Augmented reality, features to monitor and improve user’s digital consumption habits and Siri Shortcuts were a few of the big takeaways of the day, but there were plenty of other great additions to Apple’s software suite. In this blog post, we’ll recap some highlights as well as features we’re most excited to see and what they mean for digital marketers.

Stick with us to the end and you’ll learn of something experienced by attendees but not discussed in the keynote — and it may unlock many new possibilities across a variety of industry verticals.

Apps Remain Popular

With the App Store’s 10th anniversary next month, Cook shared that there are more than 20 million Apple developers around the world — spanning 77 countries — and that they will have collectively earned $100 billion from the App Store as of this week. It’s clear apps play a huge role in consumers’ lives with the App Store seeing more than 500 million unique visitors every week.

Additionally, the App Store for Mac is getting a fresh design with Mojave. Many iOS apps like Stocks, Apple News, Voice Memos and Home will make their way to the App Store for Mac, with Apple noting iOS developers can do the same (with minimal code changes required) in 2019 with UIKit.

AR & Usdz Are Transforming Technology

Augmented reality (AR) continues to become more sophisticated and accessible to a broader range of partners, promising to bring new experiences to our everyday lives.

Apple has partnered with Pixar to create usdz (Universal Scene Description): a compact and open single file format optimized for sharing 3D graphics and animations across systems like Safari, Mail and iMessages — all while allowing digital objects to be placed into the real world.

For example, Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering at Apple, used the usdz format on the Fender website to choose a guitar and place it on a physical table via AR to see what it looks like in the real world. Adobe Creative Cloud’s support for usdz will help speed up the development of new AR content with familiar content creator apps like Photoshop and Dimension CC.

Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering at Apple projecting a Fender guitar on to the table using AR. 

ARKit 2 opens up a new world of AR possibilities with face tracking, 3D object detection, persistent experiences and even shared experiences where multiple users can play together.

Core to all of this is accurate measurement, and consumers will be able to use the new Measure app to determine the measurements of real-world objects.

Shortcuts Put Siri to Work For You

With more than 10 billion requests every month, Apple is working to enable Siri to make consumers’ lives simpler with more proactive suggestions (like calling your grandma on her birthday), while also extending Siri Shortcuts to any app.

Siri Shortcuts allow Apple users to set up multi-step processes that can be triggered by telling Siri their own personalized phrase. For example, if you use Tile to locate your lost keys, you can set up a shortcut that’s launched by telling Siri “I lost my keys” which will pull up the Tile app and ping your keys.

Or, you can set up something more complex, such as a “heading home” command that will share your ETA with a specified person, share the best route via Apple Maps, start your favorite podcast and control home automation for your arrival. These shortcuts can also be enabled on the HomePod as well as Watch for a streamlined, multi-device experiences.

Customers Can Understand & Control Their Digital Consumption

A number of the key features coming to iOS 12 aim at helping users better understand their digital consumption habits, limit distractions and evaluate how they’re spending their time.

Do Not Disturb has been upgraded to make bedtime more restful by eliminating notifications from the home screen and turning dark to only reflect the time. Users can then decide when to turn this off and see what they missed overnight in the morning. Do Not Disturb has also been updated with additional options, such as setting it to expire after leaving a certain location, or ending it after a certain time period for distraction-free activities or meetings.

With iOS 12, Apple is also giving users more control over their notifications. Instant tuning from the lock screen lets users set an app’s notifications so they only appear in the Notification Center and not on the lock screen, or even turn them off altogether. It will also auto suggest notifications to turn off based on apps a consumer has not used.

Another addition is grouped notifications, which provide lists of messages received from a particular app. Now, users can get more information at a glance and manage multiple notifications at once.

A new Screen Time feature provides a weekly activity report detailing a user’s device and app usage, including a summary of the time spent in apps and when during the day, as well as a count of notifications sent by apps. This feature puts consumers even more in control of their consumption habits. While these updates provide great insight for consumers, they hold a big implication when it comes to app marketers — notifications must be more relevant and add more value than ever, or they risk opt-outs and app deletions.

App limits will also be added to help users take charge of their app usage, with Apple providing reminders when a user is close (or has hit) their self-selected limits. Similarly, Screen Time helps families achieve the right balance as kids will get activity reports, with parents receiving them too. Parents can decide “allowances,” or time allocated by app or category, and even mandate when they must unplug all together.

WatchOS 5 Adding More Interactive Options

Apple Watch continues to gain traction among consumers, growing 60% in the last year. Like iOS, watchOS 5 will be upgraded to help user stay more active and connected. Users can now challenge others to some friendly competition, complete with awards for the winner.

New workouts for yoga, hiking and additional running features are also to come along, each tuned to precisely measure each particular activity. Automatic workout detection senses when a user may have begun a workout but forgotten to start it on their Watch, with retroactive credit for their activity. The same goes for detecting when it seems like you’ve finished an activity but forgotten to end your workout to keep their time and calorie count as accurate as possible.

Kevin Lynch, vice president of technology at Apple, shares the types of interactive notifications on Apple Watch that can simplify a user’s life. 

