How to Leverage Email and Mobile Messaging to Elevate Customer Experiences

Ros: Alright, good morning, everyone. And thank you so much for joining us for this webinar on how to leverage email and mobile messaging to elevate customer experiences. Now, to get started, I’m going to just introduce your friendly speakers here today. First of all, we have Mara Miller, who is the Director of Customer Success. Mara, tell me a little bit about your role and what you do at Vibes?

Mara: Sure. Thanks, Ros. So, hi, everyone. As Ros mentioned, I’m Mara Miller. And what I do at Vibes, simply puy, I manage a large portfolio of clients across various business verticals that include automotive and retail and more. And what I’m mainly responsible for is the success of all of my customers’ mobile marketing programs. All the way from the execution and market, to ensuring that these programs ladder up to their business goals and objectives. So how we do that at Vibes, we are the glue that help our marketers unlock new revenue opportunities by arming them with the technology. And additionally, a variety of expertise and guidance that they need to succeed in mobile marketing.

Ros: Brilliant. Thank you very much, Mara. And just to tell you a few words about myself. I’m Ros Hodgekiss, I’m the Customer Success Programs Manager at Campaign Monitor. My role here is to help customers really grow their email strategy and get the best result from their usage of Campaign Monitor. What’s Campaign Monitor? We are an email marketing platform for creating simple and elegant emails to growing businesses.

We come with all sorts of great email tools to help you create beautiful, personalized email campaigns that really work for your business. So let’s jump into it. We have a really action-packed agenda today. A good 30 minutes of content that will help you as a marketer make the most of both the email and mobile opportunity. We’re really going to be getting into how you can personalize your emails, why it is actually super important that you consider both email and mobile channels. And finally, give you a couple of great examples of how you can incorporate both mobile and email in your strategy.

Finally, there will be a really good section where you can actually submit your own questions during the Q&A. So, please get your fingers ready, we’re going to be waiting out to hear what you have to say about this awesome, awesome email and mobile strategy webinar we have ahead. All right, let’s get into it.

So first of all, we’d like to say a couple of words about the state of email personalization. The truth is, while we’re marketers, we’re also consumers. And if you’re like me, you’re likely providing information to brands on a really regular basis with the expectation of receiving a rich personalized experience. According to VentureBeat, 77%, of digital market expect messaging tailored to them. And on the flip side according to Cartwheel, 25% of consumers are frustrated with a company that fails to recognize them as a past or current consumer.

Taking personalization to the next level is a marketing strategy that works across channels, such as email, mobile and social. According to one study, 72% of consumers say they preferred to connect with brands across multiple channels. And B2C brands that use multi-channel strategies do realize a 24% greater return on investment. Overall, personalized multi-channel brand experiences are really now the default. Consumers do expect them and savvy marketers now know to use multiple channels for the best result.

We’ll be discussing how you can really supercharge your results with both email and mobile in the slides to come. So now on to the rise of the mobile inbox, smartphone use is now nearly universal and prevalent in almost everything we do on a daily basis. The number of smartphone users in the US are projected to reach nearly 237 million by 2019. That will be over 70% of the US population. Mobile email use is prevalent too.

As an email service provider, or ESP, we know that over 50% of email opens are on mobile devices. And alongside engagement, converting from mobile campaigns is really high. Average smartphones conversion rates are up 64% compared to average conversion rates according to a CMS report published last year. This knowledge has provided brands with the momentum to explore using email and tying them with mobile services like mobile wallets and payment application to aid consumers and bring into the $4 trillion in-store retail markets.

In short, we have reached mobile saturation. As marketers, it’s now time for us to leverage this using email to deliver mobile-specific brand experiences to customers. So why should we even think about this hand over from email to mobile? Overall, it’s because email is a great way to drive adoption of mobile services that use geolocation or other behavioral data to bring consumers to physical retail brands and vice versa.

Some examples are action services and incorporate paying with points, [inaudible 00:05:34] deals and offers an integrated payment. We’ll discuss specific technologies and use cases later in this webinar. Overall, by 2018, eight out of 10 email users will likely access the email account exclusively from their mobile device according to Email Monday. Paired with the fact that 90% of consumer mobile usage is spent in app, we can see that email and mobile is a great mix.

