And yet, only four out of 10 marketers view testing and experimentation as a critical success factor. According to the Harvard Business Review, “As companies try to scale up their online experimentation capacity, they often find that the obstacles are not tools and technology but shared behaviors, beliefs, and values.” As HBR explains, “For every experiment that succeeds, nearly 10 don’t — and in the eyes of many organizations that emphasize efficiency, predictability, and ‘winning,’ those failures are wasteful.” 

What’s needed is a different set of shared behaviors, beliefs and values — a culture of experimentation.

What Is a Culture of Experimentation?
A culture of experimentation is a company mindset that most decisions should be data-driven — and that constant experimentation is required to produce better results. “Continuous incremental improvements” is the mantra, and everyone in every function should be empowered to test hypotheses. 

A culture of experimentation is fully established at most of the world’s leading brands. For example, at Netflix, culture is considered “the secret sauce that turns the raw ingredients of experimentation into supercharged product innovation.”  

What Are the Benefits? 
An experimentation culture gives you the power of smarter decision-making, which helps you: 

All of which helps keep you ahead of the competition.

Experimentation has driven some of the greatest market breakthroughs of their day, like Subway’s $5 footlong and McDonald’s all-day breakfast, as well as the creation of juggernauts like Amazon Web Services, which generated $80 billion in 2022. Companies with a true culture of experimentation — such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix and booking.com — run thousands of tests each year, not just a few times like many other companies. Booking.com, for example, has quadrillions (millions of billions) of landing-page permutations live at any given time. 

Hear more about Booking.com’s emphasis on experimentation by tuning in to a recent Masters of MAX podcast. 

How to build a culture of experimentation
Developing an experimentation culture differs from developing an experimentation strategy.

An experimentation culture requires support from the executive level and all teams to experiment constantly and reflexively. There must be agreement that experimentation will lead to better results, and everyone must be fully behind it. An experimentation strategy is also important, but its focus is on defining the goals, KPIs, hypotheses and success criteria for experiments.

Here are 5 keys to developing a culture of experimentation, given our experience working with hundreds of brands across dozens of industries for more than a decade.:

1.  Get executive buy-in
To take root, a culture of experimentation needs a champion at the top. The most important buy-in is around data-driven decision-making and a willingness to embrace failure, and that buy-in needs to occur at the leadership level. 

After buy-in, everything about a culture of experimentation flows from leadership initiatives: communicating the vision, aligning with business goals, and funding and resources. Ultimately, leadership will need to sign off on roles, skill sets, best practices, technology tools and KPIs. 

2. Remove barriers to testing 
Initiating and refining tests — possibly hundreds or thousands of them at any given time — is  impossible if you have to rely on developers alone. 

All of your employees must have access to tools they can use themselves — such as Airship’s A/B testing capabilities across messages, journeys and no-code app experiences, which don’t require ongoing developer support. 

3. Empower everyone to test
In addition to making experimentation tools and technology readily available, the organization should also authorize and then encourage all employees to use the tools. A culture of experimentation empowers everyone to test hypotheses and test fast. Think of experimentation as a daily practice for marketers, where everyone can and should be involved. When anyone has a hypothesis that needs testing, they should be able to formulate an experiment and carry it out quickly. It should be a safe environment for employees to use their imaginations, go out on a limb, and celebrate experiments and findings throughout the company. 

As a corollary, organizations need to create a mechanism for testers to align pre-experimentation so as not to break or interfere with other experiments. 

4. Accept that some experiment hypotheses will fail 
In a culture of experimentation, people see failure in experiments not as wasted tests, but as important opportunities for learning. If A is the control and B the modification, they can’t both win. A corollary of this is that the more tests you run, the greater the chances of finding a winner. Further, the earlier in development you start testing, the sooner you’ll be able to focus resources on the best options. 

