The Playbook to Mobile Marketing Excellence

What's Your Mobile Expertise Level?

Marketing is a fast-paced world, and hitting the ground running in every initiative can seem like the best path forward. But when it comes to a new channel with both limitless potential and unique roadblocks—hello, mobile—marketers need to first build a solid foundation for optimal longevity and customer loyalty.

Want to know where you are in the mobile journey and what your next best steps are? Once you establish that, your mobile marketing will soar past customer expectations before you know it.

The Mobile Self-Assessment

To get started, define where you are in your mobile expertise:

• The Crawl Phase
  • We’re still brainstorming. We’ve yet to send our first mobile message, or have just begun doing so recently.
• The Walk Phase
  • We’re in the groove of deploying mobile messages. However, they’re mostly generic, batch-and-blast campaigns.
• The Run Phase
  • We not only send mobile messages regularly, we’ve even begun to personalize them. The issue is, these messages are disconnected from our other initiatives in more established channels.
• The Fly Phase
  • We’ve activated 1:1 personalization across all channels, telling an engaging omni-channel marketing story at scale.

Wherever you land, there’s a relevant next step for you. Click on whatever phase describes you best and read on.

The Crawl Phase: Context Is Key

When you’re just getting started with mobile, marketers need to hone in on two things:

• Identify your most crucial channel
  • Mobile comes with several sub-channels, such as push, in-app, SMS, or mobile-app inbox messages. Instead of trying to hit them all at once, start by choosing the most powerful one for your brand that meets the objective you’re trying to achieve and perfecting it. Each of these channels have their own power and value; for example, push is best for driving app traffic and communicating urgent messages; in-app is best for fostering engagement while customers are already in the app.
• Increase engagement
  • Once you’ve chosen your linchpin channel, start with an attainable goal. Rather than only measuring conversions, keep your eyes peeled for clicks, opens, and impressions to begin your mobile journey.

In every marketing campaign, from email to mobile and beyond, data is key. Data-driven messages are what have the power to truly engage customers. To dip your toes in the world of data-powered mobile campaigns and achieve these two goals, the name of the game is contextual data.

What Is Contextual Data?

Simply put, contextual data is any information marketers can gather from their existing digital environment. Data points like weather, time, location, and date is information pretty much any marketer has access to. From there, loop in customer-specific information like language, device type, or mobile carrier. With these on hand, you’re ready to build your first MVP use case.

Contextual Data: SMS

Here, Inkredible Retail shows current and forecasted weather in their latest SMS message. By adding in this contextual data, customers are motivated to purchase the perfect outfit to shield them from the chilly days ahead.

The SMS Blueprint:

• Loop a weather forecast app into the SMS message.
• Pair the app with targeting rules based on the customer’s IP address to show the weather information that matches their current location.

Contextual Data: Rich Push

Some may argue that it’s always the perfect time for coffee, but Inkredible Retail knows the power of a perfectly timed trigger. Here, time-of-day personalization is included in a triggered rich push notification to display relevant content specific to when the customer receives the push notification.

The Rich Push Blueprint:

• Use geotargeting to determine the customer’s current location and time of day.
• Once that’s in place, set relevant content to be deployed based on your desired time blocks.

Your mobile marketing doesn’t need to be complex to win customers over. Now that you have the tools to master your contextual data campaigns, let’s enter the walk phase.

The Walk Phase: Customer-Centricity

You’ve picked up some speed with your mobile marketing efforts, and it’s time to set some new goals to impress your customers even more:

• Shift your focus from clicks to conversions
  • When customers are already engaging, it’s time to lead them to higher-value actions that drive revenue.
• Leverage customer data
  • Collect your existing customer data and use it to add additional layers of personalization.

You’ve got contextual data on lock. Now it’s time to use customer data to really captivate your mobile customers.

Where Can I Find Customer Data?

Chances are, you’ve already got a treasure trove of customer data within your CRM systems. Data like name, gender, date of birth, or account and loyalty status may seem basic; but with the right personalization tool, you can activate it into highly engaging marketing experiences.

Customer Data: In-App

For this in-app message, Inkredible Retail uses data from the customer’s account to leverage past shopping behaviors. By using the customer’s favorite store and last category purchased, Inkredible Retail sends a highly relevant in-app message that drives in-store traffic.