Given the opportunity to engage customers via email and how you want them doing so, designing email for mobile users should be a priority. After all, 70% of consumers delete email immediately that don’t render well on mobile device. So you only really have one shot according to Blue Hornet. A customer example I wanted to share with you today of a customer who really creates an ultimate mobile experience is Rapha.

A UK based biker apparel brand that really puts mobile first and foremost. After all, their customers are cyclists and other people who are interested in the outdoors and active sports. So, therefore, they really have to create campaigns for a customer base that’s always on the go. In this example from Rapha, you can see a couple of ways in which they’ve really gone to this mobile service experience.

First of all, they’ve gone for really large legible text and very, very clear call-to-action. You can see it just there, sale, shop the sale. Without a doubt, you know exactly what Rapha is trying to tell you as a consumer. Another thing to point out here is the use of big buttons and also using colors which really pop amidst the overall design. Paired with text that’s very concise, legible text, we really have a mix here that’s really designed for high conversion rates amongst the mobile audience.

To note is that this was created using the Campaign Monitor email builder, which can be used to create and test mobile-optimized email campaigns in minutes. All you need is some really great ideas. Now, I’m gonna hand over Mara, who’s gonna talk more about using technology for the mobile wallet and SMS to engage customers in a timely and relevant manner. Let’s go for it, Mara.

Mara: Thank you so much, Ros. I appreciate it. So, yes, as Ros just said, I wanted to talk with everyone a little bit further about how you can optimize your email strategy with mobile, and how it can really help increase the email productivity. And you can do that in several ways, but today what we’re gonna do is dive a bit deeper into two keys approaches. The first one that we’ll dive into is around the integration of mobile wallets. Second, being using SMS as a vehicle to not only deliver wallet objects to your email database but also as a vehicle to help grow your email database further.

So, let’s start with mobile wallets. For those unfamiliar with mobile wallet, it is an app which allows consumers to store loyalty cards, offers, boarding passes, tickets, gift cards, and more. It makes up of pretty much every type of card you could think of that’s now digitized making it acceptable right through your mobile phone. Mobile wallet takes the form of Apple Wallet for iOS, which is natively built and available on all iOS devices. And for Android devices, it’s known as Android Pay, which any day now is going to be Google Pay or GPay for short. And that’ll be coming out very soon. And again, it could be out by the time we’re done with this webinar.

But, regardless, Android Pay soon to be Google Pay is currently native to about 90% of the Android devices. And for those that don’t have it natively on their app, it is also easily accessible to download from the Google Play Store. So mobile wallet is different than mobile payments, just to be clear, but consumers are relying on mobile wallet just as much if not more as a go-to resource. In addition to being able to neatly and safely store any of your wallet objects in your mobile wallet, you also enable as a marketer and for the consumer, an ongoing supported communication channel.

The word supportive is key here in the fact that it is a supportive communications channel. Because there are some nuances to keep in mind, particularly around wallet notifications that you can send to all actively wallet installed objects. So I’ll get into those nuances a little bit more shortly.

Now, we’ve highlighted the benefits, as you saw of, you know, how the need is there for consumers, why they want it and that they’re using it. But marketers have just as much to be excited about. Mobile wallet allows you to keep your brand top of mind with your consumers, a great way to drive foot traffic. And last but certainly not least, it’s measurable at point of sale. So what that means is you’re able to tangibly prove out the ROI, which everyone wants at the end of the day. So we’re thrilled that that can help close the loop there.

So naturally, I assume the next question is how does it work? Every mobile wallet object created comes with its own unique wallet URL. And this can be easily embedded into your emails behind the save to phone call-to-action. So if you can see what this example is showing, all it takes is a couple of simple steps. Once you’ve embedded that URL as a consumer, you open the email and you’re saving it to your wallet. You’re saving it your mobile wallet on your phone in no time.

Another great reason why enabling wallet in your email, so it’s specifically for the email channel over even other channels though we, of course, recommend it for all. But for email, it’s a really great opportunity because there’s creative real estate that you have in email that you don’t have in an SMS message, for example, that really allows you to, if you choose, educate your consumers on what wallet is and how to use it. It’s new, so if you as the brand are worried about the adoption there, use this as an opportunity to explain it.

