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Building a Great Mobile Marketing Tech Stack

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There are 4,000 plus companies that provide digital marketing technology according to LumaScape. There are over 40 technologies in mobile Analytics/Measurement/Attribution/Reporting category alone (full mobile LumaScape here). In our build-up to the launch of the Tomorrow iOS mobile app in July of 2017, we knew that we needed a great mobile marketing technology stack in order to drive:

  • Customer Acquisition – Tracking media spend through the channels, through the stores (iOS and Android) and into the apps. Not just to an install but a registration.
  • Customer Success – via mobile push notifications, in-app messaging, triggered emails and personalized website messaging.
  • Behavioral Analytics – user behavior, funnel analysis, success and challenges of the app, customer centric insight
  • Marketing Attribution – which channels, creative, messaging and offers are bringing in the right/best members
  • Testing & Optimization – both in-app and on website including the products on the roadmap like Web App and Android App

Over the span of four months we looked at dozens of technologies and platforms with the objective of picking the right combination to get us into the launch and learn stage of the company with the following objectives:

  • Scale – will the platform serve multiple purposes and be around for the long-term. Is this a product that we can grow into and will grow with us as.
  • Value– based on functional requirements, does the technology provide the needed features at the right price AND the right pricing structure. The. pricing structure is as important as the price itself as a new company just launching, a model that would scale with us made the most sense. More on this later.
  • Minimize impact on engineering team– we wanted to have as much control over messaging and communications in the hands of the growth team vs having to go to the engineering team for executional tasks.
  • Interoperability– how well does the technology work with OTHER technologies. In the age of the API economy, our belief is that having best in class point solutions is superior to a difficult to use and more expensive all-in-one platform.

Here is a simple schema of the platforms we selected to give you an idea of the complexity of the systems:

Primary Marketing + Analytics Tech Stack
Primary Marketing + Analytics Tech Stack @tomorrowideas

We launched the iOS mobile app in July of 2017 and have learned a ton about what we like and don’t like. Here are some of the lessons we learned during the research process and then implementation/execution stage vs a product by product comparison – there are lots or review sites for that.

What we did right

  • Defined what types of data we wanted to capture and what decisions we were going to make based on the data.
  • Thought hard about the value and purpose of each category of the tech stack we were adding: attribution, BI/Reporting, customer communications, analytics and ETL.
  • Researched and demo’d a range of solutions for each category. We sourced our short list of tech vendors from professional connections, team’s prior usage (especially including the engineering team’s experience), online comparison sites (like G2Crowd.com and Captera.com)

What we could have done better

  • Be realistic about your potential traffic and needs with regards to complexity of customer communications.We selected Braze (formerly Appboy) as our customer communication platform. It is a very robust platform that is the most expensive part of our stack, but we still don’t use it to the fullest. This is due to our need to manage many of our communications internally so we haven’t “turned over” all emails, push notification and in-app notifications to Braze. This is also due to launching a new product and not understanding how to best communicate with our customers to make them successful – much of this only comes from experience, but the product does a pretty good job of leading someone through creating a will that our communications are lighter than predicted (which is good).
  • Select an event naming structure that is informative at the top level, but gives you the ability to dig deeper with event attributes.Since we run both marketing programs and customer analytics programs off of event logging, the naming framework you create has a massive impact on your ability to connect media spend with specific user behavior as well as analyze user behavior through platforms like Amplitude.
  • Allocate more time UP FRONT for analytics.In the time constraint world of launching a mobile app with a hard deadline decisions had to be made. One of those was to post-pone allocation of time to address event naming and analytics. This has caused challenges downstream in terms of engineering time for refactoring and gaps in behavior knowledge that could have helped us advance the product further, faster.

Mobile analytics is a unique animal that requires solutions and thinking that is different than traditional web analytics. New platforms like Segment, Amplitude and Google Firebase give mobile app data analysts and marketers tremendous insight into how media programs perform at a deep level and how users are successful or get stuck.

Let me know your thoughts!

Trends in Ad Tech from Silicon Valley

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I just posted this article on the Hacker Agency website here, but wanted to share on my site as well.

HackerAgency and FCB executives from all over the world recently returned from four days of meetings with the biggest digital media technology companies in Silicon Valley: Google/YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and Facebook/Instagram. We were treated to a first-class education which included a deep dive into consumer trends, technology shifts and a preview of the next wave of advertising opportunities across these communication platforms.

I’m going to race through the major things we learned and discussed. I hope to go deeper soon.

