Apple’s recent change to the ID for Advertisers (IDFA) represented a tectonic shift for the brand marketing ecosystem, which now must be laser-focused on first-party data.

IDFA is an identifier that allows marketers to track iOS users’ activity across apps to better target and measure digital ad campaigns. It is an incredibly powerful identifier, as it is the same across every app on every device a user has, enabling advertisers to devise retargeting and precision lookalike campaigns based on the totality of a user’s mobile app footprint.

Up until April 26, users had the option to opt out of being tracked but only by changing their phone settings.

Thanks to the release of Apple’s latest operating system, iOS14.5, apps will have to ask users to opt in for tracking. While it is early, one analysis found that only about 4 percent or 5 percent of Apple users are opting in so far.

The ramifications go well beyond Apple.

In recent months, Apple’s privacy-minded moves have influenced Google’s stances around data issues and probably will again. And Facebook has reacted by attempting to get users to opt in to app tracking transparency (ATT) so it can continue supplying a rich flow of data to advertisers.

It is important to note that this critical IDFA change is a huge win for consumer privacy.

Combined with Apple’s recently added privacy nutrition labels for iOS apps, consumers now have clearer choices to make about how their data is used without wading through pages of mind-numbing policies or levels-deep privacy settings.

For marketers, third-party data is getting scarcer, which in turn increases the importance of first-party data. With that in mind, here are three tips marketers can use to strengthen their brands.

Constantly Test to Establish Meaningful Connections

First of all, brands need to remember that when they put in a first-party data “ask”—whether it is for an app download, social login to a Web site, permission to send push notifications, a loyalty member registration, or an email or text sign-up – they are not asking for a one-off transaction that is akin to an impulse buy. To the contrary, they are asking for a committed relationship, which requires a thoughtful approach.

Therefore, brands need to offer what their customers find most valuable to establish a meaningful connection as quickly as possible.

Marketers can best accomplish this idea by continually optimizing customer journeys, app tours, opt-in prompts and messages themselves, finely tuning executions with ongoing A/B or multivariate testing.

But that is just one aspect for how constant testing can help brands’ customer experience (CX), as they can also use the practice to retain their earned audience and further drive business outcomes.

In one example, Latin America-based food delivery platform iFood used multivariate testing to achieve the goal of getting more customers to pay for their orders online rather than upon delivery, improving key performance indicators (KPI) by 14 percent.

This outcome enhanced the overall customer experience, saving them time while improving iFood’s ability to efficiently complete more transactions.

Perhaps most importantly, all of that has given the brand an edge over its competitors during the pandemic as most consumers generally preferred contactless commerce over other payment methods.

Respect Customer Preferences

When onboarding customers to apps, Web sites and opt-in channels, a brand should provide them with the chance to choose product or service preferences to help produce the best CX.

These explicit preferences can and should be granular without taking up too much of customers’ time or becoming invasive, and marketers should reach beyond preference centers to include these options in onboarding flows and account setup screens.

For example, marketers for a large sports equipment company might use app screens on initial open to establish the gender identities for which the user is shopping, the sports and activities of interest, and favorite sports personalities, to learn how to better serve individuals in a few easy taps.

Brands should also ask for channel and frequency preferences. How often do customers want to hear from a company, and for what reasons to have the type of relationship they want.

If customers provide explicit preference data, brands must both use and honor it to fill their part of this privacy-value exchange.

Even more so, marketers must also predict customers’ implicit preferences to truly provide the best CX to each and every customer.

Customers’ Web site and app behaviors, their progress or stopping points in key journeys, and their messaging interactions—from button taps to live chat—provide a wealth of continually enriched insight to better serve them as individuals.

For example, a news publisher might see users visiting “entertainment” content at a much higher rate than average, and use that in future targeting and personalization.

Even better, they could turn this signal from an implicit to an explicit preference with a simple Yes/No notification: “Would you like to receive more entertainment news?”

All such information can help evolve the customer relationship to a one-to-one level, and, ultimately, grow customer value as recipients get what they expect.

Plus, by asking them about what they prefer, a brand is showing a level of customer care that will outshine competitors.

