Neolane Unveils New Mobile App Channel

At the Forrester Customer Experience Forum in New York City yesterday, conversational marketing technology provider Neolane debuted a new application that lets marketers enhance their engagement with customers through personalized push offer notifications on mobile devices.

As more people turn to smartphones and tablets for both work and entertainment purposes, the mobile advertising market continues to grow. U.S. mobile advertising revenue is expected to reach $2.61 billion by the end of 2012, almost double that of last year, according to eMarketer.

By integrating their brand's mobile app with Neolane's marketing database, which now includes its Mobile App Channel, marketers can deploy a range of engagement strategies such as event triggered messages, transactional messaging, and geolocation-based offers through a customer's smartphone and tablet.

Being able to personalize a customer's engagement with brands on a mobile device is important to companies since it lets them maintain the conversation that they've already started with their customers through other channels, such as their Web site and social networks, according to Kristin Hambelton, vice president of marketing at Neolane.

"It's not just about the personalized push notification," Hambelton says. "Brands want consistent communication with their customers since it's expected of them. It's been difficult to do that with the new channels and devices, but here's a way for marketers to facilitate that seamless conversation."

One of the ways brands can leverage cross-channel marketing with personalized push notifications is by referring to an email a customer received from the brand in a message sent as a push notification. For customers who agree to receive geolocation-based offers, brands will be able to send them offers based on their proximity to a certain store.

Personalized push notifications on mobile devices are pointless, however, if the customer does not first opt-in to receive them. Neolane helps brands clear that hurdle by allowing them to offer their customers different levels of push notifications, Hambelton explains. "We let brands tailor the amount of opt-ins and notifications their customers receive and it's up to them to decide how much they want to offer," she says.