Not only can Sprint customers watch every live match of 2016 Copa América Centenario for free with no data charges when they sign up for the fuboTV app (after 60 days, pay $9.99/mo plus data usage), Sprint’s next-level sweepstakes offers the chance to win daily prizes including a VIP trip to attend the final match. (No purchase necessary to enter. See details at sprint.com/copa.)

To fulfill both short- and long-term engagement objectives, Sprint is enabling sweepstakes participants to download a personalized mobile wallet pass powered by Urban Airship Reach.

“Wallet offered us a new and impactful way of reconnecting with soccer fans throughout the tournament,” said Luis Martinez, Digital Lead, Multicultural Marketing at Sprint.

“Wallet offered us a new and impactful way of reconnecting with soccer fans throughout the tournament,” said Luis Martinez, Digital Lead, Multicultural Marketing at Sprint. With 16 teams and 32 matches taking place from June 3rd-26th, fans’ excitement is already high with thousands of wallet passes downloaded in the weeks leading up to Copa.

Mobile wallet passes offered Sprint a highly visible way to engage sweepstakes entrants, opening up an ongoing mobile messaging channel and keeping fans informed of extra entries earned based on the number of goals their favorite team has scored throughout the tournament.

The back of the pass contains links to keep entrants connected to the broader world of Sprint and Copa including its dedicated website and Sprint’s social channels where various activities also earn extra sweepstakes entries.

¡GOAL! Why Sprint Turned to Urban Airship Reach

Urban Airship Reach offered an ideal solution for Sprint to engage with soccer fans in a highly visible way and on a short timeline — from conception to execution, the mobile wallet campaign only took three weeks. In addition, the brilliant way that Sprint is utilizing Wallet extends a traditionally short-lived sweepstakes time period into a longer-term play for fan engagement.

“In the short-term, we hope to add value to the sweepstakes and the Copa experience via fans’ mobile wallet,” said Martinez. “In the longer term, we hope to create a new marketing channel, targeting soccer fans with relevant messaging and offers, ultimately designed to move the pass holder down the funnel to conversion.”

For Sprint, Copa is a chance to reach out to the millions of soccer fans in the U.S. who are coming together to witness these historic games, and mobile wallets are key to easily extending that engagement.

An example of a game time notification a pass holder would receive on iOS.

Go For the Win!

Click here with your mobile device to enter the sweepstakes, download the mobile wallet pass and get your game on with the chance to win daily prizes such as a TAG Heuer Watch, Samsung electronics, Nike Soccer Gear, soccer memorabilia signed by David Beckham and other legends and, of course, a VIP trip for 2 to attend the final game!

As more and more companies explore the new world of mobile engagement that wallets unlock, don’t hesitate to contact us for inspiration on your winning game plan, or get started now with a free trial of Urban Airship Reach.

The post Sprint Goes for the Goal at Copa América with Mobile Wallet appeared first on Airship.

Looking at the app, there are a lot of things they are doing really well to drive greater mobile engagement with their primary audience: fans.

1) The Opening Tip: Mobile App Onboarding

Upon opening the app for the first time, you are greeted with a timely, custom “Finals Edition” homescreen. The app then asks for permission to send push notifications and use your location to provide a better user experience.

The NBA app takes advantage of increased engagement during the playoffs by releasing a special edition.

2) Driving Toward Conversion

After completing the notification and location permissions, you’re brought to the main screen of the app and shown a game schedule (which is great utility, as schedule and score updates are likely the main reasons most fans go to the app).

You are also given the option to set alerts for the game, which could be considered a conversion since that person is then much more likely to check back into the app to stay up-to-date on the score, or even tune in to watch it on TV while using the app to stay current on in-game stats. The fan can also select a “favorite team” to make sure they don’t miss any important events or information related to their #1 team.

3) Scoring with Mobile App Retention

The NBA app sends notifications related to your favorite teams and allows you to watch game recaps and highlights, which can keep users actively engaging with the app. Fans can get a custom feed of updates, such as when one of their favorite players breaks a personal record, or excitement alerts for big moments. This is a great way to use a user’s loyalty to their favorite players and teams to create loyalty to the app — and brand.

4) Off-Season Re-Engagement

The off-season is a natural time for fan engagement to drop off within the app since there are no games scheduled. But, this time also provides the opportunity for the NBA to re-engage its audience by sending alerts about draft picks and team roster announcements, as well as classic content and clips based on their preferences. Those users with an NBA League Pass subscription can use the app to watch entire on-demand archived playoff and regular-season games from their favorite device, including classic NBA games.

All of this is a great way to keep fans engaged in the off-season, and then once again get them excited for the next season’s tip-off when the time is right!

