There are many reasons why mobile marketers, app product managers, developers, and digital customer experience specialists should attend Elevate 2021, but here are five really good ones. If you’ve already registered (thank you!) this list will just confirm that you made an excellent decision. If you haven’t registered yet (you can do that here), these five reasons will help you make the decision to join others like you in our forum.

1 – If You’re Not on Mobile Then Where You at? 

Our research of over 700 million mobile users found that mobile app audiences grew 31% year-over-year in 2020 and 10 of 12 the verticals we looked at in our analysis saw increased app engagement. The immense growth of mobile usage and engagement, supercharged by the pandemic, has proven that mobile is at the center of people’s lives. 

It all makes a lot of sense. Mobile apps are where we as consumers turn for convenience (for paying bills to making purchases), real-time, need-to-know information (such as extreme weather alerts and breaking news), connections (through social media or even data apps) and much more. Brands that aren’t providing mobile experiences are losing out to brands that are offering personalized, relevant and convenient experiences through their mobile apps. 

This is why the theme of Elevate 2021 is “Unlock Your Mobile Potential.” We want to help brands across the globe capture new levels of value from mobile engagement through strategies, insights and stories from the industry leaders who are paving the way. 

Do you really need more reasons than this first one? Okay! 

2 – Our Keynote Speakers Are Tech and Mobile Experts

This year, Elevate 2021 will have two noteworthy guest keynote speakers, each with his own unique perspectives and data on trends in mobile and technology. First, we’ll have Benedict Evans, leading tech analyst and mobile industry visionary, who will share his insights on the state of the tech industry and how new technologies are changing the way consumers interact with brands. We also have Jonathan Kay, Co-founder and CEO of Apptopia, who will highlight specific mobile app trends that are changing brand engagement and the customer’s experience. 

And of course, we’ll have a keynote from Brett Caine, Airship CEO and President, to share Airship’s point-of-view about future of mobile experience and how the mobile app is becoming a definitive destination for consumers and brands. 

If you’re not available on October 27/28, don’t worry, you can register to get a recording of the keynote and other sessions. 

Seriously, what more reasons would someone want? How about…

3 – Learn Marketing Strategies from Top Brands Like Chipotle, Disneyland Paris & Ulta Beauty

Airship has some of the best customers in the world, including top brands that are leading the way in mobile engagement and customer experience. Joining Chipotle, Disneyland Paris and Ulta Beauty are other great brands like KeyBank, Onefootball and SiriusXM. And this isn’t even the whole list of brands across industries and continents who will be speaking, with more to be added. You can learn more about the agenda and our speakers here. 

Do you still want more reasons? 

4 – Get Tools and Ideas You Can Actually Use

Hearing stories and use cases from other brands can be really insightful and inspiring, but we also want to make sure this event is practical and helpful. That’s why after every presentation we’ll be hosting lab sessions where you’ll get a demo of our latest products and features. We’ll also have Airship experts there to answer any questions you may have! 

Let’s wrap this up with one more reason to attend Elevate…

5 – Get Virtual Face Time with Your Peers

Elevate 2021 is partnering with Appsflyer, Mixpanel and mParticle to offer our attendees live networking sessions to talk about the latest tools and trends in mobile engagement and customer experience. Yes, meeting in person would be wonderful, but we’ve set up our breakout sessions to mirror as close as possible in-person hangouts. Airship team members will be joining as well, so there isn’t a better group to share strategies and war stories as well as questions and thoughts. 

At this point, how could anyone not want to attend? Again, we are very excited to share this event with you on October 27 and 28. We hope to virtually see you there!

If you’re still on the fence about attending this free event after these five great reasons, contact us and let us know what’s keeping you from taking the plunge! We would love to know why, and help you to decide to join us. 

The post 5 Really Good Reasons to Attend Elevate 2021 appeared first on Airship.

Good morning starshine, the Earth says, “Hello.” My name is Sean and I often ask myself, “How am I not myself?” I am also a Senior TAM (Technical Account Manager) at Airship in the Portland office. Some of my favorite pastimes include learning new skills, such as: How to build a backyard patio or extreme outdoor survival techniques (knowing full well that I live in a 500 sq/ft apartment and don’t even like to go camping). I guess I just enjoy watching skill-based YouTube videos!

