The following is a guest contributed post from Parker Morse, CEO and Founder of H Code Media.

Two years ago, Target launched a campaign they called #SinTraducción (“Without Translation”). The premise of the Spanish-only campaign was to use words that had no ready English equivalent – words such as “sobremesa” (a period of time after a meal spent conversing amongst friends and family) and “estrenar” (the act of using or wearing something for the first time). The goal was to create a conversation on social media, both between customers and the brand and between customers themselves. The #SinTraducción campaign marked Target’s first major marketing effort targeted directly at Hispanics – the first, but most emphatically not the last.

One of the reasons for Target’s decision to start marketing more consistently to the Hispanic audience was the realization that its core demographic had changed, from the suburban soccer moms who had previously been the focus of Target’s advertising to urban, Hispanic millennials. In the course of their research, the company discovered that Hispanic customers were more brand loyal and spent more than other demographics – which led to the brand stepping up their ad spend.

What can brands learn from Target’s approach to Hispanic marketing? Target’s experiences show the necessity of having campaigns geared specifically to the Hispanic audience; but more than that, it shows the importance of having campaigns that affirm the influence and relevance of the Spanish language in American culture, while also positioning the brand as one that understands and meets the needs of Hispanics.

One brand that has chosen to emphasize the everyday realities of Hispanic life, instead of relying on demographic cliches, is Honda. The auto company recently released an ad that was, in many ways, a rebuke of the manner in which many brands have courted Hispanic consumers. Instead of viewing the Hispanic audience as a group whose motivations and desires are unknowable (save with the help of many dollars poured into demographic research), the Honda ad presented Latinos going about their daily lives – getting groceries, going to watch a movie, and so on.

The president of the agency responsible for the ads, Andrew Orcí, said that the ad was born out of the sense that many brands see Hispanics as operating in specific categories or patterns, despite the fact that they (and every other demographic group) cannot be pigeonholed so easily. This is particularly the case with young Latinos, who “ping-pong between cultures, languages, interests and behaviors.” For Orcí, “not even a Latino can can define a Latino. They simply defy all expectations.”

Mazda too has taken an unconventional approach to marketing to Hispanics, airing ads “filled with Japanese language and imagery” in places such as Univision.com. The goal, according to Russell Wager, VP of Mazda North America, is to raise awareness of Mazda as a Japanese company, because of the “great affinity and trust” Hispanics generally have for Japanese brands. The campaign will start with ads highlighting Mazda’s Japanese roots and Japanese culture in general, before transitioning to more traditional Spanish-language advertisements. In the past, Mazda simply repurposed their ads for the general market; this campaign is the first one Mazda has produced specifically for Hispanic audiences, and surely won’t be the last, given that the company has tripled its investment in Hispanic marketing.

Earlier this year, Target CEO Brian Cornell called attention to a trend that had him and his industry worried: the fact that Hispanics are increasingly choosing to stay home, and going out to shop less often. It’s not hard to see why Cornell is concerned, given that Target has consistently pumped large amounts of money into advertising campaigns centered around reaching that key demographic. In fact, the company increased its Hispanic ad spend by 20% last year, and has pledged to maintain that level of spending this year. Target’s holiday campaign the previous year was focused mainly on reaching Hispanics and families with children – another sign of the centrality of Hispanics to Target’s marketing efforts.

It’s certainly possible that spending in border towns, which has traditionally been a boon to retailers, has fallen this year, contributing to Cornell’s pessimism. But the biggest problem that retailers such as Target face is losing their customers to Amazon. This is especially true as Amazon begins to take measures designed to attract Hispanic audiences, such as creating a Spanish-language version of its website and offering its Prime services in Mexico. That being said, the fact that Amazon’s Spanish-language website is resonating with audiences demonstrates the important role the Spanish language plays when marketing to Hispanics.

In order to combat the “Amazon effect”, brands that wish to appeal to Hispanic audiences have to make themselves more accessible to those customers, whether it’s by introducing a Spanish version of their site or by launching ad campaigns that are designed to appeal to Hispanics as they really are, and not as marketers imagine them to be.

The post What Brands Can Learn From Target’s Approach to Hispanic Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by Blis President Harry Dewhirst.

Current AI systems use training algorithms and brute-force computational strength, as opposed to real intelligence. If an alteration is made to a situation involving AI, it will currently not adapt as it has no ‘understanding’ and therefore cannot recognize new strategic patterns. There’s no doubt that future technologies such as AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) will be put to work properly by marketers, but the questions remain as to when and what it will take.

