How often should I send push? Our most frequently asked question. Learn why one approach doesn’t fit all brands.

What time of day is best to push? Use your customers’ existing activity to find the best times for engagement. The answer might surprise you.

How can I message all app users? Go beyond push notifications and create an engaging in-app message center.

Where should mobile messages direct my audience? Many brands’ messages catch attention, but fail to deliver the payoff customers desire.

When should I use push, an in-app message, or email? A layered messaging strategy explores which types of messages are most appropriate for each channel.

What makes a good message center? Learn more about the many possibilities to deliver engaging content at your customers’ convenience.

Messaging StrategyWe use engagement results across industries to explore the mechanics of what makes mobile messages work best.

How can I entice customers to come back to my app? Hook them right from the start, then deliver ongoing value to keep your customers engaged.

How should I get started with beacons? Test, mine the data, and refine: what our customers are learning from their beacon pilot projects.

How can beacons improve the in-store experience? Mobile devices might be the smartest sales associate you never hired, and a great decision-driver at that.

How can location history make messages more effective? Learn which customer data offers insights that can increase relevance and response rates.

Audience & Segmentation Strategy

This is one of the questions our customers ask most frequently in strategy sessions. The answer depends on your customers’ expectations.

Let’s break it down:

Is this something your customer asked for?

Through a preference center, customers tell you when they want to hear from you, how often, and about what. If they ask for alerts about every sale, breaking news story, or game in progress ... push away.

Is this expected communication?

Customers will appreciate push messages to confirm a reservation or product

shipment. They might also expect to hear from you on a regular (say, weekly) basis. Push based on their expected cadence so your message is not perceived as an interruption.

Is this message helpful to my customer?

How does your app provide utility, benefit or delight to the customer? When a push serves your customer, you’ve got the green light. When the push is self-serving, such as a promotional message a customer didn’t request, tread lightly and push sparingly.

How often should I send push?MESSAGING STRATEGY

What time of day is best to push?

Timing is a massive advantage in mobile—you can deliver messages at the precise time when they are most likely to inspire your audience to act. But that “best time” varies widely among apps based on content, audience and desired action.

For example, an app sending a push at 7 a.m. about a sale might be considered disruptive. But one fashion brand oriented to mothers with young children learned that early mornings are one of the few times its customers can shop uninterrupted. That’s why this app sends early-morning deal alerts.

To find out the best send times for your brand, consider when people are normally

opening your app. Commuting hours, lunch, and break times might show the greatest engagement. While engagement trends tend to vary by day, they also tend to be consistent on the same day of each week.

Finally, consider the action you want your audience to take when you choose your send time: one of our customers found that pushes sent in the evenings, when customers had the most time to shop in response to the push, yielded the highest cart values and revenue.

MESSAGING STRATEGY

Mobile messaging offers a range of opportunities to provide valuable user experiences that extend beyond your app, store or website. The most commonly used approach is push notifications, which light up your smartphone’s screen.

Increasingly, we see innovative brands leverage rich pages and in-app message centers to extend their mobile notification programs to reach all app users with persistent, branded messages. In-app messaging offers a way to consolidate content that is either “favorited” by a user or curated by a marketing team.

Starbucks delivers the ‘Pick of the Week’ as well as promotional information to

delight customers while also impacting the bottom line. Neiman Marcus’s ‘Message Board’ shares timely offers and product information to give them instant access to the best offers.

ABC News allows users to ‘star’ favorite stories and receive alerts for updated content within a personalized, in-app message center. These experiences are compelling and seamless because they’ve taken the time to customize the look and feel of the rich pages and the message center to the brand itself.

A simple way to get started with a message center is to repurpose existing email and content marketing programs. By messaging all app users, you provide a stream of current content without

How can I message all app users?MESSAGING STRATEGY

having to build out an entirely new mobile strategy. On the technical side, we provide a fully functional sample message center that can be easily skinned to match your app’s branding. We make that publishing process simple for marketing teams, with built-in rich page templates that enable marketers to quickly develop responsive content.

Some brands build sets of templates to address different marketing objectives and types of messaging. Customizable templates can incorporate brand colors, fonts, spacing, images and iconography. These templates can then be regularly used in custom messaging campaigns.

As brands realize the value and ability to segment and target rich pages to users, they often move to building original mobile-first messaging programs that take full advantage of this intimate, powerful new marketing channel.

