Mobile marketing is said to be the future of the digital marketing so it essential that brands begin to focus their advertising budgets on this (Batra & Keller, 2016). Nowadays, users are flooded with options as hundreds of new apps enter the market daily (Weiss, 2013). Therefore, they have high expectations of the apps that they do choose to download. Consequently, elements personalisation and functionality are expected of all apps (Levenson, 2017). Furthermore, among retail mobile users, consumers who are ready to make purchases prefer mobile apps by 57 percent, with 43 percent preferring mobile web showing that there is a lot of potential to increase profit margins through app development (Byrum, 2017). Evidence also shows that personalisation increases an individual’s affinity and loyalty towards the brand which is imperative in this competitive market (Parker & Wang, 2015; Anitha, 2014). This in turn affects purchasing intentions specifically in terms of repeat purchases (Srivastava & Kaul, 2016). This blog post will suggest 3 ways to successfully implement app personalisation and functionality:
Figure 1: Future expectations for the Mobile Experience According to internet users worldwide, Feb 2016
Source: eMarketer, 2016
Through Push notifications
From the outside, apps can be personalized through push notifications (Levenson, 2017). For example, to provide some sort of discounts or related information about the app that means a lot to the user for example their flight time if it is an airline app. Time is very much important in the process of app personalization. The success of an application depends upon the accurate and timely management of what to convey, how to convey and when to convey (Cetin, 2016). Push notifications can be an effective tool in the fight against churn, and an effective marketing channel generally, but cutting through the clutter can be tricky given the amount of apps using push notifications (Robles, 2016).
Onboard Your Users Well
If your user experience isn’t engaging from the beginning, it is unlikely that they will return. It’s normal for a user to download your app, have a bad experience and, not return. The average app loses 77% of users within three days of being downloaded. Creating a user experience that is high-quality, efficient and relevant from the start is the first step to implementing a strong mobile app personalization strategy (Byrum, 2017). Additionally, the first few days after app installation are imperative. If the user likes the app in the initial days than it is likely that they will use it for a longer time. Onboarding is an extremely important way to personalise an app; it helps to increase a customer’s loyalty towards the application through the following processes:
Asking for the user name and using it when communicating with them.
Provide them with free trials or discount for the first few days.
Encouraging them to use app while onboarding
Does not ask very personal questions like for phone number unless it is necessary initially.
(Cetin, 2016)
With onboarding, your ultimate goal should be to get users using your app. A common mistake is using an onboarding experience to teach people how to use an app. Onboarding experiences should not be a tutorial because there’s no familiarity with your app yet. Instead, continue to focus on educating users about the benefits of your app (Yarmosh, 2016).
Real-Time Personalisation
Real-time personalization is a data-driven approach that provides engaging user experiences based on the information that smartphones are already collecting. With efficient utilisation of this data, apps appear to respond to a user’s current situation. For example, Retail is all about fulfilling wants and needs. Those change quickly and depend on the customer’s context. For example, changes in the weather can drive purchasing decisions, so an app that’s weather-aware can present customers with discounts on warm jackets just as they step in from the cold. Furthermore, particularly for retailers, it’s important to note that context does not need to relate to the immediate situation – it can also include behavioural data from the recent past. For example, if the customer been searching for flights or other travel options over the past week present relevant ads such as for sunscreen or providing other appropriate useful information to the customer (Pozin, 2017). Below is a video showing how to do this through location:
Figure 2: Location based apps
Source: Youtube, 2014
REMEMBER – like anything personalisation is expensive to implement and does not necessarily culminate in a successful Rate of Return!