Get the Whole Org Aligned and Ready

Now that a brand has first-party data, its marketers will want to leverage it automatically in order to increase sales, decrease churn and achieve other critical business outcomes. And there is only one way to accomplish such goals: The chief marketing officer and marketing department need to be strategically aligned with the chief information officer and his or her team.

The depth of this alignment, and how well marketing, sales, services and the back-office hum in unison, will be the modern brand’s measure of successful customer experiences.

More generally, Apple’s iOS 14.5 update should make it abundantly clear to marketers that “eyeballs” are people and people have rights and choices.

Brands must earn the right to collect and leverage customer data, and maintaining that right will increasingly depend on the value provided through direct interactions across digital properties and messaging channels.

OWNING THE CUSTOMER relationship, respecting that relationship, and serving and empathizing with them is more important than ever before.

Brands that cherish and responsibly leverage their first-party data will build durable and valuable customer relationships.

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The post Apple’s Crucial IDFA Change: 3 Tips for Strengthening Brands with First-Party Data appeared first on Airship.

Vaccine passports on mobile devices have become an important topic in New York and around the world. While New York state and Israel have already developed a vaccine passport, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan are reportedly considering making their own.

New York City, like many others locations around the world, experiences broad-reaching benefits of tourism, and with summer months coming, it may be wondering how the state’s Excelsior Pass is going to work since the vaccine passport is a brand-new concept. If people hope that Excelsior will lift the local economy, they’ll be happy to know that shifting consumer behavior in recent years toward mobile wallets indicates such passports can be an all-around success.

The travel industry offers a mobile-minded guide for how vaccine passports can enable in-person experiences. Two years ago, 21% of Americans had an airline app on their phone, and 1.5 billion digital boarding passes were used. What’s more, around 2 million Americans used the Transportation Security Administration PreCheck every day in 2019.

The vaccine passport will be similar to the digital boarding pass and TSA PreCheck experience, centering on a scannable QR code that verifies the individual has been vaccinated or has recently tested negative for Covid-19. With mobile wallet usage established in the marketplace, significant adoption should follow.

Why It’s Secure

For New Yorkers, it’s worth noting that the Excelsior Pass can now be stored in Apple Wallet for iPhone users or Google Wallet for Android devotees. A vaccine passport that’s stored in a mobile wallet is easily accessible and will not require Wi-Fi or a cellular connection to use it.

Mobile wallets are tied to a user’s Apple or Google ID, so they will only be accessible by the owner of the phone with a security code or biometrics login. While vaccination data is medical and private, more and more people entrust their mobile wallets with sensitive information, including credit and debit cards—contactless mobile payments grew 29% in 2020. Storing vaccine passports in mobile wallets isn’t a big leap when you consider their importance in more quickly returning our lives and the economy to normal.

Getting Better

Government and health care providers might have been better served by skipping the dedicated app altogether and going straight to mobile wallet for the broadest possible adoption. Instead of asking people to download an app, enter their information and find their pass, they could have just sent a single link via email or SMS immediately on administering the first dose, enabling citizens to add a personalized pass to Apple Wallet or Google Pay with a couple of taps.

And that pass could be updated automatically by the issuer over time with no manual app update required. Mobile wallets are just that handy, which is something government and health care leaders should keep in mind for future digital needs of this scale.

Prepare for the Future

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The post Why Mobile Wallets Can Make Vaccine Passports a New York Success appeared first on Airship.

When celebrities, airlines, retailers, and journalists are all on the same page, call it a trend.

The pandemic has accelerated the practice of one-to-one digital relationships for all kinds of brands. A lot of progress in digital transformation has been made in a matter of months that would have otherwise taken years, and it’s happened across industries. The advancements have been due to brands pivoting to help consumers deal with the shelter-in-place and work-from-home situation most everybody has had to endure to stay safe during the pandemic.

The upshot: digital intimacy has become part of everyone’s professional and personal lives. To stay connected, we’ve needed to embrace virtual-but-direct relationships. From a longer view, this is a technology story, and it is, interestingly, part Zoom, part SMS, and part Substack.

Live Video Goes Hollywood

The shelter-in-place period has affected people at all social strata, and it’s caused hundreds of millions of people to use live video platforms such as Zoom for the first time. Friends are holding virtual happy hours, bicoastal baby showers on Zoom are now a thing, and families are catching up “face to face” via the apps on the weekends.