Netflix blogs about its institutional acceptance of failure: 

The low win rate in our experimentation program is both humbling and empowering. It’s hard to maintain a big ego when anyone at the company can look at the data and see all the big ideas and investments that have ultimately not panned out. But nothing proves the value of decision making through experimentation like seeing ideas that all the experts were bullish on voted down by member actions in A/B tests — and seeing a minor tweak to a sign up flow turn out to be a massive revenue generator.

— Netflix Technology Blog, 2022

5. The document learnings
Set up a centralized, visual reporting environment that provides real-time insights from all active experiments, as well as customer, channel and campaign data, all in one place. Include a dashboard to track mobile app KPIs across the app lifecycle so you can quickly and easily gain insights into your app performance. 

Everyone should have  a common understanding of the end-to-end optimization strategy, and know what factors lift performance across various experiments. While these winning factors may be unique in every situation, they establish a shared history to continue to engrain your organization’s culture of experimentation.

Register to join two leading brand experts as they explore how continuous experimentation and optimization drives better results for businesses in a December 5 webinar.

The post 5 Keys to Developing a Culture of Experimentation appeared first on Airship.

When enabled, Apple will download all remote data in the background by default, resulting in inaccurate open metrics for these recipients, and data collected from the IP address, such as location, will be masked. Email platforms and email marketers are rapidly trying to determine its impact on open rates and how to address this. 

Luckily, we are here to help! Here are steps marketers can take now and in the future to adjust to this new feature and improve their overall email experience for their customers.

Make Sure to Cleanse Your List

The first action you can take now is to cleanse your lists. Even without Apple’s changes, this is just a best practice for maintaining good deliverability. Here’s how you can do that:

Use the open metrics you have today to construct buckets of recent-engagers vs non-engagers.  This depends on how often you send emails, but recent engagers could consist of people who have opened an email in the past 60-90 days. 

Then, set up a reactivation campaign for the non-engagers to try and get them interested and interacting again, but after 90 days of no opens or clicks, the relationship has probably run its course, and it’s time to say goodbye. Taking these steps now will set you up to have clean lists come September when we expect Apple to release their updates.  

Check Your Inbox Placement

Inbox placement (making sure your emails are going into the right inbox instead of spam) is going to be even more important once updates are released. You should make looking at your inbox placement a regular routine, especially to detect early warnings of deliverability issues. If you’re not already doing this, there are tools available to track your emails (like Sparkpost’s Inbox Tracker).

Adjust Your Email Benchmarks 

As for measuring engagement, benchmarks will have to be adjusted and clicks will become more important. Clicks are a more direct measurement of engagement since an email open doesn’t always mean “interested.” 

Opens can be detected when a message is previewed, or like in the case of Apple’s coming changes, when a message is preloaded by the client.  However, there are times when opens are the best engagement metric available (as in the case of subject line testing or informative emails that don’t have a strong call-to-action). In this case, the baseline open rate across a brand’s own campaigns and benchmarks across verticals will need to be adjusted to the inflated open metrics we expect from Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection change.

Move on from Bulk Marketing Strategies 

One of the most important things you can do for your email program is to shift from a bulk marketing strategy to a hyper-targeted one. This ensures your customers are getting the most relevant message for them, which will make them more likely to engage. By offering a preference center, you give control to the customer to manage which types of communications they get. This allows them to opt down instead of having to be all-in or all-out with your brand’s messaging. 

You can easily implement this with Airship by creating a preference center with our drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor and including the link to the form (that Airship hosts!) in your email. We’ll manage the opt-ins & opt-outs of the different subscription lists, so you don’t have to. 

Go for the T and T: Targeted and Triggered

Keep information timely and relevant with targeted and triggered messages. Utilize the power of app+email, by using personalized email to drive customers to your app for more information that is interesting to them. 

A great way to do this is to use Airship Journeys to create messaging flows triggered off of actions your customers have taken. For instance, if someone makes a purchase, trigger an email with the order information and populate a row of recommended products by pulling in content from your recommendations engine using our External Data Feeds. Follow up with a push that upsells them on a related item. By personalizing content throughout the journey with the data relevant right at the time of send, you’ll keep your messaging timely and interesting.