Google Developers (2014) Building Location Based Apps with the Places API. [Video] Youtube. Available at: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrHov9XfRk > [Accessed 24th March 2018]
Parker, C. & Wang, H. (2015) Examining hedonic and utilitarian motivations for m-commerce fashion retail app engagement, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol 20, No 4, p487-506
Srivastava, M. & Kaul, D. (2016) Exploring the link between customer experience-loyalty-consumer spend, Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services, Vol 31, p277-286
Weiss, A. (2013) Exploring New Apps and Location-Based Services on the Smartphone, Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, Vol 90, No 3, p 435-456
Mobile marketing is said to be the future of the digital marketing so it essential that brands begin to focus their advertising budgets on this (Batra & Keller, 2016). In particular, the app sector is expected to continue to grow at a rapid rate showing companies that there is much market growth potential (Anitha, 2014). There has been a dramatic increase in smart phone use in recent years and, evidence shows that 90% of mobile time is spent on apps (Chaffey, 2018; Arora et al, 2017). This growth has meant that users expect an individually tailored experience. Evidence also shows that personalisation increases an individual’s affinity and loyalty towards the brand which is imperative in this competitive market (Parker & Wang, 2015; Anitha, 2014). This in turn affects purchasing intentions specifically in terms of repeat purchases (Srivastava & Kaul, 2016). Below are some examples of personalisation:
Table 1 – Recommended list based on the previously searched items:
Source: ASOS, 2018
Table 2: Advertisements that differ based on the weather at your location:
Source: Very, 2018
Tips/ Guides – How to personalise well:
Top Tips:
Journey Mapping – Know your users and what they want:
Users should be treated as individuals and not ‘trends’. If you have the right mobile analytics in place you can gain a lot of valuable information about users e.g their physical location, where they went in your app and the last time that they opened it. With this knowledge you can provide personalised messaging that links to different places within the app serving users with most the most relevant and interesting information for them. This can result in greater user loyalty and retention. There are 3 levels of data that you should account for:
General Usage (When was the last time the user visited and for how long?)
Behaviour (What did the user do in the app? Which screens did they see?)
Back-end data: Integrate the different channels so you can sync back end data e.g. age, gender
(Simplified Insights, 2016; Alluf, 2016)
Table 3 – Example of a way to Journey Map Source: Simplified Insights, 2016
Real Time Responses: Conversations vs. Single messages:
In many cases app communications are a single flow of actions that are generated from the user. Often apps lack in-app engagement flows that provide numerous steps in communication that listen and respond to user’s feedback. Ideally, marketers should respond individually to each users feedback e.g. if the user provides you with negative feedback the company can email asking them for further information.
(Alluf, 2016)
Test, Experiment and Optimise:
This is key to being successful in most aspects of marketing. This includes testing the apps content but also messaging frequency, in app location features and engagement features against each other. This experimentation is one way you can realise your apps full business potential. However, most companies are not there yet and are mainly focused on the app’s core functionality and less on engagement features that drive people to convert and return.
(Alluf, 2016; SOASTA, 2014)
Benefits:
Increased Customer Engagement
App personalisation and functionality expands the average 90 second visit to 120 seconds or more. It does this by increasing relevance the longer and more frequently a customer visits your app. For example, creating targeted offers based on the consumers previous searches. If you engage with consumers in this targeted way when they return to your website you can remind them of previous items that they have looked at which acts as a nudge. It can also increase engagement by creating targeted content in response to in-session behaviour in order to influence the visitor’s urgency and increase likelihood of purchase (Knexus, 2016).
Increased Retention and Conversion
Personalisation and functionality helps to increase recurring conversions, advocacy and retention. Research shows that post-purchase loyalty programmes which contain personalised offers are one of the most important factors in increasing repeat purchase. Retention is built on relationship and familiarity and personalisation facilitates this (Davies, 2013). It also increases retention through the creation of more relevant and tailored experiences with the brand (Knexus, 2016)
Personalisation makes your marketing useful:
Currently, the app market is extremely saturated and consequently there is much competition. This means consumers are continuously bombarded with new content, products and services. This makes it difficult for brands to stand out – personalisation can help to do this. An individual who receives a piece of information that is tailored to them is more likely to respond to it over a piece of generic content. This can also help to build brand loyalty (Kurve, 2015).
Risks:
Security:
Personalisation means that companies are collecting and dealing with a lot of sensitive personal data. Side effects of this can be sensitive data leakages or transmissions. Is data is leaked customers will lose trust in the brand and ultimately they will have a tainted reputation. Therefore, companies need to ensure that they have safe data storage facilities that are protected by hardcoded passwords or keys (Pollock, 2018).
Overly Invasive:
While some argue that personalisation provides a tailored experience others state that it is digital stalking. Individuals trade data for a tailored experience. This is why people instantaneously agree to terms and conditions within an app. This includes giving access to location, emails and publishing things on their behalf. However, there has been customer backlash about how much information they receive and the ways in which they use it (The Guardian, 2014).
