Consumers know the best deals of the year are up for grabs throughout November. Merchants were flush with inventory this year, and inflationary fears put consumers’ bargain-seeking behaviors on full display. Whether for loyalty points, streamlined experiences or app-only exclusives, consumers know the best deals are in the app. And for brands, app customers are especially lucrative, contributing 3.5X the revenue with a 3X higher likelihood to make a repeat purchase than other customers. 

Whether for loyalty points, streamlined experiences or app-only exclusives, consumers know the best deals are in the app.

Airship’s platform data saw massive gains in the number of new mobile app users over the holidays. From October 31st to Cyber Monday, the number of people adding a new retail app to their phone increased 26% year-over-year.

Black Friday continues to be the top day of the year for people to add a retail app to their phones — at nearly double the daily average holiday season. New from last year, people added retail apps to their phones at a greater and sustained rate starting in early November. Three of the top five app install days in 2022 were November 18 through 20.

This earlier app-uptake during the holidays mobile’s role in growing direct online sales as well as the discovery and planning process for in-person excursions. It also reflects retailers pushing key promotions earlier in the season — Target’s Black Friday deals began 11/20, as did Walmart’s third round of holiday deals.

With all of this positivity and merriment, why do we think future value will be wasted? 
On average, only 8% of these new app customers will return on the 30th day after download. It’s a pattern we’ve seen repeated year after year across most every industry vertical. For retailers, it’s even costlier, considering the holiday economics of lower margin, door-busting deals and a cost per app install estimated to be $5.28 in North America.

For an app to be successful, a customer must find it, download it, and value it enough to keep using it. Maximizing ROI depends on customers progressing through the app lifecycle beyond activation and engagement to ultimately become loyal app customers. 

Stay tuned to our blog posts over the next several weeks as we share some of the top tips and best practices to actualize and improve life after download.

The post Retail App Downloads Set Holiday Records, But Retention Will See Future Value Evaporate appeared first on Airship.

In recent years, technology has changed the ways customers purchase goods and interact with retailers. While some consumers have turned to online purchase methods, 44.4% still prefer to shop in-store or pick up their goods from brick-and-mortar locations. As more consumers seek blended digital and physical shopping experiences, retailers have an opportunity to adopt new technology to deliver enhanced experiences that increase customer satisfaction, basket size and bottom-line revenue. 

What makes a positive retail experience?

To begin developing strategies that will drive results, such as repeat business and increased basket size, it’s critical to first define what makes a good in-store customer experience.

In a recent survey, 23.8% of respondents said that they were more likely to give their business to a store that offers a convenient shopping experience; 31.9% of respondents from the same survey noted that they cared most about the availability and variety of products in-store. Another study found that long queue wait times were a major pain point for shoppers.

In the current landscape, consumers value convenience, product availability, personalized experiences and speed. Additionally, omnichannel shoppers make purchases 70% more often and spend over 30% more than customers who only shop in-store. With more choices available than ever before, and many consumers cutting back on spending, retailers must develop stellar in-store experiences to avoid losing customers to the competition.

How can location be used to create positive retail experiences that keep customers coming back?

Location-aware experiences provide personalized, convenient ways for consumers to locate and purchase the products when they shop in-store. There are several of these you can use to provide a positive experience for customers every time they set foot in your store.

1. In-store shopping mode

Retailers can improve the shopping experience and drive repeat business by surfacing in-store-only app options when a customer enters the store. These in-store app modes can offer self-checkout, product locators, store maps and navigation tips, reminders about past purchases, and more. With 60-70% of shoppers doing research and making purchases both online and in-store, retailers must invest in improving the omnichannel shopping experience.  Retailers such as JOANN power in-store offers in the brand’s app with location-based technology.

2. Buy online, pickup in-store

Curbside pickup has become an important channel for customers and retailers alike. However, for too many consumers, buy online/pickup in-store experiences (BOPIS) can be frustrating and time-consuming because of the need to hunt for curbside pickup parking spots and wait for orders. Retailers can make the experience more seamless by using first-party location to power seamless experiences with shorter wait times. By providing live ETAs and arrival detection, location empowers retail brands to enhance staff efficiency – and ensure orders are ready upon customer arrival. American Eagle uses location to provide a stellar experience at curbside and when picking up in-store.