What Is the Best Part of Working at Airship?

We all come to the table with different experiences and flavors of knowledge. Airship, and especially the Customer Success department, gives me the opportunity to share mine. Earlier in my career, I was a community health social worker. I learned invaluable skills like how to listen to my clients and help them achieve their goals. I continue to use those skills as a TAM.

Years back, with the encouragement of my brother-in-law, Ryan, I switched my career path to tech. Back then, I set a goal to get a job at Airship so I could work alongside him (he is a Principal Engineer here) and I achieved that goal in 2018. He tends to avoid the spotlight even though everyone knows him and his contributions. I feel honored as an employee and his brother that Airship has enjoyed my many Giphy animations and Hack Week projects named after him, aka “Project RALPAX.”

What Are You Passionate About?

I am passionate about client experiences and discovering solutions to problem statements of their world. My goal is to be a valuable partner within the teams I work with, whether it be an Airship team or one of my clients. Also, my dachshund, Renoir. He’s great.

What Is Something Every Airship Customer Should Know?

I often use “we” statements as this represents a mutual drive to find the best solution for the customer. Their success is my and Airship’s success, which is extremely important to me.

What Have You Learned So Far as a TAM?

As a TAM, I learned the value of vertical variety. I have many customers that represent assorted business verticals and all have their own goals and key objectives. As a TAM, it is my responsibility to make sure each of them is utilizing Airship’s tools to the fullest and make sure they are set up for success. What makes this amazing is that it continues to teach me how to be flexible and think outside the box.

Who Would Play You in a Movie About Your Life?

Adam Driver or Jeff Goldblum. I’m sometimes hard to read but can also be a colorful peacock at times. Adam’s dry demeanor and Jeff’s wild persona both convey those perfectly.

Have questions for Sean? You can reach him on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Live The #Airshiplife

Learn more about Airship and what it’s like to work with our team.

Check out our career page!

The post Meet Sean Haines – Senior Technical Account Manager, Slack Bot & Giphy Creative Extraordinaire appeared first on Airship.

Bonjour! (that is the result of 6 years of French classes) My name is Morgan Richey and I am an Account Manager specializing in the Media, Entertainment and Sports industries. I started with Airship as a Sales Development Representative in October 2018. I live in San Francisco with my long time partner and my french bulldog, Boujee. If I’m not at my desk on Zoom calls, I am binge watching prison shows, riding my Harley or drinking an ice cold beer at sunny Fort Mason. 

What Is the Best Part About Working at Airship?

I’m not one for smushy questions like these, but I can honestly say the best part about working at Airship is the people- both the Airship staff and our customers. Airship is really good at finding people that are a culture add, not a culture fit. This has created a diverse and interesting group of people who share similar goals. Similarly to our customers, I enjoy getting to be a part of their teams and contributing to their new and exciting use cases. 

What Are You Passionate About?

This is actually something I have been focusing on since the start of COVID. Before lockdown I lacked passion in my daily life. After a lot of self-reflection, I learned I am passionate about a lot of things, but they all share one common trait: I am passionate about doing the best at everything I try and helping others do the same. Whether I am swimming laps, talking to my customers or teaching my partner how to do a half double crochet stitch, I am passionate about being and creating the best possible version of myself and others. 

As the famous philosopher Ron Swanson once said, “Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.”

What Are You Learning as an Account Manager?

A LOT! I love being challenged and being an Account Manager has challenged me in so many unanticipated ways. My teammates and customers alike have taught me more than just creating a good mobile strategy, like how to be a better communicator and creating actionable goals. I am also learning a lot about how to work from home effectively. This was something I struggled with, but I have learned how to be more efficient regardless of the work-from-home distractions (as we speak my dog just knocked over her water bowl).

What Are Some Tips for Brands to Get the Most Out of Airship?

The best way for brands to get the most out of Airship is to familiarize themselves with our documentation on our Docs Page and to use the platform for more than just a way to send simple push notifications. Airship has grown with and led the mobile industry since we started in 2009. Although you can use the platform to simply send push notifications, our most successful customers treat Airship as an integral part of their overall mobile engagement strategy and view their Account Manager as a consultant and extension of their team. This looks different for every company, but it could mean taking advantage of our partner integrations, using data from Performance Analytics to make better decisions, orchestrating your web and app channels to create a cohesive user experience, or simply creating an onboarding journey.   

