5 Types of Mobile Marketing Campaigns to Have in Your Marketing Toolkit

Mobile marketing continues to grow and be one of the most effective ways for businesses to reach their audiences. In fact, mobile commerce conducted through smartphones is expected to reach $117 billion in the U.S. alone.

This means that if you haven’t already done so, you need to start putting a heavy emphasis on your mobile marketing campaigns. With the right campaigns in place, you can reach your audiences from the moment they learn about your brand and through their entire lifecycle.

There are many different types of mobile marketing campaigns you can integrate into your strategy, but we’ll focus on five main types in this article. Then, we’ll provide you with a list of mobile marketing platforms that can help you create and manage all of your campaigns in one central place.

Looking to jump ahead to the platform review? Here’s a quick look at the platforms we’ll cover:

1. Listrak
2. Leanplum
3. Braze
4. Sailthru
5. Moengage
6. Vibes
7. Airship
8. Swrve
9. Iterable
10. Kochava

5 Mobile Marketing Campaign Types

When it comes to mobile marketing, there are several campaign types you’ll want to leverage. From onboarding new subscribers to driving customers towards a purchase, each of these campaigns can help you achieve your marketing goals.

1. Opt-in Campaigns

When it comes to mobile marketing, ensuring you have consent to send your customers messages is one of the most important things you can do. In fact, for many channels, if your subscribers have not explicitly opted-in to receive your marketing content, you could be in for quite a bit of trouble and a few hefty fines.

Luckily, you can create opt-in campaigns to confirm you have permission to send your customers marketing content and encourage them to engage with you on other mobile channels.

This can be done by asking your subscribers to opt-in to your other mobile marketing channels to continue to grow your subscriber base. Doing this will allow you to reach your audiences across multiple channels and increase your chance of sending the right message at the right time.

Once your subscriber has opted-in to your marketing campaigns, you can start sending them messages to nurture them and promote your products and services. If your subscribers have opted-in to multiple mobile channels, you can begin building relevant cross-channel experiences. Image courtesy of Zipwhip.

Having permission from your customers to communicate with them on multiple channels opens up the opportunity to reach them through a cross-channel marketing strategy. That means that you can integrate various of the campaign types we’ll discuss in this article for a higher impact.

2. Onboarding Campaigns

One of the first types of mobile marketing campaigns you’ll want to create after your subscribers have opted in is an onboarding campaign, also known as a welcome campaign. These campaigns are meant to welcome new subscribers, let them know about your brand, and start to build a relationship with them.

These campaigns can be run across various channels, including email, SMS, and mobile apps.

Onboarding campaigns can provide you with some impressive metrics. Here are a few examples of how welcome emails can perform:

• 91.43% open rates
• 26.9% click-through rates
• Campaign emails with offers can boost revenue by 30% per email
• Read rates are 42% higher than the average email

It’s essential to engage with new subscribers in a timely fashion and provide them with relevant content. If they’re entirely new to your subscriber list, they may not know a lot about your company or the products and services you have to offer then, so now’s your time to let them know how you can help them.

The example below is an excellent eye-catching welcome message sent to users via MMS (multimedia messaging service). It is easily identifiable as a welcome message and provides the reader with a way to learn more about the services the company has to offer.

Onboarding campaigns are a great way to engage with new users and help them get to know your brand a little better. Lead with the value you have to offer them to ensure the message is relevant to their needs and keeps them interested. Image courtesy of Postscript.

There are tons of different ways to create a series of welcome messages. These are just a few examples to get you started:

• Invite users to shop a specific category or promote a popular product
• Share a video or article about your products or company
• Have them set their subscription preferences
• Invite them to connect with your company on social media
• Provide them with a discount or coupon code

No matter how you choose to integrate onboarding into your mobile marketing, it’s a campaign type you’ll want to consider. This is one of the first steps to building a solid relationship with your new subscriber and nurturing them towards becoming loyal customers.