3. Location-based loyalty program prompts and offers

 Loyalty programs drive repeat purchases and allow brands to personalize offers based on past purchases. By using first-party location data, retailers can verify whether a customer is in one of their locations when they open the brand’s mobile app. This verification can be used to prompt users to open their app to check in for rewards or points. Geofences and beacon detection provide accurate, real-time location information that enables retailers to promote rewards and offers when a customer enters the store.

4. Personalized marketing

Brands can surface in-app offers via SMS and push notifications while customers are on-premise. By offering relevant deals while customers are shopping, retailers can bridge the gap between their online stores and the in-person shopping experience, creating a seamless experience. Integrations with customer engagement platforms, such as Airship’s, empower retailers to send targeted messages to customers to drive engagement and conversion. These messages can prompt customers to purchase an item they had previously searched for or saved in their app while shopping online or send a reminder to book an appointment in-store.

5. Location-triggered feedback prompting

Retailers can also prompt location-triggered requests for feedback related to the shopping experience when a customer exits the store. This feedback can be used to personalize a resolution for a customer who had a poor experience – and make operational improvements to ensure future customers don’t run into the same issues. Only 1 in 26 customers will voice their complaints – the others will simply take their business elsewhere. So, it’s important for retailers to provide their customers with a forum to submit feedback about their experiences. In order to ensure retailers are getting the most value from location without a significant development burden, retailers must work with a provider that seamlessly integrates with existing technology solutions.

How can retailers implement location to deliver better in-store experiences?

Retailers with brick-and-mortar stores have two options when it comes to adopting location infrastructure to support customer experiences: building or buying location infrastructure. Native iOS and Android geofencing capabilities often present limitations and require additional technical resources in order to fulfill business needs.

While some companies choose to build their own infrastructure, brands, such as JOANN and American Eagle, choose to work with a trusted provider to provide location infrastructure.

When retailers integrate location technology into their app, the app becomes a much more powerful tool for delivering engaging experiences to customers. That’s because it takes effect in the moments when customers are most likely to make a purchase decision – when they’re inside a store. 

Get in touch with Radar’s sales team to learn more.

The post 5 Ways Leading Retailers are Exceeding Customer Expectations with Hybrid In-store Experiences appeared first on Airship.

How can retail brands meet this challenge and build better experiences that boost sales and retention? Our latest Airship ebook takes those questions head-on with insights and use cases specifically for retail. Read on for a preview. And to learn more, download the full ebook, Mobile Strategies that Boost Retail Sales & Retention!

Using Customer Journeys for More Effective Retail Onboarding 

To retain your customers, you need to show them value at every touchpoint. That starts with a great onboarding experience on the channels that matter most to each customer. And it continues through the retention and growth phases, where retailers can use intelligent customer journeys to offer real value that builds loyalty and retention. 

Creating Great BOPIS/Click & Collect Experiences

The demand for contactless, convenient mobile experiences is higher than ever, with 50% of shoppers saying they plan to continue using services like curbside pickup after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. We look at several use cases showing how channels like Mobile Wallet and SMS can help retail brands respond to this key trend.

These are just a few examples of what you’ll find in the new ebook. We hope this collection of insights and strategies will help you meet your retail brand’s goals. Check it out by downloading the book here!

Let’s Connect

Give your retail customers the personalized mobile experience they want

Contact us today to learn how!

The post How to Build Better Mobile-First Experiences for Retail appeared first on Airship.

That’s why Airship is excited to announce a new integration with Shopify! Brands who use Shopify to host their eCommerce sites can now use the power of Airship web notifications, email and SMS. By sending personalized and targeted messages based on real-time Shopify shopper data, sellers can dramatically increase conversion rates and decrease abandoned carts.

Here are just a few of the ways you can use this new integration to meet your conversion goals:

Increase Retention with Real-Time Segmentation

Every moment a customer interacts with your site or completes a purchase-related event is an opportunity to engage them further and provide them with real-time information they need. Shopify users can now send these events, such as cart created, purchase completed or order fulfilled, from Shopify to Airship to trigger and target web notifications, email, SMS, including Live SMS Chat for real-time sales and support conversations, such as answering product questions or helping with shipping issues!

Make Every Message More Engaging with Dynamic Personalization

Making each message personalized for your customer is one of the most important parts of engaging and retaining customers. By using Shopify shopper data sent to Airship, brands can personalize each message with the relevant item information, such as what the customer left in their carts or what their order number is, helping to reduce abandoned carts and increase ROI.