REMEMBER – like anything personalisation is expensive to implement and does not necessarily culminate in a successful Rate of Return!
Arora, S., Hofstede, F. & Mahajan, V. (2017) The Implications of Offering Free Versions for the Performance of Paid Mobile Apps, Journal of Marketing, Vol 81, No 6, p62-78
Parker, C. & Wang, H. (2015) Examining hedonic and utilitarian motivations for m-commerce fashion retail app engagement, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol 20, No 4, p487-506
Srivastava, M. & Kaul, D. (2016) Exploring the link between customer experience-loyalty-consumer spend, Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services, Vol 31, p277-286
Affiliate marketing has become a major strategic consideration for companies participating in e-commerce (Duffy, 2005). Some merchants hire outside specialists to set and enforce policies for affiliates and others get their own marketing team to create these (Edelman & Brandi, 2015). There are 2 main types of affiliate marketing
Pay-Per-Click – Bloggers are paid by the number of clicks, impressions or leads their link gets (WordStream, 2017).
Commission Earning – Individuals (normally influencers) place affiliate links on their blog or page which contains a tracking cookie that remains active for a certain amount of time. This tracks sales that are made through the link paying individuals a commission for any successful purchase made (Paluca, 2017).
Figure 1: How Affiliate Marketing Works
Source: Commission Factory, 2017
Most of the large fashion brands including Boohoo, ASOS, Missguided and Topshop are now utilising affiliate marketing as one of the best way to market products is through customers themselves. Bloggers contribute millions of pounds in consumer revenue to fashion companies and also earn a large commission for themselves (Paluca, 2017). While affiliate marketing can provide a good basis for cheap website traffic if used incorrectly can have reputational implications (Croft, 2007)
Figure 2: Asos Affiliate Marketing
Source: Asos, 2017
Figure 3: Missguided Affiliate Marketing
Source: Missguided, 2017
RISKS:
An easy way to make money? – Not necessarily, creating a programme like this can require a lot of work and there is much competition within the market. This is especially true within the fashion industry where most major players have affiliate programmes. It relies on fostering relationships with partners. Affiliate programmes bring traffic to a site but it is businesses responsibility to turn the traffic into conversation. Companies must be willing to put the work in (Olenski, 2014).
Exploitation -Affiliates can exploit shortcomings in tracking and attributions which could allow them to claim commission that they have not actually earned resulting in businesses spending unnecessary costs and reduced profit margins (Edelman & Brandi, 2015).
Marketers can use it badly – If an affiliate link becomes associated with sites or content that it should not be the brands reputation could be affected. Additionally, if brands become associated with shamed influencers brand reputation could also become tarnished due to association. Additionally, it is argued that most marketers are paying too much for the clicks that they are getting (Croft, 2007).
BENEFITS:
Lower Risk – Affiliate marketing offers an alternative to traditional advertising techniques where businesses can be required to pay millions of pounds up front for a campaign that could not be successful. It is a performance based approach so advertisers only pay affiliates when a sale occurs. It is therefore seen as a lower risk form of advertising (Edelman & Brandi, 2015)
Flexibility – The flexibility of affiliate marketing enables brands to network with a range of global influencers who can promote their products worldwide thus, increasing their target market size. The UK boasts one of the biggest ecommerce trade surplus of many countries perhaps because of current economic uncertainty and the fall in the value of the pound. This has meant that retailers see the oversea shopper as increasingly desirable (Edwards, 2017).
Increased Sales – Affiliate marketing often results in an increased sales revenue as it allows brands to reach out to a new audience through influencers that have an established following which includes the brands target market. For example, Gymshark (a fitness clothing brand) successfully established fitness influencers such as gracefituk who has 582,000 followers as an affiliates.
Figure 4: Affiliate Marketing Example
Source: Instagram, 2017
FINAL CONCLUSIONS
Overall, affiliate marketing can be a cost effective way to drive traffic to your website and is seen as particularly effective in the e-commerce, fashion world as it creates real and sustained ROI. However, in order to create worthwhile affiliate relationships companies must ensure that they turn the website traffic they receive into conversation (Bishop, 2016). Influencers within the specific industry can be the most effective form of affiliate as they have access to the specific target market the company is looking for.