A consistent focus on improving and elevating the email program is key to relevant customer experience. By using a preference center and other personalization tools that Airship offers, you can deliver that kind of experience to your customers. We’re here to help you navigate all the changes that come with privacy and iOS. 

Get Personal

Give your customers the personalized experience they want

We can help!

The post 5 Steps Marketers Can Take to Improve Their Emails (Especially with Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection) appeared first on Airship.

Let’s look at how three brands are using Airship’s platform to meet those challenges with highly effective cross-channel campaigns.

Redhawk Casino Goes Omnichannel

Red Hawk Casino leverages Airship Orchestration to ensure they’re using the right channel and the best timing for each message. A cross-channel welcome series helps onboard customers and educate them about key features. Dynamic emails keep them informed of the week’s sales and promotions. SMS reminders go out right before an event, promotion, or last minute COVID-19-related schedule change. And Redhawk uses push messages for day-of communications and time-sensitive offers. 

Redhawk Digital Marketing Specialist Matthew Borja explains that “during COVID, having the ability to reach our customers through multiple channels allowed us to build up and grow our brand affinity, when so many brands are struggling to get customer attention. We were able to save over 30% by switching to Airship and using it for multiple channels, helping us reach more customers at lower cost.”

Betbull Keeps Customers Engaged with Airship Journeys

Sports betting brand Betbull uses Airship Journeys to automate and orchestrate messages across SMS and email to keep customers engaged in the Betbull mobile app and informed about promotions and bonus offers. Betbull credits Airship with making it easier to build customer journeys that reach customers on the right channels and generate some of their best engagement to-date.

“It’s taken a huge operational workload off of the team,” said John Ibanez, CRM manager with Betbull. “Airship has been a game changer for us through COVID-19 for our customer retention and engagement efforts. We’ve seen our biggest engagement numbers ever.”

Getplus Prevents Dropoff with Email + App Personalization

Indonesia’s GetPlus helps its members obtain discounts and offers from a variety of retailers when purchasing within the app. GetPlus’ strategy during COVID-19 is all about personalization. They use Airship to trigger seamless, personalized welcome journeys and voucher reminders via email, in-app messaging and push notifications that prevent drop-off after signup and keep customers active in the app.

Plus, Airship helped GetPlus rapidly integrate their existing engagement platforms and start handling all of their customer engagement from one place. According to Co-Founder Adrian Hoon, “With Airship’s support, we were able to quickly onboard and start executing campaigns. It gave us an ability to get going much faster.” 

As these brands have shown, email+app are a dynamic duo in your channel mix that can keep customers engaged and build a lifetime of loyalty and value. To learn more about how Airship can help elevate your customer engagement strategy, get in touch!

LEt’s Connect

Want to elevate your email+app engagement strategy?

Contact us today!

The post How Three Brands Used Email + App to Increase Engagement During COVID-19 appeared first on Airship.

Not sure where to begin? Here are a few tips to get you going.

Love Your Layout

Have you updated your branding or are your layouts feeling a little stale? Of course, you need an attractive and on-brand look that grabs customers’ attention. But you also need a logical layout that leads subscribers toward engagement.

Use graphics and visual dividers to help readers recognize the different content sections and CTAs. Keep the text to image ratio around 80:20, meaning 80% text and 20% images. And if you do use a lot of images, always include alt text. This helps ensure there’s enough copy to get your point across if images aren’t displayed properly due to spam filters or email client behavior.

It’s also a great time to revisit your footer. Make sure it’s up-to-date and consider adding some  text to the footer to provide customers with useful information about your brand.

Make Your Messages Count

Your subject lines are your first impressions. The key is to keep them informative and simple with a 40-70 character message that gets straight to the point. It’s also a good idea to convey a sense of urgency in your headlines. However, avoid the temptation to use deceptive subject lines, which can erode trust and land your emails in spam folders.

