Marketing Strategy Guide: Push & Email in the Mobile Era€¦ · Push & Email in the Mobile Era. ... Kahuna is a mobile marketing automation company ... through the details behind

Marketing Strategy Guide: Push & Email in the Mobile Era

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Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 3Creating a central view of the customer ......................................................................... 4Knowing which channel to use .................................................................................................. 8Testing & iterating ................................................................................................................................. 13Finding cadence ..................................................................................................................................... 18Evaluating success ............................................................................................................................. 22Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 26

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Marketing Strategy Guide | Uniting Email and Push

Why should I read this guide?Mobile has changed the world. It’s a world where information travels with you, made possible by devices that understand your behavior and preferences more than any previous advancement in communication technology. As a result, the mobile-first customer has greater expectations: to have real-time digital conversations on the topics they care about most, at the times they want to participate.

What does this mean for marketers? The mobile-first era has ushered in new

opportunities and responsibilities for brands. Whether through push notifications, in-app

messages, or email, it’s easier than ever to reach customers. But because mobile has

made digital communication possible throughout the day, customers are more sensitive

to all touchpoints from brands. Businesses must carry out cohesive marketing strategies

that take this into account.

In the mobile era, the bar for marketing success has been set higher. The brands that

will win the future understand that all channels of communication must work together in

harmony to give customers a seamless and delightful experience. This guide will walk you

through the details behind how traditional email and mobile marketing can work together

to form a united and successful marketing strategy.

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Creating a Central View of the Customer


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Creating a Central View of the CustomerUnifying your marketing across channels calls for a central view of the customer. In an era where customers own many devices and engage with brands across many platforms, marketers need a complete picture of the customer as a person who is interacting with their brand through multiple touchpoints, rather than looking at their behavior through the fragmented lens of mobile or web.




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Why is this important? This centralized view will help brands send more intelligent marketing messages that work together to give customers information they want to see. Once upon a time, customers only interacted with brands through physical locations. The modern customer, on the other hand, engages with brands through many touchpoints. He might open an email and browse an e-commerce website in the morning, then add an item to his shopping cart on mobile before finally purchasing on his tablet after work. A sophisticated marketing strategy needs to take into account customer actions and reactions across touchpoints to inform its messaging going forward. Without keeping track of customers across these touchpoints, brands run the risk of sending redundant or irrelevant messages that will

annoy or confuse customers.




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How should it be done?To understand your customers as people, and not simply a user on a certain device, there are a number of key data points to keep track of. A sophisticated marketing strategy in a mobile-first world rests on gathering three pieces of information.

First, how are customers interacting with your brand? A centralized view of your customers should show you how engaged they are with your brand across devices and how they like to interact with your brand. Are they browsing your sale using your mobile app and then purchasing with desktop? Are they reading your articles on their tablet? The actions your customers take on different devices should give you a good picture of their habits and preferences.

Second, what messages are customers receiving? With a centralized view of your customers, you’ll know what volume and type of emails and push notifications they’re receiving. You can ensure that your pushes and emails are working together to deliver key information and calls to action and tailor your content to take advantage of the benefits of each environment.

Third, how are users responding to these messages? Do they prefer push over email at all times? Have they responded enthusiastically to a number of email messages and is it now time to try out more proactive pushes? By unifying customer behavior across mobile and web, you can better gauge the success of your marketing messages and your customer’s affinity to your service.




Knowing Which Channel to Use


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Knowing Which Channel to UseCommunication in today’s multi-channel world should function like an orchestra, conducted by a director who’s in tune with his audience. Like an instrument, each channel plays a part that is suited for its unique qualities, and different instruments can play together to deliver memorable harmonies. Different goals will require different combinations of channels, while consistently knowing the right channels to communicate through in various situations will enhance the user’s experience with your brand.




