Articles | June 26, 2018 | 3 min read

Activating Your Mobile Program By Integrating With Social Media

Chad Starbuck, Zeta’s expert on all things mobile, continues to share his insight on how to build upon your current mobile programs. Chad’s previous posts provided tips on SMS, MMS, App Push Notifications and Mobile Wallet. Today, he is sharing his expertise on how to activate — and enhance — your mobile programs by integrating the experience with social media channels.

Taking Your Mobile Programs to the Next Level

As you have begun to develop your cross-channel marketing programs, you’ve probably started implementing at least one, maybe more, of the mobile channels we have previously discussed. Maybe it’s an SMS/MMS program, or possibly App Push, or maybe even delivering mobile wallet passes via one of your existing channels. However, these programs can’t stand on their own. There are some easy and unique ways to enhance and grow them via interactions and integrations with social media channels.

Let’s take a look at some of the easy to implement solutions that can be developed with social media.

1) Socialize a Coupon or Offer

If you have a coupon or similar offer that you would like to extend beyond your subscriber base, use SMS to deliver the coupon and then provide a link that allows them to share the offer on their Twitter or Facebook account. Through an integration, the link in the SMS message will automatically open up the user’s Twitter or Facebook account and prepopulate the message, making it ready for sharing.

2) Share a Video or Movie Trailer

If you have created a video or trailer for a brand-new movie that would benefit from extending beyond your subscriber base, use MMS to deliver the video and then provide a link that allows them to share the video on their Twitter or Facebook account. As with the coupon offer above, through integration, the link in the MMS message will automatically open up the user’s Twitter or Facebook account and prepopulate the message and the video, ready for sharing.

3) Add a Call to Action on your Social Media Site

In order to grow your subscriber base, it is always important to promote your mobile program in as many ways and locations as possible. One of those locations should definitely be within your social media brand sites. A simple Call to Action on these sites, asking people to opt in via either a keyword, or by adding in their mobile details on a submit form, makes it easy for those customers engaged with you via Social Media, to also become engaged via your mobile programs.

4) Use Your SMS Platform to Promote Social Media Sites and Blogs

When connecting with your subscribers during regular marketing campaigns, use that opportunity to also connect your users to your social media presence. Include a link in your message that directs users to your Facebook page, or an important blog post. Get your customers engaged across all your platforms.

5) Promote a Text-to-Win or Sweepstakes Promotion

One of the best and most fun ways to integrate your mobile programs with your Social Media sites is through a Text-to-Win or Sweepstakes promotion. By simply adding a keyword Call to Action on your Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter feed or other sites, your customers are rewarded with a once in a lifetime chance to win a cool prize. Promoting an easy, “Text ‘WIN’ to 12345” message allows your customers to enter the contest. You can also promote a sweepstakes in your outgoing mobile marketing campaigns by including a sweepstakes code and link that drives your subscribers to your Social Media sites to enter.

6) Promote the Download of Your Brand App

Your Social Media sites are a great place to promote the download of your brand app. Make it even simpler by including a Keyword Call to Action (Text APP to 12345) right in your site. By texting the Keyword, the customer is provided a response that takes them right to the appropriate App store. So, by using a combination of Social Media, SMS and App, you’ve created a quick and easy access to your brand app.

When looking to promote your brand, it’s always best to look at a combined strategy across your mobile campaigns, social media campaigns and other channels. SMS/MMS, App Push and Wallet cannot stand on their own. Neither can your social media sites. Take the time to not only integrate your strategies, but your platforms and channels as well.

Articles | June 12, 2017 | 2 min read

[eBook Out Now] The Mobile Engagement Maturity Model

For numerous brands today, mobile is the biggest channel for acquiring new customers and retaining old ones. Ostensibly, the acquisition and retention of customers directly depends on how a brand engages with users via the mobile channel. A high engagement rate invariably leads to a better acquisition and retention rate.