The limitations of algorithms

Algorithms are limited in their learning to a set of defined tasks, so if a self-driving car approaches a zebra crossing with some pedestrians standing nearby, it will stop and wait for them to cross, even if they have no intention of crossing, and won’t respond to their uniquely human gestures.

The limit to machine learning is data; with new streams constantly feeding in from all directions, there is an opportunity to learn and discover, but also a major technical challenge.  As the volume of new devices like hearables and wearables feeding into the IoT rapidly expands, they provide a treasure trove of data which needs to be speedily and accurately analysed to allow the IoT to live up to its potential. However, the manipulation of Microsoft’s Tay chatbot, which learned to be racist and rude in less than a day, reflecting the information it was fed and the behavior that it mirrored, shows us the importance of being able to logically sift good and bad data inputs.

Extracting meaningful insights

Machine learning can help companies take the billions of data points they have from IoT devices and boil them down to what’s really meaningful, so that better decisions can be made. This is essential to find patterns, correlations and anomalies, since current human approaches of data analytics don’t scale to IoT volumes.

Although location data from connected TVs (CTVs) and other IoT devices that rarely move currently has limited value, smaller mobile devices provide one of the largest location data sets as they are incredibly dynamic by nature, with mobile apps in particular proving very useful input data tools, feeding CTV advertising optimization.

The importance of context

As advertisers build in-depth profiles of users based on data from IoT devices, the importance of context to advertising is increasing. There needs to be a good reason to reach a consumer in their home and, while artistry and storylines are important in engaging audiences, the context in which ads are delivered is today equally as important to engagement as the uniqueness of the ad storyline and copy itself. Based on data insights, personalized ads can now be delivered to the right person, at the right place and time to ensure the message engages and resonates, creating a return on investment. Intelligent analysis of location data is critical because the “where” can significantly influence the choice of campaign served to a particular user at a given time.

Although the volume of data and the challenges and insights presented by our increasingly digital, mobile-centric world have made the job of advertising to consumers more difficult and multi-layered in some ways, if the correct infrastructure is in place, it is extremely helpful. Depending on how these advances are implemented, ads will either cause concern as they become invasive and affect overall privacy or, if they work smoothly, consumers will come to expect them more and more as they seamlessly fit in their lives.

While machine learning is enhancing the capabilities of the industry, real AI is expected to bring further advances; precisely how it will achieve this is hard to predict, but it is likely to generate surprising insights into customers’ requirements.

The post The Future May Be AI Powered – But We’re Not There Yet appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post to MMW from Shawn Arora, the founder of LaunchSpark, a Toronto-based explainer video agency with a focus on ROI.

2016 was a pivotal year for mobile advertising. According to an IAB report, for the first time ever, digital ad spend had surpassed the money spent on TV advertising. More importantly, mobile constituted a higher share of digital ad spend compared to desktop. As a platform, smartphones and tablets are no longer an innovative new channel that businesses with spare budget like to experiment with. Along with TV and desktops, they now constitute the vital third avenue for marketing spend.

But picking the right channel within the mobile platform can be tricky. The smaller form factor of smartphones make the medium unsuited for banners, interstitials and other similar forms of advertising. While these ad channels continue to constitute a significant chunk of mobile advertising dollars today, marketers enjoy a diverse portfolio of alternatives that offer better CTRs and conversion rates. Picking the right channel is a matter of understanding your consumers’ psyche and intent.

Product Categories 

Product categories play a major role in determining what channel one must choose for mobile advertising. Products sold in a specific niche and have high pricing points are best suited for mobile search. This is because of two reasons – search advertising can be expensive and only makes sense when you have large margins. Also, consumers like to research on the product before they buy and it makes sense to reach out to them during their research process. On the other hand, if your product is an impulse purchase, then a Facebook marketing strategy works best. Display ads are great to build a brand while email or SMS marketing is very effective when you want to market exclusive offers.

Demographics 

The mobile platform is an extremely effective medium to reach out to two specific demographics – the deal hunters and the younger audiences. The mobile medium offers the ability to ‘geofence’ prospective new customers which allows businesses to only spend money on customers who are located within a specific geography. Such level of precise targeting may not be possible with most of the traditional advertising medium.