3. Brand Awareness

The next type of campaign you’ll want to use as part of your mobile marketing strategy is building brand awareness.

While some of your subscribers will know exactly who you are and what you’re about, many new subscribers may not. They might have come across your website and decide to subscribe to your communication channels to learn more about your brand or receive a discount code.

Letting these audiences know more about your brand is an essential step in the process, especially when you consider that consumers care about whether a company is trustworthy and authentic. Without letting your customers know who you are, they may not feel this connection with your brand and move on to your competition.

This is an excellent example of how brand awareness can help users learn who your brand is and identify it right away. The colors of this email make it quick and easy to identify the brand it’s promoting, Tiffany. This is exactly what you want to do with your messages over time. Image courtesy of The Email Marketing Chronicles.

So to turn these subscribers who may have found your brand in passing into purchasing and loyal customers, you need to let them know who you are and what you’re all about — and that’s where brand awareness campaigns come into play.

These types of campaigns are a great way to drive cross-channel engagement and promotion. For example, you can share details about your mobile app with current email or social media subscribers and encourage them to download it to their phone.

Then, once they’ve downloaded or subscribed to multiple channels, they’ll start to identify your brand and learn more about what you have to offer. This will, in turn, increase your brand awareness and help keep your brand top of mind for your audiences.

4. Promotional Campaigns

Of course, you’re going to want to build some mobile marketing campaigns that can directly impact your bottom line. While welcome and brand awareness campaigns are vital to your mobile marketing success, they are more direct ways to increase revenue.

One of those ways is through promotional marketing campaigns.

Promotional marketing campaigns are exactly what they sound like. They’re messages sent to your customers to encourage them to view a product and make a purchase. These messages are more direct and often personalized based on each subscriber’s behaviors and interests.

The following image is an excellent example of how personalization can be integrated into promotional messaging to keep it relevant to the user’s needs.

 

Use the customer data that you already have to make promotional messages even more engaging. This example does just that by letting the user know that they might want to book their hotel based on their upcoming travel information. Image courtesy of RubyGarage.

Some of the objectives of promotional marketing campaigns include:

• To promote new products and services
• Inform customers about product changes
• Show superiority over competitors
• Convert potential customers

Promotional messages are a great way to interact with your customers and increase campaign revenue, and many companies are already using this type of campaign in their mobile marketing strategy. In fact, promotional emails are the most common email type that marketers are investing in.

But you don’t have to limit yourself to just one channel. Promotional messages are a great tool to use across all of your mobile marketing efforts, including SMS, mobile push, and social media.

5. Product Recommendation Campaigns

Last but not least, you’ll want to incorporate product recommendation campaigns into your mobile marketing strategy. Product recommendation campaigns are another great way to increase campaign revenue and drive conversions.

These types of campaigns work best when you can track user behaviors and purchasing history. With this knowledge, you can know precisely what kinds of products they’re interested in and provide them with relevant products that are likely to pique their interest.

The more you know about each of your customer’s shopping and purchasing habits, the more targeted and personalized you can get with your product recommendations. Then pick products to share and let them know that the items you picked were curated just for them based on their interests. Image courtesy of Remarkety.

When you consider that 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last six months, getting the right products to your audience’s mobile device is vital.

If you’re sending irrelevant content that doesn’t align with your audiences’ interests, they’re much more likely to subscribe and forget about your brand. But, by taking advantage of the power of mobile marketing and product recommendations, you can make a significant impact on your campaign results.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when creating product recommendation campaigns:

• Analyze the right behaviors
• Test your strategies
• Add recommendations in unexpected places
• Feature the correct number or recommendations
• Use social proof

Product recommendations are a great way to bring customer data and your marketing channels together to create a hyper-personalized experience and drive conversions.

Platforms to Make Managing Your Mobile Marketing Campaigns Easy

Once you’ve determined how you want to engage with your audiences via mobile marketing, you might be looking for a new tool to help you effectively manage all of these different campaign types. Luckily, there are plenty of platforms available to help you do just that.

