Our webinar, “Customer Journeys in the Mobile Era: Is Your Martech Stack Up to the Task?” offers insights into meeting this evolving challenge. Forrester Principal Analyst Rusty Warner joined me to discuss the changing CX landscape, moments-based marketing, and the martech investments needed to win, serve and retain customers in this new environment.

Check out five key takeaways below and watch the webinar, here.

1) Focus on Designing the Customer Experience 

Digitally savvy customers expect brands to understand them as individuals. Good personalization translates to a great customer experience (CX). And when brands get it right, success follows. In fact, Forrester found that 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. 

2) Avoid Common Personalization Blunders

Many brands struggle to deliver consistent CX across channels. Missteps like irrelevant retargeting messages and superficial personalization can feel out of touch, or even creepy, and lead customers to opt out of your brand channels altogether. The right martech investments will minimize the risk of opt-outs and deliver an experience that’s contextual and personalized.

3) Reimagine Martech Around Customer Moments

Digital and mobile technology have transformed the traditional marketing funnel. Today’s consumer interacts with brands across multiple touchpoints throughout their customer journey. Campaigns remain important. But what’s more important is winning in the moments that matter most to customers. That means identifying and anticipating their needs and delivering customized content at just the right time and place.

4) Understand and Predict Customer Behavior

You can only truly personalize experiences for consumers you recognize and understand.

A moments-based approach requires marketers to think differently about AI-powered orchestration, predictive analytics and identity resolution. The right martech investments help brands align insights and engagements and be more responsive to their customers – in the right place and at the right time. 

5) Build for the Multichannel World

Companies that can’t make the shift to creating mobile-first customer experiences are increasingly at risk. And a recent Airship survey found that many face challenges in managing cross-channel communications. As marketers reimagine their martech around customer journeys, cross-channel integration is essential to delivering value for a brand and its customers.

So, is your martech stack up to the task? Watch the full webinar for more insights on making the right martech investments, a case study and details on Airship Journeys, our groundbreaking customer journey solution.

Airship Journeys

Simplify the way cross-channel customer journeys are created, measured and perfected.

Learn More

The post Can Your Martech Stack Deliver Seamless Customer Journeys in the Mobile Era? appeared first on Airship.

In Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms* Airship was named a Leader. 

Now, in this newly-released companion report, Gartner’s 2019 Critical Capabilities for Mobile Marketing Platforms**, Gartner takes a deeper dive into the scores behind the Magic Quadrant assessment. The report provides a rating for 18 mobile marketing vendors against the critical capabilities identified by Gartner — as well as scoring of each vendor’s capabilities as applied to three key use cases. 

This year the Use Cases the Gartner team looked at were Acquisition, Engagement and Retention. We’re proud to share that Airship received the top score in each of these Use Cases.

Airship achieved the highest Product Scores for Acquisition, Engagement (seen here) and Retention Use Cases.  Download the report to see all of the scores.

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 here from Airship.

Here’s how Gartner defines these Use Cases (see pages 19 & 20 of the report).

Acquisition: “This use case involves the design, execution and optimization of campaigns to acquire new customers via their mobile devices. This scenario includes goal setting, audience segmentation and content (including offers) that drives registration in settings such as an app or on a mobile site.”

Engagement: “This includes the design, execution and optimization of campaigns to cross-sell, upsell, motivate or inform existing customers on their mobile devices. This scenario includes specific campaigns to grow revenue per customer, and to drive more consistent customer engagement.”

Retention: “This is the design, execution and optimization of campaigns to persuade customers to engage via mobile devices, reengage lapsed customers and drive loyalty program sign-ups. This scenario includes goal setting, identifying segments for retention campaigns and offers.”

In a press release, Brett Caine, CEO and president, Airship said, “Airship is setting new standards in real-time customer experience — the critical element of brand success today — and believe our scores in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities report reflect the industry-leading results our customers and partners are seeing around the world,” 

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 here or schedule a personalized demo of our platform today!

*Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms” by Mike McGuire, Charles Golvin, July 15, 2019

** Gartner “Critical Capabilities for Mobile Marketing Platforms” by Charles S. Golvin, Mike McGuire, October 21, 2019

The post Setting New Standards in Customer Experience: Airship Receives Highest Scores in Gartner’s 2019 Critical Capabilities for Mobile Marketing Platforms appeared first on Airship.

Smartphones have already radically changed travel marketing. With AT&T soon rolling out 5G in about a dozen US cities, this long-anticipated technology is becoming a reality and will further transform travel into a mobile game.

The stakes are high: Digital travel sales are expected to hit $219 billion by 2021, with nearly half of these transactions happening via mobile. Travel brands have been undergoing an intense digital transformation for the last few years, but that journey has only begun. There’s plenty more to learn, especially from neighboring sectors. Here are a couple of tech-driven innovations from other marketing categories that travel brands can call their own and why they are important as the 5G era approaches.  

Take Them to the Experience

There’s been a lot of recent buzz around mixed reality playing a bigger and bigger role for in-flight experiences and hotels’ in-room offerings. Tourism marketers have also embraced 3D-powered video while offering jaw-dropping views of their mountains, lakes, plains and deserts. While these efforts are exciting, airlines, hotels and tourism boards may not be thinking enough about how far they can take AR, in particular.

Kate Spade offers an example that’s unusually applicable to travel brands. When promoting its first storefront in Paris last year, the women’s fashion brand acted with a destination marketing mindset by launching an AR app dubbed My Little Paris. It takes users on virtual walking tours the brand called Joy Walks, roaming the City of Lights and offering AR-enabled surprises like flamingos appearing by the Seine River or a rainbow digitally overlayed around the Eiffel Tower.

Keep Them Assured

Relevancy is everything; for instance, sending high-value push notifications frequently can increase mobile app retention rates by 3 to 10 times. With that in mind, I love what Lyft has started doing with notifications. After the app pings you that it found a nearby driver, it alerts you when the driver is approaching your location. Then, it will let you know the driver is outside your door and how long he or she will wait for you. It will also let you know if there’s been a delay in his or her arrival or if a nearer driver has been given your assignment.

How travel marketers can copy this idea right now:  For instance, when you are on your way to the airport — or even in an airport — every push notification, SMS message or email from your airline is appreciated. Typically, airlines only notify a passenger when a flight is delayed — and it’s sometimes via an email. Airlines, bus lines and cruise ships should steal this “friendly updates” page from Lyft’s mobile notifications playbook and alert customers that their departure is on time. Alerts and updates should be a common piece to an airline’s mobile boarding pass. It’s good information, and such a service will save, in particular, airport frequenters many anxious walks up to the departures screen at the airport and endear them to the brand.

How 5G could advance this idea even further:  Imagine getting a text with live video from your terminal that reveals your plane pulling up, showing that it’s is on time. Or how about live video of your vacation resort’s pool and outside bar to get you excited for an upcoming trip? 5G will make these experiences possible.

How travel marketers can copy this idea right now: Travel brands can employ this concept to upgrade the customer experience before and after the purchase. To encourage vacation bookings, airlines and hotels could enable consumers to show what the experience will be like at destinations. For instance, if you wanted to convince family members or friends that a particular place is worth everyone’s time and money, you could use such an app to overlay images of them at a tourist attraction, and then share the digital inspiration with them. The app users could also utilize the features to post AR-enhanced images while they are on the trip, promoting whatever travel brands helped them get there.

How 5G could advance this idea even further:  The opportunities for marketers in the airlines, hotels, tourism and destination-minded events spaces are going to be endless. The innovations will range from VR-powered films to get consumers excited in travel to live video taking them behind the scenes at such places. Organizations like Tourism Vancouver and The Venetian will be able to experiment with immersive videos like never before.

Watch Always and Borrow Often

In the end, travel customers worry a lot about their trips, and they take their time before spending their hard earned cash on this brand or that company. After all, the average vacation in America costs $144 a day per person.