Interactive notifications make their way to the Watch, making for a more rich user experience. Now, users can check in for their flight and share details right from their Watch, extend a Yelp reservation, or pay with Apple Pay right from inside a notification, allowing for brands to make content more actionable outside of the app. Web content will also viewable from the Watch, optimized for the smaller screen and using Reader mode when available.

Want to learn more about rich, interactive notifications? Check out our FAQ and see answers to top questions as well as results using this style of push notification.

Other Watch additions include Apple Podcasts app, a Walkie Talkie feature and adding student ID cards to Apple Wallet and Apple Watch (this will launch in a select number of colleges in the fall, with more rolling out in time).

And One More Thing…

While it wasn’t mentioned during the keynote, WWDC attendees were able to use Apple Wallet passes with NFC and Touch ID or Face ID to quickly zoom through registration. While NFC isn’t entirely new to Apple with support for loyalty auto enrollment for example, it appears Apple is opening up NFC access for additional functionality like opening car doors or a dorm room. Future applications may offer the ability to deliver tailored content based on people’s interactions in the real world — all without an app. This would certainly help drive greater mobile wallet adoption as brands look for more ways to connect with customers.

The post WWDC 2018 Recap: Highlights, New Features & More appeared first on Airship.

In this post, we share answers to some of the top questions mobile marketers ask about leveraging rich push notifications.

What are rich notifications?

Rich notifications are essentially push notifications that support photos, videos, gifs and even audio. They can also include interactive buttons that link to content inside or outside of your app.

Rich push notifications are notifications sent with images or other rich media like movies, GIFs or sound.

What are the differences between rich notifications in iOS and Android?

As is the case with push notifications, there are a few platform-specific differences when using rich notifications.

At this time, Android only allows images. With the release of iOS 10, Apple began allowing notifications with images and other media like GIFs, video and sound — and allows image cropping for thumbnails.

Rich notifications in iOS also allow you to provide alternative text. That means that users who cannot receive rich push notifications will receive a message that does not reference the rich media (i.e. “Check out our sale on patio furniture!”) while those who can receive rich media will get a message that does reference it (“Check out the patio table you see here!”).

Examples of a rich notifications on Android and iOS. For more images and inspiration, get your complimentary copy of our Rich Notifications Inspiration Guide.

What media types can I send in rich notifications?

Each platform supports different types of media:

iOS
– Image (JPEG, GIF, PNG)
– Audio (AIFF, WAV, MP3, M4A)
– Video (MPEG, MPEG2, MP4, AVI)

Android
– Image (JPEG, PNG)

What’s the optimal file size for the media I send in a rich push notification?

The theoretical maximum file sizes are 5MB for images, 10MB for audio and 50MB for video. We recommend clients plan conservatively. We also offer our clients the option to use a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure rich media gets to customers quickly and reliably. Learn more about how a content delivery network can improve your rich notifications in this blog post.

How much of a boost in response rates can I expect if I use rich push notifications?

Our data study revealed that rich notifications with images have a 56% higher direct open rate on average than notifications without images. We’ve seen rich notifications from brands like USA Today, NCAA and Dinda generate higher performance over their regular push notifications.

Check out our webinar with POSSIBLE Mobile’s Jeff Hasen, “A Rich Notification is Worth 1,000 Words” and learn the nuts and bolts of sending rich notifications, as well as basic and advanced use cases from top brands who are sending, optimizing and automating rich push. Get the recording here.

How should I handle the possibility that a user won’t be able to see the image in a rich notification?

Good user experience is at the core of successful mobile messaging strategy. If a user can’t understand your message because they can’t see the related image, that’s a bad user experience.

This could happen for a few reasons. Maybe a user hasn’t downloaded the latest version of your app. Maybe they’re using an old OS. Or maybe they had a network connectivity drop, or a server was busy, so the image didn’t download.

Whatever the reason, bake in a strategy to make sure your users can understand your message — whether or not they can see the related image. Here are a few tips:

• Craft your messages carefully: Write your notification in a way that doesn’t reference the media you’re sending so that it will still work even if the media download fails. For example, “Breaking News: Michael Phelps wins 23rd Gold Medal” may be a better choice than “Michael Phelps wins 23rd Gold Medal. Re-watch the moment: [with GIF].”

• Segment your users: Use our out-of-the-box segmentation to target only users most likely to be able to receive rich notifications — for example, those with the latest version of your app.

• Use alternate text: Take advantage of the safety net of alternate text. Provide two options for text: one option that gets displayed when the image downloads successfully, and the other to preserve readability when it doesn’t.  

And rest assured, that when all else fails, iOS 10 has a built-in backup plan when images fail to download.

Once iOS receives a rich notification, it gives the app 10 seconds to download the image. If download fails for any reason (e.g. server is busy, network connectivity drops, etc. it simply doesn’t display the image) the text of your message will still come across, loud and clear.

Image rich notifications aren’t just for push. You can also use imagery in smart ways inside your app with in-app messaging. These types of messages show up when a user is already in your app and can include images, buttons and more. Learn more about in-app automation and see use cases in our Playbook.

What mobile analytics can Airship collect from rich notifications?

