Four Ways Marketers Can Seize “Mobile Moments”
In the mobile economy, the brand who offers convenience, value, and a frictionless solve can win over a customer in a single moment. We are excited to share some actionable strategies for shaping and winning mobile moments.
This article first appeared on Mashable as part of the SWOT Team series, that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.
A mobile user’s entire app journey can happen in a matter of moments — sometimes in less than a minute. Think about this scenario: You’re commuting, reading an article about a new cruise. Curious, you search for the company mentioned, and soon enough you’re emailing to receive more information and potentially plan your trip.
This mobile moment happened on a whim, and in a matter of seconds, went from introduction to potential sale. In fact, according to a recent Google study on micro-moments, 90% of smartphone users use their phone to make progress toward a long-term goal, or a multi-step process, in short bursts while “out and about.”
Mobile has hastened the customer journey and simultaneously broken it into many fleeting interactions. Marketers must be prepared to capture, respond and innovate in real time to ensure that touch-points are optimized from beginning to end.
To engage the most users during mobile micro-moments, seize these four principles.
1. Serve the user’s moment with rapid, real-time response to behavior
On mobile, customers have higher expectations for timeliness and relevance than they do on desktop. At Leanplum, we’ve developed “digital reflexes” in which we automatically reach for our phone for need such as information, entertainment and personal connection.
Marketers have to anticipate those needs by identifying their consumers’ different paths and behaviors. That means A/B testing to find the right message, the right timing and the right location.
On mobile, customers have higher expectations for timeliness and relevance than they do on desktop.
The next challenge for marketers is to have marketing automation in place to reach users in an instant, especially because important interactions happen at a moment’s notice. During these mobile moments, immediate satisfaction trumps loyalty to a particular brand; whoever offers convenience and value will win the customer.
2. Design user experience for shorter moments
Because app experiences are getting shorter and shorter, today’s user interfaces must create shorter interactions, rather than the long engagement you would expect in a mobile game, for instance. The context for an interaction becomes very important and marketers must make hard trade-offs for content included in the app, including text, images and the layout.
For example, an M-commerce app needs enough information for the customer to make a purchase decision, but not so much content that they feel overwhelmed or become distracted. Of course, your app’s interface won’t be perfect on the first try; it takes many iterations and rounds of testing to figure out the best layout for your app. Marketers need to consider tools such as visual editors to enable that process and to help introduce changes in real time when necessary.
3. Prepare for moments outside of mobile with location-based omni-channel marketing
While it’s critical to optimize the mobile experience, we can’t forget that the full customer journey includes several channels, both online and offline. A mobile lifecycle strategy considers that holistic picture and enables marketers to understand users based on activity inside and outside the mobile app, like browsing products, adding items to carts or walking by the makeup aisle.
This understanding can be used to send contextual and location-based notifications. For example, a retailer can send a promotion to users near their store with a discount on an item they have previously browsed in the app and a reminder that the location is just a few minutes away. Omni-channel strategy also means that consumer touch points outside the app don’t fall through the cracks. It can ensure, for instance, that a cart abandonment reminder won’t be sent to a mobile user who has already completed their purchase on the desktop website.
Omni-channel strategy also means that consumer touch points outside the app don’t fall through the cracks
4. Create your own mobile moments with optimal time push
As a marketer, you shouldn’t just wait for the customer to come to you. Proactively create your own mobile moments with well-timed engagements like push. One example of the importance of being proactive is shopping cart abandonment, one of the largest headaches in mobile commerce. The average shopping cart abandonment rate for mobile is a whopping 90%, Leanplum reports.
To keep that money from going down the drain, you should notify users that they have items sitting in their shopping cart, at the optimal time, based on algorithms that identify when the user is most likely to use the app. Brands have told Leanplum that they’ve increased revenue up to 17% using this predictive technique.
Beyond cart notifications, such algorithms can determine, based on real-time behavior, the perfect time to ping customers throughout the lifecycle. When marketers send deeply personalized notifications during well-timed moments, they can boost engagement and create brand loyalty.
For example, a restaurant reservations app can deliver a series of personalized push notifications when a user books a table at a new restaurant. A week before the reservation, the app should send a link to the latest restaurant reviews. Then, a few hours before the reservation, the app can send a notification with the restaurant’s address and directions; two days after, it can re-engage the user and give them a reminder to write a review.
Mobile behavior is evolving quickly, and marketers need to be equipped to share and respond accordingly. A single person can experience hundreds of these mobile moments throughout the day. Multiply those moments by millions of people and it’s clear that marketers have billions of opportunities to seize important experiences. The future of marketing lies in identifying these billions of moments and connecting the dots between what customers desire and what a brand can deliver.
For 10 proven strategies on using Mobile Lifecycle Marketing to shape and win these critical mobile moments — download the definitive guide here.
CTA: Leanplum is the most complete mobile marketing platform, designed for intelligent action. Its integrated solution delivers meaningful engagement across messaging and the in-app experience. We work with top brands such as Expedia, Tesco, and Lyft. Discover more at leanplum.com.