What Did You Want to be When You Were a Child?

My entire life I have wanted to be the same thing: Queen of the World. When my kindergarten teacher asked us to draw what we wanted to be, I drew a picture of me sitting on a throne on top of the planet with a big sparkly crown. My first decree as Queen of the World? Give every shelter dog a loving home and outlaw wearing Crocs in public. My second decree will have something to do with making trips to the DMV more enjoyable. 

Have questions for Morgan? You can reach her on LinkedIn.

Live the #AirshipLife

Learn more about Airship and what it’s like to work with our team.

Check out our career page!

The post Meet Morgan Richey – Account Manager and Aspiring Monarch appeared first on Airship.

Bonjour! I’m Sofia, Technical Support Manager in EMEA at Airship. I’m based in Paris, France and I’ve been working for 6 years in the Support department, making sure our customers have the best experience possible at Accengage and now at Airship. When I’m not helping our customers, I visit Paris again and again, I travel the world (before Covid for sure…), I learn how to cook and I work out in the morning!

What Is the Best Part of Working at Airship?

The first thing that comes to my mind is my team! From my manager, to the team I manage and our brother/sister Support team is the US, it is a day-to-day pleasure to work with any of them. They are all so invested in their work, always do their best to provide the best customer experience at Airship. However much we can, we are always available to help each other, to learn new Airship technologies, to create new processes or improve the current one. I wish any employee in any company could enjoy working with their colleagues as much as I do. 

What Are You Passionate About?

Without surprise for my colleagues, I’d say the Customer Experience! Making a customer happy in the long term is not an easy mission, especially when you work for a technical company. Our technology is excellent and answers business needs. However, as with any technical tool, some complex situations may happen. My personal goal is to hear a customer say: “Oh, do you remember this unexpected behavior? The way that Airship managed it amazed me!” 

How Have You Adapted to Working-from-Home and the Lockdowns? 

I would not be honest if I said: Oh, it was super easy for me to work-for-home. I’m a very active person, never at home and always meeting my family and friends. However, I found some ways to adapt my work: I created a “working place” in my living room and we have some relaxing time with the team to play games all together (GeoGuessr is a cool one, but Gartic Phone is my favorite one!). Some of the team members also started earlier to have time to go to the grocery or do some exercises before the lockdowns (In Paris). I’m also allowed to go back to our office (in accordance to the French government) some days per week, which is very appreciated! 

What Is Something You have Learned the Past Year? 

Taking care of myself and my loved ones! This last year was not easy, we lost lots of the connections we usually had. We did not meet as often as we did, we did not celebrate lovely events (like birthdays, weddings, etc). Some people were very isolated and are still affected by this unique situation we are facing. Take this as an opportunity to take time for yourself, by learning how to cook your favorite dessert and to ask your family and friends how they feel!

What Is the Best Meal You Can Cook?

I’m not a great cook, but I’m very proud of my Tiramisu !! For the ones who don’t know, it is a delicious Italian dessert. I’m crazy for Italian food and about Italy in general. When I went to Roma 3 years ago, I spent my trip eating pizza, pasta, risotto, ice-cream and… tiramisu for sure. I assume my friends like it as well, as they ask me to cook it for any dinner we do together! 

Have questions for Sofia? You can reach her on LinkedIn.

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Learn more about Airship and what it’s like to work with our team.

Check out our career page!

The post Meet Sofia Arar – Tech Support Manager EMEA and Customer Happiness Provider appeared first on Airship.

But acquiring, engaging, and retaining users is more difficult than ever. People can watch games on plenty of other platforms and need to feel value for following the Tournament after their team loses.  

The team at Turner Sports uses data to create an experience that keeps users coming back for more. Christy Edward, Senior Technical Product Manager, and Caitlin Strober, Product Manager, sat down with us at our recent Elevate event to reveal insights to their approach. Here’s how they do it.

Testing and Creating a New Alert Type 

The team at Turner Sports puts data before anything else. They use Airship’s platform to A/B test different types of messaging and notifications, analyze that data and go full-force into the tactics that are working.