Several of our customers at Vibes have taken this illustrated approach scene of giving them the steps of tapping, viewing and saving, and this is proven to definitely drive a quicker adoption for wallet use with their audience. This is an illustration here of what the aforementioned wallet notification looks like. The example shown to be clear is specific to the Apple Wallet user experience. It is a slightly different but similar to Android Pay in terms of where the notification can appear on your device. But it is a similar user experience end to end, just looks a little different.

And if you’re thinking that this looks very similar to a notification that you may get from an app, then you’re correct. Because mobile wallet is, in fact, an app. So that’s not to be forgotten and it should feel familiar. Notifications can be triggered by time, it can be triggered by location. Depending on the level of data, our customers at Vibe can provide us from their side. For example, if you’re able to provide us unique redemptions by an individual as they purchase at point of sale, we have the ability to help segments what notifications go out to whom.

That said, the nuances that I mentioned before are given. Every user manages their own notifications at the device settings level, and some people can turn off all notifications across all apps and not want to be bothered. We really encourage our customers to not solely rely on the wallet notification, but it can definitely act as a valuable layer of communication on top of your overall promotional plan.

These steps here, they showcase the results that we at Vibe have typically seen with some of our customers when a brand enables wallet. And to help paint the picture even further, we’ve seen wallet from an engagement standpoint. We’ve seen save rates, so saving it to your mobile wallet reach up to 50% of a brand’s audience when the option is presented to them. So the impact is pretty hefty, right? If you’ve got an email database of about 5 million people, that’s some fun math to do. So some great things to think about.

And what’s very exciting is not only from an engagement standpoint, but as you can see here, the conversion increase that we’ve seen when wallet is available to you. And what incremental lift and revenue we’ve seen, it’s driving some very significant results for our customers that are very happy about it. So hopefully, you’re next in line to be doing the same.

So, to switch gears to SMS and touch upon this. SMS can play many integral roles in the world of mobile, probably more familiar to most than mobile wallet. But today, I wanna highlight how SMS can be leveraged as a vehicle to help get your email programs from where they are to where they want to be. Simply put, SMS drives and immediacy at a pace much quicker than almost all other channels.

Given these stats in terms of 90 seconds to open an SMS, the confirmation rates that almost all SMS messages that are sent are indeed open. And if you think about it, just as a user of a smartphone, how quickly it takes you to get to your messaging app versus other apps. The instantaneous value is probably obvious. So it’s a perfect channel to drive content to your users’ devices, especially as a mechanism to deliver on-demand content. Meaning content that a consumer is taking action saying, “I want this” Or, you know, other ways that it could be ongoing content delivered. And what’s great is that its content consumers wants that could get lost in other channels.

So here we have an example of how SMS and mobile wallet, in fact, can work together. Mobile wallet to be clear, and for more background for those that are new to it. Mobile wallet is intended to be a mobile exclusive tool. So naturally, then we say, “Well, what about people who perhaps open their emails on desktop?” SMS offers you a solution to ensure you don’t omit engaging with your desktop audience. So users coming from desktop can opt to send their wallet offers to themselves via SMS which ensures a seamless end-to-end user experience.

The example that we have here, it showcases a mobile number trigger page that Vibe actually built exclusively for our Polo factory stores customer. But, Vibe also has a suite of public API’s that are available that would make the same user experience shown possible if let’s just say a brand would prefer to trigger that from an existing page that they already have built. Maybe they want to build something new, but they want it on there because they have resources. In short, there are options available to make this experience possible.

You can also use SMS as a new or different approach to email acquisition. Through one of our current customers we have today, in a 12 month period, this approach seen here, this user flow, it drove in the hundreds of thousands of email addresses that were texted in to sign up for their email program. And what I find actually even more interesting about that volume is the fact that of that volume, 33% of them actually texted their email address even though they were already subscribed to that email program.

