The way today’s customers interact with brands is fundamentally shifting. In examining that shift, one area clearly stands out: mobile. Mobile marketing is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing ways for brands to reach their target customers.
There is a growing group of ‘mobile only’ or ‘mobile first’ customers, who interact primarily or solely with a brand’s app or mobile site. The number of customers who fall into either of those categories is only going to continue growing, given that 80% of internet users own a smartphone and are using them more and more to not only browse, communicate, and consume content, but also to make purchases.
It goes far beyond just searches, however. Apps like Instagram, Snapchat, Line, WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber, and Messenger, all represent unique channels for customers to engage with brands. Because the way people interact with brands on their mobile devices is changing, marketing experts need to employ different strategies to target these individuals. This shift to mobile-first requires businesses to step out of their marketing comfort zones and take risks with new channels and approaches by implementing effective mobile marketing solutions.
These solutions allow companies to get in front of their target audience, anywhere, and at any time. Marketers can quickly and easily provide the most relevant and personalized content, giving brands the opportunity to truly connect with customers on their most trusted devices: their smartphones. Given the growth statistics above, that’s invaluable.
To be successful, marketers must work to make mobile a business priority, and mobile marketing solutions a must-have. But how do marketers know if they are fully leveraging their mobile marketing solutions? Here’s a list of practical tips to get the most out of a mobile solution.
Use Data to Drive SMS Marketing
Adding SMS to the overall customer experience can be a critical enhancement to any marketing strategy. It allows brands to reach customers, even when they aren’t active online. The growth of mobile has corresponded to a growth in SMS marketing.
According to Digital Marketing Magazine, SMS marketing improves customer engagement eightfold. 57% of customers would join an SMS-based loyalty program, and 98% of text messages are opened within three minutes of receipt.
Because of the important role SMS can play, marketers must be strategic in how they use it; the amount of data available to today’s marketing teams can help drive the most impactful SMS marketing campaigns. Harnessing that data can help to create exceptionally personalized SMS content, as well as track campaigns to ensure maximum engagement and budgetary efficiency. Marketers can create highly compelling, automated SMS marketing messages that seamlessly integrate with omnichannel data, connecting with customers wherever they are in the world to truly build loyalty without raising overall marketing costs.
Personalize the Mobile Experience
Including native product recommendations, in-app messaging, and deep links can significantly increase personalization for mobile users. Brands can automatically trigger personalized responses when the app is in use, boosting conversion rates and increasing the number of active customers.
Marketers using the right mobile solutions can design an entire conversion journey within the application, and combine it with in-app messaging and behavioral segmentation. All these benefits can track, activate, and convert users automatically, allowing marketers to focus their time on creating the content needed to do it. Each mobile user is treated to an individualized experience, creating higher brand retention and loyalty.
Tracking Mobile User Behavior
Maximizing a mobile marketing solution’s efficacy means improved tracking and audience behavior analysis. The valuable data captured directly from a customer’s mobile device can be the missing ingredient to develop the best possible mobile campaign. With the ability to track various app events, from installs to key interactions, mobile marketing solutions should provide detailed reporting, segmentation, and campaign triggering across channels.
Measuring the performance of customer engagement and its business impact can ease the processes of segment creation and campaign automation. All of these factors can help marketers understand and target customers better than ever before.
Final Thoughts
Today’s marketers can learn an unprecedented amount about customer actions, which, of course, includes behavior on their mobile devices. As the sheer volume of customers searching for content via mobile increases, marketers have the opportunity to use the resulting data to create better, more engaging experiences. Ensuring a brand is using its mobile marketing solution to its utmost potential is a critical component in enhancing the consumer experience and providing a valuable customer journey.
To learn more about how marketers are adapting to the pace of omnichannel commerce (and how mobile marketing plays a role), download our whitepaper.
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