Integrate Shopify into Your Cross-Channel Campaigns

Airship Journeys is unique in its goal-based and data-driven approach. By setting end goals such as purchase or abandoned cart reduction, marketers can track how every Journey (and every message within that Journey) impacts that goal and optimize them accordingly. 

Brands can now integrate the personalized web notifications, email and SMS triggered by Shopify events into these cross-channel Airship Journeys, coordinating them across channels to create an end-to-end experience delivered on the channels that make the most sense for every customer. You can then see the direct impact of the messages on your conversion goals and optimize when and how your notifications are sent.

As always, we want to help you meet your messaging goals and deliver customer experiences that create loyalty. Contact us today and let us know how we can help! 

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Give Your eCommerce Customers the Personalized Experience They Want

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The post Increase Conversion Rates and Decrease Abandoned Carts with Shopify and Airship appeared first on Airship.

Yet, to implement a successful strategy, brands must revamp elements of operations and customer engagement to deliver a seamless experience that meets high customer expectations. Inspired by our recent Radar + Airship webinar, here are 5 key questions brands must ask to help address that challenge and shape a BOPIS program that drives customer satisfaction and business impact.

Making the Business Case

How can you build internal momentum? 

61% of retailers say BOPIS is at the top of their omnichannel plans and investments. But, before making that investment, you need to pull together all the right pieces to make the business case. Airship Director of Technical Services Ramsey Kail suggests several focus areas. First, identify key teams such as in-store operations, ecommerce, order management, marketing, the app dev team and potentially impacted supply chain sources. Next, determine which systems are impacted, including ecommerce, inventory, and internal systems such as POS or in-store mobile apps. You’ll also need to plan for measurement and get alignment around the metrics you’ll use to measure ROI. We’ll take a closer look at measurement later in this post.

Communicating with Customers

How will you ensure customers are informed and engaged?

Next, think about the channels, touchpoints and messages that will keep customers informed and engaged throughout the BOPIS process. What do they need to know at each stage, from order confirmation to post-pickup? What channels make the most sense? And are you able to identify your customers across those different channels?

Several specific channel pairings are ideal for BOPIS customer communication. One is Email + Mobile App. If you email an order confirmation with a link encouraging a customer to download your app, you can then trigger a push message when their order is ready for pickup. Another perfect pairing is SMS + Mobile Wallet. Send a SMS order combination with a link to a mobile wallet pass so customers can find order info and pickup details anytime on their mobile devices. Plus, consumers tend to hang onto those mobile wallet passes, giving you another way to stay connected.

Building a Great Pickup Experience

How will you ensure a great experience once customers arrive?

Long wait times, unclear instructions or poor communication between customers and your associates can derail any click and collect experience. Simple solutions like signage can help (even the most humble of BOPIS efforts benefit from clear signage letting customers know where to go and what to do). However, according to Radar CEO Nick Patrick, consumer expectations for more seamless experiences are driving brands to invest in what he calls a V2 approach. BOPIS V2 experiences are digitally enabled, leveraging tech like Radar’s location tracing and Airship Live In-App Chat to facilitate clear instructions, two-way communication and greater value for customers (and staff!). Brands that get it right see dividends in the form of increased engagement, repeat purchases and improved operational efficiencies.

Keeping Customers Engaged Post-Purchase

How will you leverage post-purchase opportunities?

Follow-on messaging is an essential and often overlooked opportunity for getting customer feedback, upselling and cross-selling, and building customer loyalty. 

Use SMS, email or in-app surveys to understand customer sentiment from your digitally engaged customers. Drive add-on and repeat purchases by deploying post-purchase customer journeys with personalized offers or other tailored content. You can also enhance CX through automated messages with valuable information like assembly instructions, preparation details, or by educating customers about your loyalty program. 

Measuring Your BOPIS Service

How will you measure success?

BOPIS 2.0 spans physical and digital experiences. That’s why effective measurement requires looking at both customer engagement and operations metrics. 

