Few skills will make or break your mobile engagement success more than the frequency you interact with your customers. Was the minimalist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe correct with the phrase he adopted back in 1947, “less is more”? Or are consumers expecting (indeed craving) very frequent engagement by brands they already trust or are growing to trust? All providing, of course, the content has value and meaning for them in the first place…
As with most things in life, we suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle ground between the two as there is no ‘one size fits all’, a silver bullet to acing the maximization of mobile engagement impact consistently. If only there were.
Finding the happy middle with customer engagement
Engagement frequency strategy via digital channels certainly is as confusing as it is important. Much of the confusion reigns due to the simple fact that we humans are not exactly a homogeneous bunch.
Adopting a singular engagement approach that wholly fails to take into account the vagaries of the varying consumer preferences we have will most surely set one up to fail. In today’s challenging business environment, with so many industry verticals languishing in the doldrums (we’re thinking the likes of airlines and hotels in particular), failure now to grasp the mettle could quite easily result in ‘lights out’ forever. Businesses need to get this right.
Many of us have been on the receiving end of vouchers from brands offering a measly 5% discount or thereabouts. Those aren’t exactly going to rock people’s worlds and have them rushing for their wallets, are they? At the opposite end of the scale are brands that reach too rapidly for the ‘send a juicy discount offer’ button. Smashing that repeatedly can lead to a devaluation in their brand value over the long term. When they try to move the price back up, consumers vote with their feet and move elsewhere – an existential threat if ever there was one.
The ‘ideal’ frequency will depend entirely on your business goals and the amount of resource and time that you are willing to commit but with quite literally a captive audience like no other time in modern history, with people crying out for something enlightening to lighten the mood and lift them out of the banal, then perhaps just a little more is, well, more. But ensure your content delights and surprises.
The best channels to send valuable content
Valuable content sent with appropriate frequency is one thing but ensuring it gets read by recipients is quite another. But then so is the content having a tangible, measurable impact on conversion rates, the most important one being actual purchases! This all comes down to the digital channel (or channels) used to deliver the content. Not all channels are built equal.
Tempting as it may be when money is tight, email alone will never deliver the results bringing an omnichannel solution to bear on the situation will. Bringing channels such as SMS and commercial chat apps like WhatsApp Business into your delivery mix, channels which quite literally billions of people understand and are comfortable with is a smart move. They are not free but providing you understand your client bases and their leanings towards particular channels, then the investment will net a great return. Tools like Mitto’s recent release, Conversations, provide browser-based support for multiple digital channels and can efficiently manage two-way messaging across WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and more within a single pre-built, no-code platform.
With our global reach, high throughput capable omnichannel, and CPaaS solutions, all allied with rapid, accurate delivery mechanisms, Mitto ensures you maximize your mobile engagement return on investment. After all, money unfortunately does not grow on trees. Even if it did, those would be in short supply right now for most. Very short supply.