Our rich message center provides a flexible platform for delivering delightful user experiences that bring users back to an application again and again.

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A push notification or message delivered within your app’s message center can take your customer anywhere within the app itself or on the mobile web.

We recommend avoiding a common default of sending your message recipient to the home screen of your app. Doing so turns what could have been an effortless experience into a frustrating one as cust-omers hunt for the particular item or topic that gained their interest in the first place.

Use “deep links” to ensure each message takes your audience to the content you shared and precisely where they want to go. Building these links can now be done without a developer’s assistance using our web-based interface.

Layer on what you know about your customers for an even more personalized

experience. For example, a push notification about a sale could take the customer directly to their favorite department or even a page featuring the clothing size that they prefer.

When you select a deep link destination, consider whether your message has been deployed via push or message center. A push message should link to a destination where the customer can immediately take action or consume content in a short burst—in just a few seconds or a few clicks.

Message center content is typically consumed at the customer’s convenience, so they are likely to be more tolerant of links to destinations where they are asked to spend more time browsing or viewing, or input more of their information.

Where should mobile messages direct my audience? MESSAGING STRATEGY

Your customer receives messages from many different channels, and they expect messages will fit each channel’s purpose.

For example, push messages are designed to drive action, delivered by mobile at the perfect time and place. Push when you want your audience to respond right away.

Messages inserted in an app’s message center have a longer lifespan, and are designed for delivery at the customer’s convenience. Send these when you’d like your audience to engage at their leisure, such as an invitation to shop their favorite products on sale.

Send email messages when you want to deliver archival information, such as receipts and warranty information, or account details. You can enable your message center content to expire after a specific period of time, but email is forever.

Messaging via multiple channels including mobile, email, in-store signage, and direct mail can reinforce important messages as well as educate customers about the value of your app.

When should I use push, an in-app message, or email?MESSAGING STRATEGY

Apps enable communication solely between you and your customer. They let you skip third-party advertising platforms, social media algorithms, and email spam filters—ensuring your message gets through.

Your message center should serve as your app’s repository for offers and content that extend the value of your mobile app. Message centers should be incorporated into your app experience and branding to provide a seamless user experience. We suggest these components when integrating a message center into an app:

New in-app messages should trigger a badge (a small red circle with a number indicating new messages) on an app’s icon on the home screen, as well as within your app on the message center icon on the home page.

Use iconography or small, thumbnail photos to indicate message content categories. For example, a sports score app might use various team or sport icons. A retailer might use a consistent icon for sales or new product, and an airline might flag VIP messages.

Messages should include a few lines of preview text. This helps a customer decide whether to read a message and can reduce marketers’ concerns about sending promotional messages, because uninterested customers will simply skip them.

Finally, set an expiration date on in-app messages. This avoids inbox clutter and ensures customers won’t get excited about a 50%-off sale only to find out it’s over.

What makes a good message center?MESSAGING STRATEGY

We believe the cardinal rule to making apps an essential part of a customer’s life is to create utility—in other words, serve first and sell later.

Everything in your app should be delivered from the mindset of benefiting the audience. Here are a few best practices that help keep your customers coming back:

We know that the majority of apps are abandoned after customers open them just once, perpetuating a download-try-delete cycle. That’s why the user’s experience on that first open should be carefully engineered to promote ongoing engagement.

When customers first open the app, your goal should be to demonstrate the app’s value for their lives. While many apps hit customers immediately with the standard iOS opt-in screen, we’ve found customers who have had a little time to explore the app are more likely to opt in to push.

Consider it equivalent to a real-world shopping scenario: are you more likely to give a retailer your email address if a sales associate asks for it as soon as you enter the store, or if the associate asks you after you’ve had time to browse the store and approach the register?

Bottom line: Weave a message that explains why a customer should opt in for

How can I entice customers to come back to my app?AUDIENCE & SEGMENTATION STRATEGY

push into their first experience with your app for better opt-in rates.

To encourage successive app opens, make sure your features benefit your audience. Is requiring a sign-in before each use improving security, or does it serve as a roadblock to the customer’s experience?

Integrate an in-app message center to offer rich content that can be consumed at customers’ convenience. You can alert customers to this new material with badges on your app icon and on the message center in the app’s home screen. These are visual indicators that new things are waiting for them inside the app.

