July 15, 2019
What is Mobile Marketing Automation & How to Jump In?
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With the majority of their website traffic now coming from mobile, 71% of marketers believe mobile marketing is key to their business. M-commerce sales are predicted to make up 44.7% of total US ecommerce sales in 2019, up from 39.6% in 2018. And by 2021, the number of mobile-only internet users is estimated to surpass 52 million.
Mobile presents endless possibilities to reach your customers at the right time and place. Delivering contextual, personalized, interactive messages at the precise moment is both a top priority and the biggest challenge.
Enter: Mobile Marketing Automation or MMA.
Mobile marketing automation is the same as conventional marketing automation, except that it deals specifically with mobile media.
Automation personalizes and automates marketing communications -- whether the viewer is on desktop, laptop, or mobile device. It removes the pain and reduces wasted time out of marketing by automating repetitive tasks. It also uses customer data to customize messaging and run highly targeted campaigns.
Most traditional marketing automation platforms are designed to gather and segment customer data and personalize communications. They’re don’t track and automate mobile-only communications like push notifications, wearable tech, and mobile apps. Old automation platforms can’t respond to customer interactions in real time or automate campaigns based on mobile-only data like the location or app usage.
With mobile marketing set to drive business growth, companies that want to stay competitive must adopt mobile marketing automation to execute, manage, and automate mobile marketing tasks and processes, and to deliver real-time, contextual, and personalized mobile experiences.
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Today’s fast-paced, technology-driven mobile marketing requires companies to look for marketing automation platforms specifically built for mobile. If you’re one of these firms, here’s a brief look at the functions that a modern MMA platform should be able to perform.
Your audience considers the mobile to be a seamless experience. They don’t recognize any boundaries between channels. Mobile users also try new apps and mobile experiences all the time. Latest MMA software allows you to customize and automate communications over a constantly expanding variety of mobile channels, like push notifications, mobile email, in-app messages, web push, wearable devices, and popular mobile apps.
A complete MMA platform allows you to scale and personalize campaigns by segmenting users based on demographics, behavior, lifecycle stage, location, and technology. The segmented customer data can be used to send your audience the right message at the right moment.
A high-quality mobile marketing automation platform enables real-time engagement with customers by using event data to trigger communications. For example, you can send automated on-boarding messages immediately when a new customer installs the app for the first time.
Top of the line MMA platforms allow you to acquire a deep understanding of customer behavior by gathering and analyzing customer data. The data can be used to form hypotheses that can be tested and validated before running full-on campaigns. You can also measure the impact of a campaign and automation on your sales and marketing performance.
Companies doing well on mobile don’t have a separate mobile marketing strategy. They have an integrated marketing strategy. A truly powerful mobile marketing automation system enables data sharing across all of your marketing systems. For example, you can send win-back emails to customers who uninstalled your app.
You can’t implement a mobile marketing automation system in a day, or a week, or a month. However, here are four steps that you should take to get closer to your mobile marketing goals.
You need to gather comprehensive user insights to know, engage, and convert your customers. With the right tools, you can have access to rich data about who your users are, what they like or dislike, the types of devices they use, the time of day when they use your app, the content that interests them, and the way they behave. Your MMA system gathers this data and segments it into different customer groups to send contextual, targeted messages.
The next step is to list all potential engagement points that can be used to deliver communications. For example, a user installs the app for the first time, makes a purchase, rates a product, or visits your store. You’ll use these engagement opportunities to send automated messages to different segments based on their key behaviors at different times during the buying cycle.
After analyzing the data and identifying the engagement points, you’ll need to set the timings and the types of messages you want to send at different points. For example, you can send an in-app message to a salesperson when a high-value customer enters your shop or office. Or you can send a push notification to a customer at the time and day when they’re most likely to buy your product.
Quality MMA programs help you create drip campaigns across multiple mobile channels like such as push notifications, in-app messages, email, or app inbox. You can have separate sequences to on-board new customers, engage current customers, encourage sales or bookings, regain lost customers, and gather reviews.
Mobile marketing automation is mostly about using the right technology. Most MMA systems come with a learning curve that might be less steep for you if you’ve been using traditional automation tools. According to TrustRadius, top mobile marketing platforms include:
CallFire: CallFire is a great mobile marketing tool for entrepreneurs running a small business. It allows you to create and manage scalable text-messaging and calling campaigns that you can track within the platform.
Branch: An enterprise-grade deep-lining platform that you can use to acquire, engage, and measure links across all devices, channels, and platforms. Branch helps you drive better performance in all of your channels by providing granular-level attribution and seamless integration.
Iterable: Iterable is another top-rated omnichannel solution that sends emails, SMS, push notifications, and more. It comes with a powerful A/B testing feature and a fantastic workflow editor. It’s a great tool for B2C companies focused on increasing retention using multichannel messaging.
Twilio: Twilio is a customizable transactional SMS platform that software developers can use to programmatically make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, and perform other communication functions.
EZTexting: As the name depicts, EZTexting is a text-message marketing automation tool that enables marketers to send timely, relevant, and contextual information to their audience. The system comes with a text-back feature and is simple enough for an 8 year old to use.
Of course, there are dozens of other mobile marketing automation systems that you can consider. A few popular solutions include SalesForce, Hustle, LeanPlum, and SimpleTexting. Which platform is best for you depends on your needs and goals.
Go for something simple such as EZTexting or CallFire if you’re just starting with mobile marketing. But, if you have more elaborate needs, choose a more powerful and integrated platform like LeanPlum or SalesForce.
Mobile marketing automation helps you take control of mobile channels by sending and tracking highly customized, automated, prompt, and contextual communications.
Automating mobile marketing is all about using the right technology stack to gather customer insights, identify potential engagement points, automated messaging, and orchestrate multichannel campaigns.
In all likelihood, you’re already using mobile marketing in some shape and form. It might be through text messaging, a third-party mobile app (like Facebook messenger), or by any other means. MMA can help you tremendously expand your mobile reach and boost your sales. With the fast-growing mobile usage, it is something you don’t want to ignore.
Discuss Mobile Marketing Automation with an Expert.
Book a Strategy Session
The art is building the right growth campaign. The science is in the results.
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