The phenomenon has even led to stars from classic movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Goonies, and The Princess Bride getting into the act. Via Zoom, cast members have gathered with their fans to share behind-the-scenes stories about their famous flicks. Everyday folks have gotten to peek into the apartments of actors like Matthew Broderick and Billy Crystal, achieving a digital intimacy neither the actor or the fan gets via a tv or in theaters. When celebrities are using the same software platform as you and can see your presence in real-time via video or the text-chat box on Zoom, it’s a special connection.

Such extraordinary digital intimacy and engagement have also been growing on Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms. Pop artists like Adele, Rihanna and Taylor Swift are answering fans’ direct messages, and singer John Legend and artist DJ D-Nice are taking song requests from fans via Instagram Live.

SMS Delivers Meaningful Connections

I shouldn’t do this but… Text me (917)746-1444. That cheeky message was the caption of an Instagram video from hip-hop artist Diddy, in which the multifaceted mogul aptly described why SMS marketing has made a huge comeback. “On [Instagram], everybody knows about everything,” he explained in the clip. “I want a deeper connection with my fans.” Indeed, celebs are recognizing the one-to-one power of SMS. Jennifer Lopez, Ashton Kutcher, Cardi B, Karlie Kloss, and Mandy Moore are some of the other famous entertainers launching dedicated SMS channels (which, of course, do not represent their personal cell phone numbers).

SMS, born in the 1990s, is having a renaissance because it allows brands to go direct with fans and customers better than email and other digital platforms. Consider that 82 percent of consumers say they open every single text message while the average email campaign open rate is 32 percent.

Brands started the SMS trend. Alaska Airlines was one of the first airlines to offer flight notifications via SMS, and the channel has become pivotal to its customer service. Fliers can message “82008” to connect with a rep for answers to simple travel questions. As another example, Brookshire Grocery Company, a chain with 180-plus supermarkets, pharmacies, and other stores in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, runs a growing SMS program to alert customers of new deals in a timely fashion. The Tyler, TX-based brand segments its text list into groups such as beer clubs and wine clubs where members only get relevant content (text and images), depending on which club they opted in to. Additionally, Brookshire employs experimentation to find out which content outperforms other messages for the greatest SMS engagement.

Journalists Bypass Middlemen

Another one-to-one branding development during this pandemic has been journalists going it alone. A number of popular writers have left notable publications to launch newsletters on platforms like Substack and Patreon. Tech reporter Casey Newton left The Verge, political columnist Andrew Sullivan departed New York magazine, climate reporter Emily Atkin exited The New Republic, and, most recently, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald fled The Intercept, a publication he co-founded. They all left for Substack, a newsletter subscription platform that lets journalists be their own bosses and cuts out the middleman.

These writers, brands unto themselves, are eschewing publications and channels and embracing one-to-one relationships with their readers. Right now, they are delivering their newsletter content via email, and they should be A/B testing types of subject lines to get the best open rates. With that in mind, I predict Substack and Patreon will eventually introduce text-message newsletter delivery because the SMS trend isn’t going away.

A Direct Response

Indeed, one of the most powerful post-pandemic trends is all about the digital intimacy that can be achieved by going direct. Eight months into this crisis, the whole idea of one-to-one connections has morphed and mutated and impacted industries in ways that few if any of us saw coming. People have been able to stay connected while still staying apart.

All of that has led to the marketing of celebrities, airlines, retailers, and journalists leaning the same way. Yeah, you can call that a trend.

The post Celebrities and Other Brands Lean into Digital Intimacy appeared first on Airship.

Super Bowl LV, which saw the Kansas City Chiefs play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was like none we have ever seen for brands and fans due to the pandemic. The host venue, Tampa’s Raymond Jones Stadium, was expected to be about one-third full with 22,000 onlookers in the stands. Given social distancing guidelines, the tradition of letting thousands of fans on the field during the halftime musical performance was nixed; the headliner, The Weeknd, had to generate in-person energy all on its own.

Normally, marketers with a budget for the big game have to decide how much to spend on activations throughout the host city. But since the usual 1 million people didn’t flock to game festivities this year, out-of-home (OOH) advertising around the municipality known as The Big Guava may have seemed a little frivolous.