So to us at a qualitative level, that further validates that SMS peaks an audience interest. It’s easy. It’s intuitive. It’s instant, and the results are pretty great. Finally, collecting both an email address and a mobile number, it increases your understanding of the consumer profile. So, what this means is and how we think about, you know, the next steps for our customers in the evolution and how they’re really getting to a holistic marketing program that’s mobile first. Knowing your holistic view of your customers enables brands to send relevant, timely content which in turn will drive higher conversion rates. So mobile number and email together, that’s a great place to start. So with that, I will turn it back to Ros and if anyone has any questions, please let the Q&A team know.

Ros: All right. Thank you so much, Mara. That was awesome. Now, if it’s not clear already, data is really what powers of both the strategy and the tool, specifically timely, relevant data on our customers. Traditionally, developing a single channel strategy based on information collected from a form was enough. As we now know, consumer expectations are much higher. Now, behavioral data is what’s needed to drive high performing marketing strategies that often require coordination between your website, social channels, mobile apps and more.

When working with marketers, I’ve come to understand that adopting a robust strategy or best [inaudible 00:18:17] tools are often less challenging than simply integrating systems. However, after demonstrating the following example, the reward to getting integrated a timely, consistent and relevant data which can be used to automate tasks, drive engagement and deliver a seamless on-the-channel customer experience.

So, if there’s one thing to think about here, especially if some of these strategies have some really interested you today, is to consider what data you have on your customers and where it leads. Do ask yourself, “What could you do with your existing marketing channels if you would have unlocked this data, and use it to personalize your marketing messaging?” So, an example of a customer that I supported in unlocking their data is Flight Center. A traveling experience of a company with almost 3,000 shops and businesses across 13 countries.

One of the initial task during the customer on-boarding was integrating that point of sale and website with Campaign Monitors behavioral email marketing offering to personalize their campaigns with location-specific flight deals, content based on preferences, and then third, demographic. And, of course, to simply personalize their marketing messages with the customer’s names, birth dates and other things that really sort of bring home the messaging.

For them, as we can see here on the slide, the result was significant uptake and internet traffic and online bookings. All attributes moved to their email campaigns, thanks for the newly integrated services and Google Analytics. So really what we’re going to bring home here today is the fact that if you really want to embark on a very effective, on-the-channel strategy, please do think about your data because the rewards that come from simply unlocking it can be incredible and really make a difference to your bottom line.

So, that now brings us to the end of this webinar session. We can already see that there are some really awesome questions coming in from all of you. Please don’t stop. We really want to make sure that we fully answer a lot of your inquiries about using mobile, email and other channels in order to create a really great email marketing strategy paired with the tools that you need to get the results that you want.

So, Mara, I do have a couple of questions for you here, if you don’t mind. First of all…Yeah, I know. It’s been pretty good [inaudible 00:20:51]. Now, question number one that we have here is, “How do you recommend brands to get started with incorporating mobile internet marketing plans?” That’s a really good question.

Mara: Yeah, that is a great question. So, you know, in terms of how they get started, I think, what we try to do is advise this. Make sure we have an understanding of things like ownership on our customers and, you know, talking about how we can collaborate with them, but understanding what their needs are immediately, and what their business objectives are. And through that discovery, it will help us identify if they need to be taking some smaller steps and achieving smaller wins or if they’re ready to go for the full kit and caboodle.

So, anyway, if we go back to SMS and wallet that I was talking about. Some customers may find that maybe mobile wallet is too much of a leap right away because again, that adoption is slightly newer than SMS. But as you can see, with the recommendations that we’ve put forth with many of our customers that have gone into market in terms of using SMS and mobile wallet together. The more that you can try it out and give more opportunities for your consumers to engage in different channels the more you have learnings and understanding how you can focus.

So really, at the end of the day, it all starts with what are you aiming to achieve, and what are the resources available on your side that we can couple them with our resources and expertise to help you do that? So hopefully, it’s a blend of everything, but you don’t have to do everything at once. So hope that answers the question in terms of how you get started.

Ros: Yeah, that’s a really, really solid answer. We actually have two other questions here for you as well. Yeah. So, I mean, we do have a lot of different company sizes represented in our audience today. So this is, I think, essentially really a good question from perhaps, you know, a smaller businesses perspective in particular. So the question is, “Do you need to have a large marketing team to get started with mobile, or do you have like a single email or digital marketer owning this responsibility?”