We can measure user behaviors within a rich notification, such as:

• Direct and influenced opens

• Message response: did they interact with any part of the notification?

• Button/Interactive button response: if you include an interactive button pair we can track which button a user clicked

Each of these responses can be tagged to trigger conditional follow-on messaging to create more personalized, targeted messaging.

Ready to get started using rich notifications?

To deploy rich notifications on Airship’s platforms, for Android you’ll need SDK 5.1.0+ and iOS 10 requires SDK iOS 8.0+.

Have more questions about rich notifications? Get in touch any time.

Download our Rich Notifications Inspiration Guide today to:
– See use cases for rich notifications that drive increased customer engagement
– Get the stats from our research on rich media’s impact on push notification open rates
– Get ideas you can put to work for your brand today!

Get your copy >>

The post Rich Push Notifications: Mobile Marketers’ FAQs appeared first on Airship.

To drive growth, marketers need to foster deeper relationships with customers and grow brand engagement. And to do so, better customer intelligence is needed to understand, predict and more quickly take action on customer journeys across any digital property or marketing channel.

But what metrics or reports do you need to see those impacts? We’ve created lots of pre-built reports in our data and analytics solution to help the world’s leading brands get more out of their reporting.

We’ve covered how to prioritize your spend and identify your best app acquisition sources, track your onboarding programs as well as understand your app conversion efforts and monitor your retention.

Inevitably, some of your app users may become inactive and visit your app less frequently. This can be combated with smart re-engagement efforts to kickstart and revitalize these users. In our final post from our predictive lifecycle marketing reports, we share two reports that can help you see who is more likely to re-engage and the types of messaging that may be more impactful.

Top Messages Before Uninstall Report

Get ahead of a common concern many mobile marketers face and dig into uninstall and opt-out rates for each message. Discover the messages and message types that lead users to uninstall — or opt out of notifications — above average churn/ uninstall rates.

Key questions this report can answer:

• Are there specific messages or message types that drive uninstalls higher than average?

• Is there a pattern of messaging that is particularly ineffective at retaining users?

Resulting Actions:

• Explore the activities that led to the uninstall/opt-out and experiment with different actions to engage similar users.

• Conclude detrimental messaging or message types based on report context to improve churn/uninstall rates.

Understand which messages specifically have an adverse impact on retention and make adjustments.

Uninstall Users Lifetime Metrics Report

Deep-dive into your uninstall traffic to identify user populations with a higher likelihood of re-engaging than others. This report provides a rich set of information post-uninstall, such as level of engagement, message volume, opens, in-app behaviors, conversions and LTV.

Key questions this report can answer:

• What is my 30/90/365 day retention rate?

• How does message frequency impact user retention?

Resulting Actions:

• Increase or decrease messaging to improve net retention based on known results.

• Benchmark net user retention and experiment with different types of messaging to increase engagement and reduce churn.

Drill down into uninstall metrics to identify patterns by taking different cuts at the data based on length of time of type of activity.

Interested in reports that support your campaign efforts and business goals throughout the customer lifecycle? Our 11 Must-Have Predictive Lifecycle Marketing Reports eBook shares additional predictive lifecycle marketing reports we recommend you start tracking to drive better decisions at key stages of the customer journey — including acquisition, onboarding, conversion, retention and re-engagement. To stay up to date on all things digital engagement, subscribe to our blog — we share a weekly digest so you don’t miss a thing.

Want to see all of the reports we’ve covered in this series? Download our eBook 11 Must-Have Predictive Lifecycle Marketing Reports.

The post Two App Analytics Reports You Should Use to Help With App Re-Engagement appeared first on Airship.

To drive growth, marketers need to foster deeper relationships with customers and grow brand engagement. And, to do so, better customer intelligence is needed to understand, predict and more quickly take action on customer journeys across any digital property or marketing channel.

But what metrics or reports do you need to see those impacts? We’ve created lots of pre-built reports in our data and analytics solution to help the world’s leading brands get more out of their reporting.

We’ve covered how to prioritize your spend and identify your best app acquisition sources and track your onboarding efforts. But some of the most important performance metrics to track relate to conversion. 

In this post, we share three reports that can help you better evaluate your app conversion efforts and analyze your campaign efforts. 

Funnel Report

Funnel reporting is an important view into any app or website’s performance. In addition to determining your conversion rate, it can be a rich source of high-intent users who didn’t quite make it “over the hump” to convert. Drilling down into user-level activity shows steps prior to conversion to identify where users are dropping off and, more importantly, allow you to reach them in retargeting efforts, capturing lost revenue visitors with high-intent to buy.

Key questions this report can answer:

• Which buyers are most likely to purchase but haven’t yet?

• Which buyers showed interest in a specific offer or product but haven’t purchased?

• Where am I losing visitors in my conversion funnel?

Resulting Actions:

• Identify high-intent users for retargeting and run campaigns to bring them back.

• Determine which step(s) in your conversion process to optimize, allowing you to focus on high-value tasks.

• Experiment with creating different types of offers to move users toward conversion.

Identify and retarget users who abandoned their shopping carts, easily pulling the list to reach them from the report.