How they do it in the MM Live app: Turner Sports knows that people like close games. So, instead of simply sending notifications at traditional landmarks in the game (the beginning, the start of the second half, the final few minutes), Turner Sports built a system to determine close games and upsets. Once determined, the team sends out Excitement Alerts to users so that they can tune in and catch critical moments in games based on the action taking place on the court.

These Excitement Alerts were, and still are, the most popular notification type, because they tap into the exact reason fans love sports: the drama and thrill of it all.

Further Personalizing the Messaging Experience

Turner Sports doesn’t stop at Excitement Alerts. They use two other types of notifications: 

• Bracket Challenge notifications. The March Madness bracket pool is a time-honored tradition. In 2019, nearly 50 million Americans wagered an estimated $8.5 billion on the tournament, according to the American Gaming Association. For those people who create brackets and submit them to the NCAA March Madness Live – there’s a deeper level of investment and interest in the Tournament. To capitalize, Turner Sports created personalized Bracket Challenge notifications giving fans important updates about their bracket and reason to return to the app, check their status along with that of others in the pool.
• Top News notifications. Every year, exciting storylines emerge from March Madness. Sometimes it’s a Cinderella team. Sometimes it’s an incredible player. In the 2019 tournament, it was Tacko Fall, Zion, and the redemption of the Virginia Cavaliers. The Turner Sports  editorial team created story-based notifications, which performed very well — about 5% of users opened those notifications.

By personalizing the messaging experience, Turner Sports gives fans a reason to come back to the app. And, useful notifications mean users are less likely to delete the app and look elsewhere for their streaming.

What’s Next?

Every time March Madness rolls around, there are more platforms and more challenges. So between tournaments, Turner Sports is committed to making sure their app offers the best experience possible. Here’s a look at what they implemented for the 2021 tournament: 

• A data-backed redesign. A redesign of the app encouraged users to explore more content. This included new content, outside of the livestreams themselves.
• More personalization interactivity. Turner Sports continues to add interactive, personalized experiences to keep users happy.
• A catch-up feature. Jumping into a game halfway can be a jarring experience. To solve this issue and encourage viewers to join at any time, Turner Sports built a catch-up feature that gave an overview of the game.

The Bottom Line

Turner Sports isn’t taking shots in the dark with their approach to notifications. Instead of blasting all sorts of notifications to their customers and seeing what sticks, Turner Sports  reverse engineers the approach to figure out what fans truly want to see.

Turner Sports uses Airship’s platform to test, analyze data, and send their notifications to deliver a better customer experience. To learn more about how Airship can do the same for your brand, click the button below and get in touch.

Let’s Connect

We can help you deliver a better customer experience on mobile

Contact us today!

The post Turner Sports’ Winning Strategies for Engaging & Retaining App Users appeared first on Airship.

We sat down with Scott Dargis, NBC Sports’ Manager of Mobile Notifications, at our Elevate event. He revealed how NBC Sports has been able to keep people engaged during a wild year. 

Here are three lessons from NBC Sports’ strategy.

Test Your Notifications as Much as Possible

When you send notifications, you want them to feel organic. Importantly, you don’t want users to feel like something’s being pushed on them. To find a healthy balance between the two, NBC Sports A/B tested a wide variety of notifications. 

The result: NBC found that “tease” type notifications—messages that provide users with a nugget of the content within, but not the whole story—performed the best. These cliffhanger-style notifications have helped NBC Sports keep their direct open rates strong.

In testing, the NBC team found that notifications with emojis in the subject line outperformed those without. One or two emojis was the sweet spot for engagement. Icons, graphics, and other rich notification elements encouraged better engagement as well.

NBC Sports also gave their writers more control over the voice and tone of messages, particularly for individual team content. Personalizing team content in this way helps NBC Sports keep their notifications relevant and relatable.

Insight: Experiment with notification approaches and understand that your users want to see something interesting. Personalize whenever you can, and always give users a reason to engage.

Reconsider How Many Notifications You’re Sending

If people feel bombarded with notifications that they don’t find interesting, they’ll tune out. NBC Sports realized this when the pandemic hit. Because live sports were mostly shut down, their volume of notifications decreased — and so did their app uninstalls and opt-outs.