However, the reason mobile advertising is on the rise is because of its ability to reach out to the millennial and the post-millennial generation. According to one study, mobile social networks like Snapchat and Instagram are the most preferred services to communicate among teenagers. Snapchat, for instance, is used by as many as 83.% of users in the 12-17 age category and 78.6% of users in the 18-24 age category. There are few alternatives to the mobile medium when it comes to reaching out to this demographic.

Customer Touchpoint 

Traditional advertising medium like TV, radio and print do not offer an integrated touchpoint with the customer. Digital advertising over internet solves this problem to a great extent since consumers may now click on an ad and proceed to buying them in one integrated experience. While this works great for large and remote businesses, this may not be ideal for local businesses like real estate agents and attorneys. These businesses work on a leads basis and depend on incoming inquiries from prospective customers for business. Mobile search is an ideal channel for such businesses since prospective customers may now look up these service providers over Google on their smartphones and may tap and call these businesses seamlessly.

Virality 

Viral marketing is a cheap and effective way to build a brand. According to a report published by Forrester, mobile users are a lot more likely to engage with content published on social media compared to desktop users. Their study found that nearly 49% of mobile users and 46% of tablet users click ‘like’ on content posted by company pages on a weekly basis. In comparison, only 37% of desktop users had a similar level of engagement.

The advertising channel you choose for your business can often make or break your campaign. The demographics and user behavior on the mobile platform can make this a lucrative medium for businesses. In the end, the success of a campaign depends on picking the right channel to reach out to your audience.

The post Are You Selecting The Right Advertising Channel For Mobile Users? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post to MMW from Shawn Arora, the founder of LaunchSpark, a Toronto-based explainer video agency with a focus on ROI.

2016 was a pivotal year for mobile advertising. According to an IAB report, for the first time ever, digital ad spend had surpassed the money spent on TV advertising. More importantly, mobile constituted a higher share of digital ad spend compared to desktop. As a platform, smartphones and tablets are no longer an innovative new channel that businesses with spare budget like to experiment with. Along with TV and desktops, they now constitute the vital third avenue for marketing spend.

But picking the right channel within the mobile platform can be tricky. The smaller form factor of smartphones make the medium unsuited for banners, interstitials and other similar forms of advertising. While these ad channels continue to constitute a significant chunk of mobile advertising dollars today, marketers enjoy a diverse portfolio of alternatives that offer better CTRs and conversion rates. Picking the right channel is a matter of understanding your consumers’ psyche and intent.

Product Categories 

Product categories play a major role in determining what channel one must choose for mobile advertising. Products sold in a specific niche and have high pricing points are best suited for mobile search. This is because of two reasons – search advertising can be expensive and only makes sense when you have large margins. Also, consumers like to research on the product before they buy and it makes sense to reach out to them during their research process. On the other hand, if your product is an impulse purchase, then a Facebook marketing strategy works best. Display ads are great to build a brand while email or SMS marketing is very effective when you want to market exclusive offers.

Demographics 

The mobile platform is an extremely effective medium to reach out to two specific demographics – the deal hunters and the younger audiences. The mobile medium offers the ability to ‘geofence’ prospective new customers which allows businesses to only spend money on customers who are located within a specific geography. Such level of precise targeting may not be possible with most of the traditional advertising medium.

However, the reason mobile advertising is on the rise is because of its ability to reach out to the millennial and the post-millennial generation. According to one study, mobile social networks like Snapchat and Instagram are the most preferred services to communicate among teenagers. Snapchat, for instance, is used by as many as 83.% of users in the 12-17 age category and 78.6% of users in the 18-24 age category. There are few alternatives to the mobile medium when it comes to reaching out to this demographic.

Customer Touchpoint 

Traditional advertising medium like TV, radio and print do not offer an integrated touchpoint with the customer. Digital advertising over internet solves this problem to a great extent since consumers may now click on an ad and proceed to buying them in one integrated experience. While this works great for large and remote businesses, this may not be ideal for local businesses like real estate agents and attorneys. These businesses work on a leads basis and depend on incoming inquiries from prospective customers for business. Mobile search is an ideal channel for such businesses since prospective customers may now look up these service providers over Google on their smartphones and may tap and call these businesses seamlessly.

Virality 

Viral marketing is a cheap and effective way to build a brand. According to a report published by Forrester, mobile users are a lot more likely to engage with content published on social media compared to desktop users. Their study found that nearly 49% of mobile users and 46% of tablet users click ‘like’ on content posted by company pages on a weekly basis. In comparison, only 37% of desktop users had a similar level of engagement.

