Marketers’ Newest Untapped Marketing Channel: Mobile Wallets 

Capturing and retaining your customers’ attention is hard. Consumers today are flooded with marketing messages wherever they turn and increasingly reject blunt promotional marketing. These rejections make it more difficult for brands to reach target audiences and drive conversions. Brands need to get creative about how they resonate with customers.

One way to break through is to leverage an under-utilized channel like the mobile wallet, now a cornerstone of mobile customer experience. Built directly into mobile phones without the need to download an app or visit a website, they enable brands to deliver value and convenience to customers on their smartphone lock screens. The payoff of mobile wallets is clear, with 31% more spent by wallet users vs. non-users. And, with 80% of Gen Zers now using mobile wallets, there’s a clear opportunity to grow into the future by harnessing this generation’s spending power.

Here, we explore how brands can tap into recent mobile wallet innovations to deliver seamless, unified customer experiences to mobile-first customers, fueling sustained business growth and increased customer lifetime value. 

Overcoming Differences Across Operating Systems for Unified Mobile Wallet Customer Experiences

For far too long, a lack of notification parity between Apple Wallet and Google Wallet stymied broad marketing adoption of mobile wallets. Brands had to approach designing and updating wallet passes differently for customers on iPhone and Android devices, making it difficult to provide a unified customer experience.

The biggest limitation for brands was that Google Wallet notifications could only be deployed for tickets and boarding passes, an innovation that Airship originally helped Google pioneer in 2018. But as the mobile ecosystem evolved, marketers needed more capability to keep other types of pass-holding customers informed. As a valued Google partner, Airship worked to support comprehensive Google Wallet notifications, including new ways to communicate with customers about pass changes, offers and other related news. 

Our Wallet Notifications API, launched in June, offered brands day-1 support of Google Wallet’s expanded notifications. It also introduced the industry’s first consistent method for messaging mobile wallet pass holders across iOS and Android, rectifying differences across Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes. Brands can now dynamically update and personalize passes, ensuring customers have the most recent information and stay informed about loyalty rewards, coupons, tickets, membership benefits and more.

Now, anyone with a wallet pass is addressable through highly visible notifications on lock screens. It’s much easier for brands to more broadly adopt mobile wallet marketing and benefit from greater visibility across all customers, regardless of their operating system. 

Ushering in a New Era for Mobile Wallets (and More Value for Your Customers)

Mobile wallets have emerged as a preferred form of payment, but they’re still underutilized as a marketing channel. Now, with Airship’s industry-first Wallet Notifications API empowering brands to deliver more consistent and comprehensive experiences across Google and Apple platforms, brands can capitalize on the untapped potential of mobile wallet marketing and deliver highly visible experiences that drive high-value actions. 

Here are just a few ways that you can start tapping into marketing’s newest, full-fledged channel to capture more value from mobile-first customers:

Communicate with Customers in Real-Time Outside the App

Brands can now reach customers with real-time notifications delivered directly to smartphone lock screens. This is a game changer, especially for teams that have relied heavily on other channels to reach customers in real time at a much higher cost. Brands can message targeted pass holders instantly and update content dynamically to enhance in-the-moment experiences. For example, during a live event, you can notify customers about changes in timing, programming and seats — keeping customers informed and engaged during moments of attention.

Deliver Innovative, Purpose-Built Experiences

Customers are no longer just using wallets for payments. They also store loyalty rewards, coupons, tickets, membership benefits and more. This presents brands with a unique opportunity to create new experiences that extend the value they deliver to customers. Marketers can personalize wallet pass content and notifications to specific customer segments, ensuring wallet experiences reflect past interactions. A QSR company, for example, could notify customers about a new offer related to their go-to order, freebies or pending points for perks. 

Grow Your Owned Audience with Increased Opt-Ins

Mobile wallets enable brands to incentivize their audiences to adopt other digital channels. By offering in-wallet coupons and discounts to opt in to SMS or email communications, you can quickly grow your owned audience and drive sustained engagement. A retail brand offering a discount for a customer’s opt-in to SMS messages could deliver the coupon directly to the mobile wallet — a far more convenient and seamless way to provide value to customers than having them dig through their email inbox for a code.

Maximize Digitally-Influenced Sales

Forrester predicts that 70% of total U.S. retail sales will be “digitally influenced” by 2027 — including consumers who research products online but buy them in person at the store. Mobile wallets can play a critical role in helping brands leverage digital customer experiences to increase those sales. After all, loyalty cards and coupons are the top reason that customers use their phones while shopping in physical retail stores, according to Airship research. You can also leverage customer information and behaviors, as well as location-based triggers, to enhance engagement when your brand is top-of-mind or when customers are just around the corner.

Now is the Time to Lean into Mobile Wallets — We Can Help

Mobile wallets have evolved to become a trusted marketing communications channel and a pivotal part of your customer experience strategy. We’ve covered just a few ways that you can leverage mobile wallets to level up cross-channel customer experiences. However, there’s a lot more you need to know to win the battle for consumer mindshare and harness the true value of wallets.

Register for our upcoming webinar on November 14 at 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm GMT / 5pm CET, “Unlock The Marketing Potential of Mobile Wallets,” to discover how you can tap into mobile wallets to deliver more unified and seamless experiences wherever customers interact.