Chances are that most people turn to a mobile app on their smartphone every morning while starting their day, even before enjoying that first cup of coffee. Whether they are checking the weather, logging in their fitness routine, or adding the cost of their Starbucks latte to their weekly budget, it is clear that ‘mobile moments’ spent on apps have become an integral part of our daily routine.
Mobile usage over the past decade has skyrocketed. According to a Gartner report, global sales of smartphones to end users totalled 349 million units in the first quarter of 2016, indicating a 3.9% increase over the same period in 2015.
The increasing use of mobile has forced marketers to develop highly innovative mobile marketing strategies, or be left behind. Mobile has become a critical component in the customer journey and marketers across industries must leverage mobile apps to connect with their customers on their most personal and trusted device. A mobile app marketing strategy can complement a brand’s offline experience, drive e-commerce, or simply help connect a brand with its loyal customers.
Below are three tips for marketers wanting to deliver a more engaging customer experience.
Personalising the Mobile App Experience
Many people turn to mobile apps to ease their daily routine, and they’re more likely to use those apps if they are tailored specifically to their needs. Marketers must prioritise this when building content for their mobile app, by ensuring that they provide highly personalised and engaging content that delivers the right message, at the right time and to the right consumer.
With specific product recommendations, in-app messaging, and links, marketers can significantly increase the level of personalisation offered to the customer. Marketers can also automatically trigger personalised responses as the app is being used, boosting conversion rates and increasing overall customer engagement. And it doesn’t have to stop there: marketers should integrate this mobile experience with other channels. for example, allowing a customer to look at a product on the website, then move to the brand’s mobile app, and then receive recommendations on the mobile app based on the product they viewed on the website.
Tracking Mobile Behaviour
Marketers can truly understand and engage with their audiences by capturing valuable data directly from their customers’ mobile device. Tracking the way consumers interact and behave while using a brand’s mobile app provides marketers with insight into the customers’ behaviours on their hand-held devices.
Tracking mobile app behaviour not only provides unparalleled insight and knowledge about specific target groups, but also allows marketers to measure the performance of their customer engagement strategy and the impact it has on their business. Tracking various app events, from installs to key interactions, is critical to providing detailed reporting, segmentation and campaign triggering across channels. For example, tracking a mobile app install can be the trigger event for a new SMS targeted message or a highly targeted social media ad. The data gathered from these behaviours contributes directly to omnichannel decision-making which improves the customer experience, as well as the marketing effectiveness and ROI.
Leveraging Data – from Every Channel
While marketers should make decisions on mobile app marketing based on the data received by understanding the consumer’s mobile behaviour, they must keep in mind that it doesn’t stop there. Once a marketer has analysed their customers’ mobile app behaviour, as a second step, they must apply the actionable insight gleaned from each of their channels to make the best strategic marketing decisions. By combining data from the mobile app and other proliferating channels, the need to optimise and refine certain strategies becomes clearer.
Using data capture and analytic technologies, marketers can leverage omnichannel marketing to take control of the customer journey. This fundamental approach provides the customer with an integrated shopping experience, while enjoying all the benefits a brand has to offer, such as promotions on quality products or services.
Marketers must keep consumers engaged with their brand across proliferating channels, or they will lose them to rivals that are better at managing engagement. Today, billions of consumers are changing their shopping behaviours faster than most brands can adapt. understanding how digital channels and consumer expectations are transforming, and acting on this knowledge can be an important differentiator. Leveraging data from all channels combined with your brand’s mobile app will help marketers execute personalised, tailored content and offers that appeal specifically to their customers.
A smart integration of mobile app marketing strategies into an omnichannel experience will empower progressive marketers to deliver critical increases in traffic, leads, engagement, and revenue. From the consumer’s desktop to their favourite hand-held device, a company’s customer gets to experience all the benefits a brand has to offer once their mobile app is integrated with their omnichannel strategy.
Interesting Links:
- 5 Tips from Retailers to Make Best Use of Mobile Wallets
- DOGFI.SH Mobile: App Design Is Vital in Ensuring Customer Experience Remains a Key Differentiator
- Retail App Poq Gets £3.5m, Brings Total to £7m