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How do you do it?Here are three ways to take a unified approach to your email and push notification strategies, depending on the content of your message and the goals of your campaign:

1. Send through every channelThe first approach is to send the message through all channels. Sending a message through all channels simultaneously is sure to grab your customer’s attention; therefore, the message you send must be worth their time. This type of communication should only be used when you want to deliver a message that is urgent and time-sensitive, something the customer will find highly useful or at least tolerate, such as a severe weather warning or an alert about an imminent event. These messages can be broadcasted across channels because they’re important for the customer to see immediately.

2. Send through the channel for optimal engagementThe second approach is to send messages through the channel that will likely inspire the most user engagement and conversion, meaning you must make a choice between push and email. Sending a message through the lens of optimizing for user behavior is the best way to send a more promotional message, with content that’s meant to entertain, inform, or spur conversion.




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Since people are bombarded by marketing messages constantly, they automatically tune out anything remotely resembling spam. If you send a promotional message through all channels, you run the risk of being ignored completely. Furthermore, anything that is repetitive will annoy users if it’s not important and damage the user’s experience with your brand. On the other hand, knowing the optimal communication channel to send your message will increase the likelihood that your customer takes the action you desire. You’re catching them at a good time, on the device they prefer, and nudging them toward conversion in a natural and helpful way.

How can you know which channel is best for your promotional message? It’s about understanding the user’s behavior and preferences throughout the day. You must get a clear picture of the times that your users like to engage with your brand, how they’re engaging, and on what devices they prefer at those times. Are they opening your emails every night and hardly responding to your pushes? Do they spend time on your mobile site during the lunch hour? Knowing these key pieces of information will help you send promotional messages at the right times, through the right channels, and at times they’re most likely to engage.




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3. Send through the channel optimized for platformDifferent marketing tactics and goals are suited for different channels of communication. Every push or email that’s sent must have a clear goal. At times, the actions that you want your users to take are best suited for a specific platform. In general, email is the best channel for communicating long-form content, like a newsletter, or content that a user wants to keep on hand, like a booking confirmation. Because this content may require more time and investment, email makes more sense than sending a push, as mobile notifications are ephemeral, and mobile users are often on-the-go. There are also specific use cases that can only work through email, like a forward-to-a-friend campaign. In this scenario, the choice of channel is clear.

Immediacy makes push the best channel for time-sensitive or location-based messages. Think of the 24-hour sale or an in-store deal—while email is a viable channel, it will likely not have the most impact, and chances are users end up seeing the message when it’s simply too late. Having a good idea of the platform-specific goals of your message will help you choose the channel that makes most sense.




Testing & Iterating


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Mobile is hyper-accessible, intimate, and moving fast. That’s why it’s important to test and iterate your campaigns in real-time. Getting mobile right means being aware of what’s working and what’s not in your messaging strategy. Here are the reasons why it’s necessary to be extra sensitive to the effects of your communications:

Testing & Iterating




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First, you can reach users at any time throughout the day, no matter where you are—but with great power comes responsibility. People are receiving so much communication each day from brands and other actors that their tolerance for badly timed and uninspired messaging is low. Ineffective messages, if you don’t catch them, will harm customers’ affinity with your brand and result in quick opt-outs or unsubscribes.

Second, mobile is an intimate and invasive environment, which can exacerbate people’s reactions to your messages. A mobile message is an interruption in the user’s daily routine; it’s up to brands to make sure that interruption is welcome. Does your user see your afternoon push as a fun break from their work day or an inconvenient disruption? Knowing what annoys and delights your customers will go a long way to making your interactions with them as memorable and appealing as possible.

And finally, mobile customer relationships are fast-moving. With the ease and accessibility of mobile, people are engaging with brands more than ever in a day. While this trend does give brands more opportunity to earn customer loyalty, people are also quicker to lose interest and do something about it. Reactions are visceral and decisions happen in a flash. With every message that you don’t get right, mobile users can easily opt-out and uninstall with a tap of the screen.