Now, NBC Sports uses a careful, analytics-backed approach to notifications. They segment their users with lists and groupings according to league divisions, common fanbases, and more. This way, NBC is able to send fewer notifications —and the ones that they do send feel more personal.

Insight: Focus on what you’re sending, not how many notifications you’re sending. If you can find a way to send fewer notifications and accomplish the same goals, do that.

Timing Is Important 

NBC Sports learned that when they send their notifications can be nearly as important as what they’re sending. People want to receive notifications at times when they’re interested in interacting with that content. NBC found that, for their app, lunch and dinner times (early afternoon and mid-evening) worked best.

It makes sense: People want to watch sports when they’ve got free time. As sports fans are scrolling through their phone at lunch or after dinner, they’re often looking for something to watch. NBC Sports capitalizes on this by sending timely messages during the periods when their users are most active.

Insight: Look at the analytics and figure out when your users want to receive notifications. Try to send your important notifications during that time frame.

The Bottom Line

2020 forced NBC Sports to reevaluate their strategy. They’ve emerged on the other side with an even more effective framework for sending customers notifications that they truly want to see. If you want to learn more about how Airship’s Push Notification platform can help your business, click the button below to get in touch. 

Let’s connect

Airship’s platform can help with customer retention.

Contact us today!

The post 3 Lessons from NBC Sports’ Mobile Retention Strategy appeared first on Airship.

Belk has primarily used three strategies to reimagine their mobile experience: behavioral targeting, loyalty program personalization, and an in-app message center. Here’s how they executed each.

Behavioral Targeting

Belk realized that sending one-size-fits-all notifications wasn’t working. Customers who shop for men’s clothing don’t want notifications about dresses and people buying fragrances don’t want notifications about boots. So, Belk switched to a behavioral targeting strategy. 

The premise is simple: Serve customers notifications that fit their shopping preferences. If they spend lots of time browsing a beauty page, they might get an in-app notification offering a fragrance promotion. This strategy helps customers feel like their app experience is tailored to them–which, in turn, can boost conversion and average order value (AOV).

Insight: Generic notifications can create a bad experience for the customer. Use straightforward behavioral targeting to boost conversion rate and make your customers feel more at home.

Loyalty Program Personalization

Belk doesn’t stop with straightforward behavioral targeting. They also have a credit card-based loyalty program, which they use to tailor notifications to individual customers. 

Here’s how it works: Belk has three different credit card loyalty tiers. As customers progress up each tier, the incentives improve and points accumulate faster. By doing this, Belk encourages customers to get increasingly involved with their rewards program. This is how Belk approaches loyalty-based notifications:

• Credit card holders and loyalty customers get personalized push notifications. These will remind customers that they have points to redeem and rewards to claim.
• These push notifications are automated. At first, Belk did things manually. But, using Airship’s attributes system, they automated the process.
• These notifications are segmented as much as possible. By hyper-targeting users, Belk was able to increase total opens by 48%.

Insight: Better segmentation, whether in-app or via push notifications, leads to more opens and more sales. Try incentivizing your customers with tiered rewards programs or targeted promos.

In-App Message Center

Belk’s new in-app message center has been invaluable. It reaches customers who haven’t opted into push notifications, and can boost overall engagement and conversions. In-app message centers are flexible, too: Belk is able to show multiple product categories within one message, complete with a “See All” button to encourage customers to explore the app.

Like with the loyalty program, using attributes has been a key to Belk’s success. Notifications with an attribute tag saw a 123% increase in direct response rate. It’s a good example of a strong channel–an in-app message center– coupled with quality targeting methods–Airship’s attributes functionality).

Insight: Get creative with how you reach customers. A message center works for Belk in part because they can reach customers who aren’t opted in with push notifications. And don’t take your message center for granted–optimize with personalization and segmentation to increase response rate.

What’s Next?

Despite seeing some impressive gains, Belk isn’t done optimizing the customer experience. In the future, Belk plans to:

• Improve rewards notifications. Belk will let customers know when promos are expiring, how close they are to reaching their next reward, and more.
• Focus on CRO messaging. Abandoned cart notifications are an area that Belk plans to expand upon in the future.