Furthermore, while many marketers overlook the importance of the preheader, that extra 35-50 characters can give your audience a little more info about why they should click open. Just keep in mind that if your audience tends to read messages on mobile, your combined subject line and preheader shouldn’t exceed 100 characters or they may get cut off.

In the email body, put your most important messages and CTAs in the spotlight by placing them above the fold, typically the top 350 pixels of your email. Try not to overload readers’ eyes by cramming too much in this limited real estate. Users will scroll, as long as you give them great reasons to. Use this area to convey your main message and deliver on the promise of your subject line. Also, avoid creating a false bottom, so it’s clear there’s more to see below the fold.

Test for Success

Before rolling out your new look, test your designs to ensure they look fabulous on all browsers, devices and clients. Use Airship’s WYSIWYG editor to drag-and-drop content blocks and edit on the fly to create beautiful and responsive designs. Then you can leverage our integration with Litmus to quickly see what your message looks like across apps and devices, and identify issues before your message hits inboxes.

Next, run A/B tests to determine which approaches garner the most engagement. We recently rolled out new A/B testing features for email, SMS, web and app that make it super simple to test personalization and design to determine which variants deliver the best results. 

Once your campaigns are live, keep an eye on analytics to help assess the performance of your new designs and optimize as needed. Key metrics to monitor include opens and clicks, link clicks and performance on different domains (e.g. gmail, outlook, etc.).

Accessorize with Airship

Get ready for your next steps with Airship’s content creation, personalization and A/B testing features. Improve your campaign creation process and design eloquent messages with:

• Airship’s WYSIWYG editor: Drag-and-drop blocks of content to edit inline and create different variations to evaluate and test.
• Litmus for Email (New!): Optimize for the best customer experience by previewing how your email looks across different devices and making changes if needed. 
• A/B Testing personalization for SMS, Email, Web and App (New!): Use our personalization features with A/B tests to optimize your message personalization to see what increases customer engagement. Test different image types based on customer preferences, varying levels of personalization, or amount of content.
• Performance Analytics: Pre-built email reports and dashboards help you drill down on essential data points and view performance.

With these tools and strategies, you’re on your way to creating more coordinated, head-turning emails that earn attention and engagement in the year ahead. To learn more about how Airship can help, get in touch!

Let’s go 2021

Need help turning inspiration into reality? We can help you put together an email strategy that wins over customers.

Contact us today!

The post New Year, New Look: Give Your Email Campaigns a 2021 Makeover appeared first on Airship.

The opportunity is massive, but the competition is fierce. That means working harder, and smarter, to make your messages stand out. Fortunately, one tried and true tactic can make all the difference in driving customer engagement: personalization. 

So where should you start? Here are some simple tips to help you break through with personalization during this year’s holiday season.

Personalize Your Upsell

Combining first name personalization with tailored recommendations is a surefire way to increase engagement and sales. A full 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers that recognize them by name, recommend options based on past purchases or know their purchase history.

When someone makes a purchase, kick off a customer journey that triggers a follow-up recommendation for a related product or service. Or take advantage of the order confirmation to include some personalized product ideas. You can even leverage the APIs you use for recommendations with Airship’s external data feeds, which can hit your API and pull in the product information for that user at the time of send.

A/B Test for Success

Not sure which personalization tactics to focus on this holiday season? The best way to quickly find out is to test it! Run A/B tests on a few variants of your personalizations to see what drives engagement and conversions. It’s also a good idea to test the message with and without personalization. We recently launched A/B testing and control group features for Airship Journeys, making it easier than ever to determine which personalizations have the biggest impact on your customer journeys.

Show Them You Know Them

Although consumer expectations continue evolving, a little personalization still goes a long way. In fact, 56% of consumers say they’re more likely to shop at a retailer that knows their name. If you’re not sure where to start, first name personalization is a great first step.