Mara: Another really great question. So we at Vibes, we work with our customers in a variety of ways that kind of reach all ends of the spectrum in terms of responsibility. So we have customers that choose a self-serve approach, which means that they’re doing most of the management on their own. They’re running their own campaigns in our platform. Other customers, it’s more of a hybrid approach where they engage us, you know, the customer success team occasionally to help them, you know, help steer them through some training needs, help make recommendations but they still manage many if not all of their campaigns on their own in our platform.

And then we have our full-serve customers. That’s the full-serve approach, which mostly all of our largest enterprise-type customers have. They’ve chosen this path in terms of meetings, subject matter expertise and thinking of us as an extension of their team at all times. So what I’ve found to be most successful is at least from a brand-side that you should be a dedicated owner, just to, you know, have that empowerment of owning mobile. They can be the main consistent point of contact. You don’t necessarily need to be the subject matter expert but at the very least have the bandwidth to carve out mobile in their overall planning. And they could help move the needle and keep that rolling while they have the extension of the subject matter expertise team on the Vibes end.

Ros: Thank you very much. That’s a great answer. So finally, one more for you here about the mobile experience and the mobile opportunity overall. Question is, “We know that SMS is also a channel many brands use to build the mobile database they can then market to. What would you recommend doing to get started with growing a mobile database?”

Mara: So the other way you use SMS. I love it. These are good questions. So for that one, so it’s actually similar to what I mentioned before about how we get started. And we do some discovery with our clients when they get started because everyone’s different. So when we’re working with newer customers in our on-boarding kickoff process, the majority choose from Vibe. We have a strategy practice area here, and there’s a number of different foundational strategy packages that they can think about getting to collaborate with us so that we can, right off the bat, figure out what mobile looks like to them across mobile wallet, SMS and SMS in the transactional vehicle space that we’ve been talking about today. But also to this question, points of acquisition. And acquisition for mobile is a key component of these strategies that we helped put together.

So once again, we do the natural discovery and dig into what they’re trying to do and achieve. We also do some goal setting and best leverage to figure out where we can best leverage their cross-promotional channels to ensure that we have a solid foundation to grow their database successfully. So the longer winded answers here too is that when it comes to building from the ground up, there’s gonna be some effort that the brand is gonna have to put in to get what they want out. So if they’re tight on resources, if they’re tight on promotional space, then we would probably work to tweak how they think about their goals. All with the, you know, intended goal of making sure that they have attainable goals that they can achieve, that they can succeed with, that they look like rock stars, and then we figure out what’s next from there.

Ros: Brilliant. Thank you so much for enlightening us. I also notice that there are a couple of great questions here about the email marketing opportunity. I love those kinds of questions. I’m more than happy to answer them, so keep them coming. Two questions that just popped out. I think this is really, really great, especially for people who are wanting to do really either get started with email marketing or really build on the current strategy. The first question I see here is, “You touched on personalization at the beginning of the webinar. Do you have any easy steps or recommendations that marketers can take to get started with personalizing email campaigns?”

Now, I love that. It’s really great. One of the most exciting things for me is really just getting started from the ground up in regards to email marketing strategy and email marketing program. Because you basically get to the result so quickly and it’s incredibly exciting. Second to that is really just building a new email campaign using things like personalization to really expand your program, get better results. And again, the joy about email is that the gratification there is just off the bat. When you send out your first campaign with even rudimentary personalization, I assure you that, darn, you will see the results, you know, pretty much straight away in your campaign report.

How do you actually get to that stage though, is an open question. Some of the easy steps I recommend off the bat are, first of all, doing a bit of an audit of your online forms. You most likely have an online form of collecting email addresses right now. That’s pretty cool but you know what? We can really take things to the next level. My recommendation is to go through those forms, you know, really consider what else that you can collect in a non-intrusive way.

And one little trick that I’ve seen is often off the person or the customer [inaudible 00:28:41] for their email address up front. But then direct them to a preference center which is where you can collect other information on things like the customer location, what kind of communications they wanna receive? You know, for instance, if they’re interested in loyalty club, all sorts of different things that could be really interesting and very, very relevant to both the customer and yourself as a marketer.