So, as a travel marketer, your strategy cannot be all about acquisition, otherwise, you’re just a small part of the $80 million that’s spent by the sector on Google daily. It also needs to be about retention, about giving people a customer experience worth repeating. That’s why it’s important to keep an eye on what the Lyfts, Amazons and Kate Spades of the world are up to and trying their tactics for yourself.

The post Tech-driven Innovations from Other Sectors that Travel Brands Need to Steal appeared first on Airship.

Amazon Prime Day might represent Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his team’s greatest retail triumph. Thanks to them, with Prime Day, we now have a midsummer, two-day Cyber Monday that’s generating billions of dollars. The fact that Target, Nordstrom, Walmart, eBay and around 250 other retailers this week mimicked the e-commerce giant with their own sales events speaks volumes about the impact Amazon has on merchandising.

More importantly, Amazon is advancing the notion of what “the big sales event” means. For decades, we’ve seen mass advertising for not only Cyber Monday and Black Friday but also retailers touting “Christmas in July” and car brands pitching “a December to remember.” This year, Amazon—which has offered recommendations to site visitors for a few years—continued its march toward more individualization by prioritizing relevancy at a higher level than before for Prime Day. Even for a flash sale, blanketing consumers with ads is fading away as the customer experience must now always be individualized.

After reviewing my offers and polling family members and friends about theirs, Amazon made Prime Day more personal than in years past. If you recently searched Amazon for golf clubs, your Prime Day deal included a discounted set of irons. If you had searched for makeup, you were served lipstick and eyeliner kits. If you had searched for a mattress, Amazon tried to take a bite out of Serta, Casper and Helix’s sales by making you a cushy offer. 

Indeed, across marketing and advertising channels, Prime Day was the latest signal that individualization is now a customer experience initiative for every single occasion. Here are three more takeaways from the digital sales bonanza. 

Maximize first-party data

The individualization of “flash sale” events highlights how important first-party data has become for brands. Amazon likely gained millions of new Prime customers in just two days, and their patronage will not only bring their purchase data to the platform but also, eventually, their Amazon search data. And through machine learning, the company will take such data and make more relevant and timely offers to customers. 
To best leverage this first-party data, Amazon—as well as any retailer, financial brand, travel brand and publisher—should always let customers choose how and when they want to be contacted. In its preference center, Amazon provides 83 product categories that subscribers can individually select to curate the offers they get in their emails. Its mobile app on Prime Day let users opt-in to receive specific push notifications for when a desired ‘lightning deal’ went live as well. 

Amazon could take these efforts steps further, though, and likely will. A granular preference center that lets customers dictate whether they’d like to get messages via email, text or push notification, should soon be table stakes for big retailers. Before long, customers should be able to decide if they’d prefer to hear from the brand in the morning, afternoon or evening. 

Embrace ‘Wholelistic’ customer journey

Amazon used its grocery brand, Whole Foods, in about every way imaginable for Prime Day. It began marketing Whole Foods specials for Prime Day several days in advance while also offering $10 Prime Day credits for anyone who spent $10 or more in one of the grocery stores.  

Amazon could do more with its grocery chain. Whole Foods was reportedly going to be a drop-off point for Amazon orders in 2017, but that situation has yet to manifest. Though Amazon has partnered with Nordstrom and Rite Aid to offer a convenient offline returns option. Given Amazon’s focus on combining the online and offline shopping experience, it seems likely that that option with Whole Foods will be available in the not-so-distant future to make the customer journey more holistic. Digital communications will be at the heart of that experience, as messages about order returns and refunds getting processed will be as valuable as ever. 

At the same time, the company clearly understands that keeping customers in the know empowers their path to purchase. Amazon for Prime Day offered an elaborate set of options for getting web and mobile notifications about what the brand calls Lightning Deals, which were only available for a brief amount of time earlier this week. 

Why Apple should copy Amazon

Amazon Prime Day this week was projected to bring in a whopping $5.8 billion, which compares very favorably to Cyber Monday ($8 billion) as a whole. And many of those sales surely came by way of individualized offers based on first-party data and Amazon’s ability to deliver a seamless online-offline experience with Whole Foods.