This eBook puts together a mobile engagement maturity model that aims to help brands focus on improving the mobile engagement rate and, consequently, boosting the bottom-line.

Within the eBook

The eBook highlights seven key factors that determine the success of a mobile engagement strategy in today’s market. The factors are listed as follows:

1. User Behavior – Knowledge of activities and behaviors of mobile users
2. Mobile Experience – User experience for each individual
3. Push – Usage of push notifications for communication with users
4. SMS – Usage of SMS for communication with users
5. Deep Linking – The depth of deep linking a brand’s engagement pattern
6. Reporting – Analysis of mobile performance on key metrics
7. Resources – Budget, tools and staff

The eBook uses the above factors to develop a maturity model. The model segregates brands into four levels, based on the level of sophistication of their mobile engagement strategy.

Download the eBook and to track the level of mobile engagement maturity your brand lies on. Further, use the eBook to level up your mobile engagement maturity strategy.

Digital Marketing | May 24, 2017 | 5 min read

Mobile Marketing Automation: Reaching Out to the Next Billion Users

Marketing automation has become an integral part of the customer engagement process for brands across different verticals. Given the scale, frequency, and diversity of channels involved in digital marketing, it’s getting pretty hard to imagine not having some level of automation in place. The advent of new age marketing platforms has made it easier for marketers to track user behavior, set rules and use customized messages to communicate with the customers and prospects.

For the uninitiated, marketing automation platforms are most commonly used in more traditional marketing channels like email and direct mail.

Collect and store user information

Segment users based on the collected information

Personalize user communication based on the web and in-app activity

Customize the tone and timing of your messaging

Determine the best channel to interact with your users

Provide a seamless user experience across all the communication channels. (Think Omnichannel marketing.)

Perform A/B testing and multivariate testing

But when you move over to the mobile marketing ecosystem, you encounter a new set of challenges. (Many of the similarities end after the initial step of collecting user information.) A traditional marketing automation system cannot leverage newer technology like Mobile Push or In-App Messaging. Most platforms are not built to work in real-time or to leverage mobile-specific user data like location, app usage, etc. This means mobile customers may not get a seamless experience, and mobile marketers don’t get to take advantage of the unique opportunities this channel presents.

In contrast, mobile ready marketing automation services like Boomtrain incorporate all the traditional marketing automation capabilities but also include the ability to optimize communications in the mobile channel and create a comprehensive user experience that includes all digital channels. Mobile marketing automation platforms include capabilities such as:

Mobile Push and In-app messaging

Mobile-first engagement

Omnichannel user-experience

1:1 personalized user experience

SMS communication capabilities

In-app product and content recommendations

What makes mobile marketing automation different from the traditional methods?

Method of Communication

In addition to getting emails on their phone, mobile users also engage through:

Push notifications

In-app messaging

Wearable device notifications

SMS and phone calls

A traditional automation system can’t leverage these communication channels. This is a missed opportunity, but can also result in an inconsistent or annoying user experience, if the left (traditional) hand doesn’t know what they right (mobile) hand is doing. A modern automation system, however, can help in actively engaging with users over traditional channels like email and mobile based communication channels like the ones mentioned above. It can also help you craft a user experience that is consistent across all channels.

Segmentation & Personalization

In traditional marketing, personalization happens in three ways: via emails, form submissions, and web activities. In mobile marketing automation, there are additional data points that a marketer can leverage.

Additional attributes like location, mobile platform, app usage activity etc can help marketers understanding their users better and act more quickly in response to trigger actions like app downloads, interactions and uninstalls, providing a more seamless and personalized experience for users.

Uber’s interaction with its users is a good example of this mobile-specific personalization in action. If you’re a frequent Uber user, then you know the brand interacts with you through personalized offers like “25% off on UberX,” or “2 free UberGo rides on us,” and more. They serve all of these offers based on the data they collect from their users’ activity, including location and app behavior.

