How Leading Brands Deliver on the Promise of Mobile-First Customer Experience 

Leading brands gathered at Airship’s Mobile Leaders Forum (MLF) last week to discuss the latest trends and best practices in mobile customer experience. We heard from innovators at Sally Beauty, New York Post, NBCU Local and AccuWeather about winning audience engagement and retention strategies, the ever-growing importance of personalization, the challenge of delivering unified customer experiences across digital channels and more. 

Here, we offer key takeaways from industry experts to help you innovate your mobile strategy and drive increased conversions, loyalty and customer lifetime value.

Mobile-first customer experience should be a business priority

Across the board, our speakers and attendees agreed that mobile is now the center of digital customer experiences — spanning apps, web, email, social media and more. However, mobile’s impact extends far beyond the digital world. By 2027, Forrester predicts that 70% of total U.S. retail sales will be “digitally influenced” — purchased by consumers who research products online but then buy them physically, at the store. 

Mobile’s shift from “just another messaging channel” to a critical brand-owned destination has ushered in a keen focus on building, nurturing and optimizing unified customer experiences. Winning brands are dedicating time and resources to creating exceptional experiences in mobile apps and web that capture customer value and insights.

In a spotlight session, Sally Beauty’s Senior Director of CRM & Channel Strategy Ana Guzman explored how she built a robust mobile app strategy spanning multiple mobile touchpoints, including SMS, push notifications and in-app messaging. The goal? Deliver experiences that create hyper-engaged customers. Ana outlined a “crawl, walk, jog, run” approach:

• Crawl: Build the app as a valuable destination for customers by implementing trusted tools, like Airship’s Experience Platform, and educating customers about the app’s utility.
• Walk: Enrich customer understanding by collecting zero- and first-party data to personalize experiences based on behaviors and preferences.
• Jog: Test and optimize different experiences to understand what is and isn’t working, and better unify experiences across different channels.

Sally Beauty is now preparing to roll out multi-channel journey orchestration, geolocation and more. However, Ana’s commitment to building and implementing a mobile-first customer experience strategy has grown organizational buy-in and support as efforts have already paid dividends across engagement, retention and revenue.

Delivering convenience, consistency and value is table stakes

Mobile leaders today know that success requires more than just getting customers to download their app. A thoughtful approach to engaging customers during their moments of attention can help advance any number of goals, from onboarding and opt-in, to adoption and conversion. 

In a spotlight session, AccuWeather’s Associate Director of Audience Engagement, Catherine Gulotta, and Senior Manager of App Technologies, Mathieu Gayraud, shared how their team uses a high-touch push notification strategy at scale to support AccuWeather’s vital mission: save lives and prevent property damage with critical weather information. 

AccuWeather’s strategy starts with App Store Optimization (ASO) and onboarding experiences, where they emphasize the importance of their alerts and encourage customers to opt in so they can receive the most value from the app. Catherine and Mathieu emphasized the importance of segmenting messages based on a customer’s content preferences, behaviors and location to personalize interactions and optimize engagement. Segmentation-driven personalization provides customers the tailored control they want when engaging with brands. A/B testing and gamification then drive ongoing engagement and optimizations for every individual.

With 11 million daily app users, AccuWeather has seen tremendous success by delivering convenience, consistency and value throughout the customer lifecycle. 

Mobile leaders need flexible, no-code solutions to meet their customers’ unique needs

As more consumers ignore traditional marketing, brands must adapt mobile strategies to meet their customers’ unique needs and preferences in new ways. That means removing dependencies between teams, empowering both technical and non-technical staff to more rapidly create, deploy, test and optimize every audience segment, journey, feature, experience and message.

Our panel discussion at MLF featured Cathay Rainone, Sr. Audience Retention Manager at NBCUniversal Local, Michael Liss, Vice President of Product at New York Post, and Tom Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Airship. Cathay and Michael discussed how, in the age of information overload, it’s becoming more difficult to earn and retain consumer attention. Both emphasized the importance of testing and iterating experiences to bring audiences into their apps, gain opt-in to messaging and effectively communicate important, tailored information. Their ability to quickly adapt to the media landscape and drive personalized interactions is a critical brand differentiator.

Level up your mobile customer experience with Airship

At Airship, we understand that delivering seamless, unified customer experiences is hard. Navigating siloed channels, teams and data often requires a heavy investment from developers, resulting in production delays for internal teams and sub-optimal experiences for customers. 

Now more than ever, brands need trusted solutions to deliver cohesive, personalized interactions — no matter where their customers choose to interact with them. We’re here to help! Reach out today to schedule a free consultation with our Strategic Services Team. 

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