If you haven’t tried personalizing messages before, it’s easy with Airship’s customer engagement platform. Upload a list of first names for each channel, email or MSISDN and start providing the first name personalization that your customers expect.

Ideas for Retailers

With retailers vying for their share of this year’s online holiday spending, consumers are likely to see more messages than ever across all of their brands’ digital channels. Whether you’re promoting limited-time deals or a big sale, try these simple ideas:

• Grab customers’ attention by personalizing your push messages, SMS, and email subject line by first name. 
• You can also reference the customer’s favorite product category in the subject line to make the message more relevant to their interests. 
• Personalize message center or email messages with highlighted products based on customer shopping history or preferences, so your customers can discover the products and deals they might otherwise miss! 
• Take advantage of your confirmation emails by adding tailored recommendations in the message.

Ideas for Travel & Hospitality

Holiday travel looks different this year, but consumers aren’t staying put either. One U.S. survey found that one-in-four respondents have a personal vacation planned, and nearly half of family travelers (45%) with kids under the age of 18 are taking a leisure trip before the year’s end. 

• Send recommendations for destinations and hospitality based on recent search history, like in-state options for a beach getaway or mountain retreat. 
• You can also offer local add-ons for booked travel, like a flight upgrade, deals on rental cars, or a room with a view.
• Keep customers engaged with your loyalty program with an update on their miles or points, and encourage them to take advantage of their miles or points before year’s end.

With a little personalization and the right tools, you’ll give your customers more reasons to engage and convert this holiday season. To learn more about how Airship’s customer engagement platform can help, get in touch!

The post How Simple Personalizations Can Drive Big Engagement this Holiday Season appeared first on Airship.

We believe that Mobile Wallet is the most exciting opportunity for mobile marketers today. (Not sure exactly what mobile wallet is all about? Check out our cheat sheet here.) Why? Three big reasons:

1) Consumers Are Demanding More from Mobile Wallets. 

In our State of Mobile Wallet Marketing report consumers indicated they’d like to use Mobile Wallet for all kinds of things — loyalty cards, coupons, order delivery updates, mobile payment, boarding passes, ID cards, event tickets and much more.

2) Mobile Wallet Platforms and Infrastructure are Strengthening. 

Apple Wallet, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc. etc. — the big players are investing more and more in their mobile wallet and payment platforms, which will drive additional consumer demand and engagement.

3) The Cost of Getting a Footprint on a Mobile Device Is Growing. 

The cost of getting a new app user continues to grow. With Mobile Wallet, you’re taking advantage of a native app (already on your customer’s phone, no download required) to deliver content they want where they want it.

It’s really a no-brainer, right? So let’s get you going.

It’s Easier Than You Think to Get Started with Mobile Wallet Marketing

Building a generic coupon that does not require personalization is quick and simple. One of the easiest wallet passes to create is a mobile wallet coupon. 

In fact, using Airship Mobile Wallet, we’ve seen mobile wallet coupon campaigns come together in a very short period of time (some under a week) from creation to distribution.   

Coupons are also something your consumers want from you. In our survey, 57% of Millennials said they’d prefer to get coupons in their mobile wallet — and 44% of all respondents said the same.

Here we go!

Make a Mobile Wallet Pass in 10 Easy Steps

Step 1

Get a certificate from Apple that allows you to place a wallet pass in Apple Wallet. It’s a straightforward process that will take about 15 minutes of a developer’s time. We provide detailed instructions for developers in our Docs right here. If you run into any issues, you can always contact us for an assist.

Step 2

Within the user interface, you’ll first need to decide what type of pass you want to create.

We support loyalty passes, coupon passes, gift card passes, member card passes, event ticket passes, boarding passes and a catchall generic pass option. As we’ve said, for this tutorial, we’ll be making a mobile wallet pass coupon. 

Step 3

Name your project and give it a brief description. Then, choose your barcode format — we support 1D, 2D and QR barcodes as well as where you want to run your campaign — on Apple Wallet or Google Pay and click “Create Project.”