Are there other brands that could have a similar impact as Amazon? One of them is Apple, which could iterate on the concept while staying true to its brand. Why doesn’t Apple parlay its annual, buzzy September reveals for the new iPhones, Apple Watches and iPads with a follow-up event centered on the for-sale release of the actual products? It wouldn’t have to slash prices; it could add value with perhaps live entertainment on Apple’s media channels and offer other perks to buying an Apple product that day. Apple should take a page out of Amazon’s playbook, which included partnering with mega pop star Taylor Swift this year. What’s more, Apple’s 1:1 messaging could be powered by first-party data to create a halo effect in conjunction with the splashy event. 

What Amazon proves is that if you have the brand, the hoopla works. It’s why the digital giant could take the traditional sales-event concept and turn it into a midsummer extravaganza that had 250 other retailers trying to keep pace. 

The post How Amazon Prime Day Individualized “The Big Sales Event” appeared first on Airship.

It is an honor to be recognized by Gartner. We believe our incredible position in the report is further validation that Airship is the best choice for brands leading the way in customer engagement. 

We’re really on a roll here, if we do say so ourselves — and our customers (and their customers) are benefiting. The customer experiences we can power with our Customer Engagement Platform are smarter, faster and more coordinated than ever before. Highlights from the past year include…

• Gave ourselves a makeover (get details in our interactive Rebrand Journey experience) to signal the major expansion in our offerings and our powerful, centralized, enterprise-ready Customer Engagement Platform.
• Brought the Accengage team on board, massively expanding and deepening the ways we can serve brands in Europe. 
• Added support for sending messages on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and RCS messages.
• Recruited even more top talent to our leadership team, adding passionate, customer-obsessed executives who are thrilled to be creating the future of customer engagement together. 
• Dramatically advanced our SMS and email capabilities with advanced personalization, as well as link shortening and tracking for SMS.

And the year ahead looks just as action-packed. Our Customer Engagement Platform continues to expand the ways brands can create amazing customer experiences — on any channel and at every stage of the customer journey. 

To sum up: if you’re already a customer, the report is fantastic validation that you’ve chosen the right partner. 

If you’re evaluating or re-evaluating a mobile marketing or customer engagement platform, we’d love the chance to hear more about your most ambitious goals — and show you how we can help you meet and beat them. 

Get in touch any time to chat with our experts, or schedule a personalized demo. We can’t wait to work together to build the future of customer engagement. 

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

*Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms” by Mike McGuire, Charles Golvin, July 15, 2019

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publication, 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.

The post Airship Achieves Highest and Furthest Overall Position for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision in Gartner Magic Quadrant appeared first on Airship.

While many people say that SMS (short messaging service) is making a comeback, the truth is that the channel never went away. Just because your brand now has a mobile app or an Alexa voice skill doesn’t mean people want a user experience that entails a lot of staring at their phone or speaker. Different situations call for different needs. And at this point, we’re all pretty used to texting in any situation.

Think about the number of ways people greet each other. Sometimes, we say “hi” with a wave. Sometimes, it’s a more formal handshake and greeting. Other times it’s a brief nod of recognition in an elevator. Brands should reflect these different types of situations with their digital channels, with SMS as much as a focus as phone calls or email. SMS responses can be easily customized by using unique keywords that indicate a customer’s product interest or location, building to more precise segmentation as more messages are exchanged. Consider that there are currently 5.1 billion mobile subscribers on Earth, so SMS obviously has incredible potential for personalization at global scale.

People respond positively to SMS-based marketing and customer care. In fact, 9 out of 10 consumers want brands to communicate with them via SMS, which has an astonishing open rate of 98 percent. Even Walmart is investing big in text messaging as retail’s next big thing.

Marketers should develop systems that enable customers to opt into certain channels — like SMS — and indicate their preferences for specific channels over the other ones. If you don’t already, your brand should have a preference center, where they can tell you how often and in which formats they want to hear from your brand for different needs. Thirty-seven percent of consumers interact with a brand on three or more channels, and 60 percent are more likely to return to a brand or retailer to make another purchase when they’re able to choose how a company communicates with them.

