7 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Mobile Marketing Platform

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It’s no secret, brands, that want to have a greater slice of the market share, focus on winning the mobile market engagement space. Smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices are becoming an indispensable part of our lives.

Business Insider estimates that there will be 6.2 billion smartphone users globally by the year 2021. As a marketer, you would want your brand to be on top of their minds, and what better way to capture and keep their attention than through a mobile marketing platform? A one-stop place for your engagement strategies and campaign analytics.

While you need an effective mobile marketing strategy for your mobile app, an effective mobile marketing platform will make it easy for customers to buy your product and keep them coming back for more.

How do you pick the best mobile marketing platform for your brand?

A mobile marketing platform will make your offerings visible and attractive to your target markets at the right time. It crafts the conversations that keep your customers engaged for the long run. It can also act as a market research tool that shows what your customers truly like, and how close or far you are to winning them over.

Still, don’t just buy a popular mobile marketing solution just because it is getting good word of mouth.

There are seven questions to ask when choosing a good mobile marketing platform:

Question 1: How thorough and precise is the platform’s analytics?

Promoting your brand is just one side of the coin when it comes to the functions of a mobile marketing platform. The platform you choose must also be capable of integrating its own data with all the other analytics platforms to create a better view of your customer’s behavior and preferences. The analysis and insights it gives you will help you craft the right messaging to engage your target market efficiently.

Smooth integration between all your data platforms will help you map your customer’s interest in your brand. It can alert you which user traffic sources work the best for you and which don’t. Real-time reports will also show you if your current campaign is working, and whether you should continue it or pull the plug.

Question 2: Can the platform monitor the entire spectrum of my buyer’s journey?

The best mobile marketing platform that can do wonders for your campaign is the one that can track each phase of your buyer’s customer journey. First, it will show you how far your customer has gone from being a mere curious visitor to being this close to actually clicking on the online shopping cart.

Then, the platform should also be able to tell you the actions that the user has performed in reply to your invites. Did he/she click on your promo, share your site link, or reply to your whatsapp message?

These numbers will in turn help your marketing and sales teams to plan their next strategic moves. Your marketing team can create campaigns that are even more appealing than the last one to your soon-to-be customer. Your sales team can analyze which of the products your customer likes the most and why. With these capabilities, your mobile marketing platform can even be your ally in making all your campaigns generate the maximum ROI.

Question 3: Does the mobile marketing platform ensure deliverability of my push notifications?

Your marketing campaign needs to win in push amplification (better deliverability rates), and not just push notification.

Push notification is important, don’t get me wrong, but you also need a fail-safe mechanism because as much as 20% of them fail to reach their target audience. Almost all mobile marketing platforms confuse the delivery rate with the sent rate (received by FCM/APNS) and not the exact impressions at the end-user’s device.

There are many reasons for this failure, chief among them being OS/device level restrictions. MoEngage’s push amplification tool first spots the push messages that did not deliver to intended recipients. It then sends these missed messages through a failsafe mechanism directly to the device. This helps in less falls between the cracks and your customer does not miss out on the engagement opportunity. Needless to say this also helps us in tracking the exact delivery rate at the end user’s mobile device.

Question 4: Does the platform make personalized recommendations?

State-of-the-art mobile marketing tools narrow down your user’s psychographics to their most granular. It can break down your customer segment into very unique sectors that have very specific needs. For example, the ‘mom’ in your customer base has many roles and identities: soccer mom, working mom, single mom, career-oriented mom, mom with teenage kids, etc. The platform categorizes your target market and gives you the data you need to reach out to every single one of them through specifically targeted campaigns.

Customization is the theme of any sound mobile marketing campaign. Your customers want to feel that you value them and care for their needs and wants. Making personalized recommendations based on their past behavior is one way to give them that assurance. Keep giving them products and services they need, laced with the message they need to hear, and they will come back for more.

Here’s a short video on how Dynamic Product Messaging works to communicate relevant products from a user’s catalog based on past browsing patterns.

Question 5: Is your mobile marketing platform leveraging Artifical Intelligence (AI)?

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has certainly made its presence felt across all industries, but it’s not usually as a stand-alone solution. Rather, it plays a key role when integrated properly with other core applications of your mobile marketing platform. And when it comes to its usability, AI can be a real game-changer.

We are all quite familiar with the recommendation engines of brands like Amazon and Netflix. These brands take note of what we click on and like, and then offer us more of the same. If you regularly watch “Brooklyn 99” Netflix might suggest you try “The Good Place” for example.

AI can help you in multiple ways from content optimization to eliminating guesswork with smarter data-driven decisions.

Question 6: Does the platform support work-from-home (remote) approvals?

COVID-19 has changed the way we work. With multiple channels of communication, devices, and touchpoints across the digital landscape, broken customer experiences can spell doom for brand marketing. How do our teams assure success with proper approval cycles when people are working remotely?

That’s why you need mobile marketing platform that lay greater emphasis on a unified approach to marketing than ever before. Such a platform breaks down silos within the marketing teams, and prospers collaboration among marketers, campaign managers, and product managers.

Here’s what MoEngage Teams feature lets you do. If you use MoEngage, with a few clicks, you can setup this feature.

Question 7: Does the platform help me create a strong community of users by going omni channel?

Every buyer wants to belong to a community that they identify with. Users prefer listening from brands that they use on a frequent basis. Mobile marketing platforms with strong inter-connected omnichannel capabilities help you create a sound brand positioning. This in turn keeps your users connected through different channels such as social media, whatsapp, email, and SMS.

Conclusion: A good mobile marketing platform makes all the difference

Asking the right questions in choosing a mobile marketing platform will help you make a smart long-term marketing investment. The platform you choose will allow you to understand your customers and keep them engaged. Engaged customers in turn can become your most ardent and passionate followers.