is supported for the following channels and partners:
  • SMS, MMS, and RCS (All the native and custom SMS connectors or service providers)
  • Email (SendGrid, Amazon SES, and custom SMTP connectors)
  • WhatsApp (All the native and custom WhatsApp connectors)
• When PII Tokenized Sending is enabled, Frequency Capping is not supported for the Email channel. However, it is supported for the SMS, MMS, RCS, and WhatsApp channels.
• MoEngage uses dynamic IPs for sending messages, if you want to use static IPs refer to this doc to know more.
• When PII Tokenized Sending is enabled, the following are not supported:
  • Opt-out Management (WhatsApp)
  • Subscription Management (SMS, MMS)
  • RCS
  • Message Archival

1. Configure PII API

Email Settings

To send email campaigns without storing customer email addresses in MoEngage, configure the following settings.

1. On the MoEngage dashboard, navigate to Settings > Channels > Email.
2. Select the Data tab.
3. In the Customer’s email address data field, select the option Customer’s email addresses are not stored in MoEngage DB (Fetch via API).
4. After you select this option, the API configuration fields appear. Proceed to the next step to configure the API settings.

SMS, MMS & RCS Settings

To send SMS, MMS and RCS campaigns without storing customer mobile numbers in MoEngage, configure the following settings.

1. Navigate to Settings > Channels > SMS, MMS & RCS.
2. Select the PII tokenization tab.
3. Click +Add API Configuration.
4. The API configuration fields appear. Proceed to the next step to configure the API settings.

WhatsApp Settings

To send WhatsApp campaigns without storing customer mobile numbers in MoEngage, configure the following settings.

1. On the MoEngage dashboard, navigate to Settings > Channels > WhatsApp.
2. Select the Data tab.
3. In the Customer’s mobile numbers data field, select the option Customer’s mobile numbers are not stored in MoEngage DB (Fetch via API).
4. After you select this option, the API configuration fields appear. Proceed to the next step to configure the API settings.

2. API Settings

You can fetch data for users individually or in batches.

Single

By selecting single, you can fetch a response based on each request. This helps you fetch particular responses instead of huge data sets.

Perform the following steps:

• Method: Select the GET or POST method.
• OAuth 2.0 Authentication: To secure your PII API with OAuth 2.0, enable the OAuth toggle. A dropdown menu appears. Select a pre-configured OAuth setting. To learn how to create and manage OAuth settings, refer to Authorization Configuration with OAuth 2.0.

• The OAuth option will be enabled on request. Contact your CSM or the MoEngage Support team to enable it.
• Only OAuth configurations with an “Active” status will be available for selection in the dropdown.
• If an active OAuth configuration used by your API expires, its status will change to “Failed”. When you edit the PII settings, an error message will be displayed, and you will need to select a new, active OAuth configuration.

• Request URL: Type or paste the “Request URL” of the API.

• Parameters: Type or paste the relevant “URL parameters”, “Headers”, and/or “Body” details for the API as key-value pairs. You can personalize the URL parameters and request headers by typing @ in the placeholders while entering the key-value pairs. \

  

Bulk

By selecting bulk, you can fetch a maximum of 500 user attributes in a single request, significantly reducing the number of requests made to collect each customer data individually.

1. Enter the batch size of your request.
2. API configuration
   • Method: Only the POST method is supported in bulk.
   • Enable OAuth : To secure your PII API with OAuth 2.0, enable the OAuth toggle. A dropdown menu appears. Select a pre-configured OAuth setting. To learn how to create and manage OAuth settings, refer to Authorization Configuration with OAuth 2.0.

• The OAuth option will be enabled on request. Contact your CSM or the MoEngage Support team to enable it.
• Only OAuth configurations with an “Active” status will be available for selection in the dropdown.
• If an active OAuth configuration used by your API expires, its status will change to “Failed”. When you edit the PII settings, an error message will be displayed, and you will need to select a new, active OAuth configuration.

• Request URL: Type or paste the “Request URL” of the API.
• Parameters: Type or paste the relevant “URL parameters,” “Headers,” and/or “Body” details for the API as the key-value pairs.
  You cannot personalize the URL path parameters and headers in bulk requests. You can only personalize user attributes in the request body with the key-value pairs as follows: Customer hash: {{UserAttribute['ID']}} value, which is mandatory in input, and the same key will be returned in the output.

2. Sample Request: Your request will be processed in the backend, as shown below:
   JSON

   {
   "abcd": "abcd",
   "CustomerInBulk": [
     {
      "Customer hash": "{{UserAttribute['ID']}}"
     }
   ]
   }
   
3. Customer hash is a key, and 456 {{UserAttribute['ID']}} is the value. You can have different key-value pairs, for example: Customer key and Customer ID.
   Sample Response: You will receive a response from the backend, as shown below:
   JSON

   {
   “CustomerInBulk”: {
     {
       Customer hash: “456”,
       First name: “John”,
       Last name: “doe”,
       Email ID: “[e-mail]”
       Phone number: “9876543210”
     },
     {
      Customer hash: “567”,
      First name: “Joe”,
      Last name: “Bloggs”,
      Email ID: “[e-mail]”
      Phone number: “1234567890”
      }
    },
   }
   
   The data will be returned with the same key (user attribute) you requested.
   You can have multiple key sets but can make a personalized request based on user attributes from only one key set.

3. Test and Save Configuration

After defining your API settings, you must test the configuration to ensure MoEngage can correctly retrieve the data.