First, major consumer trends:

  • Every one of the organizations we met with has a major focus on video as THE communication format of the near future. And it’s all about mobile.
  • Two-thirds of the world is still not on the Internet. Google and Facebook have programs dedicated to putting the Internet into the hands of those without access.
  • In the developing world, technology has skipped computers and has moved straight to mobile. However, most traffic is on a 2G-level network on a feature phone, so text is still king in these markets.

Second, technology shifts:

  • Personal assistant plus voice input (in addition to keyboard) is getting better all the time. Siri, Alexa, OK Google and Cortana are listening and responding. We’re at the beginning of interacting with artificial intelligence on a daily basis.
  • We’re seeing more focus on better user experiences. All the companies we visited are thinking about how to create more engaging, richer, digital ad experiences for better performance and higher monetization.
  • People are talking about the integration of analytics across customer touch points. Everyone realizes that one touch does not drive a behavior change, so a massive amount of work is going into understanding multi-touch marketing attribution across channels.
  • We all know mobile pages load too slowly on cellular networks, so tech giants are supporting the open source Accelerated Mobile Pages

Third, new creative opportunities:

  • Changes to something as familiar as Google search results are always big news. No ads on the right rail for Google will have a big impact on CPCs, impression share and quality score.
  • Deep linking into mobile apps is critical for mobile app promotion and a better user experience.
  • Conversational video ads on Twitter rolled out earlier in the year. They include a call to action with customizable hashtags to encourage customer engagement.
  • Cinematic pins on Pinterest allow brands to target specific user types (foodies, travelers, etc.) and use motion while the user scrolls but stop when the user stops.
  • SnapChat’s ads are an overlay over images. They have released an on-demand platform so you can create your own overlays and target individuals within a specific geography (down to 5,000 square feet) for a specific number of days.
  • Facebook Live streams to your network and competes with Periscope.
  • Facebook Canvas provides a deeper rich media experience on Facebook. You can use a combination of videos and still images to tell a story—and call-to-action buttons are available, too.
  • 360 Degree Video on Facebook lets you showcase your story in an immersive way when the user controls what they look at within the video.

We were very fortunate to get learning sessions with the largest tech advertising players in Silicon Valley, and we look forward to executing many of these new creative ideas with our clients.

How to Hit a Moving (Mobile) Target

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New post on mobile in preparation for our presentation at Market Mix in March. Read on my brothers and sisters…

On the bus this morning, I sat in the back and looked at the people sitting around me. Of the 17 riders near me, 13 were using some connected device: tablet, smartphone or e-reader. I’m continually amazed at how much our mobile devices have become integrated in our daily lives and how they have become an extension of ourselves.

Observe for a moment just how ingrained technology is in our daily lives:

• We wake up to alarms on our cell phones and check email
• The smart house knows when we come and go to set alarms, change heating and lock doors
• Connected refrigerators know when we’re out of milk
• Connected cars know where we’re driving and when
• Music and audiobook apps know when we’re listening and what we’re listening to
• FitBit and health apps know how hard we are exercising (or not)
• Google Glass knows what and who we’re looking at
• Location awareness on smart phones know which stores we’re in and when

Spooky, really.

As a digital marketer responsible for creating and optimizing campaigns, the most useful bit of data from this treasure trove is the location of the person/device. After all, they’re mobile devices — so one of the most relevant and actionable pieces of data about your target audience is where they are.

Location awareness goes beyond targeting, however, as we see four major location-enabled strategies impacting our mobile campaigns here and now:

1) Targeting. Geo-targeting at a granular level is the status quo, but how we apply the location and time of message is an area of creativity. Location-level detail allows ad networks to build out profiles and personas to predict behaviors and activities. It tells marketers where our target is — and because the data is time stamped, when the target will be where they’re going next. Within a matter of milliseconds, a retailer can deliver a message to the target — based on her profile — just as she’s planning to walk into a competitor’s nearby store. That’s relevant.

2) Measurement. Using location data, we are now able to understand how mobile ads impact retail store visits on a control and test methodology and calculate visit lift. This means we can more easily attribute sales to campaigns and determine a more true ROI.

3) Device Identification and Mapping. Device graphs associate all of the connected devices within a household (mobile phones, tablets, laptops, connected TVs, etc.) to better understand the digital buying path of a customer and the impact of ad impressions across multiple devices on conversion.

4) Customer Insights. Location data allows us to understand where people are going before and after visiting a retail location. Is this person a luxury shopper? Do they include your store as part of a normal shopping excursion? Are there ancillary stores we should be partnering with? Opportunities abound to understand shopping behavior patterns.

All of these factors contribute to understanding the true impact of connected device marketing. Come to Hacker Group’s MarketMix session, “How to Hit a Moving Target,” and we’ll discuss tactical executions, real-life applications, new technologies for data tracking, pitfalls to avoid, and war stories from the trenches of today’s mobile marketer.