So my recommendation ultimately is do work on a preference center, it’s like an expanded signup form. And it really… you know, it doesn’t have to be mandatory to fill in, but you’ll find that a lot of people do choose to use the preference center because it puts the control in their hand. The other thing I’d also add here is, you know, you might have all those steps under control already. We’ve been talking a lot about unlocking the data during this webinar. And one of the ways to do that is to really consider how you’re using integrations between your business tools at present.

You know, a good example was the Flight Center one earlier where, you know, they found a lot of their very useful customer data was living in point of sale system. A lot of other great customer data was living on the website. And really to them, it was a matter of finding an integration which they did do using vital Campaign Monitor team that managed to link those two sources of data with Campaign Monitor overall.

So that might be a pretty big example. You know, something that’s more relevant to a large organization. For smaller organizations or, you know, teams that are just getting started. You can think about things like your CRM. There’s really a lot of great customer data in there that you’re just not pushing over, that you could be using to personalize your campaigns.

Another great source of customer data is e-commerce platform. So you can, you know, have a look at your Shopify, your [inaudible 00:30:38] kind of thing. And the good news about those, there are integrations on the box available for some of the leading platforms. Sorry, I can’t [inaudible 00:30:49] Spotify. I mean, Shopify. A lot of these integrations are available out of the box and at low cost. An example is the Shopify integration with Campaign Monitor which is free of charge to use, and will help you, it will actually give you advice on how you can segment your customer data so you can then send out the personalized campaigns.

So, just to wrap up, that question is really, really good one. I’m sorry for the very detailed answer, but you know that I’m very passionate about this. Think about your online forms, think about your preference center and think about integration or opportunities that you can have to bring you tool together. Cool. So looks like there was somebody else here who was actually pretty attentive during the Rapha customer example.

Second question is about design tips and in particular with mobile emails being pretty much the do [inaudible 00:31:50] and Campaign Monitor using the email builder. “What other design tips can you share in regards to improving your overall email engagement?” So, you know, off the bat, you know, we’ve already mentioned personalization. The one thing I didn’t mention, though, is also the use of dynamic content. This is really, really, really powerful stuff.

If you can link off your customer data, for instance, the company’s location, or in the case of something like including retail brand, maybe the agenda or the sort of accessories that they like, you can actually use what we call dynamic content blocks to surface the content which is immediately relevant to the customer. We have some great examples on the Campaign Monitor website, campaignmonitor.com. In particular, also our top 100 that shows some great example of these dynamic content blocks at work.

For instance, to create these you know, retail campaigns that are incredibly effective, that really focus on delivering content that’s super relevant to what the customer has requested. And again, talking about preference centers, using a preference center, you can collect this sort of information so easily. As far as general email marketing advice goes, what I generally recommend to customers is that we don’t get tempted to run away with all the messages we wanna tell our customers in one hit. That ultimately, we should focus on creating a single email campaign and a single message.

Now, this might seem like a bit of a no-brainer, but actually, you’ll be very surprised how many campaigns there are out there that are telling people to sign up the sale. And then go do this thing and then download the app and then engage with us on social media. Yeah, you know, a lot of the time, it’s very easy to really load customers with lots of information especially if you think in your mind that this may be the hit we have. But I really recommend simplifying your messages and just making sure you have a very focused call-to-action.

It’s just like the old advice about not over emailing people. Don’t over message, keep it simple. And I am quite certain that you’re going to see the results in your campaign report off the bat. Well, thank you, everyone, who attended today. This has been a really, really exciting webinar. I’ve been really, really pumped a) to share some of the knowledge that we have with you, and also the question have been really, really great.

Unfortunately, we’re all out of time. But please, you know, if you do have any additional questions, do reach out to us and we’ll do our best to get back to you. Another thing to note is that this recording will be available to you in the next day or so, so please do keep an eye open for that. All right. Mara, do you have a couple words to say on your end?

Mara: I think just thank you, guys, for your time. I hope this was very helpful and, you know, I think at the end of the day, there’s lots more to learn but that’s what we’re here for. So if anyone is ever interested in mobile or more, we’ve got a team here back in the Chicago headquarters office and more.

Ros: Great. Thank you so much.

Mara: Thank you.