1. Enter a valid test value for the anonymous ID you configured (for example, 456).
2. Click Test to trigger the API call.
3. Review the API response to ensure it is successful and returns the correct data.
4. In the Email/Mobile Number field in API response list, select the response key that contains the customer’s email or mobile number (for example, Email_ID).
5. Click Save to finalize the configuration.

PII-Based Campaign Workflow

The following diagram illustrates the data flow when sending a campaign with PII Tokenized Sending enabled.

1. A campaign is triggered in MoEngage.
2. MoEngage calls your configured PII API, passing the anonymous IDs of the eligible users.
3. Your API retrieves and returns the corresponding email address or mobile number for each anonymous ID.
4. MoEngage sends the campaign content and the fetched PII to your configured Email, SMS, RCS, or WhatsApp service provider.
5. MoEngage immediately deletes the fetched PII (email, mobile number, and any other data fetched via Content APIs for that campaign) after sending it to the provider.
6. The service provider delivers the message to the end customer.
7. The service provider sends delivery status data back to MoEngage.
8. MoEngage maps the delivery data back to the campaign using a unique message ID and deletes any PII that may have been returned in the delivery receipt.
9. Campaign analytics are updated on the MoEngage dashboard.

Anonymization Support

Here are a few other changes implemented to support customer anonymity in the MoEngage platform.

• Campaign Sending Logs- If Tokenized Sending has been configured for a specific channel, the campaign logs will stop storing email or mobile number data (depending on the channel for which PII Tokenized Sending is configured) from the next instance of the campaign run (post the configuration change).
• Campaign Delivery data- MoEngage tracks delivery data for all the native connectors and maps the delivery data back to a campaign using the message ID field.
  Delivery information is not tracked for custom (SMS, MMS, RCS, and Email) connectors.

• Segmentation - The ‘show count’ query lists the user count as part of both Segmentation from the Segment > Create Segment navigation and Segmentation in campaigns. However, the reachable user count cannot be shown in both cases as MoEngage does not store the mobile number or email address (which is the basis for calculating reachability).
• Current campaigns (live campaigns) - If there are any live campaigns for that channel (point channel or flows) when the PII API settings are configured, sending will be done by fetching the Email ID or Mobile number from the very next instance.
• Personalized Preview - This feature is automatically disabled for the channel after PII settings are saved. You can request to re-enable it by contacting your Customer Success Manager (CSM).
• Campaign Testing Failure Reason- When testing a campaign when it is being created (for the channel where PII configuration is set), if the API fails to respond, the API error will be shown in the UI.
• Campaign Analytics - The customers for whom the PII API configured above fails to retrieve the customer sending ID (Email ID or mobile number) will not be counted in the Campaign delivery stats in the Campaign Info or Analytics section. This is because this funnel accounts for users with a valid Email ID or Mobile number.
• Content Personalization when customer data is not available in MoEngage - While the PII API above focuses on retrieving the customer’s sending ID (Email ID or Mobile number), MoEngage’s Content API feature allows you to fetch any data (PII and/or other) directly from your database in real-time when the campaign is about to be sent to the end customer. For more information, refer to Personalization using Content APIs.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Do I need a tokenization server to create an anonymous ID?

No. You only need to ensure a unique, non-PII customer identifier exists in your database that you can map to users in MoEngage.

Can Content API and PII Tokenized Sending work independently?

Yes. The features are independent. You can use Content API for personalization without using PII Tokenized Sending, and vice versa.

What happens to active campaigns if I enable the PII API feature now?

All subsequent messages for active campaigns on that channel will be sent using the PII API. Messages already in the provider’s queue before you saved the settings may still be sent using data previously stored in MoEngage.

How does MoEngage handle API retries?

MoEngage retries the API call up to three times, with a two-second interval between retries. Retries are performed only for the specific users for whom the API call failed, not for the entire batch.

Can I encrypt the PII data returned from my API?

Yes. MoEngage supports symmetric key encryption for the API payload. The PII value is decrypted only at the time of sending the campaign.

What error does MoEngage display in campaign analytics if the PII API fails?

The following errors are shown in the error breakdown section:

Channel	Error Message in UI
SMS, MMS, RCS, and WhatsApp	Invalid API response (fetching Mobile No.) Invalid/empty customer identifier in the MoEngage workspace.
Email	Invalid API response (fetching Email ID) Invalid/empty customer identifier in the MoEngage workspace.

What happens to draft/scheduled campaigns activated after changing these settings?

The draft campaigns will also use the PII API as soon as they are published or triggered next.

What happens to data retrieved in real-time from my customer's database?

It is shared with your Email / SMS / MMS / RCS/ WhatsApp service provider and deleted afterward.

Is PII retrieved via API stored in logs?

For channels configured to retrieve data through the PII API, MoEngage will cease logging Email IDs and/or mobile numbers. Instead, logs will contain a unique customer identifier (or tokenized identifier) consistent across both MoEngage and your customer database.

Do PII API settings apply to Flows as well?

Yes. For instance, if the email settings are configured to retrieve the Email ID via API instead of utilizing the value stored in MoEngage, both individual email campaigns and email campaigns integrated into flows will commence fetching the customer’s email ID through the API, rather than depending on the email attribute within the MoEngage database.

Does MoEngage offer PII masking?

Yes, for more information, refer here.

Does MoEngage Inform support PII tokenized sending?

No, currently, we do not support PII tokenized sending in MoEngage Inform.

Does the PII API also have the send and throttle speed as email batching?

The PII API’s send and throttle speeds are identical to those of email batching.