Omnichannel in Practice
- The New Generation of Mobile Marketing.
- True Omnichannel.
- How to Achieve That?
- Traditional Marketing Automation + Mobile Marketing Automation. Why Isn’t It Enough?
Omnichannel In Action: Examples
- Dynamic segments,
- Insight into how the app is used,
- Lead Generation,
- Send messages based on the user’s location,
- Know the customer’s lifestyle from location data,
- Create dynamic banners on the website based on data from the app,
- Use gamification tactics,
- Send personalized push notifications,
- Address multi-screening,
- Stay in touch with anonymous visitors,
- Use the power of social media,
- Hire bots.
The New Generation of Mobile Marketing
Experts discussing the mobile revolution keep on recommending the same solutions: responsive websites and messages, shorter content, mobile apps. But it’s not enough.
- Smartphone revolution
The smartphone is much more than a new version of the portable phone invented in 1973. An average smartphone has the same power as NASA computers in 1969 when they helped put a man on the Moon. No wonder that such mighty devices revolutionized our communication. We not only use them to perform tasks that required a PC or a laptop before. Smartphones changed the way we think about these tasks. We shop, talk, spend, save, learn and have fun in a different way now due to the abundance of mobile devices.
- Smartphones, smartphones everywhere!
Half of the population owns a smartphone, and 80% of people will have one by 2020. The number of smartphone owners is growing because these devices are getting cheaper and cheaper. You can get one for $40!
On average, we spend 162 minutes each day on our smartphones.
- Appification of the world
On our smartphones we prefer mobile applications, not browsers. This trend is increasing: today we spend 65% more time on apps than 2 years ago. Yet during this same period the number of apps has increased by only 13%. Conclusion? The amount of time we spend on apps is outstripping the number of new apps available.
Mobile changes retail. M-commerce is growing, the same as its ‘parent’ industry – E-commerce. The only thing that’s different is the pace of change. Back in 2014, M-commerce’s share in overall digital retail income of $303 bn USD was 11.6%. The market forecast is that it will reach 45% by 2020. That means the M-commerce alone will generate $284 bn USD.
It is estimated that in 2017 87% of online sales will occur via mobile channels.
- New Generation of Mobile Marketing: what does it mean?
It means you must shift perspective. You can’t treat mobile as just another channel, or something optional. Integrate it with traditional online marketing to offer a complex and intuitive omnichannel experience.
True Omnichannel
A perfect omnichannel experience involves several areas:
- Websites with personalized content (banners, contact forms, offers).
- email marketing (regular newsletters, messages sent to selected segments of the contact base, and dynamic 1-to-1 emails).
- Social media (with precisely targeted messages). Mobile is the channel of choice if it comes to social media usage. Today, up to 76% of Twitter opens are performed on smartphones.
- Ads in RTB networks (personalized and matching the rest of your communication with a given user).
- Physical stores (with beacons and mobile apps you can deliver customers’ profiles straight to sales assistants. This strategy can also be used in call centers).
- Mobile Marketing (SMS, responsive web design, campaigns dedicated to mobile, SEO and ASO, mobile app and communication surrounding an app, such as push notifications, in-app messages, and emails).
- 86% of marketers declare that this year’s primary task is developing a cohesive buyer’s journey across many devices and touch points.
- Social media are accessed by mobile devices more and more. Right now 76% of Twitter launches are performed on tablets and smartphones.
Cohesiveness
Don’t get it wrong. The point is not just to address your audience in all these channels but to deliver cohesive and inter-related messages in all the previously mentioned areas. If the user downloaded your material, don’t show them an ad of the same material in social media. Each element of your communication must fall into place to lead customers smoothly through all the stages of a relationship: from the first visit to loyalty and retention.
How to manage that? Getting a full customer profile is vital. Use contact tracking and collect data about their behavior. But you need more advanced marketing technology to address this problem.
Challenge: Mobile
From all the channels mentioned above, mobile remains the most challenging. Traditional Marketing Automation Platforms can track user behavior on websites, in social media, or record their responses to emails or RTB ads. But they’re helpless when it comes to a mobile app! On the other hand dedicated Mobile Marketing Automation tools, designed with apps in mind, collect data about app users and their in-app presence, but don’t combine this data with a full customer profile, they address each area separately.
