About Airship
What is Airship and what does it offer?
The Airship Experience Platform provides an end-to-end solution for unifying experiences across channels and capturing value across the entire customer lifecycle. It starts with Airship’s market-leading app store optimization (ASO) solutions that promote app discovery and downloads. Then our AI-powered journey orchestration, content creation and experimentation solutions kick in — all no-code and highly flexible. Customer-facing teams can quickly design, deploy and iterate cohesive in-session experiences on the web and in the app. The result? Deeper customer engagement, better conversion.
What types of businesses benefit from using Airship?
Airship delivers benefits for customers across a range of industries. We currently offer flexible and hyper-personalized solutions for businesses in travel, media, sports, finance, retail and telecom. We collaborate closely with customers to understand their unique needs and address them in the evolution of our product.
Does Airship integrate with other marketing tools and platforms?
The Airship Partner Network includes top digital agencies, systems integrators and tech companies across the globe and spanning multiple industries. We work together to deliver innovative mobile-first customer experiences and tailor use cases to specific industries. Our partnership network is leading the way in digital transformation, helping customers create flexible, future-proof technology stacks.
Mobile Customer Experience
What is mobile customer experience?
Mobile customer experience refers to the totality of interactions that consumers have with a brand on mobile devices spanning apps, websites, social media, email, SMS and more. The culmination of these interactions often determines how customers feel about a brand, so it’s important to prioritize delivering seamless, unified experiences across mobile channels.
What is the difference between mobile app and mobile web?
Mobile apps refer to the applications downloaded on a mobile device from the app store, which can often be accessed offline. Mobile web refers to the sites available on browsers, accessible via an internet connection on a mobile phone. Brands often use both mobile websites and apps to engage their customers, so it’s important to create a unified web and app experience to drive sustained loyalty and increase conversions.
What is a unified web and app experience?
In our mobile-first world, customers expect a unified, seamless experience wherever they interact with brands. What they see from your brand in one channel should be contextually connected with what they see from you in other channels. Unfortunately, siloed teams, channels and data often create disconnected and broken experiences.
Airship can help with this. We empower customer-facing teams to quickly and powerfully build content and engage their audiences consistently and personally across all digital channels. Brands can create, test and adapt connected experiences in the app and on the web to support a range of conversion goals — from opt-ins, user registrations, purchases and feature adoption to reviews, survey responses and more — all without relying on ongoing developer support.
What is UX vs. UI?
User interface (UI) refers to the visual and interactive elements of a product or service, while user experience (UX) refers to a customer’s entire experience with a product or service, including how they feel about it. While UI is important, UX is an important brand differentiator — especially in the mobile ecosystem where consumers spend hours of their day.
The Airship Experience Platform (AXP) helps brands better understand their customers and deliver more meaningful experiences. This includes creating, building and deploying innovative app and web elements like surveys, push notifications, mobile wallets and more.
What is a customer experience platform?
A customer experience platform is a software platform that helps companies manage the experiences they deliver to their customers across all touchpoints. Mobile sits at the center of the digital ecosystem with apps, web, email, social media and other channels converging in one place. As the digital landscape becomes increasingly complex and fragmented, brands need a customer experience platform — like the Airship Experience Platform — to create, manage, measure and optimize cross-channel, mobile-first customer experiences.
What is the difference between a CRM and a customer engagement platform?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms and Customer Engagement Management (CEM) platforms help brands create better customer experiences. While CRM solutions manage company interactions with existing and future clients, CEM solutions create experiences that increase customer loyalty, satisfaction and advocacy.
Mobile Apps
What is mobile app user engagement?
App user engagement refers to the interactions between mobile apps and its users. Many brands still treat mobile apps as just another messaging channel, but those that are looking to drive sustained user engagement will prioritize creating experiences that nurture the entire customer lifecycle. There are a many channels available for app user engagement, from email and SMS to surveys and mobile wallets. Airship supports them all.
How can Airship improve my mobile app’s user engagement?
With the Airship Experience Platform (AXP), brands can create, test and adapt connected experiences in the app once and deploy them everywhere, ensuring unified and cohesive experiences wherever their customers choose to interact — all without ongoing developer support. In turn, brands can consistently drive activation, education and promotions tied directly to conversion goals.
How can I keep users engaged on a mobile app?
Brands should prioritize nurturing customers at every stage of the mobile lifecycle. App store optimization (ASO), effective onboarding experiences, cross-channel journey orchestration, personalization, and ongoing optimizations all contribute to customer engagement. The Airship Experience Platform provides an end-to-end solution for unifying experiences across channels and capturing value across the entire customer lifecycle.
