Recent additions to Interactive Mediums’ mobile marketing platform make possible never before seen engagement strategies to be played out over text messaging. On our product blog, my colleague John Wood made several recent posts about newly supported abilities to orchestrate multi-step, real time interactions, segment customers based on response data then re-target the entire group or segments of the group with more relevant messaging. In the abstract, this is a powerful combination which allows mobile marketers the ability to “close the loop” on customer interactions and not simply use text messaging as a mechanism for broadcasting short messages to the masses.
I thought it would be useful to view this capability within the context of the initiatives facing marketers and which have strong applications for mobile, as we talk about in Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy.
Loyalty Programs: Registering customers for loyalty programs and having them use text interactions to log activity (e.g. via product codes for points) are useful, largely “one way” communication strategies. Newly supported capabilities can add value to loyalty programs by enabling marketers to identify targeted “best next actions” for customers, based on richer profiles and interaction history. For example, rather than simply registering customers via SMS, marketers can now, in real time, prompt customers for additional information, such as product affinity, consumption frequency, and channel preferences. Whereas in the past, such details may be obtained over time and from other data sources, they can now be captured at the initial point of contact. In cases where a marketer has already developed an opted in list of mobile customers, they can alter the “points redemption” process at the point of mobile interaction to include capturing more details of customer behavior. Once captured, profiles and consumption data can be used to develop offers for logical product bundles or product bridges. Blending speed to market with customer knowledge is an enormous benefit of these new capabilities for loyalty programs.
Demand Generation: To increase floor traffic and close more business, marketers will offer subscriptions to discount, sales or other promotional message programs. Whereas in the past, this registration was limited to a homogenous list of existing and potential customers, now within a single system marketers can develop immediate, and more detailed profiles of interested consumers for serving more relevant offers. For example, marketers can now offer these programs and at the same time request details such as age, sex, marital status, product interest and others which can then be used to segment responders into groups to be matched up with appropriate offers designed to drive purchases.
Brand Awareness: Brand marketers are gated from their customers via the built in separation between manufacturers and their sales channels. And while couponing can offer insight into consumption behavior, text messaging can connect brand marketers directly with their customers in ways which are mutually beneficial. For example, a food company might offer recipes with their products as key ingredients in exchange for a text interaction whereby the marketer obtains insight into consumers’ perception of their brand. A measure of brand engagement may be derived by how willing consumer segments are to engage in multi-question interactions.
Champion/Challenger Testing: If understanding customers “on the go” is an objective but there is uncertainty around how much information can be obtained via text message interactions, these new capabilities allow marketers greater flexibility in testing their strategies before a full roll out. Question threads of different depth and/or length can be tested to see in advance which approach will yield the desired results.
Customer/Market Research: A survey instrument may not always be the best approach to gaining insight into customer preferences and behavior for use in creating new products, packages or services. A marketer interested in obtaining this type of information can use the new capabilities to identify segments of opted in customers to ask increasingly more specific questions. This process of closing the loop only serves to inform better decision making. Key to success is ensuring customers are incented to engage in these dialogues, and offering registration in trial product programs is one such approach.