Footfall Traffic Report

Our Footfall Traffic Report correlates analytics between messages sent and geofence/beacon location data so you can see how effective your notifications are at creating footfall traffic in key stores and locations. Easily measure the impact a notification has on that traffic within the last hour and offline behavior. You can also determine how long your users are spending in a location like a storefront or aisle to measure in-store engagement.

Key questions this report can answer:

• Is my digital messaging driving in-store footfall?

• Which stores and departments are my customers visiting? At what times of the year?

• How are certain types of messaging impacting individual store or department traffic?

Resulting Actions:

Utilize correlated messaging and footfall data to increase urgency with holiday promotions.

• Experiment with messaging campaigns to drive traffic at locations similar to those that have achieved increased traffic due to notifications.

• Put additional successful messaging campaigns in place to drive foot traffic, especially in higher yield departments.

Easily show the correlation between notifications sent and footfall traffic at target locations using this report.

Campaign Drill Down Report

Get a telescopic view into campaign performance for precise reporting. Most campaign reporting solutions provide one or two dimensions of detail, like campaign name and channel. The Campaign Drill Down Report allows you to define up to 10 dimensional attributes like campaign type, channel, content type, promotion, offer, etc. that are most critical to your business. Measure and evaluate app, website, email and SMS campaign performance by the view that matters most to you.

Key questions this report can answer:

• Which campaigns are driving the highest customer engagement and conversion?

• Which channels or offers within a campaign are performing?

• Are certain types of campaigns, products or offers more suited for a particular channel than another?

Resulting Actions:

• Run more of the campaigns performing best and less of those that are not performing.

• Make adjustments to tactics (promotional messaging in particular) to increase engagement.

• Adjust your mix of channels, campaign types and offers to maximize for conversion or LTV.

Add filters to campaign reports to demonstrate the impact of various campaigns or offers.

Interested in reports beyond that help you beyond tracking and monitoring your conversion efforts? Our 11 Must-Have Predictive Lifecycle Marketing Reports eBook shares additional predictive lifecycle marketing reports we recommend you start tracking to drive better decisions at key stages of the customer journey.

Next up in our series, we’ll discuss 2 reports that can help you gauge your retention efforts. Subscribe to our blog to follow along – we share a weekly digest so you don’t miss a thing.

Want to see all of the reports we’ll be covering in this series right now? Download our eBook 11 Must-Have Predictive Lifecycle Marketing Reports anytime!

The post 3 App Analytics Reports to Help You Understand Your App Conversion Efforts appeared first on Airship.

To jumpstart your brainstorming, here are three ways brands can use in-app automation — each with triggers to consider and best practices — you can create with our solution.

For even more examples and in-app automation information, check out our new In-App Automation Playbook and watch to our recent webinar for a walkthrough on sending a triggered in-app automation yourself.

Use In-App Messages to Learn About Your Users

A banner style in-app message with interactive buttons — these can be customized without needing an app update. Buttons can also be linked to content inside or outside the app.

Try triggering an automated in-app message as a way to gather helpful information about your app users, such as topics they are interested in, favorite music, most-shopped clothing brands and more.

With this information, you can set tags and deliver more relevant messaging across your other channels, including push notifications, in-app notifications, message center content, emails and more. And the data shows more relevant messaging reduces app churn and encourages app stickiness.

This type of triggered message can also be part of a broader onboarding campaign (similar to a drip campaign you might do via email) to get to know your users and get them up to speed with your app.

Triggers to Consider:

• App open based: First open, second open, etc., trigger ongoing, automated onboarding series to give users a tour of your app and get them up to speed.

• Preference based: viewed particular content a specified number of times (ex: after they’ve read four articles on one topic)

Best Practices:

• Consider using a banner-style template for this type of messaging — banners go away automatically after 15 seconds, so this is a less intrusive choice if you want to re-trigger this message again at a later time.

• Ensure precision: Our workflow allows you to pause, edit or restart your automated program so you can have control over your program.

Trigger A “Soft Ask” Message to Familiarize Users With the Value of Opting In

Example of a triggered modal style in-app message. Unlike the full screen style in-app message, you can see the screen a user was on when the message triggered.

Let’s be real: you wouldn’t sign up for something without knowing what you’re getting into (or what’s needed from you), so you shouldn’t expect users to opt in to push notifications without knowing the value they can expect.

Rather than presenting the standard OS opt-in prompt when a user opens the app for the first time — and has little context about your app — trigger a “soft ask” highlighting the value of opting in once a user is more familiar with your app.

If a user says “Yes,” the standard OS prompt will be shown, while “Remind Me Later” will prevent the OS prompt from being presented and can set a re-trigger for a later time. Use this same approach for prompting location opt-in.  

Triggers to Consider:

• Custom events, such as viewed an article/item/product

• If a user is opted in to location services, but not to push notifications

• Viewed a screen that indicates they would benefit from push notifications (ex: preference center, deals, etc.)

Best Practices:

• Have a plan: present the ask in context, using actions like screen views or custom event triggers. (Ex: trigger an opt in to push notification on a user’s second visit to your app, and trigger a location opt in request on their third visit.)