How to Achieve That?
Omnichannel, multichannel, cross-channel… The most often used – and overused – terms of the last few years. We juggle with more and more concepts, but do we get real, applicable tools? That’s what marketers need!
We have zero interest in speculation. What we do is develop tools and solutions that help marketers deliver an omnichannel (use any other term you prefer) experience. That’s why in this ebook we will show you practical implementations of two complementary platforms, SALESmanago and APPmanago. Together they integrate traditional online marketing with mobile channels.
The world’s deepest mobile-desktop integration
No other marketing technology in the world can offer such deep integration. All systems available on the market offer an optional integration with external platforms. It causes many problems:
– investing more time and human workforce in mastering more platforms,
– constant supervision of data exchange, as the process is prone to errors,
– overcoming and patching incompatibility between the systems.
When you use APPmanago and SALESmanago, you forget all that inconvenience. These two are made to work together, produced by one company and based on the same philosophy.
Full Customer Profile and tailored marketing actions
The synergy between APPmanago and SALESmanago isn’t limited to more intuitive and efficient use and streamlining marketers’ work. The key advantage of deep integration is that you can combine data from a Marketing Automation Platform and from the mobile app to get rich and reliable customer profiles, enabling you to address personalized messages in all channels, both traditional online (email, social media, website, RTB networks), offline (POS) and mobile.
Marketing Automation + Mobile App Why it’s Not Enough
The ugly truth. Apps are the future, but…
Users are going mobile, and on their mobile devices they prefer apps over browsers (86% of them). The conclusion seems clear: we should start building mobile apps. But there are more stats you should know.
According to Statista, there are 1,500,000 apps on Google Play and 1,400,000 on iTunes. But getting a user to notice you in that crowd is just the beginning. After she downloads your app, you must fight for retention. 90% of apps are removed within 6 months of installation, and 22% of them are removed without being used even once!
The problem is…
… Engagement. As the Nielsen researchers state, we spend more time using apps, but don’t increase the number of apps we use. Younger smartphone owners tend to have fewer apps installed than older ones. So it’s clear: we want a couple of practical apps, not hundreds of them. The average smartphone user actively uses only 26 apps.
The solution
You might think: “What’s that all about? Just create a great app, and people will use it!” But it won’t work. You must remind users of the app and encourage them to use it more. It must become a part of their everyday life.
To increase engagement, introduce push notifications. Don’t worry! We don’t mean intrusive, bulk, one-size-fits-all notifications. Segment your base according to their interests, time of app installation and their actual engagement. Apply dynamic 1-to-1 messages, created and sent as a reaction to the user’s action or lack of it (e.g. if they haven’t used an app for 3 weeks). In a nutshell, you need Mobile Marketing Automation to create useful and personalized push notifications.
Enrich your Marketing Automation Platform with Mobile channels
Your Marketing Automation Platform can’t deliver reliable data if it doesn’t include what happens in your mobile app. If you have the app and ignore it in your automation processes, you miss a lot of knowledge about your audience!
63% of users say that they want to do more shopping with mobile devices. Today we consume more content via mobile apps than via traditional media. 40% of customers do research in 3 channels before they buy. 60% of smartphone owners do it during a visit to a physical store, and 50% – before the visit.
87% of consumers use their smartphones to make a purchase. Do not underestimate this channel.
- Dynamic segments
Dynamic segments are groups of users created automatically by APPmanago according to their in-app behavior. All you have to do is to define conditions that must be met to assign a user to a segment.
For example, we want to group users who have visited a particular area during the last 24 hours and use our app regularly (let’s say, at least 30 minutes per day). All users who meet these conditions get a tag and we can issue a dedicated campaign precisely to that group (from both APPmanago and SALESmanago). Do it to send a precise, personalized message to this group. The message can be sent from the SALESmanago as well as from the APPmanago platform.
What’s more, when the behavioral pattern changes, the user is automatically excluded from the group.
- Insight into how the app is used
The system also shows stats on the date of installation, last launching, and time spent in the app.
