Julie Ask and Douglas Roberge from Forrester recently published a compelling and powerful report titled, “Create Mobile Moments with Messaging.” I’d like to summarize some of the most interesting bits of information along with the key elements needed for success in delivering on your own customers’ mobile moments.
Forrester defines a mobile moment as “a point in time and place when a consumer pulls out a mobile device to get what she wants immediately, in context.” The 27-page report asserts that “Mobile messaging is the most effective tool in initiating mobile moments to drive consumer engagement and financial results.” The report discusses how messaging punches well above its weight, and Forrester reveals 4 key considerations for success.
- Look beyond Marketing
Opportunities for mobile messaging moments exist throughout the entire customer journey. Interestingly, driving customer engagement and satisfaction top the list of mobile priorities, but we see customer acquisition use cases most often – a tremendous amount of value is left on the table. After the sales and marketing steps opportunities exist to:
- Update/inform on order or shipping status
- Remind customers to take action
- Help customers with set up or to get better use of products
- Enable customer support with two-way messaging to address questions
- Communicate fraud alerts
- Service authentication or password reset
- Remind customers of payments or appointments
- Alert customers to product servicing, re-orders, or prescription refills
- Foster loyalty with unique offers
- Gain valuable feedback via surveys or Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Cut through the noise with relevancy
Even personalized messages that are untimely or irrelevant will be viewed as bothersome and annoying. The power of mobile messaging is its immediacy. To successfully deliver on your customers’ mobile moments the messages sent need to offer true value or provide relevant information. A notification that the departure gate for my flight has changed saves me from running through the airport. A reminder to refill my prescription or to pay my bill saves me both time and money. A balance alert or credit charge notification allows me to safely manage my finances.
- Create a framework to identify and address your most important mobile moments
Forrester has a specific methodology for this they call the IDEA cycle:
- Identify which pain points can be alleviated with messaging. Who are you messaging? What is the customer’s motivation or need? What is the customer’s context?
- Design Effective Messages. Use appropriate cadence to your messaging. Embed a contextual call-to-action that helps drive adoption. Personalize messages when it suits the use case. Convey simple and concise information.
- Engineer your business to support messaging which includes your platforms, processes and people.
- Analyze the results to optimize your success. This includes identifying your success metrics up front (i.e. what does success look like?), A/B testing, and capturing information specific to users so you can optimize their experience.
- Leverage Best Practices
The fastest way to success is to work with a partner who has the experience to help guide you on best practices. Some of those best practices include:
- Create unique, valuable messages through content and context
- Automation is your friend – look for the mobile moments that can be automated based on triggers.
- Build trust over time – valuable mobile messaging builds trust and loyalty which provide the opportunity to introduce other engagement tools such as a mobile app or mobile web.
- Increase relevance and targeting over time as you collect more data and learn more about your customers.
OpenMarket helps hundreds of companies around the world use mobile messaging to interact more effectively with their customers and employees. Contact us today for more information.