In this section, we’ll take a look at ten different platforms that can help elevate your mobile marketing strategy and save your marketing team time. Each tool has its unique capabilities, and determine which meets your needs will be based on your specific goals.

1. Listrak

Listrak is an integrated digital marketing platform that can help you manage and integrate all of your mobile marketing campaigns. This platform can help you build comprehensive cross-channel digital marketing campaigns that drive conversions through real-time customer data from email to SMS messaging.

Create mobile marketing campaigns that engage your audiences across multiple channels and platforms with one central platform. Choosing to create cross-channel campaigns will help build brand awareness and increase customer touchpoints. Image courtesy of Listrak.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• A robust SMS marketing platform that tracks real-time customer interactions to ensure you’re sharing the most relevant campaigns
• Email marketing tools that allow you to create quickly send, track, and optimize all of your email efforts
• Mobile push capabilities that can help you engage with users at the right time and drive more traffic to your mobile app
• Social media integrations that can take your mobile marketing campaigns to the next level with timely and relevant content

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“A data-driven, easy to use tool for marketers to automate their SMS, email, and CRM programs.” — Listrak Customer Testimonial 

Pricing: Listrak provides customized pricing, and you’ll need to contact a representative to discuss your needs.

2. Leanplum

Leanplum is a mobile marketing platform that will help you reach your customer engagement goals through multi-channel campaigns. This platform can help you manage your marketing campaigns on the following channels, email, mobile push, in-app messaging, and on your website.

Create mobile marketing campaigns and manage them all from one central location. With the ability to quickly view how each campaign performs, you can help you make more informed decisions on where to put your marketing spend. Image courtesy of Leanplum.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Email marketing that allows you to leverage pre-designed templates and integrate personalization into every message
• Quickly engage with your audiences through mobile push notifications that are sent directly to their phones via your mobile app
• Workflow capabilities to help you build robust mobile marketing campaigns that interact with your customers based on where they’re at in their journey
• Website browser push notifications that allow you to quickly engage with audiences on your site no matter what device they’re using

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“Leanplum gives us the flexibility to customize in-app message templates and timing, to reach users when they’re most engaged with a look that matches our brand experience. Because our promotion matched the look and feel of our native UI, users responded with great engagement, giving us a 5% lift in daily active users and increasing their time spent in the app by 30 seconds.” — Leanplum Customer Testimonial

Pricing: Leanplum provides customized pricing, and you’ll need to contact a representative to discuss your needs.

3. Braze

Braze is a customer engagement platform that is designed to drive relevant and personalized experiences to your audiences. Braze will allow you to reach your audiences across multiple channels and platforms and create relevant experiences with every interaction.

Developing automated workflows will make managing your mobile marketing campaigns easier than ever. Identify specific actions and identify what the next interaction looks like to keep your audiences engaged throughout their purchasing journey. Image courtesy of Braze.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Quickly build email campaigns that put mobile users first and let you create messages with dynamic content to improve message personalization
• SMS marketing capabilities that allow you to send awareness and transactional campaigns directly to your customer’s mobile phone
• Use push notifications to encourage new and current subscribers to use your app and make purchases
• Send interactive messages through your mobile app or on-site experience to capture your customer’s attention

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“With Braze, we’re able to serve the global design community better quickly and at scale. The capabilities of the platform enables our flexible and creative messaging strategy, enabling us to evolve with our diverse set of users.” — Braze Customer Testimonial 

Pricing: Braze provides customized pricing, and you’ll need to contact a representative to discuss your needs.

4. Sailthru

Sailthru is a marketing automation platform that helps businesses bring together all of their mobile marketing tolls into one centralized location. Whether you’re looking to integrate email, SMS, or app push notifications — this platform can help you do it all.