How can I increase user engagement in mobile apps?
The Airship Experience Platform helps brands guide customers through the full mobile app lifecycle, from acquisition and activation to engagement and loyalty. Here are just a few ways that brands can increase customer engagement leveraging AXP:
- Know your audience: Leverage first- and zero-party data collection to better understand your customers and deliver personalized messages.
- Deliver unified experiences across channels: Prioritize cross-channel journey orchestration to engage customers consistently across all channels — apps, web, email, SMS, push notifications and more.
- Test and optimize: Perform tests across different segments and quickly validate the effectiveness of your tactics to see what’s working (or not) and maximize engagement.
How can I increase the user base for apps?
Mobile app strategies should focus on growing the quality of customer experiences, rather than simply growing the number of users overall. Downloads are important, but they only matter if users continue to engage with the app beyond install. From app store optimization and onboarding experiences to cross-channel journey orchestration and experimentation, brands need to deliver consistent, personalized experiences that guide customers through the full mobile lifecycle. Prioritizing an end-to-end customer experience that drives loyalty will help brands grow a strong user base.
Push Notifications
What are push notifications and how do they work?
A push notification is an alert generated by a mobile app that is presented to customers when the app isn’t open. It can offer updates or promotional message, such as a news flash alert, a sports score or an invitation to a flash sale.
When a customer downloads an app on their device, it registers with the operating system’s push notification service. The app receives a unique identifier, which is sent to the app server. When the publisher wants to send a notification, they use their unique identifier to send a message to the push notification service, which delivers the message to the right devices.
How can I use push notifications to increase user retention?
It’s common for customers to forget about an app once they’ve downloaded it. A push notification can keep people engaged and active. Brands can send product updates or launches, special promotions, daily learning reminders or other industry-specific use cases. Push notifications allow brands to reach people wherever they are at the exact moment it matters most, and bring them back to the app. Customers who receive push notifications in their first 90 days have a 3X higher app retention rate compared to those who do not.
What are the best practices for crafting effective push notifications?
Push notifications allow brands to reach customers directly rather than getting caught in spam filters or forgotten in an inbox. To be effective, they need to be carefully planned. Here are a few considerations to pack the biggest punch:
- Personalize content: Include the recipient’s name and relate to their previous actions.
- Consider timing: Send content based on a user’s activity and time zone.
- Ensure relevance: Use data from a CRM system, Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) or other resources to create targeted messages for individuals.
- Be clear and concise: Make sure users can understand what a push notification is about and what action it requires from them at first glance.
- A/B test your messaging: Try out different messaging strategies for your audience segments to see which options resonate most.
In-App Messaging
What is in-app messaging?
In-app messaging (also known as in-app notifications, in-app messaging and Message Centers) are messages delivered to customers while they are active in your mobile app. Used in conjunction with other messaging channels such as push notifications, mobile wallet, email and SMS, in-app messages help brands deliver engaging, informative experiences within apps. They integrate seamlessly into the app experience to increase the reach and effectiveness of message delivery. Common use cases include onboarding, feature introduction, promotions and customer service messaging.
How do in-app messages differ from push notifications?
In-app messages differ from push notifications in that they are delivered within the app, while push notifications are delivered outside of the app. In-app messages typically have a greater impact than push notifications according to our 2023 Mobile Engagement Benchmarks, receiving 8X the direct response rates.
Can in-app messaging be personalized for different user segments?
Yes, in-app messaging should be tailored to different user segments. Not every message is going to resonate with your entire customer base, so segmenting content to address unique needs and preferences will support performance. For instance, the US Open used location targeting and previous in-app behavior via the Airship Experience Platform to identify users near the event that showed recent purchase intent and target their messaging. Their in-app message segmentation resulted in a 32% conversion rate.
SMS and Email Marketing
What is SMS marketing?
SMS (Short Message Service) is also known as text messaging. It’s a service for sending short messages of up to 160 characters to mobile devices. SMS messages are sent through a phone’s native messaging app and, unlike push notifications, can reach any user who has opted in to receive them. Virtually every mobile phone today has support for SMS text messages, so it’s a trusted medium for reaching customers.
How does Airship support SMS marketing?
Airship helps brands integrate SMS marketing into their customer experience strategy, alongside other messaging channels like push notifications, mobile wallet and email. We help orchestrate cross-channel customer journeys, segment personalized experiences, manage opt-ins/outs, test and monitor performance and more. The Airship Experience Platform enables a two-way messaging system where customer experiences are thoughtfully orchestrated to support conversion goals.