The surest bet for generating enormous big game buzz is to combine a fantastic TV ad with layers of intelligent digital marketing activations for before, during and after the game. CBS’s 30-second TV spots, which cost $5.5 million, this year did not include mainstays such as Budweiser, Coke, and Audi. Instead, newcomers like Chipotle, DoorDash, Fiverrr, Indeed, Vroom and Mercari got the spotlight.

With that in mind, here’s what the first-time big game advertisers should do so their hefty investments make a sales impact beyond game day.

Establish a Long-Term Connection

This fresh group of advertisers should beware that their categories don’t always get mind-blowing TV ad recall for the Super Bowl. Two years ago, Burger King, representing the restaurant sector, got a 30% ad recall, while DoorDash, Fiverr and Vroom should know that tech brands like Hotels.com (8%) and SimpliSafe (6%) did far worse that year.

To bolster their brands, advertisers need to engage the big game audience not only beforehand with assets such as teaser videos — which is a table-stakes practice now — and during the game, but also in the immediate days after it is over while ad recall is higher. Common sense would suggest people talk about the ads soon after post-game, and studies have shown that is when Super Bowl word-of-mouth is at its strongest.

This year’s newcomers can enable people to talk about them via text messages or work Slack channels after Super Bowl LV by creating post-game content for mobile sharing. While this tactic can entail a series of special offers to keep consumers engaged, marketers should have a longer-term direct-to-consumer aim in their strategy. For instance, a few years ago, Sprint sponsored the Copa América Centenario soccer tourney and got more people to sign up for its mobile wallet sweepstakes alerts than for email notifications. A less than 1% mobile wallet uninstall rate kept more people connected to the broader world of Sprint and Copa including a dedicated website, social channels and more ways to earn additional sweepstakes entries.

Even if Chipotle, DoorDash, Fiverrr, Indeed and Vroom don’t use ad creative to promote their apps, mobile wallets, or slick and convenient digital-enabled experiences, their Facebook, Instagram and TikTok follow-up copy should include calls-to-action to get viewers to download an app, sign up for text messages or engage with social content to extend the TV spots’ reach. Getting and fostering that one-to-one digital connection for the weeks and months ahead is crucial to drive initial and repeat consumer behaviors that directly impact business performance and grow lifetime value.

Go Beyond ‘Home Commerce’

Super Bowl watchers, which typically total 100 million, were at home on their couches using their phones more than in a normal year. There were no parties to go to and engage with others in-person, after all.

Mobile app engagement was already up year-over-year mid-pandemic by 31%, as most Americans spent a greater amount of time in 2020 on mobile devices to shop for groceries, clothing and other items while sheltering in place. Mobile apps and websites have increasingly become everyday shopping experiences, and you can see this development in the Super Bowl ads that were already out there online before game day.

These spots rightly do not hit weary viewers over the head with pandemic messaging, but they do wisely portray relatable situations for our shelter-in-place-ready situations. Mercari’s Super Bowl ad showcases how its online marketplace enables at-home commerce while offering used product “finds” at deal-worthy prices. And TurboTax is emphasizing its live video consultation with CPAs, underscoring how most people would rather not visit a tax pro’s office this winter and spring. And Vroom, a car-buying digital platform, is running a clever ad that shows the potential anguish of vehicle shopping and ends with copy about its experience being “contact-free.”

What these e-commerce advertisers need to do next is go beyond the creative, relatable ad executions and desires of greater brand recall and awareness. They need to provide value, incentives and options for consumers to begin a direct and lasting relationship. Brands should be deliberate about follow-up engagement based on goals critical to their success: viewing product details, creating an account, adding payment details, trying new features, joining a loyalty program, etc. Especially since nearly all, if not all, of these brands rely on repeat business to make the Super Bowl’s cost of acquisition worth it.

This ongoing digital-led engagement is even more important for brands selling higher-stakes items like Vroom since car shoppers are typically in the market for months before making a purchase, and their preferences can shift. Digital interactions and message responses are key to enrich customer understanding and fuel customer journeys that close big tickets like car sales. I’d even argue that Vroom should have mentioned its mobile app in its spot.