• Set a limit: if a user dismisses your opt-in request a set number of times (ex: 3 or 4 times), do not show the user that message again.

• Consider trying a similar approach for requesting a user to turn on location services.

Connect Users Across Multiple Channels by Encouraging User Registrations

Example of a full screen in-app message. These give your brand the most real estate and support up to 5 buttons and link to content in an optional footer.

Actionable data has become a key component for brands when it comes to orchestrating their marketing messaging across other channels like push notifications, email, SMS and more.

In-app messaging is a smart way to ask users to register with your app, which in turn gives you data to help identify a user across their different channels — Registered users are key to gathering actionable data you can use across other channels.

Ask users to register or login at opportune times to increase your addressable user base as well as better personalize users’ experiences in your app. Additionally, should an authenticated user churn from the app, you still have valuable information you can use to reach them on other channels.

Triggers to Consider:

• Opened the app but has not yet logged in/registered

• Custom events you’ve set: for example, made a purchase, saved a favorite item or story, created a wishlist

• Completed a specified action in the app a certain number of times

Best Practices:

• Share the value upfront: Let users know what they’re gaining by registering, rather than blindly asking them to register.

• Money talks: Incentivize users to register or login by sweetening the deal with a perk, such as 5% off their first order, 30 days free of limited time free shipping.

Try In-App Automation Yourself

Want to increase app engagement, reduce churn, drive feature adoption, and increase app revenue? Our new in-app automation engine allows marketers and product owners (read: no developer required) to drive value starting on day one with with the product. Give it a try yourself — get in touch with us, or request a personalized demo to learn more.

The post Three Ways In-App Automation Can Drive Value for Your Brand appeared first on Airship.

Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies delivering services in more than 150 countries. One of Vodafone’s primary goals is to pave the way to digital life for its customers.

To support that, Vodafone is communicating across a variety of digital channels — from mobile, to voice assistants and more — in a contextual, relevant way.

Vodafone uses Urban Airship’s AI marketing orchestration and notifications to take the guesswork out of marketing orchestration and their customers’ data do some of the critical thinking for their team.

We were lucky enough to interview Thomas Neumann, Principal Digital Products Manager, Vodafone Consumer Products and Services, on what they look for in a business partner, integrating between our respective teams, and more.

What do you look for in a business partner?

“I’m convinced that in today’s business you can only survive when you collaborate. Mutual trust. You share the success — maybe also the failures — but you listen and you get your input.”

How does Urban Airship fulfill on that need?

“We had lots of concerns around going from an old in-house development to a managed service. What we have seen over the last two years is that Urban Airship is not a vendor. You’re a partner for us.”

What has been a key part of the integration between our teams?

“For us here the key is Connect — getting the raw data, which captures all the events happening on the mobile device, is one of the key sources for us to leverage this data to make use of real-time campaigns. Then of course putting that together with other information — what we know about our customer — and be able to create a more personalized, real-time customer experience.”

What does marketing orchestration mean for your team?

“Artificial intelligence takes the guesswork out of marketing orchestration and lets our customers’ data do some of the critical thinking for us. It’s quickly becoming one of our ‘easy buttons’ to better and more productive customer experiences across every digital engagement channel. Since Urban Airship’s platform is open, we will be able to reach our customers on digital channels such as RCS or voice assistants and moving forward to IoT and chatbots, which we can expand at scale.”

Looking for more stories about how our customers are using our digital growth platform to support their business goals? Here are a few of our favorites:

• How the New Zealand Herald Grows Audience Engagement with Web Push Notifications

• How Brazilian Retailer Uses Push Notifications and Predictive Churn Analytics to Boost Sales

• How The Body Shop Is Using Mobile Wallet To Support Their Campaign “Forever Against Animal Testing”

• How GameStop Uses Mobile Channels to Reach Customers Wherever They Are

Want to learn more? Drop us a note, or request a demo.

The post Vodafone’s Partnership With Urban Airship appeared first on Airship.

We’ve pulled together some of our top resources on web notifications to help you better understand what they are, what they can help you accomplish and how to add them into your marketing mix (you can get started today for free). Have questions or something you’d like to see? Feel free to contact us.

1) Use Web Notifications to Connect with Your Customers

Your website drives a high volume of visitors — and it’s probably one of the first touchpoints a consumer will have with your brand. We share three kinds of use cases for web notifications — transactional, educational and promotional — that help you connect with your customers, and provide examples of each type.

2) 11 Reasons to Start Using Web Notifications Today

There are many advantages of adding web notifications into your marketing mix. Here’s just one: if someone is online and they’ve opted in to receive browser push notifications from you, you can reach them. We share 10 other compelling reasons to start using web notifications today.

3) Top 10 FAQs About Web Notifications

Answers to some of the top questions digital marketers are asking about leveraging web push notifications. Our post shares information about setting up web notifications, the differences between a web notification and an app push notification, the opt in process and more.

4) Send Your Own Web Notification In 6 Steps

Ready to try your own? Here’s an easy 6 step tutorial for sending your very own web push notification.