We look forward to seeing you there — and we’ll know where you are if you don’t show up.

10 Uber Trends That Will Drive Digital Media in 2014

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This was just posted over on the HackerGroup.com blog here, but wanted to share here as well. There is so much going on with regards to marketing technology that I wanted to highlight 10 big trends that play into just about every campaign we build. Let me know what you think!

Here are ten trends that we saw and tested in 2013 that will have big impacts on campaigns and insight in 2014.

1)      Increased ability to connect off line customer data with online or mobile targeting. As direct marketers, we live on lists of prospects and customers that we send mail to. The amount of data we have access to at the household level and the models we built to select the right people to mail to in the past has been completely dis-connected from the ability to target online and mobile users outside of email. However, new data safe havens that anonymize the connection between offline and online data plus new technology capabilities such as mobile location matching boosts our ability to target online and mobile consumers based on off-line insight.

This trends opens an entirely new way to target prospects and users in online and mobile channels. Our media strategies can now start with a list or customer model and we can execute across a wider swatch of media. This is a really big deal and will dramatically impact digital marketers work in 2014.

2)      New marketing advertising technology that connects the same user across multiple connected devices – tablets, smartphones and laptop/desktops. The buyers journey is continuing to evolve, especially with the improvements of smart phones and expanded access to the internet – anytime, anywhere. However, the ability to understand that journey and deliver marketing messages as appropriate points in that journey has been hindered by the inability to follow that journey across connected devices.

New technologies from companies like TapAd and Drawbridge build device graphs that help us understand that a series of advertisements on a mobile phone drove research and purchase on a laptop or tablet. There are many more examples, but this trend of connecting users throughout the buy cycle will help drive more digital marketing dollars to mobile platforms and help us re-think how we communicate to specific customers.

3)      Re-marketing gets smarter by working across channels. A corollary to #2, the connection of data across channels – search, mobile, social and online – via exchanges and direct media relationships is creating opportunities to target media in one channel based on the interaction in a different channel. A great example of this is delivering an ad on the Facebook Mobile app based on searching activity on Google.

The implications for 2014 is that digital marketers will need to evolve their strategies based on the customer buying journey and targeting end users based on relevant buying signals wherever we can find them.

4)      Tablets will outsell ALL desktop & laptop computers in Q4 2013.  The tablet trend has been gaining steam since the launch of the iPad and with dozens of manufacturers it is the go to device for consumers. Tablets tend to be bunched into the “mobile” category because they run on mobile operating systems like iOS and Android. But, with less than 10% of tablets shipped cellular enabled, it functions more as an easy to use consumer grade laptop. Here are the main uses of smart phones vs tablets.

What this means is that digital marketers have a new, highly scalable form factor and use scenario to integrate into their campaign strategy.  New ad units, interaction scenarios and usage location (on the couch, in the kitchen) drive different types of messaging strategies and abilities to connect with the end user in order to be more relevant with their usage patterns.

5)      Location based measurement and marketing is getting better. The ability for marketers to deliver messages and measure impact of ads based on location is a game changer for digital mobile marketing. The fact that we can now reasonably connect the impact of mobile ads with change in location patterns through new technologies like Placed and PlaceIQ means that the value of mobile advertising will be more clear. If we know, for example, that the treated group of a mobile campaign for a retailer (the group that saw the ads) shows up in that retailers store 5x more often over the control group (the group that didn’t see the ads) – that’s a plus, right?

For 2014, the integration of location based measurement and better micro-geographic targeting will be a major theme for many digital marketing campaigns.

6)      Marketing attribution technology and process is getting better. We spend a lot of time measuring the performance of marketing programs and assigning success metrics based on sales. It is always a challenge to separate the impacts of different campaigns that are running at the same time aimed at the same audience across multiple channels and assign success to specific spend. However, new approaches, mathematical models and technologies from companies such as Visual IQ, Adometry and Convertro are helping drive better attribution.

For companies running large and/or complex multi-channel campaigns, upping your marketing attribution game will help drive better marketing resource allocation in the coming years. If you aren’t actively building attribution systems, now is the time to re-visit and set the foundation.

7)      Marketing automation is moving from B2B to B2C. Marketing automation – the process of delivering marketing messages in an automated way through the use of data and behavior triggers – was born in the long sales cycles of the Business to Business (B2B) environment. As the technology for marketing automation has gotten better and easier to implement, more Business to Consumer (B2C) companies are taking up marketing automation tactics and implementing them. This is especially true in longer research sales cycle type products like auto’s, health insurance and subscription services.