Another way to enhance your app’s utility is to integrate your brand’s loyalty card with your app through digital wallet. This increases use of the loyalty card and creates another touch-point that discourages customers from deleting

your app while simplifying their lives at the same time. Now, they only have to bring their phone into the store rather than remembering the stack of plastic loyalty cards they’ve likely accumulated from dozens of retailers.

Use customer information such as purchase history to create improved app functionality. Details about products that are ordered and returned, for example, can enable you to offer a size predictor for whether an item runs true to size, a bit large, or a bit small. This reduces returns and increases customer satisfaction.

Finally, use customer behavior to improve targeting. Apps are full of information, yet customers only want what suits them. Use the fact that they typically add size 6 items to their wishlist to adapt your mobile messages to alert them to “new size 6 items on sale.”

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AUDIENCE & SEGMENTATION STRATEGY

We recommend that companies start small, piloting beacons at a few stores or locations while focusing narrowly on specific objectives that provide value or service to customers.

In doing so, a beacon pilot project allows you to gain early insights into its potential ROI, whether that’s increased sales, improved customer service or cost-savings efficiencies. In some cases, the ROI for a brand is in the new customer data itself.

These beacon pilot programs also provide you data on who is visiting your store and how often, with their response to beacon-triggered messages enabling you to fine-tune and scale your strategies prior to full-scale rollouts.

Be judicious about your messaging. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and consider whether a particular message will be perceived as valuable. If not, think long and hard whether to send it. A message

broadcast to everyone, such as 25% off everything in the store, can be a great incentive, but you also need to be mindful of how many beacon-triggered messages are sent per store visit.

Your customers benefit from segmented offers tailored to past purchases or product interests. Additionally, insights captured from app use and loyalty card use can benefit your bottom line.

Lastly, to engage your customers through beacons there are some requirements: opting in to push notifications, opting in to share their location and having Bluetooth turned on.

Businesses who have considered strategies that position the value of these opt-ins see the most success and drive greater conversion rates. Look to in-store signage, as well as interactive app walkthroughs and welcome messages sent to new users to boost opt-in rates and grow your beacon-addressable audience.

How should I get started with beacons?

The key question for brands that incorporate beacons in their messaging strategy: What should customers do as a result of a beacon-triggered message?

Because beacons offer proximity data within a store or structure, they capitalize on the customer’s location context, such as whether the customer is in a department or near a promotional display.

You can use beacons, therefore, to send specific messages about a new product or a sale price precisely when the customer is near the object to purchase.

We advise our clients to use these messages sparingly and in combination with other audience insights. Bombarding

customers with messages (or even a few irrelevant messages) can create a poor user experience that causes customers to delete the app.

Beyond messaging, consider how beacons can be used to gather customer insights to enable more precise and relevant messaging in the future.

Dwell time can reveal a customer’s interest in specific departments, intent to purchase, and preferences. You might find they prefer to shop new items (typically located at the front of the store) or sale items (typically in back). This, in turn, can hone your messaging strategy toward this-just-in products or bargains.

How can beacons improve the in-store experience?AUDIENCE & SEGMENTATION STRATEGY

Location history, also called a location profile, indicates a web of destinations where your customers live, work, and play—anywhere they take their phones.

This insight can help you cast a wider but more relevant net for customers who are near a location at some point, but not necessarily at the present.

When one of our major retail customers wanted to invite its members to its largest annual sale event, it used location profiles to send messages to everyone who had been within five miles of the store in the past month. This user group includes people who are likely willing to make the trip to the store for the sale.

Another retailer wanted to use location history to include customers who had visited the store within the past three months, exclude customers who had visited within the last six weeks, and increase the value of the promotional offer based on the customer’s typical distance from the store.

As a result, the retailer sent the strongest come-back-again incentives to its hardest-to-reach customer base with great success.

How can location history make messages more effective?AUDIENCE & SEGMENTATION STRATEGY

Urban Airship helps the world’s leading brands build their businesses by engaging customers through the most immediate and context-aware channel—mobile.

Because 70% of new mobile app users abandon apps after as little as a month, brands must create mobile experiences inside and outside of their app to build long-term relationships.

Urban Airship’s industry-leading, scalable, marketer-driven technology inspires “mobile moments” that personalize content, enable frictionless ticketing and

tipping, and help customers discover what matters to them.

We do this with a simple, guiding principle: empowering brands to deliver the experiences customers crave, at precisely the right time and place.

Ready to learn more? Call us to consult with our team.

1.800.720.2098 @urbanairship

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