The considerable pay-off is in consumer loyalty. Companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain 89 percent of their customers, compared to 33 percent for those brands that do not. With that in mind, here are brands in four categories that wisely weave SMS into their omnichannel customer experience.

Order Fulfillment

FedEx does a great job of keeping customers in the loop via text message after they express SMS as their preferred alerts channel. For instance, I recently ordered a few long-sleeve t-shirts from Walmart.com, and the delivery service sent me text notifications when the order was picked up by a truck and then when it arrived. After it was delivered, I got another SMS.

With the texts, FedEx has transformed the shipment tracking process from passive to active. In the past, the expectation was that you would have to log on to FedEx.com and input a tracking number to get an update. Smart brands are taking the onus off of their consumers with SMS. What’s more, I did not get annoyingly double-messaged with emails about the delivery, even though FedEx has my email address.

Nightlife Planning

The Nudge is a lifestyle planner mobile app in Silicon Valley that — remember, the core of its business is a mobile app — uses SMS more than any other channel. Since text messages are actually less immersive — you normally just read one message and then you are done — The Nudge encourages people to curb their screen addiction. It delivers interesting tidbits about what’s going on around a user’s locale in the coming days and lets them add events to their app with a click.

At first blush, with a mobile app focusing on text, one might say, “what an inverted concept!” But it’s not upside-down at all; it’s putting the customer experience first and the brand second. The simple text reinforces the rich experience of the app by directing the user to specific content or features that they would be most interested in.

Lunchtime Needs

Quick-serve brands are seeing great success with SMS as a channel option for their patrons, and Subway is the clearest example. It offers a six-inch sandwich for only $2.99 if you sign up for its SMS-only program, which has attracted 5 million customers to join and accomplishes an 85 percent retention rate. They then get lunchtime specials notifications during weekdays.

Subway has more numbers that show the value of channel preference in the customer experience. On average, the brand has found that 26 percent of its SMS followers visit stores more often, 13 percent spend more, and 15 percent make more purchases than before being in the SMS program. This program’s results represent a clear victory for the brand.

Style Notifications

Apparel shoppers want a human touch and convenience, which are two ideas Rent the Runway’s texting concierge service achieves simultaneously. The direct-to-consumer brand allows customers to use MMS to receive recommendations and style advice. With a text, they can also get expedited delivery and request items to be placed on hold for pickup in-store.

The SMS concierge service sneakily improves the customer experience across channels. For instance, when customers figure out pick-up logistics in advance via texting, their in-store experience is more efficient and smoother. Right now, the texting service is entirely powered by humans, but Rent the Runway plans to implement AI eventually to expedite conversations.

It’s All About Defining Moments

What FedEx, The Nudge, Subway, and Rent the Runway accomplish with SMS is serving consumers at the right moment. Indeed, text messages are an efficient way for brands to help people at the correct time and place.

SMS should be a piece to your omnichannel offering that people can opt into instead of other channels like email or phone calls. Increasingly, mobile marketing is all about offering such personalized relationships. And what is a more personal connection than a text?

Let us help you create a strong SMS strategy. Make sure to check out our SMS resources and let us know if you have any questions.

The post Why SMS Should Be a Strong Focus in Your Customer Engagement appeared first on Airship.

I recently co-hosted with Anthony Tse, Director of Global Professional Services, the webinar “Be There: A CMO’s Roadmap to the Future of Customer Engagement,” where we talked about the strategies, solutions and innovations brands can use be there in the moments that matter most. We also shared some vital stats that underscore the importance of customer experience and customer engagement.

Here are 8 noteworthy stats that underscore why customer experience is crucial for your brand.

• Customers of brands that lead in CX have a seven times higher purchase intent than those of other companies.
• 44% of CMOs said that customer experience is the most important program they are looking to for driving innovation and differentiation.
• Good customer experience makes a difference. 65% of customers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising
• Bad customer experience can also make the wrong kind of difference. 32% of consumers say they’ll walk away from a brand after just one bad experience.

