Len Shneyder, Marketing Manager, OtherLevels believes a retailer’s proper use of mobile apps can significantly increase a customer’s lifetime value, according to his report titled, “‘To’ Device & ‘On’ Device Messaging: Mobile’s One—Two Punch.”
“Mobile devices are an indispensable component of our daily lives” Shneyder said in the report. “By some accounts, they may be the ‘remote controls’ of our lives, making it possible for us to communicate, interact, navigate, coordinate, research, and provide us with endless hours of entertainment. Apps on our devices serve multiple purposes from utility to entertainment, but core to those apps is the ability they provide to app publishers to communicate with users who’ve downloaded it. The ability to communicate through an app is critical—the phone, like the app marketplace, is crowded with competitors and distractions. Mobile messaging is an important tool that affords app publishers the ability to differentiate their apps, communicate the value, educate newly minted users and given the right product and set of conditions—monetize.”
But, Shneyder said the road to monetization isn’t a clearly defined path, but the most successful apps are those leveraging the mobile messaging channel as a routine cadence and component of their overall marketing strategy.
“Discovery is key, but without messaging, an app can sit idle for days, if not months, on a user’s phone until the day it is removed,” he said. “Mobile messaging is the tool in an app publisher’s quiver that can serve as a reminder and set up the necessary dialogue for repeat usage and interaction. By tracking how users interact with the app, and the messaging they receive, app publishers can better tailor the entire mobile experience and personalize the communication stream to increase an app’s utility, and a user’s lifetime value.”
Through apps, and other native messaging channels that include SMS and MMS, Shneyder said mobile apps offer companies the ability to communicate with opted-in customers through push notifications.
“Push technology is a short message format, however, it’s often misconstrued as a broadcast channel with limited feedback,” he said. “The reality is that push is an incredibly rich communication channel, one flavor of ‘to device’ messaging, and offers users a wealth of behavioral and device data to make informed and measured messaging decisions. In order to unlock the potential of an app’s messaging capability, it’s important to understand that ‘to’ device push messaging isn’t the only outbound messaging option. Mobile devices allow app publishers to leverage a range of sub-channels, or varieties of message origination points that fulfill the paradigm of ‘to’ and ‘on’ device.”
Too many companies spend too much time trying to drive instant revenue through push by sending offer after offer without segmenting their audience, Shneyder said, exploring other rich messaging formats that are native to the app and mobile device, or delivering messages in the user’s local time zone.
“Push is not a one-way bullhorn,” he said. “It’s a medium that affords smart companies to drive numerous different communications that range from product/feature and educational to promotional. Determining the right message for the right person, and delivering it at the right local time is a function of analysis and leveraging mobile messaging tools that provide deep actionable insights.