‘25% of people now trust social media messages over those opinions in articles and magazines as they are seen as direct and reliable.’
(Quesensberry, 2015).
It is therefore important that brands consistently ensure their social media sites are reflective of their brand image and that they successfully communicate messages (Singh, 2017). Consequently, brands must regularly audit their networking sites in order to ensure that they are optimizing their social media sites. There are some questions brands should regularly ask themselves in order to do this.
Audit Question One: How many networks is the business currently available on?
There are over 150 + different social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, vine, google + and the list goes on (Michaelidou et al, 2011). It can sometimes seem overwhelming to have profiles on each of them. Initially, brands must determine which sites the business is currently active on. Most company’s are available on the big five; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google +. But you must take into account ALL profiles even ones that may have been created years ago and forgotten about! Here are some reminders (Levy, 2013):
As you locate these keep note of specific elements, one easy way to do this in a spreadsheet on excel these are some heading suggestions (Lee, 2016):
Source: Lee (2017) The 15-Minute Social Media Audit Everyone Can Do
TIP: UNLESS YOU HAVE VAST RESOURCES PICK THE TOP 3 NETWORKS THAT BEST MEET YOUR COMPANYS NEEDS AND MONITOR THEM CLOSELY, THIS HELPS YOU TO FOCUS YOUR TIME ON WHERE IT IS BETTER SPENT (Entrpreneur, 2013).
Audit Question Two: Are your networks being optimised?
Once the business is aware of their numerous social media profiles they must ensure that they are complete and consistent. They should rigorously analyse each profile checking every one is entirely filled out. Each of these platforms have countless customisation options so it can be easy to forget one. To make sure nothing has been missed out organisations could open the customisation settings on each network and review everything individually e.g. images, texts etc are being used (Lee, 2016).
After making sure that each individual platforms fully completed companies must ensure that branding is consistent across all platforms to make sure that they are optimised! To do this businesses must ask themselves questions such as:
1. Are themes consistent across the pages?
2. Are profile pictures and cover photos the same?
3. Are all URL’s the same?
(Hootsuite, 2017)
Each social network is designed differently therefore it is inevitable that a company’s presence will differ slightly on each of these – this is not a massive problem! The tone on the network should come first e.g. LinkedIn should be more professional (Lee, 2016).
Finally, in order to ensure social media networks are being optimised make sure the business regularly posts, changes their cover photo and keeps active on them. This helps to build consumer relationships (Istvanova, 2014).
Here is an example of how to do it on twitter:
Source: Hootsuite (2017), Optimizing Your Twitter Profile.
Audit Question Three: Which are your best networks?
To determine which of your networks is the best you must measure specific features such as how many followers you have, engagement and customer feedback. An easy way to do this is by creating a social media audit spreadsheet like the one below. However, feel free to change your key metrics as they may differ from company to company and site to site (Lee, 2016).
Source: Lee (2017) The 15-Minute Social Media Audit Everyone Can Do
While these initial metrics are good to track delving into deeper characteristics will give you more insight about which networks are best. There are numerous different tools to use when trying to to find these characteristics, here are a few:
Larger businesses may fund third party analysts such as experts in analysing businesses social media profiles (Sprout Social, 2017).
Find the data yourself! You have access to all of your own networks where data can be found and from this metrics can be calculated. If set up as a business on certain social media sites provide you with free statistics including engagement such as Instagram (Instagram, 2017).
There are also sites such as google analytics where organisations can create free accounts. Businesses are then able to see both where visitors come from and to understand visitors behaviour. A tracking code is created and then added to the companies site. Businesses are then provided with endless data regarding their site that goes beyond simply lnumber of followers, it tracks product sign-ups, leads, downloads etc. (Cisnero, 2015).
Company’s just need to decide the best method for their business and what they can afford. Once determined these analytics can be used to develop a marketing strategy and set specific goals in regard to improving social media channels.
A final word of advice is that in this era of hyper competition social media is an important way to differentiate your business, create a brand personality and build relationships, so try your best to keep on top of it (Yan, 2013)
Michaelidou, N., Siamagka, N. & Christodoulides, G. (2011) Usage, barriers and measurements of social media marketing: an exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands, Industrial marketing management, Vol 40, No 7, p1153-1159
Quesenberry, K. (2015) Conducting a social media audit. [online] Available at:
