Expert: What Apple’s new features really mean for brands

Kristina: Rich messaging is one of the bigger updates to the Apple infrastructure, as far as brands are concerned. What do these updates really mean for business, and how can brands take advantage of them?

Marissa Aydlett, VP of Marketing, Appboy: Notifications are a great way to pull users into brand experiences, connect campaigns and experiences together, and boost engagement and value exchange between a user and a brand, ultimately building a long-term relationship and loyalty.

Kristina: Can these updates improve how brands ‘see’ their customers?

Marissa: a single view of each user across channels and devices wherever, whenever — is critical to a successful relationship between a brand and their user. With all user data in a single CRM (like Appboy), brands can understand in real-time what behaviors and actions they are taking and action on them in the moment. For example, a brand can send a location specific message based on the weather in the different areas, or personalized content in specific languages, or messages based on loyalty points, and more.

Kristina: How can brands best use the rich messaging features without bombarding customers?

Marissa: Appboy data shows that brands will generate a 71% lift in retention over the initial two-months just by sending a push notification to customers within the first week after installing the app. To ensure customers don’t disappear, brands should give their customers the same cadence they’ve come to love and expect, onboard smart, and simply iterate on what they’re doing as they have with social, emailing, and in-app messages and rich mediums like pre-existing push notifications on Android.

Kristina: Should brands jump right in to these new features?

Marissa: Brands shouldn’t add creative just to add creative. Instead, brands should think of Apple’s new push notifications as the new pull. Their purpose is to engage customers and pull them into brand experiences, whether within the interactive 3D touch experience on their lock screen, or within the app. There’s a lot that goes into a message that can impact it’s success — whether that’s getting a click, or an open, or converting to a purchase, app usage, or other custom event. Brands should think about more than just the visuals (though they can increase conversions by 57% when used in tandem with other lifecycle marketing tactics) such as the tone, deep-linking into the exact experiences, multichannel cohesiveness, send-time optimization, and the overall campaign messaging and creative.