From an engagement perspective, you’re likely to incorporate existing methods and metrics such as customer satisfaction surveys, repeat purchase behavior, average order value or loyalty sign-ups. On the operational side, focus areas include wait times, order quality, and order prep timing. These data points can help drive a virtuous cycle that generates improvements in both CX and operational efficiency. For example, adjusting when you trigger order preparation to ensure customers’ meals are fresh when they arrive can drive improved customer satisfaction.

For more ideas on how to create BOPIS experiences that deliver incredible value for your customers and brand, check out our How to Build Better BOPIS Experiences blog post as well as the webinar with Radar and Airship.

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The post 5 Key Questions to Shape a Winning BOPIS Strategy appeared first on Airship.

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

Behavioral Targeting

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

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

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

Loyalty Program Personalization

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

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

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

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

In-App Message Center

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

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

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

What’s Next?

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

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

The Bottom Line

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

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

Let’s connect

We can help with your mobile app strategy.

Contact us today!

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

Retail and ecommerce brands are looking to capitalize on the massive mobile opportunity available with mobile apps. Recent data shows that consumers spent nearly $111 billion globally in-app during 2020, which grew 30.2% year-on-year (YoY). 

To help harness such explosive growth, experts who work for and with industry leaders on the latest innovations in app and mobile-first marketing, including US fashion chain and Poq customer Belk, shared the latest strategies and insights during a recent webinar.

The panel, who was made up of top mobile marketing minds, including Ana Warner, Director, Digital Marketing – Customer Retention, Belk; Michael “Finn”  Finnimore, VP North America, Poq; and, Kristi White, General Manager, Retail, Restaurant, CPG, Airship, all agreed that mobile is critical for staying ahead of current trends.

White, from digital customer engagement platform provider Airship, highlighted how the benefits of contactless when consumers return to stores or shop more online support the shift to mobile apps. Finnimore confirmed no let up in these trends, pointing out Poq saw a 4x YoY increase in downloads during Spring/Summer 2020 that was still tracking at 2x today. 

Evolving to Deliver Mobile-First Commerce

A webinar poll revealed that companies were most focused on improving omnichannel personalization strategies at this time. This was followed by increasing mobile conversions, which Warner of Belk said tracked in line with the US department store retailer’s strategy. With over 300 stores, a growing ecommerce website and a Poq-powered mobile app, offering customers an integrated shopping experience is key, she explained. 

“We’re focused on all of these at Belk,” Warner confirmed. “From the point of view of my team, looking at customer retention, this year we’re really trying to double down on omnichannel personalization. We’ve seen customer behaviour over the past year really shifting. People are home and on their phones more. 

“So, we want to make sure that we’re engaging wherever they are. We’re looking into how to make that omnichannel experience more streamlined, more connected, and ensure we’re leveraging the channel that the customer wants to engage with us through to give them a personalized experience.”

Finnimore added: “Spearheading your omnichannel strategy within mobile and then, specifically in Poq’s case, within apps, bringing in BOPIS [buy online pick up in-store], curbside pickup, store stock check, loyalty, omnichannel coupons, personalization and making the phone central to your customer’s entire shopping journey and relationship with them, is essential. 

“Also, when they shop with you as an app customer, you don’t have reacquisition costs, because you can send push notifications and contact them directly. Native mobile apps were built for phone screens; HTML was never built to be used on a phone. If mobile is the future, then you need to think of the best experience possible and that’s always going to be a native environment. As Belk proves, the app continues to outperform the mobile shopper on a per customer basis.”

Driving Engagement and Conversion

The majority (74%) of webinar attendees voted mobile app top of the channels their brands currently use to connect with customers. This was followed by mobile apps, cited by 65%, and SMS / text messaging (42%). White commented: “Historically, brands spent a lot of time focused on a single channel and weren’t necessarily focusing on multichannel engagement. Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a quick transformation to using multiple channels.” 

Warner added: “I’m lucky that my team works in an environment where we leverage almost every channel that’s at our disposal. Obviously, we have a very strong mobile app, and we’re starting to talk about SMS although we don’t have a fully fledged programme. Post-Covid, I’m definitely seeing more retailers leveraging SMS, just because of the mobile environment and everybody being on their phones now. 

“Then email is just our bread and butter. We have a really great loyal customer base that loves our email program, and we have a strong paid media program as well. We also launched live chat and web notifications is something we’ve been talking about – it’s a little bit new for us currently.”