Personalized communication over mobile is also far more interactive and effective than the traditional mediums. For example, you can now send an interactive push notification with “yes” and “no” buttons that let a recipient take action instantly and effortlessly, without even needing to open an app!

Timing and behavior-based engagement triggers

One of the biggest advantages of engaging mobile users is that the interaction can happen in real-time. A user can be reached quickly and unobtrusively, even on the go. A push notification with breaking news can be sent and seen when the news breaks, not discovered hours later in a user’s email inbox.

Smart mobile marketing automation services also leverage the real-time update feature. They use real-time behavior triggers like first app opens, abandoned shopping carts, and usage milestones to initiate timely and relevant communications. And as every marketer knows, it’s the relevance of your communication that has the largest effect on its ability to engage users and shift behaviors.

Better Data & User Integration

Successful brands have always focused on strategies that provide users with a consistent and seamless experience.

A smart, omnichannel marketing automation service will provide you actionable data and insights to increase engagement across all consumer touch points.

For example, you can use this rich, integrated data to:

Win back customers based on abandoned shopping cart contents, app uninstalls, or user inactivity,

Run exclusive mobile-first offers and campaigns

Use Mobile Push to promote limited offers and one-day events

Figure out when your customer is most likely to read and interact with your messages

Optimize the delivery of your content and offers based on your users’ most active time and preferred channels.

How can my brand get started with mobile marketing automation?

Mobile marketing automation can do a lot for your business and help you explore previously untapped customer landscapes. However, there are some things to consider before you jump into evaluating vendors and platforms. Here are some considerations that can help you put an effective mobile marketing plan in place:

Make sure that your app and website are optimized for mobile usage and mobile communication.

Look at how your brand communicates with users across multiple devices, like desktops, laptops, mobile or wearable tech. Try to implement an Omnichannel Communication Model.

Learn the intricacies of different Mobile OS (for example, Android and iOS). This will help you in tailoring your messages across channels.

This guide by Appboy is another great resource when preparing to make the move to an OmniChannel strategy.

Conclusions about Mobile Marketing Automation

There is no doubt that mobile as a channel is only going to keep growing for the foreseeable future, and if it’s not already, you need to treat it as a critical—and distinct—part of your digital marketing strategy.

An efficient mobile marketing automation service can handle all the inner intricacies and complexities of a mobile-first world, and integrate them with your traditional marketing channels. Better automation means you can focus more on creating great content and user experience for your customers (and put your engineering resources to work where they really matter instead of asking them for help on push notifications.)

If you’d like to see what a smart, omnichannel marketing automation platform like Boomtrain can do for your business, contact us for a demo.

Articles | May 22, 2017 | 4 min read

What’s in Store for Mobile Marketing in 2017

Handheld devices and wearables are the dominant force in the rapidly evolving landscape of digital marketing. A report by Statista claims that 41% of the world will be using a smartphone by 2020. That’s over 2.87 billion people, up from an already staggering 2.32 billion today. With so many eyes glued to these handheld devices, it’s no surprise that brands are going all in on the mobile marketing channel, and mobile advertising investment is expected to exceed $40 billion this year in the US alone.

This runaway growth has many marketers wondering how they can stay on top of such a fast moving channel, but despite a long list of exciting new developments, many of the fundamental tactics remain the same. We’ll help you get a handle on the biggest trends for 2017 and keep your mobile strategy grounded in what works.

Top Trends for Mobile Marketing in 2017

Mobile Push remains the best way to engage with users

Push Messaging has steadily become the defacto way of engaging with your customers via mobile devices. Due to the “low commitment, low intrusion” nature of the experience, users are more willing to opt in for push messaging. The tradeoff is that sometimes brands get less personal data about their users as a result. But even with minimal or no user data, push messaging can still deliver promotional and transactional notifications to the user and capture behavioral data.