We can also see a chart illustrating which app modules a particular customer uses most often, and which aren’t explored enough. It tells us a lot about their needs and interests.
Use that data to segment a contact base according to their engagement, then prepare a campaign for heavy users or users who downloaded your app first, you can also reactivate the dormant ones.
The mobile app is an excellent Lead Generation tool. To optimize your workflow, APPmanago will automatically transfer new leads from the app to SALESmanago. That way you can start to track them immediately after they visit your website for the first time. Their email address and contact card will be automatically associated with their in-app behavior and the full APPmanago profile.
You don’t only get new leads, but also provide a personalized experience for app users who visit your website for the first time.
- Send messages based on the user’s location
94% of smartphone owners use mobile devices to look for information related to their current location. Thanks to the synergy between SALESmanago and APPmanago you can send email, push notifications and SMS related to a user’s location.
What does it mean in practice?
When she passes by a physical store, use push notification to send a discount for a product the user viewed in an online store. Thanks to full cooperation between the two platforms, you can deliver the desired offer or content when a customer needs it.
Why do you need Real Time Marketing?
88% of marketers declare that Real Time Marketing is a vital element of their strategy.
They list its advantages as:
– building engagement (81% of respondents),
– increasing the quality of a shopping experience (73%),
– increasing conversion (59%),
– improving brand perception (52%),
– increasing retention (52%).
- Know the customer’s lifestyle from location data
Data on a customer’s location is not only great material for real-time marketing, allowing you to send an offer in the most appropriate moment. It also helps you learn about a customer’s lifestyle. Below we show what you can deduce from user location and its changes.
Type A. King of the Road
When someone travels long distances many times per month you can safely assume that their work involves a lot of travel. Probably hotel and restaurant suggestions would be useful. Also, remind them about car servicing.
Type B. Nine-to-five
If you can see regular short trips, you know a given user is a commuter and likely has a traditional 9 to 5 job. It entails fixed rituals and habits, such as shopping after work. After recognizing the pattern, you will be able to find a place for your product in that routine.
Type C. Adventurer
Users who move long distances and explore new places are specific: this type shares a distinct ethos of independence and resourcefulness. Refer to those values in the communication. This dataset combined with website behavior results in a comprehensive customer image.
- Create dynamic banners on the website based on data from the app
They’re banners without a static, set content – it’s selected for each user individually, based on her profile. That way every visitor sees a different, personalized offer that matches their profile.
In other words, we don’t define which product will appear on the banner, but set a rule of choosing them for each customer. For example, the banner displays the most recently viewed products, products from the same category as recently viewed/purchased, products bought by customers with a similar buying history, and so on.
But what if you don’t have data from the website?
Sometimes you can learn more about a user’s interests from their behavior in the app rather than their website behavior. That’s why you should involve data from the app. Even if a mobile app user visits your website for the first time you can still address their needs and interests using data collected earlier.
Recommend products based on how the app is used.
Which language is set on a user’s smartphone? Which are the most used app features? How do users react to your messages? All of these are valuable feedback that you can use to personalize banners on your website. Always connect in-app behavior with the products and services in your offer!
- Use gamification tactics
Game creators, app designers, and marketers all use gamification mechanisms to increase engagement and revenue. How is it done?
– Offering premium package, upgrades or additional features? If you earn from extensions and extra packets, it’s vital that you tailor an offer to what a given user can spend. To assess her spending willingness, refer to her engagement. Heavy app users are more likely to spend more on additions while less frequent users might prefer something less expensive because they don’t know your app well enough to risk wasting their money. Optimize your efforts: you offer more expensive products to users willing to spend more and suggest viable options to the less engaged.
– As mentioned above, sending messages that remind users of your app is essential to keep them with you. Without constant reminding, they forget about the app and uninstall it a couple of months later. Make sure they have a chance to use it, love it and develop a habit of using it on a regular basis. Use push notifications, in-app messages, email and social media.
– Inform users about the progress they make. It might involve giving points and small rewards and applying ranks. Remind them of their targets and steps to achieve them. Such mechanisms are widely adopted in educational apps and ones promising you a lifestyle change.