Easily create personalized messages that encourage your audiences to interact with your marketing campaigns. Then use a cross-channel strategy to turn that personalization into a high-performing mobile marketing campaign. Image courtesy of Sailthru.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Send emails based on real-time customer interactions and create journey-based triggers to move them closer towards making a purchase
• Create personalized push notifications that pique the interest of your customers and encourage them to open your mobile app
• Elevate your web experience by creating personalized experiences with the help of robust customer profiles
• Use SMS messages to quickly get your important messages and campaigns in front of your customers

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“Partnering with Sailthru allows us to work smarter. Together, we as a team have been able to find opportunities to increase program sophistication while also tailoring our strategy to impact our bottom line ultimately.” — Sailthru Customer Testimonial 

Pricing: Sailthru provides customized pricing, and you’ll need to contact a representative to discuss your needs.

5. Moengage

Moengage is a mobile marketing platform that can help you create and manage all of your mobile campaigns. By creating more personalized experiences and creating a seamless experience from one platform to the next, you can expect to see higher-performing campaigns.

Reach your customers across various platforms with messages that will encourage them to engage and convert. Whether it’s an email, SMS message, or a personalized push notification — you can reach your audiences at the right time with the right message. Image courtesy of Moengage.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Develop a push notification for every situation, from triggered notifications to location-based messages
• Send emails that are relevant to each user by using behavioral data and aligning content with their customer journey
• Create on-site messaging that is specifically drafted for them based on their likes, preferences, and behaviors
• Integrate SMS messaging into your multi-channel marketing campaigns to see even higher engagement metrics

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

Being in the competitive home-sharing market, it’s imperative to provide a personalized and consistent experience to users across channels. MoEngage’s smart segmentation and personalization suite enabled us to improve campaign targeting, and ultimately boost conversions. — Moengage Customer Testimonial 

Pricing: Moengage has three plan options including, the Starter Plan, the Growth Plan, and the Enterprise Plan. You’ll need to contact a representative to learn more about specific pricing.

6. Vibes

Vibes is a mobile engagement platform that will help you manage your mobile marketing with SMS and MMS tools and various mobile app capabilities. With this tool, you’ll easily be able to engage with users anywhere, at any time.

Vibes is a mobile marketing platform that focuses on all the channels that reach your audiences directly on their smartphones. From an elevated mobile app experience to relevant and timely SMS and MMS messages, your messages will be seen. Image courtesy of Vibes.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Use SMS and MMS marketing to reach your audiences on their most-used device and boost both in-store and online revenue
• Integrate push into with your mobile app to send personalized push notifications with rich, dynamic content
• Add mobile wallet as one of your marketing channels and keep it relevant for customers based on real-time data
• Use your mobile app inbox as a central location for all of your customer communications

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“With Vibes, we were able to build a strong audience and achieve a high app install rate. SMS proved to be the lowest cost channel for app installs in the retail base across all our campaigns.” — Vibes Customer Testimonial

Pricing: Vibes provides customized pricing, and you’ll need to contact a representative to discuss your needs.

7. Airship

Airship is a customer engagement platform designed to help enterprise brands perform their mobile marketing campaigns more effectively and at scale. This tool can help you deliver the right messages, to the right audiences, on the right device, at the right time — which will lead to higher conversions.

Find new ways to engage your audiences and encourage them to opt-in to your marketing campaigns to receive the full benefit. Whether it’s through your mobile app or web-based notifications, you can reach your audiences where they’re at. Image courtesy of Airship.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Improve your mobile app experience with push notifications, a dedicated message center, in-app messaging, and more
• Create a seamless experience between platforms and integrate SMS messages into your campaigns for higher performance
• Easily create and send personalized emails that are much more likely to engage your subscribers
• Leverage web notifications that are customized for your audiences and return higher performance metrics

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“The level of insight that Airship provides is invaluable. It would be like driving with a blindfold on if we didn’t have Performance Analytics.” — Airship Customer Testimonial 

Pricing: Airship has two pricing models, Engagement Channels and Analytics & Data. To find out specific pricing for the platform, you’ll need to speak with a representative.