5) Web Notification Use Cases and Examples You Can Use

Our Web Notification Inspiration Guide shares an assortment of use case examples in a variety of industries to give brands ideas they can steal and implement into their own digital strategy. Check out the guide for 15+ examples and details on use cases they support as well as what you get out of the box.

6) How to Add Web Notifications to Your WordPress or Drupal Site

If your website is hosted via WordPress or Drupal, great news — our new integrations allow you to implement web notifications on your WordPress or Drupal site more quickly and easily. We also provide out-of-the-box custom opt in options with both integrations. See how to get set up on each platform in just a few steps.

7) Seeing is Believing: Examples of Brands Using Web Notifications

The proof is in the pudding: don’t miss stories of real brands using web notifications. See how the New Zealand Herald uses web notifications, their strategy and how they boost audience engagement. And, learn how another media company uses web notifications to increase page views and drive ad revenue.

8) 50+ Push Notification Ideas You Can Use

Looking for more messaging ideas? One of our most popular posts shares 50+ push notification ideas that can easily be adapted for web notifications.

9) Documentation

Ready to implement? If you’re not using our Drupal or WordPress plugin, you may need a quick hand from your web team. We’ve made it easy for them to see what needs to be done: here’s a detailed walk through for getting set up.

Want to be the first to know when we publish new how-to content? Subscribe to our blog today, and never miss a post.  

The post Web Notifications Resource Roundup: Information, Ideas and Integrations appeared first on Airship.

Heading into 2018, we wanted to pull together our most popular posts to help you think about and refine your digital growth strategy. One thing is clear: mobile is still mighty, but marketers must be thinking about connecting all of their business channels — in terms of messaging and data — to have the greatest impact on their business.

We hope you enjoy these posts and if there’s something you’re interested in learning more about, please let us know! Leave a comment on this post, or contact us here.

Why not make 2018 your best business year yet: Subscribe to our blog — We’ll send you an email once a week with posts that will help you make your job easier, move your metrics in the right direction, and meet (or beat!) your most ambitious goals.

1) Your Mobile Strategy Can’t Just Be About Phones

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, our CEO, Brett Caine, shared how executives can stay ahead of the business opportunities mobile engagement offers by staying focused on the bigger picture of what mobile is — and what it can do. Level-set your efforts with these three strategic exercises >>

2) Want to Predict & Prevent Customer Churn — and Increase App Retention? This Post is For You.

What if you could figure out just the right frequency for sending push notifications, so you engage and retain more (lots more) of your app users? Well, you can. This blog post summarizes our latest benchmarks on how push notifications influence customer churn & app retention rates. Learn how you can use push notifications to reduce app user churn >>

3) 5 Ways Brands Win With the Right Mobile Engagement Automation Partner

This year, Forrester Research did their first-ever Wave for mobile engagement automation (MEA) solutions. Get their take on the the bottom-line benefits of partnering with the right MEA vendor, plus a free RFP template and the full Forrester report >>

4) 7 Mobile Engagement Statistics That Show How Push Notifications Boost ROI

Learn how push notifications can help you meet your mobile engagement goals. Use these stats to guide adjustments to your mobile marketing strategy — and watch as your app engagement KPIs — and your ROI — improve! One tip? Targeting your push notifications can improve response rates by 4-7x. See the other 6 stats >>

5) 5 Privacy Tips for the Voice Notification Era

Voice notifications are here — and so are the privacy concerns that go with them. Protect your users and your brand with these tips from our SVP of product and engineering, Mike Herrick. Get tips — and how to join our Voice Notifications Early Access Program >> 

6) 50+ Push Notification Ideas You Can Start Using Today

Marketers are often worried about sending too many push notifications, but our data actually shows many are not sending enough. If you're not sending regular push notifications, you're leaving user acquisition money on the table. Good news though, we’ve got dozens of ideas you can put to use to boost mobile engagement increase engagement. See 50+ high-value ideas >>

7) 3 Ways to Use Web Push to Connect With Your Customers

This year we launched our web notifications solutions as a new and vital way to connect with customers — and create value and utility for brands, customers and prospects. Get ideas and best practices for creating web push notifications that get results >>

8) Chief Digital Officer: Here’s What 14 Experts Said You Need to Know to Grow

This post is filled with pearls of wisdom from 14 must-follow marketing minds sharing advice about achieving more and better digital growth. See what experts from Adobe, Google, Fandango. Forrester, R/GA and more have to say. One quote: Edith Yung of 500 Startups says “Think carefully about your app & mobile web strategies & goals.” More thoughts >>

9) Build Personalized Mobile Wallet Passes Easily — At Scale

Whether you’ve used mobile wallet passes in your marketing mix before, or if it’s new to you, there’s never been a better time to get excited about what this channel can do. Learn more about how we’re helping brands unlock the potential of mobile wallet by enabling them to create hyper-personalized mobile wallet passes at scale >>

10) 5 Things Every Mobile Marketer Needs to Understand About the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation

New GDPR requirements take effect May 25, 2018. (That will be here sooner than you think!) These new requirements mean changes to how marketers interact with, collect & store customers' personal information. Is your company ready? Our Vice President of Operations and Security shares 5 questions to help you size up your readiness >>

Bonus Round 1: New in 2017!

