6 Ways Mobile Marketing Automation Boosts App Engagement And Monetization

"These are a few of my favorite things", mobile apps and marketing automation.  A perfect marriage.  Mobile is the channel of the future and marketing automation can enhance it to improve monetization no matter what the business model.  This article is focused on the freemium business, but I believe it applies to everyone who has a mobile app.  Marketers should start thinking of mobile as a channel instead of a business unit, then the understanding of marketing automation and true omni-channel marketing can come to fruition.

1) Understand users’ behaviors

For any type of campaign to succeed, developers must first understand their users’ behaviors and the motivations behind them.

What price point is likely to get a certain user to make a purchase? Which items or services are they most likely to pay for? What is most likely to trigger their first purchase? Their second? Their tenth? What kinds of rewards (free coins, extra lives, unlocked content) do they want most? How likely are they to refer a friend? Why or why not? Which features do they use most often, and what new features would they most like to see?

This is marketing automation at its finest.  Taking the users behavior and trying to drive additional behavior or change the current behavior if possible.  Using mobile as a channel allows for the ultimate in timeliness.  Most people have their mobile device on them all the time, so being able to communicate and knowing it will reach your intended target immediately makes mobile the best channel for marketers.  Targeting the offer and the message is just icing on the cake.

2) Build advanced user segments

Not all users are created equal. They must be treated as individuals, and in order to do that at scale, developers have to divide their user base into distinct segments.

Is there any other way to build segments?  Start small and grow your segments.  There are numerous ways to skin this cat, but segments should be grown out of analytics.  Don't segment customers by gender if males and females behave exactly the same.  Segments are built from knowledge of behavior that is different from the rest of the group.  That's how new segments are born and they are different for every business.

3) Set up custom messages and campaigns

Once cohorts are created, developers can start targeting those groups with custom messages and campaigns.

Segments are built for customizing offers and messages.  If this is not going to happen, then there is really not a need to identify the segment other then for analytical purposes.  The reason these customers stood out from the rest is they were different, so make sure they receive different messaging and offers.

4) Deliver messages during contextually relevant moments

The next step in perfecting a mobile marketing automation strategy is to pick the right moments to serve campaigns.

The right offer to the right person at the right time.  This has always been the direct marketers mantra.  Timing is very important in marketing.  In this context, the discussion is when to serve up an app in a game, but this applies to all marketers.  I bought an engagement ring at Tiffany's for my soon to be wife.  I received weekly emails after that purchase advertising the engagement ring.  This would have been the optimal opportunity to sell me a wedding band, both male and female.  

5) Select the right channel

In-app messages aren’t the only way to promote campaigns.

In the context of marketing for freemium games this is always a tough one, but for regular brick and mortar businesses, this brings home the point I started the article with, mobile is a channel.  Sometimes it will not be the right channel. For instance, as a hotel mobile is a great channel for marketing offers while the customer is at the property.  For when they are at home, they don't need to see there is a free cocktail waiting for them at the bar, bad channel and timing.  A lot of times, email is the preferred channel and mobile is used for more contextually aware needs.  But test that theory.

6) Track, measure, and optimize

The final step, as with any campaign, is to continually improve upon your results.

This is the best final step there is, because without it there is no way to really enhance the campaigns.  Be sure to capture all the relevant data and be able to access it through a BI tool that can represent data visually.  This will allow for greater insight to the data.  Once hitting a wall with the BI tool, then advanced analytics can come into play in the form of data mining and predictive analytics, but there will be plenty of segments created without those tools.  Remember, marketing automation campaigns are living and breathing.  They are never finished, so constantly be looking for that next great segment.

Additional Thoughts on Twitter

A comment from John Dexter had me thinking even more about the Twitter problem.  I think it is clear to me, more than ever, that owning the platform is more important than owning the interaction when it comes to Twitter.  

In 2012 Twitter decided it was going to be an app company instead of a platform company.  They blew off their third-party developers in hopes to bring all of the eyeballs from the Twitter stream/firehose into their own app and webpage to monetize with advertising.  This essentially laid the groundwork for Twitter not owning just the platform, but owning the entire experience.  In the case of Apple and Facebook, this is good because it is their core competency to own all the widgets.  When looking at Twitter, a big reason they are where they are today is because of innovations by third-parties.  They would not be in mobile if it wasn't for other developers getting there first.  All of the app innovations have been made by third-party developers, so much so that Twitter had to purchase one of them to catch up.

