3 Mobile Personalization Tactics That Work

With today’s consumers spending close to three hours a day on their phones, relevant mobile marketing matters more than ever.

Let’s say you buy a guitar from a music store, and a week later, you get an offer for a keyboard. How likely are you to act on it?

Now, if the music store sent you an offer for guitar stands, would you at least click on the link and take a look?

That’s why your mobile marketing strategy shouldn’t rely entirely on “buying” loyalty with rewards, promotions, or discounts. 

The Harvard Business Review found that in this new era of digital-based competition and customer control, people buy instead because of a brand’s relevance to their needs. Another study found that 44% of text message subscribers unsubscribe from irrelevant messages. 

Your audience represents different age groups and geographic locations. They have varying levels of “loyalty” and product or service preferences. 

If you can incorporate customer-specific data into your mobile marketing campaigns, you’ll likely see higher engagement and conversion rates. Who doesn’t want that?

Without further ado, here are some ideas on how to do it.

What Is Mobile Personalization?

Mobile personalization uses customer-specific data (demographics, interests, behaviors, life stage, location, time, etc.) to enhance and customize marketing messages across your mobile experience. 

It enables marketers to build deeper relationships with customers and treat them as unique individuals. A classic example of mobile personalization is when mobile apps use information like your location to trigger push notifications.

It allows you to engage with customers better because you can send personalized messages that are relevant and valuable. 

Mobile Personalization Ideas

Now that we’ve defined what mobile personalization is, let’s take a look at three proven mobile personalization tactics.

1. Location-Based Personalization

If you have multiple locations, then sending promotional messages based on a subscriber’s location is critical.

For example, location-based personalization ensures that a customer in southern California isn’t offered a winter coat, while someone in New York City is. Or that if a user purchased baby shoes during their last visit to your store, your follow up offers something like a designer bib or a matching hat.

A survey of 700 in-house and agency marketers using mobile marketing found that 87% use location targeting. More importantly, a majority of respondents reported positive results.

We’ve written a thorough guide to location-based SMS advertising, which we recommend reading if it’s something you want to incorporate into your text marketing strategy.

2. Behavioral Personalization

According to MarketingSherpa, 39% of marketers found that sending personalized emails based on user behavior was their most effective email marketing strategy. It’s also evident in most mobile app marketing tactics.

For example, luxury brand Gilt sends push notifications to customers based on past behavior like adding a product to a wishlist. When the item is back in stock, the customer gets notified immediately.

Source: Business2Community

You can apply the same approach to your text messages to target shopping cart abandonment. We’ve written before about abandoned cart texts–they’re a great example of texts that include personalized and highly relevant messaging based on someone’s actions.

3. Past-Purchase Personalization

If someone buys from you, you immediately have an incredibly valuable data point. Start personalizing your mobile marketing by recommending more purchases or actions based on a reader’s past ones.

For example, if someone buys a pair of trail running shoes from you, it’s safe to assume that they’re interested in trail running. 

You can send a promotion for a hydration pack or a headlamp. You can even send these subscribers non-promotional content like a guide to different weather-resistant jackets. 

How to Collect Information From Your Audience

For marketers to implement personalization, they need to collect information from their audience first.

While you can’t tell when a subscriber’s flight has arrived in Paris, you can collect tons of information from your SMS subscribers. Then you can send more targeted text marketing campaigns.

Here are several ideas on how to start collecting this data.

• With our data collection feature, you can collect even more information from your subscribers using an SMS keyword (here’s how it works)
• Create a web form and ask your customers to fill it out with added information like their location or product preferences
• Use our Zapier integration to connect with other platforms and send behavior based text messages
• You can also use our SMS API to collect custom information and trigger text messages

Key Takeaway

The point of personalization is to give your existing and potential customers a unique, memorable message and build a bond. It lets them know you’re paying attention and understand what they want and need.

When done correctly, your audience gets what it wants at the right time, creating a better customer experience your competitors won’t be able to match.