The advertising channel you choose for your business can often make or break your campaign. The demographics and user behavior on the mobile platform can make this a lucrative medium for businesses. In the end, the success of a campaign depends on picking the right channel to reach out to your audience.

The post Picking The Right Advertising Channel For Mobile Users appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by Priscilla de Groot, Customer and Partner Marketing Manager at Mapp Digital  

Way back in 2003, Juniper Research looked at how people spent their time online. The top four will come as no surprise: email, search engine searches, researching products and services, and gathering local information. Number five on the list, with a 59% share of internet users’ time, was online contests and sweepstakes. People in the noughts loved a quiz!

2003 is a thousand years ago in digital marketing terms, so let’s get a bit more current. A decade later, a survey from Unbounce showed landing pages running a $500 prize collected 700% more email subscribers than those devoid of contests. A pretty impressive growth rate by any standards.

Coming right up to date, the value of incentive marketing is stronger than ever – and it’s seen in terms of real message cut-through, and corresponding click-throughs and conversions.

A recent project we facilitated introduced fashion brand Vente-privee.com into the UK market. The win for the customer was a weekend trip to Paris. For the brand, it was the (completely transparent) collection of customer data, gathered through a survey. Data it would later use in ongoing consumer acquisition and nurture campaigns.

Over 34,000 people completed the contest, at a rate of 93%. Once completed, an incredible 40%, then signed up to become members. Check out the dramatically reduced cost of acquisition Vinte-privee achieved here.

Why clear incentive messaging is key

Vente-privee.com got it right. It didn’t just attract with the headline competition prize, it engaged audiences with clear incentive messaging that went far beyond this.

Consumers typically ‘hope’ to win, but rarely ‘expect’ to. Knowing this, the online fashion and lifestyle brand positioned a completed survey as an opportunity, not only to win the big prize, but to better understand the customer. By doing that, it could offer each contestant exclusive, personalized promotions. This transparent approach and additional value caught the imagination of its audiences. And they responded.

How to make your quiz or survey engaging

As we’ve seen, consumers like quizzes, love chances to win and are happy to share data. Here’s the big ‘but’: only if the contest/quiz is engaging, and if the prizes offered are appealing to them as individuals.

There’s another thing for the brand to consider. While your consumers may be tempted by a ‘win the latest tablet’ offer, if you’re a clothing boutique, there’s little connection to your brand. In fact, you’re promoting someone else. Added to this, audiences can tell a ‘lazy prize’ when they see one . Either way, the wrong prize or incentive is a huge missed opportunity.

Back to Vente-privee. Its all-expenses-paid trip to the haute couture capital of the world was more than simply a great prize, it embodied the brand, creating an instant and unconscious association with high fashion and lifestyle. The email did something in seconds that would have taken days and weeks for a pay-per-click or banner ad campaign.

It’s not only the prize. Promotional messaging must be accurate and clear. Getting this right will not only swell participant numbers, it also ensures entrants clearly understand the proposition, retain a positive brand sentiment and are incentivized to take that all important next step. If you’re new to the market or geography and looking to acquire customers, don’t take the easy option of collecting basic details – make competition entry conditional on parting with more details.

Surveys work best when information gathering is transparent, and individuals will share more if they see value in doing so. So, reward every entrant – perhaps with a special discount code – to make potential customers feel like they’ve won something already. It’s also a great way to capture data that can be used to craft more effective and relevant communications in the future.

So, while the initial aim of the game may be to spur entrants to action, competitions also represent a unique opportunity to develop a true sense of your brand and a lasting relationship with the consumer.

When choosing your channel, consider your audience and your objective. Quizzes and promotions abound on social media, and offer easy sharing opportunities. But if you’re looking to move above the noise, the direct engagement of email offers a less scattergun approach. If the offer’s compelling, the audience segmentation right and the survey or competition easy to enter, everyone’s onto a winner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Priscilla de Groot is Customer and Partner Marketing Manager at Mapp Digital. Mapp Digital is one of the largest, global independent marketing technology companies. Our Customer Engagement Platform, with integrated Data Management Platform and customer-centric services assist mid-market and Fortune 500 companies maximize return from digital marketing executions.