Step 4

Once your project is created, you’ll see our default template for the pass type you’ve chosen to create. In this case, you’ll see the default template for a mobile wallet coupon pass. Customize the template by choosing your brand’s colors and fonts, as well as adding your logo, and an image if you’d like.

Step 5

Define the values needed for your pass. For coupon passes, you’ll add text fields for the value of the coupon or discount percentage, the coupon ID number and expiration date.

Step 6

Add information to the back of your pass. Like the back cover of a book, the back of the pass is a great way for you to add content and information. We’ve seen brands successfully generate additional mobile engagement by adding social links, website information, contact info and more to the back of the wallet pass.

Step 7

Once you’ve finished building your pass, you can quickly test it. Click the “Send Test Pass” button at the bottom of the screen. A dialog box will open, requesting an email address. Simply enter the email associated with your test device (or any other emails you want to send to for testing) and click “OK.”

Step 8

Download your mobile wallet coupon pass to your mobile wallet. Open the email you sent from the test environment on your phone. You’ll see there’s an attachment. Tap it, and the pass will be served up. In the upper right-hand corner, you’ll see an “Add” link. Tap it, and voila, you’ll now find the pass added into your Apple Wallet.

Step 9

Give yourself a pat on the back! You just created a mobile wallet pass, distributed it through email, and added it to the mobile wallet on a phone!

Now that you’ve created your pass — if you’re happy with how it looks — you’re ready to deploy it to your customers!

Step 10 – Now, Think Even Bigger

Now, imagine doing mobile wallet marketing like this at a larger scale. You could…

• Include a call to action button (with an URL link to the wallet pass embedded), in an email with instructions for downloading and using the coupon.
• Include the URL of the mobile wallet pass coupon in a tweet or a Facebook post. Viewers can click on the URL and download the pass directly onto their phone.
• Send a push notification with a deep link to your pass – all within the Airship platform!

Once you have a few campaigns under your belt, you can build out a marketing calendar to make mobile wallet passes and mobile wallet marketing campaigns an integral part of your mobile marketing strategy.

Bottom Line

Now you know how easy it is to leverage the mobile payment ecosystem. You’ll surprise and delight your customers — and you’ll reap the benefits with higher engagement rates and conversions.

Don’t Miss Out

Deliver an even better experience and create better connections with your customers today.

Contact us

The post How to Create a Mobile Wallet Pass appeared first on Airship.

Create Custom Email Templates

WYSIWYG!

That stands for “What You See Is What You Get” (we like to pronounce it wi-see-wig), and that’s exactly what you’ll get with the email editor in the template sections of the UI (user interface). Brands can make their email templates look exactly the way they want them to, easily dragging and dropping content blocks to where you want them and editing the content and display. You can add new content blocks where needed or merge fields, like names, loyalty numbers and account balances to add more personalization to your emails. 

Alternatively, marketers also have the choice of simply uploading full HTML to quickly send out an email that you’ve already created.  However you make your email template, you’ll be able to save it and access it for editing at any time!

Easily Store and Select the Right Templates

We’re also making it easier than ever to send out your emails in record time. Templates can simply be selected in the composer UI or with their template ID in the create-and-send API.  After creating your custom template within the WYSIWYG editor, you’ll be able to simply choose the template for that message and send.

Stored templates are also available for SMS, MMS and the Open Channel API, making it more streamlined to send out those time-sensitive or rinse-and-repeat style messages that need to go out quickly across channels.

Make Email Part of Your Customer Engagement Strategy

Consumers are flooded with emails on a daily basis (about 73 per day!), making it difficult to stand out from the crowd.  But with engaging content and relevant messages, you can make your emails a unique customer experience every time.