It’s great to see so much new blood in Super Bowl LV’s advertising lineup. But a mega-sized event calls for an ambitious playbook and one that demands a long-term strategy to truly prevail with today’s mobile-led, digital-first customers.

The post Big Game Newbies Like Chipotle, Indeed and Vroom Should Focus on Ads’ Long-Term Impact appeared first on Airship.

Covid-19 has dramatically transformed the way the world does business. Tens of thousands of merchants and millions of consumers are now using contactless payment systems and curbside pickup to reduce the risk of getting infected, with e-commerce and delivery apps like Instacart and DoorDash also growing exponentially because of this trend.

Subsequently, emerging mobile commerce data shows retail’s future hinges on our phones. While our industry was well aware of this trend before the pandemic, the acceleration stats are striking. Per Insider Intelligence, mobile is accounting for 45% of all e-commerce in 2020 and will total $284 billion, an 80% year-over-year jump. In comparison, 2019 only saw a 31% annual increase, according to Insider. Further, a BankRate study found more than half of Americans have now made a mobile purchase.

Clearly, m-commerce is at the center of what Mckinsey & Company calls “The Next Normal,” an era of pandemic-driven, rapid change. With that in mind, here are my five mobile predictions for 2021.

SMS Gets Smarter

Brands are leaning into SMS because the channel gets nearly a 100% open rate and is proven to drive purchases. For instance, one month into the pandemic, direct-to-consumer beverage brand Dirty Lemon saw SMS sales grow year-over-year by over 20%. And before the pandemic began, the Detroit Pistons used SMS commerce along with their mobile app to sell game tickets — getting fans into the seats they wanted more quickly.

But mobile marketers shouldn’t just broadcast text messages to customers. Personalization and relevancy boost response rates and help avoid opt-outs, which are a simple reply away. Consider Brookshire Grocery Company, which allows customers to opt in to its wine and beer text clubs for targeted messaging and employs experimentation to find out which content creates the greatest engagement. In 2021, look for brands to continue not only leaning into SMS but making their programs smarter with A/B and multivariate testing, as well as one-to-one SMS conversations and SMS payments.

Digital-First Is All About the Smartphone

Even before Covid-19, retailers knew about the growing importance of BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store) and BORIS (buy online, return in-store). These options have been expanded to include curbside order pickup, which is now a service that half of 2020 holiday shoppers planned to use.

Brands like Apple, Best Buy, and Home Depot offered curbside pickup and drop-off for the 2020 holiday season. There is a mobile opportunity in this digital-first mandate. Apps streamline customers’ experiences online and in-store, and brands that master the overall mobile experience—including SMS—will win in the future.

Mobile Wallet Progress Continues

A bevy of recent statistics has shown that the mobile wallet is continuing to gain traction and suggests it will continue to do so next year. Consider that 57% of shoppers said they would be comfortable using mobile wallets to continue to make contactless payments after the pandemic. And 30% of consumers have made mobile wallet transactions for the first time! Further, mobile wallets improve ROI: The University of Illinois last year found that on average, after adopting mobile wallets, consumers’ average order sizes increased by 2.4% and their transaction frequency jumped by more than 23%.

Consumers will be attracted to mobile wallets features for in-store shopping because they will be concerned about their health and safety and for streamlined online shopping experiences. In recent years, the biggest mobile wallet players such as Apple Wallet, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay have partnered with retail chains for in-store transactions, including thousands of outlets for Walmart, Nike, Costco, Macy’s, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Trader Joe’s. In 2021, we’ll see more and more of them.

Consumers Raise Their Hand

For years, the trend had been for consumers to shy away from sharing location information with brands, but this is changing and location will become a larger factor in improving consumer experiences in 2021.

Our datashows the pandemic reversed this trend: shelter-in-place consumers wanted to unlock experiences that were suddenly need-to-have instead of nice-to-have conveniences. Not to mention that the largest mobile platforms are making location sharing an easier choice than ever with more granular permissions, which give users more control and peace of mind. Next year, more consumers than ever will raise their hands and welcome highly relevant, location-enabled brand experiences without getting weirded out.

Messaging Orchestration Takes Center Stage

Mobile commerce will not be replaced by voice or chatbots any time soon — and certainly not in 2021. During this pandemic, the strongest brands have leaned into contactless commerce, exclusivity, scarcity, and frictionless, white-glove service.

