How Synchrony Creates Memorable Experiences to Drive Next-Level Results

At this year’s Movable Ink Think Summit in NYC, I had the privilege of interviewing Synchrony’s VP of Marketing Innovation, Kelly Haggard, and VP of Mobile Marketing, Ryan Hayes. They shared their insights on leveraging Airship and Movable Ink technologies to create engaging in-app experiences that drive high-value actions from customers. Here are three key takeaways from our conversation:

Innovating the Mobile Customer Experience

Synchrony blends multiple mobile technologies to provide a seamless customer experience and remarkable engagement results. A standout example is their Podcast Live Stream promotion. By combining in-app messages, push notifications, add-to-calendar invites within the app, and YouTube integration, they achieved a 7X increase in views compared to previous campaigns. This multichannel approach highlighted the power of cohesive, well-timed communications.

Enriching Zero-Party Customer Data

Key to any customer engagement strategy is data. Synchrony has been successful at enhancing zero-party customer data through interactive in-app experiences. For instance, they used live polling to engage customers within their favorite podcast episodes. This provided valuable insights into their preferences and enabled Synchrony to refine their customer segmentation and engagement strategy. Synchrony’s customer-driven, proactive approach proved effective in building a deeper understanding of audience interests,  which enabled them to enhance personalized experiences.

Unlocking the Potential of Mobile Wallets

Brands often underutilize their presence on mobile wallets. Now, more than ever, mobile wallets offer significant opportunities for brand-to–customer communications. Since mobile wallets come pre-installed on smartphones, brands can engage with customers even if they haven’t downloaded the brand’s app. In addition to using mobile wallets for payment cards and boarding passes, brands can send customers personalized loyalty cards, coupons, special event tickets and order status updates, including  links to guide customers to other brand channels across social customer support and app store product pages. Everything on mobile wallet passes is customizable, from the design, images and always up-to-date display of customer information to the highly targeted notifications that can now  light up all customers’ smartphone lock screens . Mobile wallets are a marketer’s newest full-fledged customer engagement channel, yet most brands are just scratching the surface.

For Synchrony, mobile wallet passes proved to be  faster and more efficient than email in enabling its retail partners to send customers personalized rewards and promotions. Consumer adoption of mobile wallet passes is growing briskly across the Synchrony network of retail partners — even though the firm adopted the channel years ago.

The collaboration between Synchrony, Airship and Movable Ink has resulted in groundbreaking campaigns that have set new standards for personalized engagement and customer experience. Another output of this trifecta, enabled live streams to be included directly within In-App Automation messages served to app customers. By harnessing the  power of advanced mobile technology and data-driven personalization, Synchrony has continued to out-perform industry benchmarks,  exceed customer expectations and pave the way for future mobile-first innovations in the financial services industry.

To learn all the details discussed during this conversation, watch the video below.