Mobile App Best Practices

Mobile app marketing, when done right, provides true utility to users and the NBA app demonstrates many mobile best practices. Want to learn more about how your app can keep users engaged? Check out our guide, 10 Mobile Engagement Best Practices Explained, for more tips and tricks.

The post How the NBA App Engages Fans appeared first on Airship.

The Google Hackathon Experience

In attendance were Urban Airship engineers Stefan Lynggaard, Jamie Clinton and Jeff Green. The challenge laid before them: to create a solution that would relieve an implementation pain point for a mutual retail customer that has upwards of 200 stores nationwide. The engineers’ long day started with a breakfast at Google with members of Google’s Android Pay team and representatives from the retailer’s product, marketing and development teams.

Urban Airship’s Jeff Green during the hackathon at Google HQ.

Our engineers said participating in this event provided a great opportunity to dive deeper into the customer’s processes, honing in on challenges and working through the technical details. This collaborative work was done across multiple teams at Urban Airship. Airshippers who participated from off site locations were connected via Slack, bringing different areas of knowledge and expertise to bear in a compressed timeframe.

Biggest Takeaways: Understanding The Client’s Perspective

According to Lynggaard, one of his biggest takeaways from the hackathon was how beneficial it was to visualize the product use cases in person alongside the customer as part of the development process.

“Any difficulties the clients are having with the product become much more obvious when you are sitting next to them,” said Lynggaard. “You get more visibility into how they approach the problem they’re trying to solve with our product. This allows us, in turn, to address those points in future product development. It makes you want to work out any rough edges and improve the quality so they feel good about the product and it can be something you as an engineer can be proud of as well.”

Another Hackathon? Anytime.

The day was a success — the team was able to implement a creative solution to the problem, and the customer came out of the day with a working, demoable prototype. Urban Airship has always been committed to innovating to serve our customers better, so we’re excited about more similar events in the future!

The post All in a Day’s Work at a Hackathon appeared first on Airship.

A September 2015 study conducted by Forrester Consulting, “The Total Economic Impact of Urban Airship’s Mobile Engagement Platform,” and commissioned by Urban Airship, found that customers using Urban Airship’s mobile engagement platform would likely generate a risk-adjusted return on investment (ROI) of 878%, and a payback period of two months, based on results from four customers compiled into a composite organization.

Among the benefits that Forrester found could be achieved using Urban Airship’s mobile engagement platform were:

A 10-70% increase in one-day mobile commerce sales from a product promoted through a push notification

Remind your customers of a current sale, promote your hottest items or let them know that the pair of shoes they’ve been eying is still available… but perhaps not for long. A well-executed push notification is a great way to catch your user at the right time and encourage them to complete their transaction.

A 15-30% increase in average spend per customer

Targeted messaging based on data means you can reach users with the information you know they want. This results in both happier customers and a higher average spend.

A 20% increase in lifetime value of a customer due to mobile influence on purchase behavior

Your mobile app users are your most loyal and most connected users. They have given your app valuable space on their phone, as well as given you permission to reach them with relevant content.

An increase in app engagement, traffic and sales driven to other channels

App users  are also likely to interact and engage with your brand across other channels, becoming “super users” and maybe even lifelong brand advocates.

The net?

Maybe, rather than asking if marketing can afford the expense of mobile engagement, the question should be whether your organization can afford to not open mobile as a front door to business?

For more about how you can achieve a higher ROI from your mobile marketing efforts, download the report.

Still not sure? Try us out for free today.

The post How To Achieve an 878% ROI on Mobile Engagement Initiatives appeared first on Airship.

Think of BagelNOW as an Uber, but for bagels.

At Urban Airship, we know that engaged mobile users become lifelong brand advocates, and a crucial component of mastering mobile engagement is giving your users what they want. BagelNOW gives consumers exactly what they want — bagels — when they want it: now.

Simply tap the “Bagel” button in the center of the app’s home screen, and your bagel is on its way — almost!

All that’s left to do is whisper into your microphone the type of bagel and schmear you want, and one of BagelNOW’s hundreds of bagel contractors in your metro area will receive a notification to start preparing your order. BagelNOW uses beacons to sense your location, making delivery a breeze.

Plain, Salt, Garlic or Everything — whatever type of bagel you want, BagelNOW can make it happen. Note: Cinnamon Raisin is currently only available on iOS.

Not sure what kind of bagel you want? Don’t worry, they can help: Introducing BagelNOW Plus, an even more powerful app. For only $1.99, it can help determine what type of bagel you’re in the mood for, and exactly how hungry you are.

How Does it Work?

First, accept BagelNOW Plus’ request to use your mobile device's microphone and run in the background to record your body's sounds. The app’s highly sophisticated algorithm can analyze your stomach’s rumbling and determine exactly what kind of bagel and schmear you want.