The post How to Use Competitions and Incentives in Your Customer Acquisition Strategy appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

In free-to-play (F2P) mobile games it’s common for fewer than 2% of players to spend money via in-app purchases (IAP). Therefore, the attraction to integrate advertising as a way of monetizing the remaining player base is obvious.

However, getting ads to work in tandem with the rest of the in-game economy isn’t without its challenges. Developers have to be able to balance player retention, social engagement and IAP monetization with advertising, in a way that doesn’t annoy, frustrate or confuse users, while ensuring high fill rates, and maintaining eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) value across multiple ad networks.

This isn’t easy, which is reflected in the findings of our In-Game Advertising Study 2016, which identified that the majority (52%) of developers are unsure how best to approach ads, with only 3% describing their ad strategies as ‘effective’.

In a perceived bid to protect retention, most developers take an ultra-cautious approach to setting ad frequency. However, recent research from the University of San Francisco shows that ad frequency actually has no effect on retention. While ads don’t affect retention, showing some ads can still be worse than showing no ads at all, because advertising can cannibalize hard won IAP revenues:

So, the situation is that unless they’ve taken steps to manage IAP cannibalization, many developers are losing money, some up to 75% or more of their IAP revenue by running ads, compared to not running them. I think this gives enough of a guide to show that the prevailing approach to advertising as a bolt-on isn’t working, but it’s important to note that advertising certainly can work, and work well.

Mind the data gap
Alongside the complexities of integrating, optimizing and reconciling numerous ad networks, a lack of accurate performance data means that it’s actually incredibly difficult for developers to ever truly understand what impact ads are having on different types of players.

The irony is that the industry is in a very fortunate position in that data on any player interaction can be captured and analyzed, yet most game developers can’t make the most of this data because, with advertising, it is housed in separate analytics silos.

For game developers and publishers, mediation is also fraught with potential inefficiencies. Often, when you implement an ad network, the eCPM may start high, but then it drops like a stone as programmatic buying kicks-in to minimize cost per click for advertisers. If they change around the order of the cascade, the same happens. Developers need to be able to optimize ad serving by using different ad network cascades for different regions and different device types in real-time to ensure they are serving the highest value ad available each time of asking, so each player receives the best performing available ad.

In-game experience is everything
When it comes to the in-game experience, there is a real opportunity for rewarded ads to support game progression and enhance the experience, and so long as ads don’t interfere with gameplay experience they aren’t proven to be a problem, as the University of San Francisco study shows.

Therefore, if your ads provide a positive in-game experience, then there is little need to worry about frequency, so you can confidently show more of them. Of course, the only reason for caution is when you aren’t in possession of the data to know what the outcomes of a strategy are likely to be. Segmenting your players and knowing when to provide an IAP offer, a rewarded ad opportunity, or an interstitial ad, and to whom, is the key to effective monetization.

Rewarded ads are a great case in point for understanding players’ ad engagement. On average, more than 70% of players don’t engage with rewarded ads, which is a big opportunity, given they pay out on a cost per click (CPC) basis. By testing different positions, rewards and creative, developers have a huge opportunity to improve rewarded ad monetization, and to ensure there are no adverse consequences on IAP revenues down the line.

Summary

We know, by looking at the monetization strategies adopted by the most successful games, that IAP and ad monetization can sit side-by-side and deliver great returns, but to unlock this potential, developers need to take back control of their entire in-game data, confidently optimizing ad performance with regard to its effects on IAP and retention by treating it just like a game mechanic, and use intelligent mediation that serves-up the best value ad for each player, not the lowest value ad for each advertiser.

Until then, you might never know your game’s true revenue potential.

The post deltaDNA CEO Talks Mobile Ad Strategy appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to the IAB, the report in question is designed to help marketers develop a strategic approach to identity management and reap benefits that include improved targeting, campaign measurement, attribution, and ad relevancy.

The paper presents various use cases for identification data within two primary categories—targeting and measurement—and explores related applications that range from frequency management and audience amplification to attribution and predictive modeling. In addition, the report outlines the pros and cons of various methodologies used to anonymously match and map users and devices.

“The guide highlights challenges marketers face linking consumers and households across different data sets,” reads a statement provided by the IAB. “Unlike on desktop, where cookies still serve as a connective tissue for web advertising, in mobile, the persistence and acceptance of cookies can vary from device to device and across web and app environments, making them a less reliable method for identification. To compensate, marketers must become adept at mixing and matching a variety of solutions to effectively reach consumers with the right message at the right time, regardless of the device they are using.

