What is mobile marketing automation?

Mobile Marketing Automation (MMA) encompasses a wide range of technologies and approaches with the intent of increasing customer engagement. MMA provides understanding into the user, allowing for the creation of personalized content that is both relevant to the user and delivered in an optimal manner. This, in turn, produces a better user experience, builds retention as the user becomes familiar with the relevant content served to them, and increases ROI as more and more users are active on devices and making purchases.

Key features of mobile marketing automation

Each solution will vary on the features offered but let’s look at the following: push notifications, in-app messaging, A/B testing, and remarketing. These tools are used to improve user experience, build retention, and increase ROI.

Push Notifications. Users respond to what is applicable to them. Notifications are a great way to provide valuable information to the user.
With some consumers turning off notifications, creating personalized ads that follow a user’s journey outside of your app is another way to keep them engaged.
In-App messaging. This is a way to deliver alerts with the right content to a user at the appropriate time.
A/B testing. So many apps are downloaded and only used once. With A/B testing, you can optimize based on what is working and avoid guesswork.
Who can benefit from mobile marketing automation

Mobile marketing automation is used by various industries, such as games, media, e-commerce, health, and travel—just to name a few. Ultimately, anyone that wants to engage their users effectively can benefit from MMA for the purpose of increased revenue and better user engagement.

New MMA partner: Swrve

To highlight the integration processes, here is an example from Swrve, the latest partner to support Windows.

Swrve is a mobile engagement platform, purpose-built for the mobile app experience owner. This platform enables mobile app experience owners to know and personally interact with each and every customer who has their apps. The platform focuses on four key areas to help owners shape the mobile experience—onboarding, nurturing, engagement, and retention—and empowers owners with the following tools in the platform:

real-time segmentation and targeting
conversation management
dynamic optimization
analytics
cross-channel data orchestration with existing marketing stacks
In short, Swrve can help drive monetization while building customer lifetime value.

Swrve app dashboards

The User Lifecycle dashboard provides an out-of-the-box breakdown of your users against a standard app lifecycle covering six states of activity and inactivity. It also enables you to target users in each state with relevant in-app message, push notification, or conversation campaigns.

The KPI Metrics dashboard allows you to monitor and analyze your app’s performance over the past 24 hours.

Swrve integration to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps

After you have installed the SDK, complete the following steps for a basic integration. Replace <app_id> and <api_key> with your app ID and API key.

Step 1: Add the following code snippet to the OnLaunched method of your application:

private async Task InitializeSwrveSDK() { // Configure here anything extra like in-app custom button listener, // push notifications and push payload listener or dialog listeners. SwrveConfig config = new SwrveConfig(); // To use the EU stack, include this in your config. // config.SelectedStack = Swrve.Stack.EU; // Configure here anything extra like in-app custom button listener, // push notifications and push payload listener or dialog listeners. await SwrveSDK.Instance.InitAsync(<app_id>, <api_key>, config); } protected override async void OnLaunched(LaunchActivatedEventArgs e) { Frame rootFrame = Window.Current.Content as Frame; if (rootFrame == null) { // Initialize the SDK when the app has been launched for the first time await InitializeSwrveSDK(); } }
Step 2: Add the following to your application’s OnActivated method:

protected override async void OnActivated(IActivatedEventArgs args) { base.OnActivated(args); var rootFrame = Window.Current.Content as Frame; if (rootFrame == null) { // Initialize the SDK when the app has been started from an activation await InitializeSwrveSDK(); } SwrveSDK.Instance.OnActivated(args); }
Step 3: Add the following to your application’s OnSuspending method:

private async void OnSuspending(object sender, SuspendingEventArgs e) { var deferral = e.SuspendingOperation.GetDeferral(); // Save application state and stop any background activity await SwrveSDK.Instance.OnSuspendingAsync(); deferral.Complete(); }
Step 4: Add the following to your application’s OnResuming method:

private async void OnResuming(object sender, object e) { await SwrveSDK.Instance.OnResumingAsync(); }
The project is now ready to compile and run in the Windows 10 simulator.

Other MMA partners supporting Windows

If you’re interested in learning more about other MMA partners supporting Windows, please check out this list:

Azure Mobile Engagement – Combine big data collection with real-time processing to trigger engagement scenarios according to app-user behavior and demographics. Azure Mobile Engagement answers nearly any question relevant to your business needs. For documentation and SDK installation, please click here.
Localytics – A Mobile Engagement Platform that brings together User Insights, Smart Targeting & Marketing Automation to power great user engagement. For documentation and SDK installation, please click here.
Urban Airship – Urban Airship provides leading brands with a market-leading mobile engagement platform and digital wallet solution that enable high-value customer relationships.

Source:Windows Blogs