3 effective mobile marketing channels to promote consumer engagement

3 effective mobile marketing channels to promote consumer engagement

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Mobile marketing allows you to reach your customers wherever they are, whether that’s home, work, or play. The vast majority of shoppers welcome communications from brands that are truly relevant, helpful, and engaging. One of the best aspects of mobile marketing is that it allows businesses to pull together a number of different channels—social media, email marketing, video, search advertising, and physical retail—in a way that is engaging and immediate. The way to solidify conversions from your efforts will be to communicate in a way that isn’t invasive—but, rather, intriguing, entertaining, and engaging. Among the most effective mobile marketing channels are opt-in SMS messaging and notifications, email subscriptions, and retargeted ads.

Mobile Marketing Channels That Promote Engagement

Opt-In Mobile Messaging & Notifications

With a consumer’s permission, brands and retailers can engage by:

  • Announcing Promotions: Let shoppers know about an upcoming sale or new merchandise. 
  • Sending Alerts: Send location-based reminders and offers when they’re near your retail location.
  • Confirming Orders: Keep customers abreast of deliveries by confirming the transaction. 
  • Sending Updates: Share important group updates about cancellations, closures, and upcoming activities. 
  • Offering Rewards: Maintain a loyal customer base by keeping members informed of their reward status and benefits.
Text messages are one of the most popular channels for marketing communications due to their effectiveness. Consider this: 

  • Text messages have over a 90% open-rate, compared to just 20% for email communications.
  • Response rates to text marketing are 7.5x higher than email.
  • Branded vanity links sent via text get 39% more clicks than generic short links.
  • Seventy-five percent of shoppers say they don’t mind receiving texts from brands they like.
  • More than 50% of customers prefer contacting support through text messaging.

By 2020, 45 million customers had opted into mobile text communications. It’s no surprise, considering Americans look at their phones an average of 80 times per day. Mobile marketing is the ideal way to reach prospects these days, as the messages get through, they’re read quickly, and they inspire action. Incentivizing consumers to opt-in to mobile messaging is an easy way to build your communications list.  

Email Communications

Email is like a comfortable and familiar old friend. Consumers are used to receiving email communications and generally find email to be a helpful and non-intrusive way to keep in touch with their favorite brands. Global internet users overwhelmingly prefer to receive brand communications via email communication (62.9%) compared to a mobile app (43%), social media (25.2%), and direct mail (18.1%).

According to research, shoppers use email messages to:

  • Obtain discount offers, coupon codes, and rewards.
  • Discover new products of interest based on past history.
  • Remember to purchase from a preferred brand.
  • Read product reviews and reviews from publications.
  • Find similar products and share them with friends/family.

Interactive Emails

Interactive elements invite subscribers to actively engage with your marketing emails in some way. Audiences are surprised and delighted by these opportunities to engage. Examples include:

  • surveys and polls
  • rollover effects
  • product carousels
  • incentivized games
  • video product demos

Rather than passively scanning email text, shoppers are clicking and engaging. 

User-Generated Content

Storytelling with user-generated content is a hot trend on social media, but can easily be incorporated into the email channel as well, since people look to email as a source for reviews. 

  • Share fan images and videos.
  • Create reviews-driven ads.
  • Leverage polls to collect data.
  • Add thumbs up/down buttons.
  • Share the most popular items.

User-generated content engages fellow shoppers using authentic and trustworthy supporting voices.

Personalized Segmentation

Simply personalizing the subject line can increase email-generated revenue by 760% compared to one-size-fits-all. Creating targeted lists upon signup lets you connect with audiences in a more relevant way. You can segment based on:

  • age, gender, location, profession
  • type of benefit sought
  • occasion for shopping
  • brand loyalty status
  • buyer readiness stage

Personalization in marketing grabs consumer attention and can lead to loyalty.

Retargeted Ads

Retargeting campaigns help you get the most from your paid ad spending. Unlike pop-up banner ads, native advertising tends to blend into the surrounding environment, like at the bottom of news articles as paid/sponsored ads, in a social media feed, or at the top of Google search results.

Facebook and Google are among the most popular retargeting platforms, as they make it easy to build custom audiences and allow brands to:

  • increase awareness, maintaining visibility after the first visit.
  • send reminders, showing the exact product browsed again.
  • re-engage, appealing to those who haven’t recently shopped.
  • reduce abandonment, reminding shoppers of items left in their cart.
  • be relevant, campaigning based on geography or product.

You may not be able to win them all, but retargeting can attract up to 98% of visitors who have left your site without making a purchase back to your brand again and boost overall conversions up to 150%.

If you’re looking for a unique mobile marketing channel to promote customer engagement, consider Shopkick. Shopkick users (“Shopkickers”) begin engaging with a partner brand by viewing in-app content and checking offers during the consideration phase of a shopping trip, whether at home or on the go. Once in-store, Shopkick utilizes a gamification strategy to drive shoppers to products on the shelf, encouraging physical product interaction in exchange for reward points (“kicks”). Shopkickers redeem their kicks for gift cards of their choosing, which creates positive brand affinity. Shopkick makes a great addition to your marketing mix, in addition to your text campaigns, email communications, and retargeting ads. 

Shopkick is an effective mobile marketing channel that allows brands and retailers to communicate with consumers along the path to purchase. Our partners use Shopkick to offer consumers rewards for engagement that leads to measurable ROI. Contact us to learn more about incorporating Shopkick into your mobile marketing efforts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shopkick

Shopkick is the fun and easy way to earn free gift cards for the shopping you already do. Download the app now!

3 effective mobile marketing channels to promote consumer engagement

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shopkick

Shopkick is the fun and easy way to earn free gift cards for the shopping you already do. Download the app now!

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