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1. Fine tune the content and copy of your messagePush notifications are short forms of communication with precise, actionable goals in mind. They’re often intended to trigger visceral reactions that lead to an action, such as a purchase, social share, or key onboarding action. Therefore, the best push messages are clear, concise, compelling, and clever—they deliver moments of delight and urgency that prompt people to act. Email adheres to some of the same principles. As a long-form channel of communication, however, there are many more variables in play. Subject lines can determine open rates, images can enhance appeal, and calls to action serve as a final prompt for users to engage and take action. With both push and email, A/B testing can help pinpoint the small tweaks that will make a big difference in your engagement and open rates, as well as opt-out rates.

2. Experiment with message personalization

It’s a powerful way to cut through the noise and get people’s attention, but personalization has both pros and cons, depending on specific situations. Personalization can make your message more relevant (e.g. referencing a location they’re in) but also offput your customer if it seems like you are taking advantage of too much information about them. Furthermore, personalization is not always needed. A user who has abandoned his cart might appreciate a reminder about the tennis shoes he added, but someone who merely browsed an item may not want to hear about it in a marketing message. Testing empowers you to see what kind of personalization appeals to your customers.

How do you do it?




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3. Use control groupsSometimes, it’s possible that no action is the best action. Customers may take the action you’re hoping for, even without a gentle reminder from your brand. Setting a control group in your test allows you to make sure that your messages are achieving a better result than not sending any message at all. You can also adjust the size of your control group. For riskier campaigns, you can set your control group to a large percentage and then decrease that percentage as you gain confidence.

4. Monitor campaign success, both positive and negativeUsers hear more from brands than ever before and have the ability to tune out much quicker. Therefore, it’s important to see which campaigns are driving higher engagement, conversions, and goals achieved, in comparison to opt-outs and app uninstalls. More to come in Section 5.

5. Auto-optimize for best resultsWith multiple message variations, delivery times, and personalization options, it can be difficult to know exactly which campaign is performing best, and why. You need an automatic way to keep abreast of your best performing options and send the winning messages to more recipients. To do this, you’ll need the right software to consider all of the varying messaging factors and algorithmically determine the right path to pursue—all in real-time and optimized for the success metric that’s important to you.




Finding Cadence


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Finding CadenceLike a symphony, the ebb and flow of your communications can be music to your customers’ ears. The pace and volume of your messaging strategy is critical in today’s hypercompetitive mobile world. Here’s why:

Brands have multiple channels through which to contact users, but with each brand that joins the fray, the cacophony of voices becomes louder and more overwhelming. Successful companies rise above the noise, grasping the key insight that it’s about not just the content of their messages, but also the delivery. Smart brands know just when to push buttons and when to take a step back. A larger number of messages does not necessarily earn more attention from customers; the value of each message drops, the higher the volume. Brands who understand cadence know that messages sent at strategic times will earn the user’s notice.

Reaching customers’ devices may be easier than ever, but people also have better tools at their disposal to clear out the messages they don’t want to see. Spam filters are becoming more sophisticated. The Gmail Promotions tab and Priority Inbox have significantly demoted marketing communications from brands. Opt-outs and uninstalls are just a click or swipe away. When customers receive too many messages from you, they have the option to make you irrelevant very easily.




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How to do it?Getting your cadence right means taking note of three aspects of your messaging campaigns:

1. Watch the number of messages sent per personAsk the question, “How often do your customers want to hear from your brand?” It usually depends on the customer as well as the type of service you provide. Based on their previous interactions with your brand, some will be happy to hear from you frequently, while others need a little more time to get comfortable and truly appreciate your value proposition. If you provide an automatic billing service, you might require a less frequent messaging strategy than a social media app. The number of messages you send to each person, or segment of people, must reflect these understandings.

2. Watch user response to messagingAs you communicate to users at various stages of the lifecycle, take notice if they begin dropping off in engagement or increasing uninstalls. It’s a good measure of how well customers are tolerating your messages. If you see a trend of users losing interest, it’s time to roll back the volume and frequency of messages you are sending. If you see a trend of higher engagement, you might want to gradually add more messages, while making sure they bring more variety and depth to your conversations with your customers.