Here’s a highlight reel of some of our favorite launches, product enhancements and integrations from this year. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

1) Announcing Our Voice Notification Early Access Program
2) How to Send Notifications to Any Channel In Your Marketing Stack: Introducing Channels API
3) Urban Airship App for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder: At Your Service
4) Introducing Web Push Notifications
5) Introducing WordPress & Drupal Integrations for Urban Airship Web Notifications
6) Announcing New Predictive Lifecycle Marketing Analytics for Digital Marketers
7) Our New Apple TV SDK – tvOS – is Here!

Bonus Round 2: Client Success Stories from 2017

Last but not least — we’re lucky to have awesome clients who do awesome things with our products. Here are five of our favorite stories we heard this year — we hope they inspire you! (If you have a story to share, we’d love to hear it!)

1) eHarmony’s Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy: A Case Study
2) GameStop’s Playbook for Winning With Mobile Marketing
3)How the Cavaliers and Kings Drive Fan Engagement With Push Notifications
4) How The Body Shop Is Using Mobile Wallet To Support Their Campaign “Forever Against Animal Testing”
5) How One Retail App Uses Push Notifications, Predictive Churn Analytics & More to Grow Revenue

What would you like to see more of (or less of) on the Urban Airship blog in 2017? Leave a comment or contact us and let us know!

Also, if you're not already subscribed to our blog, you can easily sign up here. We’ll send you one email at the end of every week to keep you on top of our latest and best thinking about everything mobile and digital growth.

The post Our Top 10 Blog Posts From 2017 appeared first on Airship.

Brazillian retailer Dinda helps people discover daily deals on clothing and accessories for children, babies and mothers on both its website and app.

Beginning in October 2015, Dinda noticed a shift in where their traffic was coming from: more and more customers were arriving on their site via mobile devices and the mobile app. To address this change, retailer began focusing heavily on evolving its mobile app strategy.

Dinda’s two main app objectives are to increase its active user base — both by gaining new app users and retaining existing customers — and grow app revenue. 

Their plan to achieve these goals? Create deeper connections with customers through the app by delivering real-time, personalized mobile messaging.

Check out this video sharing Dinda’s mobile strategy & app success. Or, download the case study to get the full story.

Sending Targeted, Relevant Push Notifications to Increase New & Active Users

To increase downloads and acquire new users, Dinda uses third party advertising, such as Facebook, to promote its app. Dinda shares daily deals by delivering segmented push notifications to relevant app users, via Urban Airship Engage.

For example, if there is a sale on shoes, Dinda can deliver that message to a specific list that includes only those who have indicated interest in shoes. An automated welcome series also onboards new app users by sharing special features of the app and the value of opting in to push notifications, which encourages user activity and repeated use. See how you can create your own here.

Optimizing Push Notification Copy

Daily A/B tests help optimize message copy — the Dinda team runs tests such as with/without titles, with/without emojis and even differences in wording like “Don’t get wet today” vs. “It’s raining,” or “Meow, Hello Kitty is here” vs. “50% OFF Hello Kitty Clothes.”

“We run A/B tests almost every day to test title, image, offers and segments,” said Rodrigo Santos, marketing coordinator at Dinda. “We get creative with our text – and emojis – to get better open rates.”

Using segmentation in combination with A/B testing has resulted in a 25% direct open rate and an even higher influenced open rate for Dinda, meaning these notifications often prompt users to open the app. (This number outpaces typical direct open rates.)

“Another great feature of Urban Airship’s analytics tool Insight is the Lifecycle tab, where you can see what type of influence your push notifications are having on your users,” said Santos. “For example, if there’s a high number of uninstalls after sending a particular message, you can adjust your approach quickly.”

An example of Urban Airship's Predictive Churn Analytics report. Learn more here.

Predicting At-Risk Users & Re-Messaging to Retain These Users

Dinda quickly checks and monitor day-to-day metrics and success, including daily/weekly/ monthly active app users as well as authenticated users with Urban Airship Insight.

On top of that, Urban Airship’s Predictive Churn solution analytics allow Dinda to see users that are at low, medium and high risk of churning. They’re also able to see their app’s top 25 device tags broken down by risk distribution — for example, a high percentage of users who have items in their cart are at low-to medium-risk of churn, while other tags may have more high-risk users.

With this breakdown of information, Dinda can create retargeting campaigns re-engage at-risk users. By doing so, high and medium-risk users have decreased. Unsurprisingly, Dinda app users who have made a purchase are the least likely to churn, followed by those who have authenticated/logged in to the app.

Over the past year these tactics have led to an an uptick in revenue coming from Dinda’s mobile app over, with 60% more revenue coming from its app than desktop website purchases.

“Urban Airship Insight provides valuable information about our app, including an overview with general data, predictive models that help our marketing team take action on at-risk, inactive users as well as analytics to see if these actions are having a positive impact,” said Santos. He continued, “it provides a way for us to get a better view of our data and act on it more quickly to keep our users active, and positively influence our overall results.” 

Want to learn more about how mobile can drive results for your business? Contact us anytime!