With a combination of those elements, marketers next year will focus on growing direct customer relationships that deliver mutual value and grow lifetime value. They will employ multiple mobile-first channels (like apps, SMS and mobile wallets) to send the best messages and transact at the right moments of the customer lifecycle, which means marketers will have to leverage modern customer engagement platforms’ orchestration capabilities. Granular preference centers will be more important than ever, giving customers control over how often they hear from a brand and through which channels.

In summary, next year, mobile commerce will be at the top of the list of things brands need to master in the “next normal.” Retail chains and local merchants that step up to meet CX expectations will win the day in 2021.

The post 5 Predictions for Mobile in 2021 appeared first on Airship.

That’s why we are inviting marketing and product leaders to join us and other leading brands for our virtual event, Elevate 2020. This event will have sessions led by top digital experts from brands like Alaska Airlines, Accuweather, Sonos, the BBC, Vodafone and more, who will be sharing how they adapted and accelerated their strategies to succeed during this time. We’ll also have smaller breakout sessions so that you can connect with other digital pros to share insights and network. 

You can learn more about event here, but here’s a sneak peek into what’s in store:

7 Rules for Surviving a Digital-First, Mobile-Led World

Virtually overnight, the way companies in all sectors and regions did business changed. Survival required an immediate shift and ongoing focus on digital — and this is here to stay as consumer preferences are already shifting from safety to convenience. Airship CEO Brett Caine will share Airship’s official rules for surviving a digital-first, mobile-led world, with fresh insights and inspirational examples from agile and growth-oriented brands to thrive not just survive.

How Vodafone Drives Customer Engagement through Conversational Experiences

Join this session and Thomas Neumann, Principal Manager, to learn how Vodafone is leveraging Airship and Rich Channel Services messaging to drive a more interactive and personal experience through a conversational experience.

How to Reach Digital Maturity to Drive Customer Engagement in 2021

2020 has been a year of change, when technology and digital channels have proved to be crucial in the communication between brands and consumers. How can brands identify when they’ve reached a level of digital maturity that will fully support their customers needs now and in the future? Join Boots, BBC, hagebau connect and onefootball to hear the opinions and different points of view on how much is enough to achieve digital maturity for your business.

How Alaska Airlines Leverages Multiple Channels to Create the Best Experience for Customers

The rate of digital advancement in the airline industry has accelerated from decades to days. Learn how Alaska is embracing the change and leading the industry in contactless innovation. Dave McCormick, Director of Product Management, will share how to engage and educate customers to instill confidence in the new age of travel and how their app is moving from a utility app to a touch-free travel companion.

The Future of Mobile Commerce and How SMS Is Leading the Way

Despite the SMS boom, the majority of businesses have yet to embrace SMS marketing as a key engagement channel. Join Airship’s Jonathan Rueda and ReplyBuy’s Brandon O’Halloran as they talk about the “how” and “why” of SMS and learn how SMS is changing the marketing landscape.

These are just some of the great sessions we are preparing for this event. You can find more information on all our speakers and sessions here, including partner spotlights featuring Movable Ink, Radar, Branch and more! 

Don’t miss out on this chance to connect other marketing professionals. Save the date (December 10th) and make sure to register today!

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The post Here’s a Sneak Peek into What’s in Store for Elevate 2020 appeared first on Airship.

Battle-tested retailers are embarking on the longest and most challenged holiday shopping season of all time. 

Online retail sales were up 44% year over year in Q2 to more than $207 billion. For comparison’s sake, last year, Q2 online retail sales grew just 13.3% year over year. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar sales have already dropped 14% in 2020. 

As consumers shift to online shopping, they expect real-time order updates at every step of the journey as well as near-immediate gratification with delivery, putting additional pressure on merchants. 

Retailers have had to test new channels and innovate quickly to meet consumer demand. Legacy players including Target, Staples and Walmart are partnering with same-day delivery startups such as Shipt, Instacart and Postmates. They’ve innovated to adopt curbside pickup and returns, which half of holiday shoppers say they plan to use this year.

But with retail disruption on full display, brands must embrace new ways of doing business with mobile at the center to engage with shoppers this holiday season. 