Warner explained: “Our store associates are actually a huge driver of app downloads. You wouldn’t necessarily think that the stores would have such an impact. Bit it’s part of our store training and reflects a very concerted effort to make sure our associates are bought into getting our customers over to the app.”

White also pointed to a drive to expand beyond historic single or dual-channel focus. “They’re asking customers where they want them to communicate and what are some of the messages they want to hear,” she said. “Of course, this is all to help drive conversion and sales. One example is two-way chat, which enables that two-way communication during the sales cycle and can really help close the deal.” 

Finnimore flagged an uptick in interest in augmented reality (AR), as footwear and beauty brands look to move their app strategies to the next level of engagement. In the meantime, he also pointed out the most optimal times to send push notifications for the highest response during the peak period of Black Friday were the half hours starting at 1230, 1730 and 1930, which are all times of day when most people are either taking a break from, leaving or arriving home from work. 

Making Small Changes for Big results

In addition to discussing under-leveraged innovations, such as in-app messaging, mobile wallet and SMS, that can have big upside opportunities, the panel also shared how small app changes can lead to big results for sales and growth.

Warner said: “From a digital marketing perspective, we started making sure that, if we were emailing customers who had already downloaded the app, we’re sending them to the app, rather than the mobile web. Then we rolled this out to all our other paid channels, including paid campaign ads that led the customer directly to the promotional assortment in the app. 

“We found that this was one of the key reasons we were able to grow sales penetration from the app very quickly (up 244% in 2020) by sending users to the relevant product in-app, instead of sending an app user to a destination outside of our app. Another measure we use is a retargeting trigger. 

“Historically, if someone was engaging with us through the app and got an email from us, we were not sending them back to the app. If you abandoned your cart or browsing session while in the Belk app, we would send you an email to click right back into the app. That was a big win for us and, again, sales penetration tells us those strategies are working.”

Attendees indicated in a poll that links in emails for app downloads were the most popular app acquisition strategies they were using today, as a free and owned channel through which retailers can communicate the benefits of downloading the app. 

Finnimore added: “Swipe-to-like additions to wish lists result in a 7% increase in customer AOV [average order value]. Asking customers to opt into push notifications at relevant points of high engagement, such as when they are adding items to a wish list, can enable even higher levels of connection.”

Driving Engagement and Conversion

Finally, the panel considered the latest personalization strategies that brands are using to connect more deeply with customers, where personalization emerged top of the list of strategies the audience was using to grow their loyalty programs today. 

Warner shared the Belk perspective. “Having a large credit card loyalty program, loyalty is always top of mind for us,” she said. “It’s no surprise that our cardholders are also heavy users of the app. So, we started using Airship’s attributes functionality to create a data tag that gets stored on an app user’s Airship record and allows us to target them. 

“We also do a lot of behavioral-based targeting based on our push and in-app messaging. For example, if a customer is browsing fragrance, we might pop up an announcement about a great gift with purchase they can take advantage of on a fragrance purchase. We’re looking to do more this kind of behavioral-based targeting.”

Alongside all of the ways that retailers and brands can use loyalty to seize the mobile growth opportunity shared by the Airship, Poq and Belk representatives, Finnimore concluded: “Also, embedding loyalty card access into apps, so that they can use a mobile wallet or barcode to earn and redeem rewards at the store checkout as well as online, can really help drive higher omnichannel customer lifetime value and engagement.”

The post Retail App Strategies That Boost Engagement, Loyalty & Sales appeared first on Airship.

The opportunity is massive, but the competition is fierce. That means working harder, and smarter, to make your messages stand out. Fortunately, one tried and true tactic can make all the difference in driving customer engagement: personalization. 

So where should you start? Here are some simple tips to help you break through with personalization during this year’s holiday season.

Personalize Your Upsell

Combining first name personalization with tailored recommendations is a surefire way to increase engagement and sales. A full 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers that recognize them by name, recommend options based on past purchases or know their purchase history.

When someone makes a purchase, kick off a customer journey that triggers a follow-up recommendation for a related product or service. Or take advantage of the order confirmation to include some personalized product ideas. You can even leverage the APIs you use for recommendations with Airship’s external data feeds, which can hit your API and pull in the product information for that user at the time of send.