The post How Retail App Dinda Uses Push Notifications, Predictive Churn Analytics & More to Grow Revenue appeared first on Airship.

If you’re a digital marketer, you’re always looking for the best ways to keep your customers connected to your brand. GameStop is no exception.

GameStop’s extremely popular app keeps their customers connected to their brand, helping them stay up to date with the gaming news they care about the most.

The app also makes it easy for GameStop customers to keep track of discount codes and coupons, make purchases and see their PowerUp RewardsTM  loyalty program points anytime.

The goal for GameStop is to be wherever their customers are.

“We don’t see our business in terms of channels, and we work hard to focus on the user to fulfill their needs regardless of where, and in what context they choose to interact with us,” said Bill Graham, director of multichannel operations at GameStop.

Personalize Messaging Based on User Preferences

The GameStop app uses our solutions for push notifications, message center and mobile wallet to communicate with users. Users can pick and choose what sorts of notifications they would like to receive such as promotions, PowerUp rewards, and account activity.

“By using our business system of record to create lists and Urban Airship’s mobile messaging capabilities, we can deliver a customized experience for our users to give them content related to what they care most about,” said Graham.

GameStop’s push notifications preference center allows users to choose exactly which message they do — and don't — want to receive.

Why This Works

Taking a personalized approach creates better engagement. In fact, our research shows targeted push notifications earn 4-7x higher response rates when sent to a more curated audience.

“By using our business system of record to create lists and Urban Airship’s mobile messaging capabilities, we can deliver a customized experience for our users to give them content related to what they care most about.”
– Bill Graham, Director of Multichannel Operations, GameStop

Combining Push Notifications & Message Center Content

When GameStop sends push notifications, they often pair them with in-app message center content. When they combine the two, they typically see an 8x increase in read rates. (Which, coincidentally, is exactly the lift our mobile engagement benchmark research shows marketers can expect when combining these two channels.)

For example, a promotional offer for a “Buy 2 pre-owned products, get 1 free,” could be delivered via push notification to its list of “Top Scoring Pro Members” (their most loyal members who had met a reward point threshold), with content also appearing in the message center.

GameStop’s team develops custom HTML5 pages to create a visually compelling message center. When a user taps on the content, they’re taken to the related destination in the app or GameStop’s mobile website. 

GameStop’s HTML-rich message center content is another way to deliver mobile marketing campaign messages to their app users. Message content is often paired with a push notification and deep links back to the most relevant place in their app or on their mobile website.  

Why This Works

Combining push notifications and message center messages just makes sense. In addition to the increased read rates, message centers on their own are a great way to reach users who have opted out of receiving push notifications.

Message center content also stays in the app (although marketers do have the option to “expire” content to keep the inbox clutter free) making it an ideal channel to share information or offers customers will want to refer back to.

Another example of GameStop's message center content.

Explore Adding Mobile Wallet to the Mix

GameStop also provides a mobile wallet loyalty card and mobile wallet coupons for easy access when shopping online or in store.

“GameStop’s PowerUp Rewards loyalty program is one of the fastest growing loyalty programs in retail, and we continue to make enhancements so rewards can be issued monthly and customized to each customer’s preferences,” said Darin Smith, senior director of GameStop’s PowerUp Rewards program. “Mobile wallets give us another highly visible and convenient way to reach more customers with the personalized benefits of our exclusive loyalty program.”

According to Loyalty360, PowerUp members drove 71% of GameStop's sales volume in the U.S. last year, so providing an easy way to access their rewards card is important.

“Mobile wallets give us another highly visible and convenient way to reach more customers with the personalized benefits of our exclusive loyalty program.”
– Darin Smith, Senior Director, GameStop PowerUp Rewards Program

More than 339k users have downloaded the GameStop loyalty card, and nearly all of them keep it — GameStop sees retention rate for this pass consistently over 90% month-over-month.

Why This Works

Research shows consumers want to use digital wallet more often. Mobile wallet passes help brands reach new customers and extend their mobile footprint. Use it to grow loyalty programs, share coupons, boarding passes, tickets or gift cards and much, much more.  

PowerUp Rewards loyalty members can also add their membership card to their phone via Wallet.

Invest in Mobile to Grow Your Business

GameStop has seen their mobile traffic and revenue grow significantly over the last year. They attribute much of their success to better engaging their most loyal customers on mobile.

“Our aim is to connect and unify [all of our] different touchpoints to drive engagement, loyalty, and ultimately purchases — regardless of channel,” said Bill Graham, director of multichannel operations at GameStop.

Ready to Get Started?

Want to learn more about the solutions that power GameStop’s Success? Check out these resources:

Urban Airship’s Engage solution: Send personalized push notifications, in-app messages and message center content with our easy-to-install SDK.

Urban Airship’s Reach solution: From coupons to loyalty cards, use mobile wallet to increase your mobile footprint. You can get started with minimal developer resources, and be up in running as quickly as two weeks.

Want to chat? Talk to one of our solutions experts to talk through where you may be missing opportunities to drive mobile growth for your brand. Contact us anytime.

The post GameStop’s Playbook for Winning With Mobile Marketing appeared first on Airship.