Embrace Mobile Agility

Forget about sweeping quarterly plans. This holiday season, brands need to win in real time with granular contextual intelligence. 

Frequent A/B testing is a critical way to maintain and control market share. Target “is putting a premium on being really responsive” and agile this holiday season, chairman and CEO Brian Cornell recently said. “We are taking a much shorter-term horizon as we are thinking about the business.” 

But real-time insights will benefit retailers beyond just this holiday season, as SMS texting and apps become key avenues for building individual customer relationships.

Five-year-old direct-to-consumer beverage brand Dirty Lemon, for example, has primarily used SMS to double revenues annually, while GameStop increased global e-commerce by 800% last quarter by focusing on building individual customer relationships in recent years.

Making a case for mobile has never been easier. Per eMarketer, mobile sales will reach $314 billion by the end of 2020, growing more than 155% since 2016. And academic research has found retail app users buy 33% more frequently and spend 37% more than non-app users.

Create New Touchpoints for Engagement

With social distancing orders still in place, many consumers are adopting buy online and pick up in store (BOPIS) as well as buy online and return in store (BORIS). 

Prior to the pandemic, 40% of consumers were using BOPIS regularly, while 31% were using BORIS. Post-COVID, those numbers will only grow. This presents new opportunities for merchants. 

Contactless mobile wallet transactions will become attractive to consumers who want to stay safe while shopping in stores. By leveraging first-party data, retailers can send relevant offers to wallets like Google Pay, Apple Wallet and Samsung Pay to draw shoppers in.

Whether consumers purchase online or in store, retailers should engage them in an orchestrated way through text messages, push notifications and email. Customers want to know if their order is ready to be picked up, if it’s sitting on their doorstep, or if their return has been processed. Post-purchase engagement builds loyalty, as long as the messages are relevant. 

Success this holiday season will require a consistent effort by retailers to show up throughout the entire customer shopping journey — regardless of where the purchase takes place. To do that, engaging in a mobile-first strategy will be key. 

The post In a COVID-19 World, Holiday Shopping Is All About Mobile Engagement appeared first on Airship.

In Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms  Airship was named a Leader for the third consecutive year. 

Now, In this newly-released companion report, Gartner’s 2020 Critical Capabilities for Mobile Marketing Platforms*, Gartner discretely analyzes the specific capabilities of products and services of 13 mobile marketing platform vendors and presents a comparative analysis that scores the market’s products or services against a set of critical differentiators identified by Gartner.

Again this year the 3 Use Cases the Gartner team evaluated were Acquisition, Engagement and Retention. I’m proud to share that Airship received the highest score in all of them, and now for the second year in a row! 

Download the report to see all of the scores.

Here’s how Gartner evaluates these Use Cases (see page 2 of the report) 

Acquisition: “Evaluates how well solutions help marketers design, execute and optimize campaigns and/or offers to acquire new customers via mechanisms enabled on a mobile device.”

Engagement: “Evaluates how well solutions help marketers design, execute and optimize campaigns and/or offers to cross-sell, upsell, motivate or inform existing customers on their mobile device(s).”

Retention: “Evaluates how well solutions help marketers design, execute and optimize campaigns and/or offers to persuade customers to continue to use a mobile app and/or website, reengage lapsed customers and drive loyalty program sign-ups.”

In a press release, Brett Caine, CEO and president, Airship said, “Airship is bringing entirely new levels of simplicity, optimization, and ROI to cross-channel customer journeys built for today’s mobile-first consumers. Providing exceptional mobile-led consumer experiences has never been more important and, for more than a decade, we’ve proven that Airship is unmatched in keeping our clients at the forefront of innovative digital engagement strategies that grow customer lifetime value, strengthen loyalty and inspire advocacy.”

Bottom line, we’re thrilled for this recognition of I’m proud of all the work the Airship team is doing globally for leading brands. Let’s talk about how we can help yours. Contact us here or schedule a personalized demo of our platform today!

>> Click here to download a complimentary copy of the Gartner report.