The In-App Blueprint

• Display a store locator for the customer’s nearest brick-and-mortar location based on their favorite store.
• Beside the map, show a top product personalized to the customer’s most recently browsed category.

Customer Data: Rich Push

To encourage loyalty, marketers can send a rich push message to drive adoption and stickiness for their mobile app using a personalized checklist. By completing their profile, customers will not only engage today, but will receive more personalized experiences in the future, ultimately driving more app use.

The Rich Push Blueprint

• Use customer data to determine what steps customers have achieved and what they have yet to complete.
• Loop in data visualization to bring that data to life in a personalized checklist that encourages next steps.

You’re halfway to mobile personalization prowess. With contextual and customer data in your back pocket, you’re ready to start running with highly sophisticated campaigns.

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The Run Phase: Current Customer Behaviors

You’ve got a good thing going with your mobile marketing. Let’s supercharge what you’re already doing and turn a good thing into a great thing. Here are your next best steps:

• Focus on long-term loyalty and increased lifetime value
  • Clicks and conversions? Check. Time to ensure that your current customers stay for the long haul and transform into brand advocates.
• Incorporate behavioral data from all sources
  • Take behavioral data to the next level by funneling in data from sources outside of mobile, creating an omni-channel personalization experience.

Need a refresher on the ins and outs of behavioral data? Let’s explore the best sources for this powerful data.

What Is Behavioral Data?

Behavioral data, also known as first-party data, are the crumbs of information that customers leave behind as they interact with a brand. Think of abandoned carts, recent searches, browsing history, and log-ins. Discover how to use this highly relevant, in-the-moment data to power mobile campaigns:

Behavioral Data: SMS

Inkredible Retail uses the customer’s behavioral data on their desktop site to power an enticing SMS message that displays a personalized product recommendation. Additionally, they also show how many views the product has received—leveraging social proof to both validate product quality and drive a sense of FOMO.

The SMS Blueprint:

• With Movable Ink, use a product web crop to display the recently browsed product.
• Use an API or Stories profile to overlay the product view count on top of the web crop.

Behavioral Data: In-App Message

Here, Inkredible Media uses an in-app message to encourage the customer to continue watching, ultimately driving higher app use and reducing churn.

The In-App Blueprint

• Use the Movable Ink SDK and data from your CDP/CRM to determine the customer’s most recent viewing.
• Leverage data visualization to create a compelling message that showcases the customer’s progress.

With campaigns like these, your customers will experience a top-tier mobile marketing experience. Now it’s time to truly wow them with next-level tactics.

The Fly Phase: The Omni-Channel Approach

Your mobile marketing has truly taken off with data-driven approaches that drive revenue and enhance loyalty. Push your mobile marketing over the edge and delight your customers by achieving this final goal:

• Establish a 360-degree view of your customers
  • Use data from every channel so you can personalize experiences at any touchpoint.

Email to Rich Push

Create a seamless experience from email to mobile, all while collecting valuable zero-party data from customers for future 1:1 personalization. Here, Inkredible Retail sends a live poll to customers via email to ask customers about their preferred style. Once the customer engages, they receive a retargeted push notification.

The Email to Rich Push Blueprint

• When deploying the live poll email, ensure responses are tied to a specific user ID that can be referenced in both your email and push campaigns.
• In the following push notification, content will then change based on poll choice; for those who did not engage, set default content to be shown.

Rich Push to Email

While email behavior can inform mobile messaging, the opposite works just as well. Inkredible Retail ensures a unified brand experience across channels with this abandon cart message, allowing the customer to easily resume browsing no matter where they choose to engage.

The Rich Push to Email Blueprint

• Capture and link website behavior data and mobile app activity using Movable Ink’s Stories and SDK or via the Customer Data API.
• Use decisioning logic to determine which content is displayed to the customer.
• Loop in a countdown timer for added urgency toward a promotion or sale.

You're Ready for Mobile Marketing Magic

With these tools, tips, and examples, you’re well on your way to unbeatable mobile marketing campaigns. Get ready to increase your engagement, conversions, and customer satisfaction with a personalized, unified experience across all channels.