A/B Test for Success

Not sure which personalization tactics to focus on this holiday season? The best way to quickly find out is to test it! Run A/B tests on a few variants of your personalizations to see what drives engagement and conversions. It’s also a good idea to test the message with and without personalization. We recently launched A/B testing and control group features for Airship Journeys, making it easier than ever to determine which personalizations have the biggest impact on your customer journeys.

Show Them You Know Them

Although consumer expectations continue evolving, a little personalization still goes a long way. In fact, 56% of consumers say they’re more likely to shop at a retailer that knows their name. If you’re not sure where to start, first name personalization is a great first step.

If you haven’t tried personalizing messages before, it’s easy with Airship’s customer engagement platform. Upload a list of first names for each channel, email or MSISDN and start providing the first name personalization that your customers expect.

Ideas for Retailers

With retailers vying for their share of this year’s online holiday spending, consumers are likely to see more messages than ever across all of their brands’ digital channels. Whether you’re promoting limited-time deals or a big sale, try these simple ideas:

• Grab customers’ attention by personalizing your push messages, SMS, and email subject line by first name. 
• You can also reference the customer’s favorite product category in the subject line to make the message more relevant to their interests. 
• Personalize message center or email messages with highlighted products based on customer shopping history or preferences, so your customers can discover the products and deals they might otherwise miss! 
• Take advantage of your confirmation emails by adding tailored recommendations in the message.

Ideas for Travel & Hospitality

Holiday travel looks different this year, but consumers aren’t staying put either. One U.S. survey found that one-in-four respondents have a personal vacation planned, and nearly half of family travelers (45%) with kids under the age of 18 are taking a leisure trip before the year’s end. 

• Send recommendations for destinations and hospitality based on recent search history, like in-state options for a beach getaway or mountain retreat. 
• You can also offer local add-ons for booked travel, like a flight upgrade, deals on rental cars, or a room with a view.
• Keep customers engaged with your loyalty program with an update on their miles or points, and encourage them to take advantage of their miles or points before year’s end.

With a little personalization and the right tools, you’ll give your customers more reasons to engage and convert this holiday season. To learn more about how Airship’s customer engagement platform can help, get in touch!

The post How Simple Personalizations Can Drive Big Engagement this Holiday Season appeared first on Airship.

A culture of experimentation has many benefits — one of them is helping you meet your revenue goals. A/B testing is a great way to practically experiment with your data to determine what works – and what doesn’t. Whether it is finding the winning message copy, the most engaging images or best action-inciting rewards, you’ll be able to make smart, impactful decisions that will increase the ROI from your engagement channels. 

Here are three ways you can use A/B testing to boost customer engagement goals. 

Capture Omnichannel Sales 

As the customer journey grows increasingly omnichannel, brands need to optimize and personalize their digital experiences to capture sales. 

For example, If a customer is browsing products, you can split test the product images or descriptions both online and on mobile to see which leads to more conversions. 

Let’s say a customer has added items to their online cart and you want to nudge them to buy now. In that case, you might consider A/B testing the mobile checkout page with a free shipping offer — or experiment with a more streamlined process to ease the checkout process.

Through A/B testing, you’ll be able to drive sales through key channels and double down on the most effective incentives or offerings.

Crank Up Customer Engagement

Since high stakes are riding on a customer’s first impression, you can turn to A/B testing to nail that first interaction. 

For example, following an app download, you may want to run experiments on the first-run experience. Should you show the user a straight-forward registration page or provide a tutorial? Should you allow users to login with their social accounts or by email? If you ask the user to select some categories in the beginning to personalize their browsing experience, would this result in higher click-through rates? These are all questions that can be answered through A/B testing.

As you witness your conversions climb, you can use more A/B tests to optimize even further. For example, you can show different first-run experiences to users coming in from your Google Adwords campaigns and those referred from a partner site.

Fine Tune Your Loyalty Program

Keeping your loyal customer base happy means more profits. A/B testing can help you make the experience of earning and redeeming points as streamlined and delightful as possible.

Test where and how to display their points online or on the mobile app to encourage engagement. If you show the number of points they’re short of to reach a reward milestone, would that boost sales among members close to that milestone? How about testing different types of rewards to see which encourage more loyalty sign-ups? For loyalty members using their mobile app to collect points, what’s the best experience for higher levels of engagement?

Want to know how Apptimize, an Airship company, can help? Contact us to learn more.

The post Three Ways A/B Testing Can Help You Meet Your Goals 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. 

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