• A one-point increase in CX scores can translate into an increase of $10-$100 million in annual revenue.
• In a global survey, 45% of participants said that they wished booking a hotel was a more digital experience.
• 29% of marketers said that event-triggered/real-time campaigns will most impact marketing activities over the next five years.
• 38% of CMOs say that fragmented engagement systems that fail to connect or deliver a unified view of the customer experience are the primary challenge of executing data-driven CX strategy.

At Airship, we want to help you get more traction in your organization for initiatives that improve CX, so we’ve created a “stat pack” with slides, like the images above, you can use to share these important facts and figures in your organization.

Feel free to download (available as ppt and pdf files) and share them in your internal and external presentations — and let us know how it goes! We’d love to hear back from you.

Let’s talk customer experience at Elevate, a Customer Engagement Forum. Airship will be hosting panels on customer engagement with brands like Zillow, AccuWeater, and Foot Locker. Come say hi to me and other Airshippers at the events in San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris. For a full list of brands and cities, check out our event page.

The post 8 Stats That Show Customer Experience Is Critical to Your Bottom Line appeared first on Airship.

The correlation between creating amazing customer experiences (CX) and bottom-line success can’t be denied.

But while customer experience and customer engagement are business-critical capabilities for modern brands, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day chaos and let customer experience take a back seat. Marketing leaders need to have an intentional focus on customer experience and drive the necessary conversations with their teams to build experiences that create long-term value for both customers and brand.

So, for your next marketing brainstorm or strategy meeting, here are some questions that every CMO and marketing leader should be asking their team.

“Is our company at risk of disruption from competitors who are creating innovative customer experiences?”

The story is painfully familiar: a scrappy startup swoops in with a smart, streamlined strategy and disrupts an established competitor seemingly overnight. These disruptors are so effective because they are obsessed with creating deep customer connections by creating an incredible  CX — usually digital. Don’t get pushed to the sidelines. Determine your risk of disruption and how aggressive you need to be to stay ahead.

Follow-up Questions: Are we thinking  “big” enough? Are we creating experiences that differentiate our brand and set new bars for innovation and success? What companies in other industries are setting a new bar for CX and what can we learn from their approach?

“Are the customer experiences we create consistent with our brand promise and mission?”

Authenticity is the most valuable currency and can set you apart from the other brands vying for your customer’s attention and time. When the customer has an interaction with your brand, whether online, in-app or in-person, can you deliver a consistently authentic brand experience, each and every time?

Follow-up Questions: Does the customer’s experience of our brand deviate or deteriorate across some devices or channels? If so, how is this influenced by our business decisions?

“How cohesive is our customer experience with our brand — across all touchpoints?”

Your customers have lives and experiences, not devices and channels.  You need to meet them where they live with the content and messages they want to make their lives better. Doing so will create cohesive brand experiences and keep customers connected. Doing the opposite, by sending irrelevant or unwanted messages, will ruin experiences and end brand-customer relationships.

Follow-up Questions: When the customer asks for support, is it coordinated with everything else, or do I have to repeat things or jump from place to place? What’s our prepared response for a customer’s bad experience?

Want more conversation starters? These are just three of the ten key questions every CMO should ask their team from the ebook “Ready to Build the Future of Digital Customer Engagement?” You can download the ebook here.

You can also watch our on-demand webinar, “Be There: A CMO’s Roadmap to the Future of Customer Engagement” where I shared more strategies, solutions and innovations that are working for the brands leading the way in creating the future of customer engagement.

The post 3 Questions Every CMO Should Ask to Improve Customer Experience appeared first on Airship.

Michael Stone is the SVP of Marketing at Airship, responsible for the company’s market growth strategy, demand generation, communications and product marketing. For over 20 years, Mike has led marketing organizations and provided strategic consulting to technology companies. Most recently, Mike was SVP of Marketing for Salesforce Community Cloud—from its initial launch through four years of worldwide growth.
 

Where were you born and raised?