How successful is SMS marketing?
Studies have shown that 98% of SMS messages are opened, and 90% are read within three minutes. The sheer visibility that SMS marketing offers is undeniable. What’s more, 75% of consumers have made purchases as a result of SMS marketing so the business value is also clear. To deliver effective SMS marketing, brands should consider how SMS messaging fits into their broader customer experience strategy. Success is often defined by consistency across channels, journey orchestration and ongoing iteration to deliver optimal communication.
What is email marketing?
Email is one of the most used marketing channels for delivering information about products and promotions. Paired with other messaging channels, such as push notifications, mobile wallet and SMS, it holds an important role in cross-channel communications and mobile-first strategies.
What are the benefits of using email marketing through Airship?
Airship helps email marketers craft compelling and seamless email content with its no-code Experience Editor. Then with Journeys AI, they can automate and integrate email with other messaging channels to deliver a cohesive experience on the web, in apps and everywhere in between. Personalization, A/B testing, and performance tracking help brands boost their email marketing performance, reducing opt-outs and improving customer satisfaction overall.
Can I track the performance of my SMS and email campaigns with Airship?
Airship offers advanced analytics and reporting to help brands measure KPI performance across SMS and Email campaigns with marketer-friendly dashboards to understand how, when, where and why customers are engaging. The insights reveal opportunities to improve or course correct campaigns for better results.
Beyond visibility, Airship’s Analytics provide consistent measurement across all channels from a single place, so you can quickly determine which channels are delivering the most value. You can also create reporting templates that auto update as new performance results become available.
Web Notifications
What are web notifications and how can they be used?
Web notifications are sent to a customer via desktop and mobile web. They appear in the corner of the desktop screen or on a mobile device in a manner similar to push notifications delivered from apps, whether the customer is on a brand’s website at that moment or not.
Similar to push notifications, web notifications help brands deliver information — product updates, breaking news, promotions and more — to draw customers back to their website. They allow brands to leverage the benefits of personalized, in-the-moment communications and drive repeat engagement.
How do web notifications help to re-engage website visitors?
Web notifications allow brands to reach their customers with a direct message whether they’re on the website at that moment or not. They encourage customers to return to a brand’s website and position the brand as top-of-mind in moments that matter. With segmentation, brands can tailor content to specific audiences so that the message drives the desired outcomes.
Can web notifications be personalized based on user behavior?
Web notifications can be targeted to audiences segmented by behaviors and preferences to create more effective messaging. When web notifications are personalized based on past website interactions, customers are more likely to engage with them, resulting in higher web visits and conversion rates.
Mobile Wallets
What is a mobile wallet?
Mobile wallets (also referred to as “digital wallet,” “wallet passes,” “wallet card,” or “mobile wallet passes”) offer content or information in the form of a wallet item or pass, stored in the Apple Wallet or Google Wallet apps on a customer’s mobile device. It’s the digital equivalent of items in a physical wallet, like loyalty cards, coupons, business cards, tickets or credit cards, but customers can easily access them without the use of physical cards or printouts.
How does Airship support mobile wallets?
Our Mobile Wallet Solution empowers brands to design, deliver and manage wallet passes, delivering greater convenience and value. It’s a whole new channel for engaging and communicating with customers on mobile with or without an app. Digestible content with clickable links — such as URLs, locations and phone numbers — create repeat engagement and foster loyalty.
Airship’s Wallet Notifications API is 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.
What are the benefits of mobile wallets?
Consumers today are flooded with marketing messages wherever they turn and increasingly reject blunt promotional marketing. Built directly into mobile phones without the need to download an app or visit a website, wallets 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.
Analytics and Reporting
What types of analytics does Airship provide?
Airship Analytics offers a unified view of data across all Airship channels from a single place. Brands can view app lifecycle performance from a single dashboard or feed your user-level insights to your own backend systems in real time. We provide performance analytics, real-time data streaming, predictive analytics and app health — all of the information you need to make data-backed decisions about your mobile experiences and optimize for better results. We also offer custom reporting templates that auto update as new performance results become available.
How can I use Airship’s analytics to improve my marketing strategies?
Airship’s enterprise-grade performance analytics reveal how, when, where and why customers are connecting with your brand so you can zero in on what’s working and optimize the experience accordingly. Our app health dashboard highlights key metrics such as user growth, activation rates, engagement scores and retention rates to measure the effectiveness of your mobile experiences. Our predictive analytics empower brands to anticipate how and when they should engage with their customers for the best outcome.