8. Swrve

Swrve is a mobile marketing platform that allows you to bring all of your customer data and marketing channels together to create one seamless experience. With the right tools, you can easily automate marketing campaigns, react to customer lifecycle changes, and much more.

The more you know about your customers, the more customized campaigns you can develop. Understanding whether they’re a loyal customer or at risk to churn can help you identify what campaigns they should be enrolled in. Image courtesy of Swrve.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Integrate this platform with your current marketing channels to bring each other and create multi-channel experiences
• Easily design and automate seamless customer experiences from onboarding campaigns to optimized transactional messages
• Improve segmentation with business intelligence technology that provides you with all of the customer data you need
• Send triggered messages directly to your customers via their mobile device based on their real-time interactions

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“Swrve is giving us the ability to inform, engage, and assist customers at scale with 1:1 messaging in real-time. This is a game-changer for us, as more customers are opening our app more often, our engagement is increasing, and we’ve enjoyed great achievements, including a 79% increase revenue in a single quarter with Swrve.” — Swrve Customer Testimonial

Pricing: Swrve provides customized pricing, and you’ll need to contact a representative to discuss your needs.

9. Iterable

Iterable is a cross-channel marketing platform that will help your business create a seamless customer experience from one channel to the next. Whether your goal is to create more personalized emails, improve app engagement, or start more 1:1 conversations with your audiences — this platform can get you there.

Engage with your customers across all of their mobile channels, from email to SMS and in-app messaging. Using one tool to manage all of these interactions will allow you to build full-scale cross-channel marketing campaigns. Image courtesy of Iterable.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Create email marketing campaigns at scale with personalization tools, content snippets, and dynamic audience segmentation capabilities
• Develop workflows that allow you to integrate all of your mobile marketing channels  to run cross-channel campaigns with ease
• Engage with your audiences through push notifications that entice them to open your mobile app
• Build 1:1 content experiences through relevant customer data to build stronger relationships and increase campaign relevancy

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“Flexibility in automation was our biggest priority—finding a solution that would give our team access to the data and events they needed, so they weren’t continually reliant on engineering.”  — Iterable Customer Testimonial

Pricing: Iterable provides customized pricing, and you’ll need to contact a representative to discuss your needs.

10. Kochava

Kochava is a digital marketing platform that helps businesses develop customized marketing campaigns for customers at every sales funnel stage. From sending a welcome campaign to new subscribers to promoting new products and upcoming sales — you can get the word out with the help of this tool.

Keep your audiences engaged no matter what their journey looks like. From enrolling new customers to targeting people who can churn, Kochava can help you make the most out of every interaction. Image courtesy of Kochava.

Mobile Marketing Tools: 

• Leverage mobile push notifications and SMS messages to get your campaigns out to your audiences
• Use frequency levers to identify customers who are trending towards becoming inactive and send targeted campaigns to keep them from churning
• Create rich audience segmentation to improve campaign relevancy and personalization in an effort to increase engagement
• Send campaigns that integrate dynamic content, triggered messages, and create funnel events to keep messages relevant and timely

Here’s what their customers are saying: 

“Kochava is one of my favorite partners to work with. It’s hard to imagine life without that tool and product.” — Kochava Customer Testimonial 

Pricing: Kochava has three plan options, including the Free plan, the Foundation plan priced at $100 per month, the Enterprise plan that starts at $100 a month. There are additional add ons available based on your business needs as well.

Fill Your Mobile Marketing Toolkit With the Right Campaigns

The success of your mobile marketing efforts all comes down to sending the right content, to the right person, at the right time. By creating campaigns that span the entire customer lifecycle, you can reach audiences at the right time at scale and increase your chances of making a sale.

So what are you waiting for? Get started filling your mobile marketing toolkit with the right campaigns based on your customer needs and start seeing higher monthly metrics.