I was born in Detroit but my family moved to the East Bay Area in California when I was 2 years old. I was raised in Oakland, so I saw the rise of the high-tech industry pretty much from the very beginning and got opportunities to work with emerging technology very early on in my career.

What was your first job?

My first job was actually working in a newsroom for the local CBS affiliate during the Gulf War. After that, I worked with John Naisbitt’s (“Megatrends”) consulting group as a trend researcher. From there, I moved to Regis McKenna Inc. developing positioning and messaging for technology companies. In all those jobs I spent a lot of time doing research and directly interviewing customers – I’ve literally done thousands of live customer interviews. Starting out on this career path really shaped my perspective on approaching problems – looking from the outside-in and always taking the big picture into account.

What was the first product you got really excited about?

The first time I borrowed a laptop computer. Whoa. Just whoa. Teeny LCD screen, mostly just word processing and spreadsheets. But man – you could carry any research, half-written paper, whatever, anywhere you went, open that thing up and you were right where you left off. Crazy.

Who has been the biggest influence on your career?

I’ve been lucky enough to have had a lot of great managers. I borrowed different things from each of them.

What has been your greatest achievement?

By the numbers, probably launching the Communities product line at Salesforce and leading marketing through enough rapid growth for it to be dubbed its own separate “Community Cloud” organization by Marc Benioff. But what I am really most proud of is the team we assembled almost from scratch. Such a broad array of backgrounds and personalities, but we really all genuinely enjoyed working together – and we got so much done with a relatively small team and kept it fun.

What has been your biggest mistake?

Working as a marketing consultant for a few great companies and not getting paid in stock.

What is your greatest strength?

I think over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at looking at a lot of data, perspectives and product capabilities, and boiling them down to their most essential elements pretty quickly. This has led me toward a pretty strong career in positioning and messaging: taking complex products and simplifying their story so that people can easily see value.

And I genuinely enjoy developing the skills and careers of the people on my team.

What is your biggest weakness?

I’m always working on assertiveness and trusting my gut. My natural approach is to consider a few different perspectives and scenarios before going full speed ahead. But that’s not the way things work sometimes. Sometimes, you have to just make a quick call on the spot or provide direction to an assembled team while a topic is top of mind. Or jump into a heated conversation before things head in a direction that is unproductive. As the years pile up I’ve gotten better at trusting my intuition, but I still have to push myself sometimes.

What do you think is the aspect of your role most neglected by peers?

I think sometimes marketers can get too comfortable after a while and think that they know their audience and market better than they actually do. Many years of domain expertise can actually be dangerous. Attitudes, preferences and expectations change incredibly quickly.

Sure, you should do regular research, but you need to get out with customers a few times a month. Go on sales calls, host advisory boards and user groups, go out to dinner or grab a beer afterward. And then don’t just ask about your product – ask about their jobs, their teams and how their work ties into the company’s business strategy. That’s how you really find out how you can help them.

Which word or phrase is your mantra and which word or phrase makes you squirm?

I’m pretty big on prioritization. I probably too often repeat “strategy is about focus, and focus is about saying no.” It’s really easy to say yes to everything, but if everything is important – nothing is important.

I also think the phrase “thank you” has the highest ROI of anything in the world. So I like to remember to use that phrase when it’s deserved.

Phrases I hate? Pretty typical overused business babble – “outside the box”, etc. I keep saying “over-rotate” in meetings and it’s driving me crazy.

What makes you stressed?

Packed trains. But that’s probably not what you’re looking for.

What do you do to relax?

Photography. It’s the one thing I do where I just look for interesting light and patterns and don’t really think about anything except what’s in front of me.

What is your favorite song?

That’s the toughest question yet. Impossible. Guess I’ll go with Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin.

Which book taught you most?

Well, my wife is an author. So I’d have to say her first published book. The content was great, for sure. But watching that process was amazing up close. I think it’s incredible to make up a whole world of characters out of thin air, and then amazingly brave to show that world to anyone. You show the world something that is completely and only of you and your mind – for them to love or question or critique. It blows my mind that she can do that, over and over again.

Do you have a team or sport that you follow?