- Send personalized push notifications
Skillfully implemented push notifications can boost user engagement by 540%. But it’s a double-edged sword: despite its potential, it can backfire, causing your audience to turn push notifications off or even uninstall the app.
Push notifications must always fit perfectly in the context and:
– resonate with a user’s interests: you will discover them thanks to combining insight from traditional Marketing Automation platforms (such as user’s behavior on the website, purchases, reactions to particular campaigns) and data from Mobile Marketing Automation systems and app analysis (the modules she uses most often).
– respond to user’s commitment: “a user is a user is a user” approach won’t lead you to either big traffic or big revenue. Some customers have known your brand for a long time and have bought from you several times. They need a different form of communication than users who have just installed your app and can’t tell precisely what you sell. Now, thanks to SALESmanago – APPmanago synergy, you can get a full picture of user engagement in all channels, which you can fit your messages to.
– address the situation and place a user finds herself in: if you want to send a coupon for a coffee, the best time to do so is when a user passes by your cafe, or at time when you know she is in the city, not relaxing at home. Use geolocation tools and analysis of a user’s activity – at what time of day and week do they most often interact with your brand?
- Address multi-screening
How many devices do your customers use to interact with your brand? How often do they get a push notification on their mobile devices, and then rush to your e-store on their laptops? Today’s consumers use many devices simultaneously: watching TV, playing on an iPad and checking email on the phone all at the same time. That’s why it’s so easy to lose them during the journey across many devices and platforms, with so many distractions.
What is multi-screening?
It can mean two problems:
- a) Using more than one device simultaneously (multitasking).
- b) Using more than one device to complete one process (you start it on one device, and finish on another). It concerns approximately 90% of consumers.
Non-linear purchase process on multiple devices.
The SALESmanago + APPmanago duo helps you address changing shopping habits and a new model of the buying process, which involves a number of devices.
Gathering all customer data in one place allows you to create a cohesive experience and avoid losing your customer when they are switching between devices.
Personalization needed
60% of consumers declare that they would like ads to be more tailored to their needs. At the same time, 49% of marketers say that they have data to provide more relevant offers, but they can’t do it on a regular basis due to problems with integration of data from various sources. That’s why you need a duo of perfectly combined tools that work smoothly to deliver the most useful offers.
- Stay in touch with the anonymous users
Every day your website faces massive traffic. Some of the visitors come there intentionally, some of them found you via a browser search or social media mention, and some of them clicked the link by accident. Just to remind you of a well-known stat, only 1-2% of them are ready to make a purchase. The rest require careful preparation and nurturing before they are ready to make the transaction. Moreover, only a small percentage of this traffic is made by identified contacts. It makes addressing the marketing content a little bit complicated. Doesn’t your heart bleed when you think about all those potential leads vanish from the website, and you have no clue how to stop it?
Relatively new members of the omnichannel family are web pushes – push notifications designed for web browsers.
Web Pushes can be sent to anyone who visits your website at least once and agrees to receive notifications on your site. The only requirement for this kind of notification to appear is that the user agrees to get them via an agreement form. A contact doesn’t even need to have an active browser window or be using it at that moment. The processes responsible for sending Web Push notifications remain active, even if the window is closed.
IMPORTANT: To send this kind of notification you don’t even need to have the recipient’s email addresses, as Web Push notifications can be sent to anonymous contacts!
Are Web Push notifications effective?
The average CTR for Web Push among our customers is 30%. External sources mention CTR on an average level of 15%-25%. These numbers are far more impressive than those for emails. Especially, since the OR of Web Push notifications is always 100% (all delivered messages are opened).
Use Web Push notifications to inform website visitors about the hot deals in your store or remind them to update their status in mobile app. Create automation rules to bridge user actions in various channels so you can adjust your message to the needs of identified users and to stay in touch with anonymous users.
- Use the power of social media
¾ of Facebook users and ½ of Instagramers use the platform on a daily basis. More than 50 million companies use Facebook Business Pages and up to 2 million of them use Facebook for marketing purposes. This potential calls for a good plan.