With Airship, not only can you now make customized email content, you can also take advantage of a single UI to create, deploy and then coordinate your email messaging with all your engagement channels.  Use Airship’s channel coordination capabilities, such as brand priority or fall back channels, to automate and optimize your channel selection. Use email when it is most effective, or set custom event and tag triggers to automatically send emails when they are most relevant to your customers.

How Can Airship Improve Your Email Personalization Strategy?

Let’s Connect

The post Email the Way You Want It – The All New Template Builder appeared first on Airship.

We believe that Mobile Wallet is the most exciting opportunity for mobile marketers today. (Not sure exactly what mobile wallet is all about? Check out these other resources.) Why? Four big reasons:

1) Consumers are demanding more from mobile wallets. In a State of Mobile Wallet Marketing report consumers indicated they’d like to use Mobile Wallet for all kinds of things — loyalty cards, coupons, order delivery updates, mobile payment, boarding passes, ID cards, event tickets and much more.

2) Mobile wallet platforms and infrastructure are strengthening. The big mobile wallet players are investing more and more in their mobile wallet and payment platforms, which will drive additional consumer demand and engagement.

3) The cost of getting a footprint on a mobile device is growing. The cost of getting a new app user continues to grow. With Mobile Wallet, you’re taking advantage of a native app (already on your customer’s phone, no download required) to deliver content they want where they want it.

4) Mobile wallet items have a 95% retention rate.Consumers can be reached with change messages, notifying them of offer or program updates as long as the pass remains in their wallet.

It’s really a no-brainer, right? So let’s get you going.

Make a Mobile Wallet Pass in 10 Easy Steps

Step 1

Contact us to request a demo of our Mobile Wallet marketing platform. You can send up to 100 wallet passes during your trial — a fantastic way to experiment with mobile wallet marketing. 

Step 2

Get a certificate from Apple that allows you to place a wallet pass in Apple Wallet. It’s a straightforward process that will take about 15 minutes of a developer’s time. We provide detailed instructions for developers in our Docs right here. If you run into any issues, you can always contact us for an assist.

Step 3

Within the Urban Airship Reach user interface, you’ll first need to decide what type of pass you want to create.

We support loyalty passes, coupon passes, gift card passes, member card passes, event ticket passes, boarding passes and a catchall generic pass option. As we’ve said, for this tutorial, we’ll be making a mobile wallet pass coupon.

Step 4

Name your project and give it a brief description. Then, choose your barcode format — we support 1D, 2D and QR barcodes — in Project settings, you’ll be able to set the default barcode value, text, and encoding.

Step 5

Once your project is created, select a platform — Apple Wallet or Google Pay (Enterprise Only) — to create a template pass type you’ve chosen to create. Once you’ve selected a platform, you’ll see the default template for a mobile wallet coupon pass. Customize the template by choosing your brand’s colors and fonts, as well as adding your logo, and an image if you’d like.

Step 6

Define the values needed for your pass. For coupon passes, you’ll add text fields for the value of the coupon or discount percentage, the coupon ID number and expiration date.

Step 7

Add information to the back of your pass. Similar to the back cover of a book, the back of the pass is a great way for you to add content and information. We’ve seen brands successfully generate additional mobile engagement by adding social links, website information, contact info and more to the back of the wallet pass.  

Step 8

Once you’ve finished building your wallet pass, you can quickly test it. From Urban Airship Reach, click the “Send Test Pass” button at the bottom of the screen. A dialog box will open, requesting an email address. Simply enter the email associated with your test device (or any other emails you want to send to for testing) and click “OK.”

Step 9

Download your mobile wallet coupon pass to your mobile wallet. Open the email you sent from the test environment on your phone. You’ll see there’s an attachment. Tap it, and the pass will be served up. In the upper right-hand corner, you’ll see an “Add” link. Tap it, and voila, you’ll now find the pass added into your Apple Wallet.

Step 10

Give yourself a pat on the back! You just created a mobile wallet pass, distributed it through email, and added it to the mobile wallet on a phone!

Now that you’ve created your pass — if you’re happy with how it looks — you’re ready to deploy it to your customers!