Anna Bager, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Mobile and Video at the IAB say that today’s consumers “are juggling up to four different devices on a daily basis, making effective cross-device targeting critical for brands. This primer will help marketers develop strategic approaches to mobile identity management, so they can reach consumers with more relevant, device-specific creative. In this mobile-first, soon to be mobile-only, world, user-level identity management is now table stakes for brands and media companies.”

“Mobile Identity Guide for Marketers” is available here.

The post New School: IAB Primer Educates Brands on Best Practices in Mobile appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Major hotels see a need for charged-up marketing via digital and social channels as they work to combat threats from Airbnb, Priceline, Expedia, and other actors in the extremely competitive hotel business.

How to stay “top of mind” with consumers? More hotel marketing professionals than ever plan to increase their budgets for digital marketing and social media strategies.

Evidence for this comes from a recent SiteMinder survey. When the hospitality marketing platform queried hotel professionals worldwide “about their projected budget allocations for the next 12 months, 48 percent of respondents said they planned high spending to go toward digital marketing, while 44 percent said they intended to designate high investment in social media strategy.”

The goal among hotels is to invest in marketing campaigns that encourage customers to “book direct.”

“One reason hotel professionals are doubling down on digital marketing and social is the growing market power of accommodations upstart Airbnb,” according to eMarketer. “Hotel operators must also compete with the deep pockets of online travel agencies Priceline and Expedia, both of which spend considerable sums on consumer marketing (and cut) into hotel profits by charging commissions for customer referrals.”

Review of the top 10 U.S. accommodation websites tells the tale about challenges confronting hotels.

“Airbnb ranked as the most visited accommodation website in Q4 2016, receiving nearly 88 million visits, up 42 percent from Q4 2015,” reports eMarketer. “Priceline Group’s Booking.com came in second, with more than 82 million visits and a 24 percent growth rate, while Expedia-owned Hotels.com was fourth, with more than 65 million visits, up 25 percent year on year.”

Did any hotel chains make the top five chart? Only two: Marriott and Hilton.

The post More Cowbell! Hotels See Bigger Digital, Social Budgets as Way to Counter Competition appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from Momchil Kyrurkchiev, the CEO and co-founder of Leanplum.

TextNow, a company offering affordable alternatives to traditional wireless plans and services, recently built an automated and personalized lifecycle campaign across several messaging channels, including push notifications, email, in-app messages and app inbox. The campaign encouraged and incentivized users to interact with their app, resulting in up to 79 percent conversion rates across

The TextNow app gives users their very own dedicated phone number and offers free unlimited texting, calling, picture messaging, voicemail, and more — including low-cost international calls. With over 60 million downloads to date, TextNow is on a mission to radically transform the telecom landscape.

The Challenge

As the saying goes, “the first impression is the last impression,” which means onboarding is a critical factor in an app’s retention strategy. Users that engage with the core app experience early in their lifecycle are more likely to become loyal users, and retain long term. TextNow wanted to ensure that newly onboarded users understood how to use the app and get immediate value.

The Goal

TextNow defined successful onboarding as getting users to send their first message or make their first call within the first 12 hours after registration.

The Campaign

TextNow used Leanplum’s mobile marketing platform to set up three engagement campaigns. These platforms enable app managers to build personalized lifecycle campaigns in one visual timeline across any messaging channel, such as push notifications, email, in-app messages, app inbox, and more. By employing a combination of mobile automation tactics, the lifecycle campaigns are instrumental in onboarding new users.

Of the new campaigns:

• The first campaign encouraged users to make their first phone call.
• The second campaign focused on getting users to send their first message.
• The third campaign simply asked dormant users to come back to the app.

Once new users completed the registration, they qualified for the campaigns. When they took the desired action — making a call, sending a message, or returning to the app — they were considered successfully onboarded and moved on to the next stage of lifecycle campaigns.

The Results

With these three lifecycle campaigns, TextNow saw outstanding results as the result of the push notification:

• The first campaign converted 25 percent of users. That’s a 3.7 percent lift in users who initiated a phone call.
• The second campaign converted 44 percent of users. That’s a 1.2 percent lift in the number of users who sent a message.
• The third campaign converted 79 percent of users. That translated to a 3 percent lift in day seven retention.