To leverage social media profiles you have to run them with caution. At the end of the day, 15 photos of funny cats won’t bring any tangible results (unless you sell products for pets, of course). While content is king, distribution remains a queen. Therefore, you must learn what kind of content to post, when to post it, how to promote it how to select the target audience and how to optimize the budget.
Users share a lot of information scraps on social media platforms: not only demographic data, but also all performed actions, like comments, likes, check-ins, and time spent on particular fanpages (and consumption of the posts they share). You can never overestimate this vault of knowledge. Use it to better personalize your ads and target them more precisely.
It will also help you react in real-time and spot the micro-trends among your audience.
Connecting social media activities to a marketing automation platform opens up a whole bunch of new marketing opportunities. First, it allows you to queue up posts on the most popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter and measure their performance. Secondly, it engages information about contacts gathered in your database while you create so-called Custom Audiences – a group of recipients for which Facebook creates a database comparison (between its own database and the database of the company wanting to create the Custom Audience).
Effective Facebook campaigns are targeted at those groups in your area of interest that are most likely to engage. Precise targeting is the key to success here. You can create Facebook target groups based on individually monitored user behavior, such as: adding a tag to a contact, reaching a specific score by a contact or opting out from mailing.
Obviously, the data from your Marketing Automation Platform can be extremely helpful in the process of creating Custom Audiences – contacts’ website behavior, their responses to various campaigns, history of products bought, viewed, or added to cart… any of these may become criteria for segmenting your Facebook fans. Use the advanced behavioral and transactional analytics (use the RFM analytics) to build a target audience for different Facebook creations. Adjust the message to the audience’s engagement level and their current stage of customer – brand relation.
- Hire Bots
A bot is a program that imitates conversations with people by using artificial intelligence. The software is designed to automate all kinds of tasks you would usually do on your own, such as ordering food, making an appointment, searching for news or finding the solutions to simple, logical problems.
The technology has been around for a while – constantly improving and reducing risks, such as lack of trust in the bot or concern regarding the ability to understand each other. What’s also important: chatbots save your employees’ time so they no longer have to answer simple questions or use a search engine to look for specific websites a person may ask about. That allows them to do various tasks more efficiently.
The intelligent, automated customer experience provides great opportunities for e-commerce and advertising industries. The more a customer uses the chat box, the more personalized the messages become. Soon, users will also be allowed to pay directly from the platform for a product or service, making the whole process effortless.
SALESmanago launched a bot for Facebook Messenger that can automate customer service and sales on Facebook. The new tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend products based on previously recorded behavior from various channels. Additionally, it is fully integrated with SALESmanago‘s marketing automation software. It can be used by any company to automate its customer service and sales through Facebook. Once you leave your email address while talking via Facebook Messenger, the bot recognizes you and links up the conversation with your profile on the SALESmanago platform. Using the information on your behavior from all available channels, including desktop, mobile, and Facebook apps, ad networks, call center or even brick-and-mortar stores, it can recommend you products, check your order status or help in the complaint process.
According to Konrad Pawlus, CTO at SALESmanago:
“This also works the other way round. All the data from your conversation with our bot is transferred to your profile and can be used to customize future offers. It can be delivered via email, dynamic product recommendation boxes on the website or Facebook ads. All of this is automated by our system. For some users, the bot might be a great chat partner, but we designed ours to fit e-commerce purposes.”
Benefits
Let’s do a recap: what will you win by implementing the SALESmanago + APPmanago duo?
- Increased customer engagement.
- Real-time reaction.
- Realistic, more accurate image of your customer, that brings personalization of your messages to a whole new level.
- Ability to create content that interests your customers, followed by offers they’ll really go for.
- Genuine omnichannel experience for your audience.
- Cost optimization: you pay only for displayed messages that can deliver real value.
- Unlocking the full potential of the app: building a closer relationship with your customer. You are both visible and easy to find – and you can send messages.
- Addressing multiscreening: regardless of how many devices a given person uses at a time, or if they start the process on one device but finish it on another, you are armed to provide them with a consistent and step-by-step buyer’s journey with a smooth switch between devices.
- Increased efficiency of in-app sales by displaying tailored offers.
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