The Bottom Line

A good, mobile-centric strategy will look different for every brand. Belk’s Katie Kazukynas recommends first focusing on the most impactful changes for your customers. And remember, you don’t need to do everything at once: Belk had generic messaging to start, but it was a springboard for the successful campaigns that followed.

Belk uses Airship’s mobile platform to execute their strategies. If you’d like to chat about how Airship can help your brand, hit the button below.

Let’s connect

We can help with your mobile app strategy.

Contact us today!

The post 3 Strategies Retailer Belk Used to Improve Their Mobile Experience appeared first on Airship.

Laura Whitworth, Sonos’ Senior Director of Global DTC, and Rachel Dudley, Director of Global CRM, shared the strategies and insights that they’re using to drive customer engagement at Airship’s latest Elevate event. Let’s break them down.

Focus Effort on Channels That Work

Sonos is unique: They favor in-app messaging over push notifications and SMS.

Because their app is a necessary part of the customer experience, Sonos doesn’t waste energy trying to reach customers where they’re not. Instead, they focus on the channel where they know they’ll be able to deliver a quality experience for customers.

And Sonos isn’t flying blind: Since the pandemic, they’ve improved their segmentation of users. Much of this process can be automated, which saves both time and money. Segmenting and thoroughly researching their customers allows Sonos to more effectively run in-app messaging campaigns.

Insight: Don’t get caught trying to exhaust every channel. Find what works for your brand, and hone your effort there. Utilize segmentation as best you can.

Put the Customer Experience First

It’s tempting to use in-app messaging like email campaigns, with endless promos and aggressive sales. But, Sonos’ Rachel Dudley cautions against this. Your app is one of the most personal ways to reach customers. Drowning them with promotions can backfire, and might leave your customers feeling frustrated with the experience.

Staying focused on customer experience isn’t always as easy as it sounds. This is especially true when you’ve got multiple teams, each with different goals, trying to work together. Sonos saw big improvements by dedicating a team to managing digital presence on apps. 

Insight: In-app messaging (and, to an extent, SMS) is more intimate than a channel like email. Focus on the customer experience above all else – and be gentle, not aggressive.

Encourage Teams to Collaborate on Strategy

The digital team at Sonos collaborates with their product team on strategy. They come up with a joint roadmap and shared KPIs, so that everyone is in alignment with goals. By doing this, teams have more clarity on strategy – and can surface new insights for in-app messaging.

Different teams will have different goals. Collaborating and aligning can surface new ideas for growth. It’s been a win-win for Sonos.

Insight: Don’t create your messaging strategy in a silo. Collaborate with other teams to define joint KPIs. What goals do you want to hit, and how can you work together to get there?

About Airship’s In-App Messaging Solution

Sonos works their magic with Airship’s in-app messaging solution. It’s built to help your brand send the right messages to the right people. Click the blue button below to contact us today.

Let’s connect

We can help with your in-app messaging strategy.

Contact us today!

The post How Sonos Uses In-App Messaging to Personalize the Customer Experience appeared first on Airship.

Hi, I’m Laura and I have been managing Sales for the EMEA region and represent the company at regional events. I work out of our German office in Munich, where I moved 4 years ago to be closer to my happy place: the mountains. I’ve lived and worked in 6 European cities and speak 5 languages, which makes me feel more like a European than belonging to one single country.

What Do You Enjoy Most About Working at Airship?

I am happy to go to work every day because of the people I work with. Everybody here is extremely dedicated to doing a good job beyond their own field of tasks and the team spirit is very strong. I think that’s what our clients feel, too, when working with us. When I am selling the Airship platform to prospective clients I can do that with the utmost confidence, because we are simply that good. I don’t have to embellish anything. We deliver on our promises and that’s a great thing for a salesperson to have in their hands.

What Are You Passionate About?

There are many things that I am passionate about. One thing that I really care about is gender equality. I am involved in different women’s networks in Germany to make our economy more female. As women, I believe, we need to have more tribes and groups to support each other. At Airship I feel much supported as a woman. We generally have a diverse workforce with co-workers from all backgrounds and cultures and many women in rather traditionally masculine roles.