Warriors and 49ers. I’ve also been pretty over the top on fantasy football for over a decade.

Which country would you like to work in?

Probably the UK, I guess. Aside from my general lack of any language other than English, I’ve been there quite a bit on business and always enjoyed it.

Which company do you think has the best marketing?

I think you have to give it up to Apple – maybe an obvious answer, but they’re really the Lebron James (Messi?) of B2C technology marketing. They are amazing at how long they’ve maintained a very consistent, simple yet somehow personable approach to their messaging, creative, etc. They make complex technology approachable and their brand is maybe the most impressive in the world because it’s so infused in everything they do. You know an Apple commercial before you see the logo, the industrial design and packaging, the in-store experience, the website – everything looks like / sounds like / feels like Apple. And in the ultimate proof, it’s just as quickly recognizable when someone else is trying to copy Apple in any aspect of their marketing, merchandising or design. That’s powerful.

What do you love most about your job?

All of the different use cases and impacts we can have on the customer experience. It gives us a lot of room for creativity and variety in the stories we tell and the strategies and programs we can create. And it’s a great environment comprised of really smart people who don’t have a lot of attitude and genuinely all want to pitch in for the greater good.

What is your favorite book?

You guys and the book questions! Books I really enjoyed reading include the Pillars of the Earth, Kite Runner, King of the World (Ali), The Name of the Wind, 11/22/63 by King, Book Thief, American Gods, Breakfast of Champions, Me Talk Pretty One Day.

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The post Q&A: Get to Know Mike Stone, Airship’s SVP of Marketing appeared first on Airship.

There’s a lot at stake. And smartphone-centric marketing strategies are not just the power behind the retail industry’s so-called disrupters, but clever mobile marketing is also a key ingredient behind the resurgence of many established leaders like Target Corp. and Tiffany & Co. Additionally, mobile is why a legacy, non-retail brand such as Good Housekeeping is creating smartphone-based experiences in the Mall of America.

Yet, retail marketers sometimes underestimate mobile as just another sales channel. It’s more than that — it’s part of our moment-by-moment lives, part of our human experience. Brands need to think about mobile in a few big ways that will affect holiday sales across channels.

Build Anticipation Via Off-line and Mobile

It’s paramount for retailers to create buzz in their holiday marketing. In the U.K., holiday TV ads are akin to our Super Bowl commercials over here, generating massive amounts of online chatter that boost sales for brands with the most popular adverts. Here in the U.S., thanks largely to traditional media coverage, we get up in the wee hours of the morning, stand in long lines and even camp out overnight to take advantage of epic discounts at places like Walmart and Best Buy.

But there are easier ways of creating hype. An example is Rothy’s, an e-commerce start-up that sells women’s shoes. About every three weeks at a different time, it unveils a new shoe at its lone store in San Francisco. It breaks the news by alerting people via e-mail just a few days in advance and putting a notice in the shop’s window. Lines form around the block before doors open for the shoe drop, and Instagram posts pour in with the company’s dedicated hashtag. Rothy’s underscores how retailers can combine digital and off-line messaging and turn it into foot traffic — and how foot traffic can drive online sales thanks to social media sharing.

Bigger competitors such as Chanel, Prada and Gucci have mobile apps at their disposal. If people have gone to the trouble of downloading their apps, then they are clearly customers who should be encouraged to take advantage of phone functionalities like the camera, social sharing and mobile wallets. Shopping app The Hunt offers a glimpse into the possibilities for big brands. Users can post photos of clothing items they spot on the street, and then fellow users help find the item either on the app or elsewhere. Such features not only convert sales, but create brand advocates for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Imagine a Chanel in-store customer posting a photo of a hard-to-find handbag, with a message about how many are left at the location.

Personalize Effectively

Last holiday season, my team analyzed app data from 100 retailers during the holidays. We found that new app installs for brick-and-mortar merchants peaked on Black Friday, while online-only brands saw steady rates of installs throughout November but peaked a couple days before Thanksgiving.

The post Three Big Ideas for Retail Holiday Success appeared first on Airship.