3 Quick Tips for Smarter Marketing in 2015

business2community.com

“This year, I will write wittier push messages.”
“This year, I will read one blog a day to keep competitors away.”
“This year, I will be a smarter app marketer.”

January is the month we make New Year’s resolutions. We set goals to improve our day-to-day activities and be more efficient at our jobs. While we can’t ensure that you go to the gym everyday or eat fewer carbs (there are apps for that though!), we can help you stick to your professional resolutions and grow as a mobile marketer.

Here are three tips to make your app campaigns of 2015 smarter than ever before.

1. Get More Granular With Your Targeting

Smartphones are often seen as an extension of an individual. In fact, 25% of smartphone owners aged 18-44 can’t remember the last time their phone wasn’t by their side. On a device this personal, consumers only expect to see highly relevant messages. And to deliver customized marketing, you need to divide your users into like groups.

This year, tighten up your targeting by creating if/then user segments that combine session, event, and profile data. Check out the below table to see how you can enhance your user segments into sophisticated audiences:

In 2015, say goodbye to simple segments and say hello to enhanced targeting scenarios.

2. Use Auto-Profiles as a Starting Point for Personalization

The best kinds of resolutions are the ones that require little effort, but high reward. Using auto-profiles is an example of that.

Auto-profiles are out-of-the-box, ready-to-use profiles that are immediately available to power push and in-app messages. No fussy or complicated implementation needed!

Auto-profiles are based on standard information app analytics vendors can draw from every app. If you’re not sure which dimensions or attributes to use in your personalization strategy, auto-profiles are a good place to start. These canned profiles help app marketers create and launch targeted campaigns based on data about who users are inside an app and who they are in the real world. To better illustrate, here is some of the information that auto-profiles capture from the get-go.

App-level (behavioral data about in-app actions)

• Push enabled/disabled (has a user opted into push notifications for this app)
• Total number of sessions (how many times has someone used your app)
• Last session date (last time a user opened an app)
• Last app version (so you can send users on an older version of your app a message to upgrade)

User-specific (information about user that goes beyond the mobile device)

• Timezone (so you can send users a push message or in-app notification at 8:00am regardless of where they are in the world)
• Country (so you can customize your marketing based on location)

In 2015, learn more about who your customers are inside your app and outside your app by embracing profiles.

3. Harness Transactional Push Messaging in Creative Ways

Some of the most effective push notifications are utility focused – not promotional in nature. Essentially, these push notifications provide information that is extremely valuable and specific to an individual person at a particular moment in time.

Think about someone waiting on the curb for a car or sitting on his or her couch waiting for dinner to be delivered. A push alert letting this person know their ride is here or their order is on the way would be hugely useful and well received. And if these conventional scenarios don’t fit your app’s mold, think innovatively about how you could communicate one-to-one with your users. For example, perhaps you could send unique push notifications to new users and welcome them by name.

In 2015, set-up these kinds of transactional push messaging campaigns to deliver unique information to users and keep them engaged in your app.

Better Targeting = Smarter Marketing

You may have noticed that the three tips above all have something to do with refining your targeting. This is no coincidence. App users now want to see more “just-for-me” marketing on their beloved mobile devices. After all, we call them smartphones right?

To be a smarter marketer this year, start by further crystalizing your knowledge and image of the real people using your apps. Then, delight them with push and in-app messages they instantaneously connect with.