Now, Think Even Bigger

Now, imagine doing mobile wallet marketing like this at a larger scale. You could…

• Include a call to action button (with an URL link to the wallet pass embedded), in an email with instructions for downloading and using the coupon.
• Include the URL of the mobile wallet pass coupon in a tweet or a Facebook post. Viewers can click on the URL and download the pass directly onto their phone.
• Send a push notification with a deep link to your pass – all within the Urban Airship platform!

Once you have a few campaigns under your belt, you can build out a marketing calendar to make mobile wallet passes and mobile wallet marketing campaigns an integral part of your mobile marketing strategy.

Bottom Line

Now you know how easy it is to leverage the mobile payment ecosystem. You’ll surprise and delight your customers — and you’ll reap the benefits with higher engagement rates and conversions.

Don’t miss out. Deliver an even better experience and create better connections with your customers starting today.

The post How to Create a Mobile Wallet Pass appeared first on Airship.

In recent years, the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement has really taken hold. According to Statista, the industry is expected to soar to $43 billion dollars globally by 2018. It’s no surprise that the wedding industry has also seen this phenomenon impact its business, with customers wanting to create their own online wedding announcements, RSVPs, landing pages, crowdfunded wedding registries and more.

Those companies who can seamlessly blend both the traditional wedding needs with the DIY cost-conscious consumer are poised to win the wedding marketplace.

Digital Brings Costs Down

With costs averaging over $26,000 for a wedding in the US, couples are frequently looking for ways to save. Some of the easiest things to do yourself include wedding printouts, such as save-the-date announcements, invitations and programs. However, even with these cost-cutting measures, there are still hefty fees for printing, materials and postage. This doesn’t even  account for time spent researching, talking to vendors, and managing all these elements.

If a couple really wants to save time and cut costs, it is time to go digital. We’ll go through an example of just how a mobile wallet option can reduce time, cost, paper and headaches —  all while making your wedding an interactive experience on a whole new level.

Open a Line of Communication with Guests

As mentioned, save-the-date notices are a popular DIY item. But it’s a one and done — you send it and the next communication usually occurs within the invitation.  But by creating a digital version, couples can help set the tone for a modern wedding by creating a living resource for the event. Using an e-invitation service, the couple can send a personalized email to their guests containing a link to download a mobile wallet pass announcement to their Apple or Android device. All guests need to do is tap the button and, voila, they have added the mobile wallet item onto their smartphones.

Once the pass has been downloaded, the couple can update their guests’ passes with news and reminders as the date approaches. For instance, reminders to RSVP, book hotel rooms, or attend a new group activity ahead of the event can be sent so that a notification displays on the guests’ phone.

As the wedding approaches, those who declined attending can delete their pass, or the couple can target only those who plan on attending for further updates.

For the big day, the pass can be updated with the wedding program on the back, directions to the venue(s), or other critical information. Since grandma may not be as technologically savvy as some of the other guests, paper programs can still be handed out to only those who need them, reducing both costs and the number of printed copies.

As an added touch after the wedding, the couple can send out a “Thank You” notification and update the pass with one of their favorite wedding photos.

Make Personalizing Weddings Easier

By going digital with a wedding, couples have a less expensive means of communicating and helping their guests stay up to date on the day-of. Whether you are a wedding vendor or a couple, think about how you can incorporate more digital items like mobile wallet to help you communicate, keep track of all the moving parts, and ultimately deliver an unforgettable experience.

The ways to reach your audience on mobile are endless using mobile wallets: a business card, a movie pass, a punchcard, an omni-channel store pickup solution, a wedding announcement, etc. All of this can be accomplished without using an app!

Learn more about mobile wallets here and download our Mobile Wallet Inspiration Guide to see how you or your business could potentially leverage mobile wallets.

The post Take the Traditional Wedding Digital: Mobile Wallet Makes it Easy appeared first on Airship.