Using your mobile phone’s internal barometer, BagelNOW Plus measures both the acidity of your gastric juices and the productivity of your salivary glands based on the PH and humidity of the air you breathe. The app then delivers a bagel of appropriate heft and density.

Mere seconds later, look to the sky and see a toaster-laden drone heading your way. Make sure your Smartplate™ is fully charged, then hold it above your head (after first ensuring that your Location Settings are turned on) and the BagelNOW drone will launch your bagel downward toward your plate.

Costs may vary, and are calculated based on how many other BagelNOW/BagelNOW Plus users are currently hungry, and how many bagel preparers are logged in as “Available to Toast.”

Sounds easy, right? It is! But what if you’re not even sure you want a bagel at all? They can help with that too. 

Even More Help

Options. Everywhere you look there are options. You are surrounded by a seemingly endless amount of simple solutions that outsource your everyday problems to a contracted worker with relatively low cost to you and even lower effort required. With the tap of a screen, help is on the way.

But the burning, existential quandary that none of these modern conveniences can solve: what do you want?

Coming soon from the makers of BagelNOW and BagelNOW Plus — Yearnify: The app that makes choices for you.

The post The Best App We Have Ever Seen: BagelNOW appeared first on Airship.

St. Patrick’s Day has us thinking about luck. It’s a great feeling when luck is on your side — in fact, the feeling of winning is often so good that it’s enough to make a behavior into a habit. Many of today’s leading mobile apps use this great feeling as a motivator to get users to return to their apps again and again by employing gamification. “Gamification” is the use of game mechanics and rewards in non-game applications to increase engagement and loyalty.

Incorporating elements such as luck or chance, leaderboards, badging, unlocking, rewarding, leveling up, as well as surprise and delight in your app are all examples of gamifying.

Why Use Gamification?

Gamification makes tasks (such as app onboarding) feel like games and helps users understand their progress in your app. It also supports user re-engagement and increases user contributions, time-in-app, engagement and loyalty.

User actions completed through gamification can lead to better personalization, and can create competition achievement and status — which can encourage social sharing/status, thereby authenticating your users on another channel. Authenticated users are more valuable as they are better known, more easily messaged and often more engaged users. Authentication is also key to achieving an omni-channel presence for users, as a brand needs to know users on each channel to create a seamless experience.

Gamification Simplifies Mobile Engagement

By way of examples, here are two apps that have successfully used gamification to make their app experience more engaging:

ChoreMonster

The ChoreMonster app aims to make chores fun for kids, and make supervising these chores easy for parents. They do this by gamifying the experience for both parties.

For example, when a child wants to select a chore to do, they would see this screen:

After completing a chore, the child is rewarded with a fun and friendly screen that lets them know they earned points that can be redeemed for parent-selected rewards such as gift cards or an ice cream outing.

Kids can also play games of chance, such as Spin the Wheel, to earn fun rewards like playing a short animated video.

Just like in life, there isn’t always a reward. But it’s the chance that makes playing interesting. And parents get to have fun too!

As parents approve chores they are “leveled up” and sent motivational messages that encourage them to keep assigning and approving their kids’ chores.

Viggle

Viggle gamifies the experience of watching TV and listening to music by rewarding users with Perk Points that can be redeemed for prizes and real-life experiences.

As users watch TV, they get points for watching different shows. Points are also rewarded when a user plays a song. These points can be redeemed for prizes and real world experiences. Viggle reinforces behaviors that are already pleasurable (like watching television and listening to music) by letting users earn Perk Points that can be exchanged for prizes and benefits. Users can also play along with real time trivia or challenge themselves to quests. Viggle also uses push notifications to let users know when their Perk Points are ready to be claimed.

Considerations When Using Gamification as a Strategy

Gamification can be a successful strategy for businesses in any number of verticals, but there are a few considerations to keep in mind first:

What is the business goal of your app? What does success look like?

• Are game elements going to generate desired business actions?
• How will you know?

Who is your audience? Is a game or game elements right for them?

• Be true to the core purpose of your app.

• If you turn to a game to make your application sticky, the app itself might not be.

• Keep it simple: unless your game is the core function, use game elements to supplement the value your app already has.

• Don’t be needy: balance game play with the larger interests of the user and your business.

Gamification won’t work on disengaged users.

• They won’t come back to your app if they’re not using it already — but encouraging social sharing can help with new user acquisition.

• Use interactive notifications to encourage sharing.

To learn more about gamification, check out our white paper on how dating apps make their apps a habit for users.

The post Do You Feel Lucky? How Apps Can Use Gamification to Foster Mobile Engagement appeared first on Airship.