For companies that engage in extensive conversations with customers either before a sale or need to keep a conversation going to keep the subscription dollars coming in, look hard at the marketing automation technologies that are out there such as Marketo, Pardot and Act-On. They may give you inspiration to improve your communications and sales efficiencies. This tactic is less effective for pure e-commerce or transactional B2C companies (I’m lookin’ at you Amazon!).

8)      The advertising delivery technology on mobile devices is improving rapidly and beginning to deliver capabilities we rely on in online display. Mobile Real Time Bidding (RTB) – aka programmatic media buying – will make up 45% of mobile ad buys, central ad serving technologies like Phluent and DoubleClick are better and mobile networks are assigning inventory to open exchanges.

The improvement in advertising delivery technology along with improvements in location based measurement and cross device connectivity means it will be a very important year for marketers to test and understand the full impact of connected device marketing. These trends in combination with the amount of time people are spending on their phones means that 2014 could be the perfect year to get great media value out of mobile while the technology is adequate for running sophisticated, impactful campaigns.

9)      Email is now truly a mobile first tactic. With over 60% of emails opened and read on a mobile OS – either on tablet or smartphone – the way to plan, organize and deliver content in email on mobile has to be your primary consideration. Responsive or fluid design is important, but thinking through the way people read emails on device and then click through to the website is critical for improving response.

If you haven’t invested in responsive design or a mobile first approach to email, do it. Now.

10)   Buying specific audiences is getting more consistent (and easier) across display, online video and TV.  Good news for brand media planners – giants like Google are making their audience segments – or affinity segments – more consistent to how TV is purchased for YouTube video and online display. Clearly this is aimed and breaking down some of the barriers between more traditional media purchasing and the new-fangled digital world.

What this means for marketers is that you can start with an audience segment that you want to talk to and be more consistent with your targeting and buys across channels. This is a nod to an uber-trend of customer centricity in planning and buying. I’m sure we’ll see more of this type of streamlining as the large digital players work to get more dollars out of traditional channels like Radio and TV into their video, contextual and social inventory.

I hope you like the trends we’ve pointed out and are as excited for the new year as I am. 2014 is brimming with exciting new opportunities in the digital media space and we’re already knee deep in integrated, cross-channel campaigns.

What trends do you think are important that we missed?

A New Way to Measure Mobile Marketing

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I recently posted this method of mobile marketing on The Hacker Group website here. We’re doing some very interesting work with our clients on connecting mobile with other campaigns for improving targeting and tracking. Here’s the text of the post.

Digital marketers are addicted to cookies. Not the delicious raisin-oatmeal variety, but the unique text files that reside in your internet browser on your computer that ID you as someone who visits ESPN.com and buys power tools regularly on Amazon.

The use of cookies is the dominant paradigm in digital tracking and it DOESN’T WORK in the mobile marketing environment. The fragmented device, mobile app and operating system environment doesn’t allow for consistent placement and usage of cookies across devices. There is no central ad serving system such as an Atlas DMT or DoubleClick that can consolidate the view of a consumer. So, fugetaboutit.

On top of the cookie tragedy is the fact that mobile devices – especially smart phones – are used differently than the research > buy > retain flow we’ve come to know and expect on computers and websites. Mobile phones are used as research and navigate aids much more than research and buy aids. We shouldn’t EXPECT people to research a purchase and buy it on their smartphone so why should EXPECT our smelly old tracking systems to replicate on that platform. You’re right, we shouldn’t.

I’d much rather light a candle than curse the darkness, so here is what we CAN do to track the impact of mobile – especially in relationship to physical retail.

Change the mobile paradigm from tracking cookies to tracking location. Most smartphone users have location turned on at all times for weather apps, social media networks, check-ins, etc. In 2012 it was 73% and that was up significantly from 2011. It’s a thing, mobile ad networks know where your device is most of the time.

Now, if we take this bit of info and apply that to tracking, we can start to make some interesting connections such as:

–        A control group of mobile devices did not see my ad, but a test group of mobile devices DID see my ad. How many of those that saw my ad showed up in my retail store vs the control?

–        Ad networks see the mobile device go to a specific spot every night around 6pm and stay there until 7am. High likelihood that the device owner lives there. What does that address tell us about the device owner?

Creepy? A little. But, it is a way to understand the new ways mobile marketers are looking to change the tracking paradigm and understand how the delivery and receipt of mobile ads are stimulating response and encouraging specific behavior. It’s not perfect, but what tracking system is.

So, to measure the impact of mobile media, break the current ad tracking paradigm and think location, location, location. Feel free to comment to this blog with thoughts and tomatoes.