What are the Differences Between the EMEA and US Markets?

Generally, the US tends to be quicker in trying out new things and therefore oftentimes imore open for innovation than companies in “good old Europe.” Also, the way of doing business is much more straightforward. While in Europe companies tend to take more time to make a decision on buying a new solution, their US peers are quicker to decide on a tool and simply try it out. Another difference is certainly the sheer size of the companies and their audiences. Some customers we have in the US have more users than Germany has citizens. 

What Brand Do You Think Does Customer Engagement Really Well?

I personally love a good news app that I can rely on to get the latest information on current topics throughout the day. I don’t listen to the radio because I am on calls most of the time so my first news source is my phone which I have on my desk next to me. T-online is my favourite news app – they really are the fastest to send out breaking news and I am able to set my preferences and be informed of topics I care most about. 

What Is Your Favorite Smell?

I absolutely love the smell of fresh wood in the pure mountain air. It’s just the best smell in the world to me and gives me a very special feeling of closeness to nature. 

Have questions for Laura? You can reach her on LinkedIn.

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Learn more about Airship and what it’s like to work with our team.

Check out our career page!

The post Meet Laura Schwarz – Director of Sales EMEA and Mountain-Lover appeared first on Airship.

Hello! My name is Anthony and I’m a director of Engineering at Airship. I am the youngest of three boys in a proud Italian-American family and parents were from the same area of Palermo Sicily before they moved to New York. As a child, I was captivated by 80’s video games, pop culture and movies and was frequently glued to my computer and TV. I came to Airship from ReplyBuy where I was a cofounder, CTO and a developer. At Airship, I’ve been playing a dual role of engineering and product, which I am used to from building multiple companies. I’m excited to have this opportunity to combine our products with Airship.

What Do You Like About Working at Airship?

Since joining the Airship family via ReplyBuy’s acquisition in September, I’ve observed that Airship is a great company with great products. It’s the culmination of years of relentless hard work, strong customer relationships and devotion to quality and innovation – all of which are values I strive for. I’ve been impressed by the talent and commitment of my colleagues. I’ve also been consistently welcomed and offered a platform to share my ideas, especially by Airship’s executive team. I really enjoy turning ideas into products that impact the world, and this is a great place to do that.

What Are You Passionate About?

I love traveling, especially to other countries with beaches and mountains, and great places to eat. I’ve been fortunate to be able to visit parts of Mexico, the Caribbean, Spain, South Africa and, of course, Italy. We’ve been to Sicily a few times, and that is by far my favorite place to visit because of the gorgeous beaches and mountains, along with the best food I’ve ever eaten. The culture is an amazing blend of Italian, Greek, Arabic and African. I married my wife Sally in 2012 in beautiful Taormina, Sicily. I’ve also been very much into snowboarding big mountains since I was a kid, which is one of the reasons I prefer living in western USA. 

What Has Been the Biggest Change Since the ReplyBuy Acquisition?

The feeling that we have a much larger opportunity in front of us than we did before, to grow into other markets beyond sports and higher education. This means there are way more conversations to be had, with more stakeholders, and many more Zoom calls. My impression of what it would be like to work at a much larger company again has also changed. I had before earlier in my career, and was afraid to return to the same routine corporate life. That hasn’t been the case at all. The experience of working at Airship has been like working for a startup, just a much larger one, which I enjoy. 

What Does a Great Customer Experience Look Like to You?

One that leaves customers impressed and eager to spread the word. There’s no perfect experience, and you can expect an occasional bump in the road. It’s how you respond in those situations that is key to building a lasting relationship. Most bad experiences should be viewed as opportunities to turn a negative into a positive, provide dedicated customer service and turn customers into raving fans. I also believe in the importance of good design and usability, providing an intuitive experience that leads to increased in usage and improved ROI for the customer.

If There Was a Movie About Your Life, Who Would Play Your Character?

Probably Nicholas Cage. He’s such an iconic character and people tell me all the time that I look like him. I get Adrian Brodie a lot too!

Have questions for Anthony? You can reach him on LinkedIn, Twitter or email him here.

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The post Meet Anthony Saia – Director of Engineering, Life-Long Technologist and Social Butterfly appeared first on Airship.