*Gartner “Critical Capabilities for Mobile Marketing Platforms” by Mike McGuire, Anna Maria Virzi, Joseph Enever, October 29, 2020

**Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms” by Mike McGuire, Anna Maria Virzi, Joseph Enever, October 26, 2020

Gartner Disclosure

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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If you’re like many marketing execs we’re talking to these days, the functionality you need from your customer engagement martech stack continues to grow while budgets get more scrutiny than ever. So when you’re looking for the right partner for mobile marketing solutions, analysis from a trusted third-party is essential in your decision-making process — to ensure you’re partnering with a vendor who will deliver major value, trusted execution and extraordinary ROI. 

That’s why we’re thrilled to share that, for the third year in a row, Airship has been named a Leader in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms*. We believe our enviable positioning in the report is further validation that Airship is the best choice for brands leading the way in innovative, engaging customer engagement that accelerates growth.

 The full report is available for a limited time here.

In a press release, Brett Caine, CEO and president of Airship said, “As mobile becomes increasingly vital for brands and the customers they serve, Airship will continue to surround businesses with the best mobile-first omnichannel solutions, broadest global support and expert strategic services to power amazing customer experiences that rapidly drive growth.” 

Bottom line, we’re thrilled for this recognition of the work we’re doing globally for leading brands. Let’s talk about how we can help yours. Contact us anytime, or schedule a personalized demo of our Customer Engagement Platform today!

*Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms” by Mike McGuire, Anna Maria Virzi & Joseph Enever, October 26, 2020

Gartner Disclosure

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The gartner document is available upon request from Airship.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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Airship was cited as a Leader in the recently released The Forrester Wave: Mobile Engagement Automation, Q3 2020.

If you’re reading this you’re probably looking for a mobile engagement automation platform — or evaluating the one you have. In the newly released report The Forrester Wave: Mobile Engagement Automation, Q3 2020, Forrester analysts evaluated the top vendors in this category — those delivering at least 1 billion push notifications a month, with at least 30 enterprise customers — and scored them on 31 evaluation criteria. Each vendor was then categorized as a Leaders, Strong Performer, Challenger or Contender.

We’re thrilled to share that Airship was named a Leader. 

Here are five highlights from the report that we’re most proud of, because we believe they reflect our laser focus on continuous innovation — and the unparalleled value we continue to create for our customers and their end-users: 

“Airship combines intuitive orchestration capabilities with a robust testing platform.” 

Features are under-utilized if they’re difficult to use. That’s why we focus on continuously simplifying the user experience while offering an integrated solution for testing and optimizing user interactions at each stage of the customer journey — on mobile and beyond — with Apptimize. Learn more about Apptimize — and try it for free.

“Airship stands out for its mobile-first approach and its vision of a consumer-led shift of messaging from an interruption to an invitation.” 

Since day one, we’ve been deeply committed to helping global brands create win-win interactions with users. We continue to believe providing relevancy and value at every interaction is an essential foundation for growing long term customer relationships in the mobile era. 

Airship was also named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms for the past two years. Last year, Airship placed highest and furthest in the quadrant for our ability to execute and completeness of vision. Learn more. 

“References called Airship a partner, not just a vendor, and praised the stability and scalability of the platform.”

We love going deep with customers to understand their challenges and opportunities: our goal is to ensure customers are successful in achieving their business goals, not just providing outstanding service. From our global strategy team to our technical and managed services experts, you won’t find a more committed and skilled partner for growing your business with a holistic customer engagement platform. 

“The platform encourages users to set up sophisticated, interconnected journeys so they can visualize how consumers move from one journey to the next, and it has controls to minimize the risk of overmessaging to a single consumer.”

Launched earlier this year after many months of deep research, development and testing, our groundbreaking cross-channel customer journey builder, Airship Journeys, is already a critical tool for our customers. Learn more about Journeys.

“Users can also let a consumer’s past engagement behavior dictate the message format she receives in the future, rather than taking a one-message-fits-all approach.” 

In the one-to-one world of omnichannel messaging, personalization is critical — and so is context. We make it easy to create customer journeys that reach users at the right time on the right channel, thanks to  sophisticated tagging, custom events, segmentation, and behavior-based triggers. The bottom line: we help brands be there when customers need or want them. And that’s a win-win. Learn more about our Orchestration solutions.

Want to learn more? Download your complimentary copy of “The Forrester Wave: Mobile Engagement Automation, Q3 2020” today.

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