Twitter should take a step back and develop the platform to generate revenue.  If agreements were laid out to developers allowing them to get a piece of the ad revenue generated through their apps, they would be great partners in pushing the ads in new and intuitive ways.  Twitter can then focus on knowing the Twitter customer, the logged in user, better than Facebook knows their customers.  I believe Twitter has an advantage because they know peoples interests better. The people I follow on Twitter align more to my interests than the people am "friends" with on Facebook.  Facebook tends to focus more on real-world relationships and the close knit social graph.  

Once Twitter can repair the relationships with third party developers and focus on developing the platform to maximize ad placement, they don't have to worry about innovating apps that sit on top of that platform, which they are not particularly good at doing anyway.  This model would bring the most app innovation, while at the same time, allow Twitter to focus on revenue generation for the platform.  The third-party developers would have to share all the data back  and then Twitter can be the master of the customer, which is where the ad revenue will come from.  Focus on being able to deliver the best ad to people consuming the stream.  

Study: 80% of Companies Will Increase Digital Marketing Budgets

Woohoo!!!  I think this is a wise move as we move into the golden age of digital marketing.  Until now I believe the many companies viewed this area as media buying and website analytics.  Digital marketing is the force that will bring the customer experience to fruition by combining online and offline behavior.  Creating consistent content and messaging from one channel to the next will be key in the coming years.

"One challenge that has been very prominent for digital marketers is the hiring of great talent, and companies are finally getting the budget to do that," said Laura McGarrity, VP-digital marketing strategy at Mondo, a technology and digital-marketing resource provider.

According to the study, the top hiring barriers are finding skilled talent (cited by 65% of respondents); the cost of quality staff (30%); attracting top talent (21%); retaining top talent (16%); and culture fit (26%).

Talent is in high demand and I think what companies have to realize is the talent they are looking for do not necessarily have many years experience in the field.  In fact, there is very little experience in the new age of digital.  Finding talent will be harder than looking at a resume and seeing if the applicant has X number of years and X degree.  These are not the metrics companies should be aspiring to hire.  The metrics should include applicants that have expressed their thoughts about digital marketing and whether their thought leadership is the direction the company is trying to go.  

"Turnover has been a really big issue," Ms. Garrity said, noting that the average tenure for digital marketing professionals is 12 months to 18 months. By comparison, average CMO tenure is 45 months, according to executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart in a March 2014 report.

"There is such high demand and it's such a new space -- people are hopping around to find the best jobs," she added. "It is a candidate's market, particularly in digital marketing."

The top skill sets companies are hiring for this year are digital/social (54%), content creation (44%), big data/analytics (33%) and mobile strategy (30%), Mondo found.

There should also be a questioning of why there is so much turnover.  Even though it is a talent market, there should be less turnover if the work is rewarding and CMO's are really bought into the innovation.  Too many times CMO's tend to be brand focused and the digital marketer will get frustrated in that environment.  

The study also asked marketers which digital platforms will drive customer engagement in the future. It found that today, mobile is seen as a key driver of customer engagement by only 24% of respondents, but in the next three to five years, that will increase to 70%.

The 24% number is too low for mobile as a key driver.  Today is the age of mobile and if companies aren't focusing on mobile, they will be behind in three to five years.  Mobile strategy takes time to implement and companies need to start now.  

The next 12 - 18 months will be very interesting in the digital space as technology vendors are building platforms that can support the wants and needs of marketers.  Upcoming technology will push the boundaries of what is possible.  Many companies will want to leapfrog steps to get to the end goal quicker, but it is important to realize to take advantage of the next low hanging fruit before jumping too fast.  That is why it is imperative to start now on the digital strategy.

The Current State of Email Marketing in 9 Fascinating Stats [#SlideShare]

Some very interesting stats on the slideshow, just click the title and you can view them.  The interesting stat to me was 20% of marketers link their primary revenue back to email.  I think this number is too low.  Email is still the best channel for businesses.  

Now I believe mobile will overtake email soon because it is a more direct channel.  Mobile apps have the potential to be the greatest marketing channel in our lifetime.  The phone is always with us.  It knows where we are, where we've been.  It knows if we are moving or standing still.  It knows where in our store our customers have been.  It is also always on, always available.

Email is not dead, but it already knows who will kill it.