According to Crazy Egg, brands that sent 2 push messages a day saw app usage increase by 15X and conversion rates (buying a product or subscribing to a service) increase by 6%.

And it’s about to get more interesting. With Android and iOS opening the doors to interactive push messaging, people can now reply, snooze or decide to act upon the notification as per their comfort level, all this without opening the app at all.

Mobile interaction is moving away from an app-based ecosystem.

Many brands and app developers have realized that one of the best ways to combat app churn is to think beyond app-based interactions. We’re still very much in an app-based world, but there is a shift occurring. This involves a number of strategies, including more interaction via push messages as mentioned above. It also involves more collaboration with the device and operating system developers to further lower the barrier to engagement through chatbots, virtual/voice assistants, and web-based applications.

Two especially interesting projects in this vein are Google’s AMP and Android Instant Apps. With these platforms, Android phone users can actually have app-like experiences without ever downloading an app. Basically, when a user searches for something and Google identifies an app that is relevant, a chunk of that app’s functionality can start running instantaneously while the user searches. The user’s experience of the content is seamless and the user never has to download anything.

Check out the video below for more info about Android’s Instant App feature:

Google’s AMP, on the other hand, are articles and web pages that are basically stripped down version of traditional mobile websites that allows faster and easier mobile access to content over (potentially) lower-bandwidth connections. Google AMP is still nascent but most brands are eager to jumping onboard as soon as possible. It’s important to note that AMP compatible content ranks higher in Google searches than non-AMP content, so there’s another incentive to participate. Click here for the complete story behind AMP and its impact on Google rankings.

AI will play a major role in mobile marketing

In the past year, AI has gone mainstream, becoming a crucial part of the mobile ecosystem. Whether we know it or not, most of us are interacting with AI engines on a daily basis.

It can be overt, like in the case of talking to an AI assistant like Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa. Or, it could be more indirectly, as when browsing recommended content from services like Netflix and Spotify. Sometimes it’s even more subtle, as a marketing automation platform employs machine learning technology to identify optimal content and send times for a notification.

Mobile devices and operating systems are already incorporating the same AI and machine learning technologies. AI assistants are the most prominent feature, (The new Samsung Galaxy S8 will have a dedicated button for their AI assistant, Bixby), but they may be just the beginning.

In 2017, more apps will use AI to monitor and engage with users. We’ve already seen companies like Amazon and Spotify boost their conversion rates using AI engines behind the scenes.

Mobile engagement adapts to user behavior

Top Mobile brands have shifted their focus from a one-to-many to a one-to-one user experience. Brands like Etsy, Apple Music, and Flipboard are investing heavily in user personalization, and Uber is making a big push towards individualized experiences in 2017.

The growing use of 3rd party AI and Machine Learning technologies like Boomtrain have further accelerated this process, and as we see more and more specialized AI service providers, we can expect to see more and more applications take advantage of their potential.

AR and VR are set to gain momentum

With the success of Pokemon Go and it’s imitators, the release of AR based phones like Project Tango, and affordable VR accessories like Samsung’s Gear VR, it’s clear that device manufacturers are betting heavily on AR and VR.

Ambitious projects like test driving a car in VR, shopping by using AR and VR, and more are already being tested out by companies like Google and Microsoft.

According to IDC, It’s estimated that the number of mobile virtual reality users will reach 171 million by 2018 as the mobile VR headsets become more accessible and cheaper than computer VR headsets. In terms of revenue, the VR/AR industry is expected to hit $5.2 billion this year and jump to $162 billion by 2020.

Final Thoughts

With the Mobile market showing no indication of slowing, marketers should are smart to focus heavily on the mobile channel. While investments in mobile marketing can provide an immediate boost, the numbers show that now is the time to invest in the infrastructure that will enable you to take full advantage of these trends. By 2020, it may be too late.

For more information on how modern marketing platforms can help you up your Mobile Marketing game, be sure to drop by our Demo page.