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3. Rate limit messagesSet a limit to the total number of messages that you send a user in a specific timeframe, whether that’s an hour, a day, a week, or another span of time. Even if the user qualifies for a number of messages based on his interactions with your brand, he won’t necessarily appreciate your enthusiasm. For example, unless there is an urgent, real-time event, it’s highly unlikely that any user would like to receive more than one message from you within the timeframe of a few hours.




Evaluating Success


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Evaluating SuccessOnce you have defined your messaging strategy and started running campaigns, it’s time to evaluate your success and hone your approach. Looking at the overall, campaign, and person-level results will help you understand what’s working and what’s not, so that you can tweak your messaging, timing, personalization, or delivery channel. Having a clear picture of your success allows you to iterate within a safe environment, providing you the flexibility to figure out the best messaging tactics without harming the user experience.




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What do you look for?The first question to evaluate is how your overall messaging strategy is contributing to your business. This can be determined by evaluating the aggregate effect of your messaging strategy on user retention, engagement, and monetization. What’s the effect on retention? Do the users who receive your marketing campaigns show higher retention rates than users withheld from all campaigns through a control group? Are these users who are receiving your campaigns more engaged? Do they interact with your brand more than those in the control group? How much more money are they spending, or are you making because of them? The specific metrics you track will depend on your product or service, so it’s critical to know which key actions make a customer more valuable. For some businesses, it may be important to look at how many times a customer has added information about themselves or the number of ad impressions in a month, while others are more interested in the number of new subscriptions.

Secondly, it’s important to look at results at the campaign level so you can determine whether specific campaigns are triggering positive reactions vs. negative reactions and decide which ones to continue, tweak, or discontinue. At this level, you can also drill down to examine whether the results vary by channel. One type of campaign may inspire more action over email than via push, or vice versa. Ask and answer the following two questions: 1) Did the campaign drive users to take the desired action? and 2) Did the message enhance and enrich the user’s app experience? To answer question 1, set a specific goal for each campaign and track the specific number achieved as a result of the




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campaign. To understand how your messaging is impacting user experience, look at two key metrics—campaign engagement and app uninstalls. A higher engagement rate than that of the control group means that people appreciated the message you sent and were drawn back into the app. A higher app uninstall or opt-out rate than that of the control group is a sign that they found your messages annoying or irrelevant.

The third view to take into account is the person-level view. You can now collect information about individual behaviors and preferences that will help you connect better with users as unique people with unique habits. Everyone’s lifestyles and daily routines are different; their preferences for communications from brands reflect those differences as well as other factors such as personality. With the data you gather about each person, you can optimize messages not just at a campaign level but at an individual level. Three variables you can optimize are optimal times, content and copy, and personalization preferences.




Conclusion


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ConclusionThe mobile-first era is a watershed that brings in new complications but also rewards. For consumers, it’s an era of on-demand information and interaction, in which relationships with people and brands can be built faster and easier than ever. For brands, there’s an obligation to understand consumers in more complex ways than ever before. Businesses must take into account customer habits, preferences, lifestyles, and personalities to create a sophisticated messaging strategy that mirrors the human flow of conversation. But with this new mobile world comes a new opportunity for brands: an increasingly complex landscape pushes you to think more deeply about your customer’s interactions with you and opens up more opportunity to differentiate your brand from others. The businesses that are ready to seize this moment are the ones that will soar.




Kahuna is a mobile marketing automation company dedicated to fostering user delight and driving engagement and revenue through mobile. We help companies understand and intelligently communicate with customers wherever they are: email, mobile web and apps, and social networks. We believe there is magic in delivering the right message to the right customer at just the right time.

Kahuna is trusted by The Weather Channel, Overstock.com, HotelTonight, and hundreds of others. The company was founded in 2012 and is funded by Sequoia Capital and SoftTech VC.

Want to learn more about Kahuna?We’d love to hear from you. Here’s how to get in touch:

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Marketing Strategy Guide: Push & Email in the Mobile Era€¦ · Push & Email in the Mobile Era. ... Kahuna is a mobile marketing automation company ... through the details behind

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