The mobile marketing automation ecosystem is growing rapidly as mobile publishers and developers are realizing the truth of the old marketing adage: getting a new customer costs five to ten times more than keeping an existing one.
And users, of course, are customers.
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In some ways, it’s like CRM for mobile.
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The ecosystem is growing more crowded as MMA is changing from something that mobile-first and mobile-only startups — especially gaming companies — do to maximize the lifetime value of their users to something that every company with a mobile presence is doing to tie mobile apps and mobile web into their omnichannel customer experience and marketing web of solutions. As such, mobile marketing automation is something that every marketing cloud and marketing tech vendor has to consider adding to their toolbox.
Above: MMA vendor market share
That’s something that FollowAnalytics CEO Samir Addamine recognized in 2012 when he started FollowAnalytics. At the time his app development boutique was among the most successful in France, but he grew tired of building the 20th and 30th apps for the same company.
“The company was booming — we went from 4 people to 45 — but I realized that adding a new app every month didn’t make sense for companies,” Addamine told me. “You need to look at usage … you need to connect these mobile apps to the business of the company. You cannot just have branding apps.”
Monetate added MMA to its offerings just this month by partnering with Taplytics. While the company has focused on e-commerce personalization and optimization, Monetate said at the time that the growth of mobile commerce essentially requires the new product offering.
“Multi-screen shopping is the norm — not the exception — and today’s customers expect a consistent cross-device experience,” Monetate CEO Lucinda Duncalfe said in a statement earlier this month.
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As with other enterprise-focused MMA solutions such as Swrve, Kahuna, Adobe, and Salesforce, Monetate’s new product will allow companies to create a consistent, contextualized, and personalized user experience across web and apps, particularly with data such as past purchases, loyalty memberships, individual preferences, and more. This is critically important, because consumers are coming to expect that every communication from a company — whether on the web, in a branded app, in email, via social, or in person — is contexualized with all the information the company is supposed to know about you.
Above: MMA features
That’s something that Oracle VP of product marketing John Stetic emphasized in our recent marketing clouds report:
“Via a new integration we just released that integrates our marketing cloud and service cloud, Kenyan Airlines made a recent marketing campaign smart,” he told me. “The software will check if person has an open support case before offering them a travel deal or special. … For example, you don’t want offer a customer a deal on flight tickets if you just lost their luggage.”
MobileROI takes that to a whole new level: the integration of martech with adtech — and now, customer experience tech.
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Core to MobileROI’s vision is that every experience of a brand should be relevant and timely — a challenging target. But everything the platform knows about each consumer gets added to the calculations that, it says, will drive the targeting of every future interaction in both earned and owned ecosystems. In other words, what you’re learning about your customers will drive future ads as well as personalized experiences in apps and on the mobile web.
“MobileROI’s cross-platform solution integrates all customer-owned systems of record, including CRM, email, and transaction data, to provide brands with a single, unified view of their customer across their entire journey, enabling retailers to build stronger relationships, deepen loyalty, and grow revenue,” said MobileROI director of marketing and communications Emily Cummins.
Above: MMA features that developers and publishers use
The result?
MobileROI claims three-figure increases in engagement and retention, and double-digit increases in monthly mobile revenue. Those are impressive numbers. They’re impressive numbers that are delivered through attaining the goal of every modern marketer: personalization.
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As Swrve’s CMO Steve Gershik told me recently, “Every metric we track is actionable and can immediately work to segment users for personalized in-app messages, push notifications or custom content. … The future of in-app marketing automation is crafting a personal experience for each app user based on their preferences, profile, and behavior.”
The four new additions to our MMA report have some serious customers in the consumer and enterprise world. FollowAnalytics works with Renault/Nissan, L’Oreal, Louis Vuitton, Allianz, and SAP, among others. MobileROI works with Red Bull, Calvin Klein, and BMW. Taplytics claims banking giant RBC, Quicken, and fashion disruptor Frank & Oat.
What’s becoming increasingly clear is that MMA is not just for the Subway Surfers and the Clash of Clans of the world.
It’s also — and maybe even more so — for the big brands that are just now starting to take their place in our palms as well as our wallets.
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The updated mobile marketing automation report is available here for $499, or free with your VB marketing tech subscription. You can sign up for the free webinar next week right here.
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