With the acceleration of the digital transformation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, connecting with customers through the use of mobile technology has become increasingly relevant.
Brands across the globe are now all trying to deliver engaging digital content.
However, with a wealth of customer data, the various methods of advertising on digital platforms, and stiff industry competition, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome for brands trying to engage with their customers.
Braze is a customer engagement software that is designed to help brands produce effective digital experiences for their customers, tackling all the issues of modern digital marketing to provide marketers with advanced tools centred around audience segmentation and cross-channel marketing.
With a diverse range of customers including well-known brands like Burger King, Grubhub IBM, 8Fit etc, Braze’s platform has provided the perfect way to actively engage with customers no matter what industry.
The basics of cross channel marketing
There are two types of marketing channels; out-of-product and in-product.
While out-of-product channels engage recipients who aren’t currently using your digital platforms, in-product channels help engage individuals who are actively using your website or mobile app.
Meanwhile, multi-channel, omnichannel and cross-channel marketing are methods that use both of these channels in marketing strategies. While they may be used interchangeably, they are not the same thing.
Multi-channel is when you use multiple channels to reach users, but this is not optimised in any sense.
Omni-channel marketing also uses multiple channels to communicate with a “more is better” approach rather than looking for an ideal channel mix.
The cross-channel approach is where marketers try to determine the ideal channel mix to reach customers cohesively.
The issue with cross-channel marketing is how you can determine the ideal channel mix to give customers a coordinated customer experience.
How Braze can make audience segmentation and cross channel marketing easy
Understanding the customer is integral to any marketing strategy.
Braze prides itself on focusing on the customer experience and building and optimising your content for what they want—not for what you want to sell.
This way, Braze can ensure that you are getting the right marketing messages out to the right audience.
Braze can use a variety of channels such as mobile and web push, in-app and in-browser messaging, content cards, email, and SMS to deliver marketing material in a way that’s useful to the customer.
This in conjunction with its advanced testing tools and intuitive customer journey mapping tools enables brands to segment their audiences to increasingly smaller segments to both personalise and test their messaging experiences.
Moreover, with the entire process automated, creating these audience segments and delivering personalised content becomes a seamless process that’s not only easy to implement but also easily scalable as your business grows.
Customer conversions with BALAAN
BALAAN, a Korean luxury shopping platform, had limited resources for customer messaging, often sending generalised messaging to customers at various points in their journey with the brand.
Once they switched to Braze, they were able to create a marketing campaign that expanded into mobile and leveraged the platform’s automation features to deliver personalised customer messaging at scale.
They created three types of push notifications through Braze to customers who had saved products in their shopping carts but had not yet made any purchases: a message encouraging them to open up the app when the items in their cart were in short supply, a message encouraging customers to complete the purchases that they had left in their shopping cart, and a message to customers who didn’t install the app to complete their purchase.
By sending customised messages at each point in the customer journey, BALAAN managed to increase new subscribers by 150% and conversions by 250%.
User retention with Viber
Viber, an instant messaging application, also decided to use Braze’s platform to improve user retention.
Using Braze’s audience segmentation features, they were able to determine the level of user activity on the Viber app, running from very active to inactive.
These users were then given the same type of messaging to see which ones would respond the best.
The team was able to compare different forms of messaging, such as slide up banners that are powered by in-app messages with other outreach strategies to get a sense of which audiences responded best to different messages.
Seeing that banner messages worked best with active users who frequently opened the app, they were able to deliver relevant messaging to that audience segment.
Meanwhile, for other users, other messages yielded the best results as they encouraged users to open the app and engage.
They were also able to put in place a localisation strategy, personalising messages to users in different languages based on their location.
With the Braze platform, they were able to see how many messages are sent and converted based on language, which gives an indication of which audiences are engaging the most—a valuable tool for any tech company and anyone with a global outreach.
Viber was able to not only gain user retention, but also leverage data analysis and campaign reporting, thus learning more about their users and reducing unnecessary work for their marketing teams.
Better audience engagement with HBO Max
With Braze’s customer journey management tool, Canvas, brands can design an onboarding flow that can start audience segmentation right from the start of their journey with your brand.
HBO Max was able to create personalised content using Canvas by immediately starting to segment the users who signed up for a 7-day free trial on their platform.
They were able to segment those who didn’t know much about the platform and what it offered Vs those who were already fans of the shows and movies that were on the platform. HBO Max then used these customer segments to trigger different types of messaging for each type of user.
Those who were determined to be movie fans were included in a campaign about the debut of the film ‘Magic Mike XXL’ where users were given a ‘Remind Me’ button and a ‘Maybe Later’ button.
Subscribers who clicked on ‘Remind Me’ then received a push notification before the movie’s start time using Braze’s retargeting segmentation features.
On the movie premiere night, there was a 30% increase in viewership compared to a control group of users who had clicked on the ‘Remind Me’ button on the in-app message but had not been sent a push notification.
This highlighted how even the most interested subscribers need that extra push from cross-channel messaging.
Braze—give your customers the push they need
The cases mentioned in the post are only scratching the surface of the true power of Braze technology.
With more than 100 out of the box segmentation filters and intelligent and predictive automation, Braze can allow you to target the customers who want to use your product or service.