Fueled by Mobile Marketing, the world now is going through an era of technological development. On the one hand, progress brings us solutions that make our lives easier. But on the other hand, as we know, we have to adapt to changes faster. And businesses must be flexible enough to accept these changes. What was sufficient for commerce 10 years ago now is outdated and boring.
In 2002, Labatt Brewing launched the first sms advertising campaign. By now, such an approach won’t surprise anyone. However, an element of surprise is part of a winning strategy, as customers always long for fun. So, let’s see what entertainment the digital epoch brings us and why it makes the work of mobile marketing specialists so hard.
Social networks
Correlation of social networks and mobile marketing shouldn’t go without mention. What do you do first in the morning? Personally I stretch out my hand to grab my phone and check out Facebook. You too? More than 50% of smartphone users check their devices immediately after waking up. That’s one of the reasons why digital marketing is booming and the tendency is expected to increase.
People are addicted to their phones. And as mobile marketer you can take advantage of this habit. Statistics say that the mobile version of Facebook is used by a one third of 600m of users. The mobile percentage for Twitter is 50%. Youtube gets 200m views a day via mobile devices! And not only these giants invest a great deal of money into social networks. 98% of companies featured in the list of Fortune 500 are doing exactly the same.
The modern generation of millennials download and delete mobile apps without any hesitation, so developing one no longer grants you engagement. Now you need to “conquer” client’s attention by using urgency creating tools like SnapChat or Periscope, or messaging apps Viber and WhatsApp.
Trending AMP, PWA and Mobile First Index
Search engines have been bringing an accent on mobile phones for quite some time. But 2016 was among the most challenging years in this sector. What was done? Google launched or supported such projects as Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA). Let’s talk about them in more detail.
Both Google and Twitter created a lightweight HTML page – AMP – to make mobile pages load faster. It doesn’t allow using some HTML tags and JavaScript except basic libraries to ensure the highest level of speed for reading pages.
PWAs are the apps that load even if the internet signal is weak. And you don’t need any extra scrolling while using them.
One more thing – Google announced Mobile-first Index. Currently they still use the same algorithms for ranking both desktop and mobile. But soon, we’re going to see the shift to the mobile version, as more and more people are using Google via phones. Thus, it is strongly recommended to make a change, having a mobile version fully developed not to miss positions and clients. What does it mean for you as a marketing specialist? Speed is playing a more and more important role, as people want to stay connected 24/7 and they won’t wait more than 7 seconds for a page to load. If you cannot meet these requirements, you have a strong chance to lose the race.
Machine Learning Is The Present
For instance, information about previous purchases can be a basis of understanding and predicting customer preferences. The next time a client visits the shop, the company will be able to send him/her a push-notification with a special offer relevant for this particular client. That’s how personalization based on machine learning works.
What doesn’t work is email open rate. No matter if a client reads your newsletter or not, you need conversion. And to get conversion you need to personalize your approach to every customer both offline and online.
The best way to reach out to clients is to summarize the data on their behavior and transactions, and to synchronize with their choices. Make sure that the technologies you use make your business more flexible, accommodate the needs of modern customers.
Push Notifications
This trend belongs neither to SEO nor to social networks. Push notifications are far from being simple messages. They’re a way to communicate closer with your clients. Browser push notifications have already become commonplace to us, But taking into account the popularity of mobile devices, this option is sure to develop in the near future. What should we expect from it? The key word is personalization.
I don’t even need to prove to you that personalized messages are at least twice as effective in converting potential leads, do I? And here we talk not only about preferences we can collect. Location and user activity also give mobile marketers an opportunity to improve clients engagement. The higher level of user segmentation you achieve, the more personalized your push notification will be. Besides machine learning, such technologies as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are influencing mobile commerce. So the challenge is to follow a trend and make the best use of it.
Chatbots
One more “child” of AI and Big Data is a chatbot. The development of these is its full swing now. Some specialists even predict that sooner or later they will oust mobile apps. Despite us downloading lots of apps, in fact we use only a few. Chatbots can be a decent alternative combining several options. Chatbots have access to large amounts of data and are able to adapt (due to machine learning) fast. They update automatically and interact with each other. So instead of meddling with dozens of apps, you can simply use one or two bots when ordering a taxi/pizza/tickets etc. What can we expect in this sphere is integration. However, this doesn’t mean that mobile apps will disappear in the short term. Actually, they are going to become smarter due to the new technology and improve their usability.
Multiple channels of information
According to DMNews, more than half of customers believe it is important that companies collect information from all devices. And about 78% don’t mind providing information about their purchases in return for more personalized offers. High time then, to provide your clients with what they ask for – hand-picked offers based on their activity both on desktop and mobile devices.
Moreover, such a technique will allow monitoring the sales funnel for every customer and to react accordingly. Won’t it be better to send a push-notification about an item left in a cart the next time a prospecivet client visits the website, instead of annoyingly mailing him/her several days in a row?
Takeaways
Let’s summarize. Personalization, integration and speed are the key factors influencing mobile marketing here and now. To catch up with it you have to be one step ahead of yourself which is probably the most difficult part. Technically however, we have all the necessary tools.
Your Comments, Please!
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Julia Kravchenko