We take great pride in our partnerships here at Movable Ink, so we’re taking the time to introduce you to the innovative partners who help elevate the campaigns of our shared clients. We spoke with Mada Seghete, Co-Founder and Head of Strategy and Market Development at Branch to learn how marketers can stay innovative.
What’s your role at Branch?
I lead market development and culture initiatives at Branch, where I’m also a co-founder. Since we first started the company, I’ve always been focused on building and maintaining Branch’s culture. These days, you can most often find me on the road speaking at events all around the world on mobile growth, mobile transformation, and digital transformation.
How does Branch help marketers stay innovative?
Branch provides solutions that unify user measurement across different devices, platforms, and channels. The introduction of mobile has divided today’s businesses, causing inaccurate attribution and links that don’t work, leading to wasted marketing spend and broken customer journeys. Branch fixes that — and enables marketers to innovate — by providing a holistic view of various user touch points and ensuring that links take the user to the right place on the website or native app. Branch powers mobile links and cross-platform measurement to more than 3 billion monthly users across the globe, and is a trusted cross-platform marketing, engagement, and measurement solution for over 50,000 apps — including Foursquare, BuzzFeed, Yelp, OfferUp, and many more.
What are your marketing predictions for 2020?
There are four trends I believe will impact mobile in 2020 — and in the years to come.
- Marketers will continue to focus on web-to-app engagement strategies.
- Branch data shows that apps engage and convert 3x better than the mobile web, so it’s a no-brainer to try to convert your mobile web visitors into app users. One way to do this is through personalized smart banners.
- The digital ecosystem will become more and more fragmented. Fragmentation was bad enough with different devices, platforms, and operating systems causing headaches for marketers and product managers looking to create seamless experiences. Now we’re seeing more and more super apps like Facebook, Snapchat, WeChat, Rappi, and GoJek creating their own closed ecosystems — and even their own app stores. So marketers will have to have a presence on all these platforms and try to connect user journeys across all of them.
- Mobile means more than your phone. Mobile in 2020 does not just refer to phones and tablets. Cars, TVs, homes, and even refrigerators and becoming part of the mobile experience. More connected devices, and rising technologies like AR (augmented reality) will give brands more ways to connect with and engage consumers — but only if those brands can keep up and adapt.
- New buzzword: Identity Resolution. As the mobile ecosystem, fragmentation, and the number of devices per person grows, marketers will seek new ways to overcome challenges and give users seamless and consistent cross-device experiences. Identity resolution will become a focus in 2020 as a way to connect and understand user touchpoints.
What are the biggest trends happening in the mobile space right now?
The trends above are already happening, but one trend that’s a major focus for most companies in the digital space is data privacy. Alex Austin wrote a great blog post recently about how data is seen more as a liability than as an asset these days. Data is at the core of all of today’s most exciting technological advances, but we all have to pledge to be good data citizens in order for the innovation to continue.
What can marketers do to level-up their mobile experiences in the new year?
Keep track of new platforms that arise and think outside of the box when it comes to the mobile experiences you deliver in 2020. Like I mentioned earlier, AR will make a big splash in 2020 — so think about how you can incorporate exciting new technology into your business as it becomes mainstream. Being early adopters of new technologies and platforms could give brands a unique competitive advantage in the coming years.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges that marketers are facing right now?
Attribution remains a huge challenge for marketers. Even before all the fragmentation, it was difficult to measure the performance of marketing activities to fully understand the value that marketing generates. The struggle to measure the impact of marketing activities has only increased. Understanding the true customer journey — and how marketing impacts that journey — has always been a top priority for marketers, but it’s also a challenge in our increasingly fragmented digital world.
What do marketers need to do differently in 2020?
Marketers (Branch Marketing included) sometimes get caught up with focusing all campaigns and messaging around product/service benefits. While the benefits of your products remain relevant, marketers need to look at the bigger picture. How can you improve the customer experience to the point where you’re a part of your customers’ day-to-day? How can you use technology to surface your brand to consumers at the exact point in time that they need it? This could be bridging the gap between online and offline, or it could be leveraging new and interesting technology partners to improve the customer experience beyond the pain points your offering addresses directly.
How can marketers stay ahead of the competition in 2020?
Use Branch! Mobile linking and attribution are crucial not only for connecting user touchpoints to create seamless experiences, but also for marketers to understand how all of their campaigns are performing against each other, and what the user journey actually looks like. Considering the growth of new devices and platforms, this isn’t a challenge you can solve on your own. You need a partner, like Branch, to ensure success in 2020 and beyond.
About Mada Seghete
Mada leads market development and culture initiatives at Branch and is also one of its co-founders. Born and raised in Romania, Mada came to the US to study Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and then earned her Masters of Engineering and MBA from Stanford. Mada enjoys playing the latest viral mobile game, binge-watching the hottest sci-fi show, and photographing Branch events. Mada regularly speaks about mobile growth at top tech events like Web Summit and SaaStr, and was included in Linkedin’s Next Wave: 150 top professionals in 15 industries all under 35.