You’ve mastered the art of marketing automation. You use customer relationship management software to store personalized info. You have incredible email marketing software – MailChimp, Sharp Spring, or perhaps Litmus. You even dig deep into Google Analytics in order track your results and refine your strategy.
Congratulations. You’re a marketing rock star. But what about mobile? Do you send push notifications? Do you know how to engage with your customers in real-time based on their current location? If not, you still have a bit of work to do.
With mobile taking over the digital landscape, mobile marketing automation has opened up as the next frontier. Just when you thought you had it nailed, it’s time to start all over again. Such is life as a digital marketer. Fortunately, we can help. Here are a few tips that will get you primed and ready.
Start with In-App Messaging
In-app notifications allow you to send people messages while they’re using your app. It’s the least invasive way get the attention of your target audience. You can spotlight new features or present special offers to people who are already engaged with your business.
Some companies have even started to track people’s in-app behavior in order to send them more individualized notifications. Just be careful. Consumers have become more tolerant of advertisers sending customized offers, but many are still wary of online stalking and may not take kindly to overly-personalized messages.
As long as you’re aware of the pitfalls, in-app notifications can push your marketing efforts to the next level. The best part is that you’re delivering your message at the most opportune moment—while your customers are already logged into your app. What better way to help them dive deeper into the brand experience?
Now Set Up Push Notifications
What if you could deliver offers, promos and new content straight to your customers’ phones? Ah, but you can. With push notifications, you get access to an engaged audience no matter where they are or what they’re doing. That gives you power—power to grab attention, power to stay connected, power to promote your message and your products to the right people.
Of course, power also comes with responsibility. When customers give you access to their phones, they’re letting you into their personal lives, and trusting you not to abuse your position or overstay your welcome. In other words, don’t overdo it. Send only as many notifications as you need to in order to make an impact. While you’re at it, make sure each message is relevant.
Not sure how many push notifications to send out? Consider this: According to Business 2 Community, more than a third of your audience will get annoyed if they receive more than one notification per week – annoyed enough to disable the push notification feature. Send a few more than that – say 6 to 10 notifications per week – and more than 31 percent will delete your app.
The good news? Most people will disable push notifications before they get vexed enough to blitz the entire app. The bad news is that your automated marketing efforts may be alienating customers in one way or another.
In the end, it’s best to err on the cautious side, and start out with one message per week. After a while, you can boost the frequency for your most active followers, and then analyze the stats to see if your customer base appreciates the increased interaction. If they do, feel free to experiment a little more. If you notice a bunch of people unsubscribing, go back to what works – one per week at most.
The Tools You Need
In order to offer any type of automation, you’ll need a mobile marketing automation platform. There are tons of them out there on the market, but here are a few that might be worth some research:
- Swrve: The go-to mobile automation tool for big businesses, this service offers everything from in-app messaging to push notifications to Code-level A/B testing.
- Braze: Using artificial intelligence to supply insights to businesses, this automation service is designed for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
- Localytics: A well-known platform that provides real-time engagement analysis, as well as all the other automated features.
In addition to in-app messaging, these comprehensive tools offer push notifications and advanced mobile marketing analytics – everything you need to provide a great mobile experience.
SMS/MMS
Another, even more personalized way to reach your target audience is by text messaging (SMS) or multimedia messaging (MMS). Add a simple automation tool to your arsenal, and you can send either simple text messages or photo/video-based messages to those who sign up for alerts.
That gives you the ability to deliver calls-to-action straight to your audience’s mobile devices. Such personalized communications can spur active users to take the next step and compel latent users to reengage with your brand.
As far as SMS providers go, you have a number of options, including:
- SlickText: Over 40,000 organizations use SlickText for their text marketing needs.
- Sumotext: This one brands itself as a “mobile relationship management tool” that helps brands start and sustain communications with customers through SMS and MMS.
- SimpleTexting: An SMS/MMS marketing service that sets itself apart with a user-friendly platform.
- TextMagic: Get total control over your text, email, and SMS campaigns with this platform that comes with a ton of customization options.
There are plenty of other services out there. As always, do your research before committing to a particular platform, and make sure it has all the capabilities your organization needs.
Location-Based Targeting
What’s the best part about mobile marketing? The ability to target individuals at the local level. That starts with optimizing your SEO for local search, launching a Google My Business page, and establishing a strong presence on various review platforms such as Yelp.
At a more advanced level, it means using automation software to understand your customers’ behavior and to send push notifications based on the location of the users. Here are a few services that can help you target your audience based on where they are:
- LocationSmart: This giant location services company offers “proximity solutions” that give digital marketers the tools they need to boost awareness, generate new leads, and increase their ROI.
- Factual: This one offers comprehensive location data for businesses so they can better understand their customers.
- PlaceIQ: Leverage location intelligence to connect with your target audience and refine your mobile marketing campaign with PlaceIQ.
How to Be a Mobile Rock Star
Mobile-first marketing automation won’t solve all of your problems. You must still do the hard work of generating leads. That means improving your SEO, generating quality content, and promoting your brand on social media. Still, it will free up time, ease the burden on your marketing team, and help you interact with your customers on a more personal level by sending direct messages to the devices they use the most. And that can make a huge impact on your next campaign.