Does Airship offer real-time data and reporting?
Connecting customer data across all systems in real-time is essential for creating a seamless, unified customer experience. The Airship Experience Platform integrates with any system in your stack to enrich customer profiles, trigger high value moments and make smarter decisions. You can send data about customer behaviors taken on any Airship channels to your data warehouse or customer data platform to ensure you are operating based on the most accurate information.
How do I measure app customer retention?
Measuring your app’s retention rate is a must. Downloads reveal how successful your campaigns are at driving app traffic, but retention reveals whether your mobile experience is actually resonating with customers and keeping them engaged. Airship’s app health dashboard highlights key metrics such as user growth, activation rates, engagement scores and retention rates to measure the effectiveness of your mobile customer experiences.
Customer Journey Orchestration
What is customer journey orchestration?
Customer journey orchestration is the process of creating goal-driven customer experiences across channels, anticipating needs and delivering individualized value at every step. This can include a structured onboarding experience to activate customers, in-app messaging to encourage customers to take a specific action, predictive analytics to deliver the right message at the right time or all of the above.
For years, journey mapping has been a highly visual process, but one that’s also very manual and time-consuming for marketers. AI takes journey mapping to the next level by automatically generating content and cross-channel orchestration. Airship Journeys AI uses marketers’ responses to natural language prompts and their stated goals to instantly create a journey map and content for cross-channel messages and on-site and in-app experiences. Now, what used to take several hours, if not days, takes moments, giving marketers a head start on the creative process with complete journeys they can easily edit and perfect.
What are the benefits of using customer journey orchestration for my business?
Customer journey orchestration offers several benefits. You can build, measure and optimize journeys with real-time customer intelligence to drive high-value actions. You’ll also get the data insights you need to continuously sustain valuable relationships. In particular, companies using AI for journey mapping see a 30% increase in customer retention and a 20% boost in satisfaction as they deliver experiences tailored to individual needs.
How can I create personalized customer journeys with Airship?
Customers today expect highly personalized and targeted communications. With the Airship Experience Platform, you can quickly and easily combine information from Airship channels with external data feeds to create rich, interactive experiences. In the age of data deprecation, it’s important that brands prioritize building a strong zero- and first-party framework to personalize experiences. With Airship, brands can combine customers’ opt-in selections, real-time mobile behaviors and preferences to send recommendations uniquely fit for the audience.
Airship Onboarding and Support
How easy is it to get started with Airship?
It’s very easy to get started with Airship. Brands can sign up for a live demo today to learn how AXP empowers customer-facing teams to create powerful mobile-first experiences that drive value for customers and revenue for brands. Learn more about our pricing plans – AXP Essentials and AXP Enterprise – to determine which makes the most sense for your business and its needs.
What kind of support does Airship offer to new users?
Airship’s Client Solutions team collaborates closely with customers during the onboarding period and beyond to educate them on the product, share updates and strategies and ensure that our technology is helping brands achieve their customer experience and conversion goals.
We also provide extensive learning resources. Our knowledge base covers all major mobile channels — web, email, SMS, wallet, and others. Brands can easily search to find an answer to a specific question or browse through content about a particular topic.
Are there training resources available for using Airship’s platform?
Our documentation hub offers everything clients need to know to make the most of the Airship Experience Platform. We create content for marketers, developers and product owners so that anyone using our platform has the resources they need to find success. Brands can also get expert guidance from our Client Services team to navigate our mobile-first world.
Security and Compliance
How does Airship ensure data security and user privacy?
Integrity is one of our core values. We’re committed to protecting customer data across all of Airship’s operating environments. Standard security measures are enabled throughout the broader Airship platform, and include SOC 2 Type II, end-to-end encryption and multi-factor authentication single sign-on (MFA/SSO) with role-based access control (RBAC). For more information, you can review our Security Measures.
Is Airship compliant with GDPR and other data protection regulations?
We’re committed to meeting the standards that our customers expect from us. That means not just providing exceptional products that scale to sending billions of messages each day, but also ensuring that the Airship Experience Platform supports your compliance needs. This includes the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the laws passed in various states in the US, including California (CCPA and CPRA), Virginia (CDPA), Colorado (CDPA) and the others that are sure to follow. We welcome global privacy laws as opportunities to demonstrate our commitment to data protection and privacy rights.