Put in perspective, these lifecycle campaigns had a significant cumulative impact on retention. In terms of day 15 retention, there was a five percent lift in the number of Android users and a four percent lift in the number of iOS users who returned to the app. Those are big wins for TextNow.

As TextNow moves more users towards in-app milestones, it can increase the number of users converting to paid subscriptions. More onboarded users also means higher retention and greater potential app revenue.

What this Means for App Managers

Converting new installs into active users is hard. To do it at scale, you need a great technology partner.

Specifically, you need a campaign automation solution that enables engagement with millions of users in real-time. By setting up lifecycle campaigns just once, you can onboard every new user who installs your app, at scale. This decreases the drop-off rate in the beginning of your funnel, and increases the chances of users coming back to take actions (like subscribing) that drive ROI. You can also A/B test these campaigns against one another to continually optimize for performance.

The post 3 Proven Conversion Strategies Anyone Can Use appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

In free-to-play (F2P) mobile games it’s common for fewer than 2% of players to spend money via in-app purchases (IAP). Therefore, the attraction to integrate advertising as a way of monetizing the remaining player base is obvious.

However, getting ads to work in tandem with the rest of the in-game economy isn’t without its challenges. Developers have to be able to balance player retention, social engagement and IAP monetization with advertising, in a way that doesn’t annoy, frustrate or confuse users, while ensuring high fill rates, and maintaining eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) value across multiple ad networks.

This isn’t easy, which is reflected in the findings of our In-Game Advertising Study 2016, which identified that the majority (52%) of developers are unsure how best to approach ads, with only 3% describing their ad strategies as ‘effective’.

In a perceived bid to protect retention, most developers take an ultra-cautious approach to setting ad frequency. However, recent research from the University of San Francisco shows that ad frequency actually has no effect on retention. While ads don’t affect retention, showing some ads can still be worse than showing no ads at all, because advertising can cannibalize hard won IAP revenues:

So, the situation is that unless they’ve taken steps to manage IAP cannibalization, many developers are losing money, some up to 75% or more of their IAP revenue by running ads, compared to not running them. I think this gives enough of a guide to show that the prevailing approach to advertising as a bolt-on isn’t working, but it’s important to note that advertising certainly can work, and work well.

Mind the data gap
Alongside the complexities of integrating, optimizing and reconciling numerous ad networks, a lack of accurate performance data means that it’s actually incredibly difficult for developers to ever truly understand what impact ads are having on different types of players.

The irony is that the industry is in a very fortunate position in that data on any player interaction can be captured and analyzed, yet most game developers can’t make the most of this data because, with advertising, it is housed in separate analytics silos.

For game developers and publishers, mediation is also fraught with potential inefficiencies. Often, when you implement an ad network, the eCPM may start high, but then it drops like a stone as programmatic buying kicks-in to minimize cost per click for advertisers. If they change around the order of the cascade, the same happens. Developers need to be able to optimize ad serving by using different ad network cascades for different regions and different device types in real-time to ensure they are serving the highest value ad available each time of asking, so each player receives the best performing available ad.

In-game experience is everything
When it comes to the in-game experience, there is a real opportunity for rewarded ads to support game progression and enhance the experience, and so long as ads don’t interfere with gameplay experience they aren’t proven to be a problem, as the University of San Francisco study shows.

Therefore, if your ads provide a positive in-game experience, then there is little need to worry about frequency, so you can confidently show more of them. Of course, the only reason for caution is when you aren’t in possession of the data to know what the outcomes of a strategy are likely to be. Segmenting your players and knowing when to provide an IAP offer, a rewarded ad opportunity, or an interstitial ad, and to whom, is the key to effective monetization.

Rewarded ads are a great case in point for understanding players’ ad engagement. On average, more than 70% of players don’t engage with rewarded ads, which is a big opportunity, given they pay out on a cost per click (CPC) basis. By testing different positions, rewards and creative, developers have a huge opportunity to improve rewarded ad monetization, and to ensure there are no adverse consequences on IAP revenues down the line.

Summary

We know, by looking at the monetization strategies adopted by the most successful games, that IAP and ad monetization can sit side-by-side and deliver great returns, but to unlock this potential, developers need to take back control of their entire in-game data, confidently optimizing ad performance with regard to its effects on IAP and retention by treating it just like a game mechanic, and use intelligent mediation that serves-up the best value ad for each player, not the lowest value ad for each advertiser.

Until then, you might never know your game’s true revenue potential.

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