Additionally, with GDPR and other privacy laws in place, it’s more important for marketers to leverage native push notifications as it works on the principle of permission-based marketing (at least on iOS devices—this will be discussed in more detail later).

1. What are Native app push notifications?

Native app push notifications, also referred to as mobile push notifications, are short messages sent to a user’s device where the respective app is installed. 

These messages pop up in the notification center, the lock screen, and as a banner, depending on the mobile operating system (OS) you use.

The notifications can be sent at any time, whether or not the user is actively using the app, as long as the device is connected to the internet.

2. What’s the difference between web push notifications and native push notifications? 

Oftentimes, web push notifications and native app push notifications are referred to interchangeably, as web push notifications can also be sent to a mobile device. However, they are quite different from each other:

Web push notifications

• For web push notifications to function, it requires a website with a web push code installed.
• It can be sent to both the user’s desktop and mobile device, regardless if they are actively using your website, as long as the browser is open.
• Unlike app push notifications, web push notifications cannot leverage device features.
• It can only support large images and only on Chrome version 56 and above.

Native app push notifications

• For native app push notifications to function, it requires a native app installed on a user’s device. 
• Its reach is limited to mobile devices (smartphones and tablets).
• It can utilize users’ device features, such as the GPS, camera, contact list, etc.
• It can support rich media, such as images, GIFs, videos, and audio.

3. How do native push notifications work?

The process begins with the app publisher registering their app with an OSPNS (Operating System Push Notification Service). Each OS (e.g., Android or iOS) have their own respective OSPNS.

The OSPNS then provides an API to the app publisher to allow communication between the app and the service. The app publisher then adds an SDK to their app to enable native push notifications, then uploads the app to the app store.

Depending on the OS, an API call will trigger an opt-in prompt once the user downloads the app to their device. For Android, mobile app push notifications are enabled by default. For iOS, however, an opt-in is necessary. 

After this, users will start receiving push notifications from the app. The app publisher can then use unique identifiers (IDs) from the device and the user’s preferences to personalize the messages they will send.

As mentioned earlier, notifications can be sent any time of the day, regardless if the user is actively using the app. However, an internet connection is required.

When users click or tap on your notification, this will open the app and they will be taken to the specific landing page. 

4. What are the benefits/advantages of using push notifications?

Push notifications are virtually among the best ways to communicate directly with your target audience. Here are some of its top benefits:

• Real-time notifications: With a well-strategized push notification campaign, you can send the right message to the right users. Every time you have new content, new promotions, and so forth, you can send these notifications to users in real-time.
• Personalization: Since app push notifications can leverage user and device data, you can personalize your message and make it more relevant to each recipient.
• Increase engagement: App push notifications are great tools for retargeting and retaining customers. According to a study by Invespcro, push notifications can boost app engagement by 88%. The same study also found that apps with push notifications increase app retention rates 3 to 10 times more than those who don’t.
• Increase conversions and sales: When done well, you can boost conversions and sales with app push notifications by providing users with relevant reminders at the right time. The study mentioned previously found that 48% of mobile app users have made an in-store purchase after being prompted by an app push notification.

5. Do users have to opt-in?

For Android devices, native app push notifications are enabled by default. Users do not need to opt-in.

For iOS devices, they are disabled by default. Users need to opt-in before you can start sending them app push notifications.

6. What is the anatomy of a native push notification on an iPhone and Android?

App push notifications on an iPhone or Android both have the following “parts” in their “anatomy”: an icon, the app name, a timestamp of when the notification was received, the title and message, rich media (usually an image), and calls-to-action (CTAs).

However, while native app push notifications appear similar on iPhone and Android devices, both have subtle differences:

iPhone

• iPhone users first see the title and the subtitle. The notification can be expanded to reveal the banner image. Maximizing/minimizing can be done by swiping to the left.
• Aside from the notification message, iOS allows for an option to add a subtitle.
• The banner image/GIF is picked up automatically from the content and used as the icon. There is no option to add an icon of your choice.

Android

• You have the option for a small and large icon (usually your brand logo). If a small icon is not defined, Android automatically uses its default bell icon.
• To maximize or minimize the banner image, users can click the inverted arrow (^) beside the timestamp.

7. How are push notifications delivered to a user’s device? 

As mentioned, native app push notifications can be shown in 3 places depending on your mobile OS: the notification center, the lock screen, and as a banner. There are also differences in how the notifications are delivered to a user’s device based on the OS:

iPhone

• Notifications are delivered to the notification center by default. If the phone is locked, however, users cannot see them on their lock screens unless they manually enable lock screen notifications.
• To add to its subtlety, notifications are delivered silently on iPhones and do not appear as banners. Users will have to swipe down on their notification center to see any new app notifications in chronological order. However, there is also an option if you wish to receive push notification to be “Delivered Prominently” (i.e., with sound or badge/banner).

Android

• Notifications appear by default on the notification tray. If the phone is locked, notifications are also shown on the lock screen. The notifications, however, disappear once the user unlocks their phone. Notifications on lock screens can also be manually disabled. 
• For lock screen notifications, users have the option to show or hide sensitive information—that is, only the title will be shown, not the message.
• Android is more prominent in showing push notifications. By default, they appear as banners and the sound and LED light notification are also enabled. This can, however, be manually disabled or snoozed.

8. What kinds of messages are best to send through native push notifications?

• Promotional: These kinds of messages are the most common types, especially for the e-commerce industry. Promotional push notifications include special offers, time-limited discounts, and even behavior-based product recommendations or updates (e.g., “An item in your wishlist has just been restocked!”)
• Transactional: These messages are triggered by a user’s previous interactions with the app—for example, shipping and delivery updates, abandoned cart reminders, and payment confirmations.
• Lifecycle: These types of notifications can go hand-in-hand with transactional push notifications. The main difference is that with lifecycle messages, the triggers are mainly based on timing. Some examples include welcome voucher notifications, special birthday promos, and re-engagement reminders for inactive app users.
• Educational: For non-e-commerce apps, educational notifications are the most common types to use. Publishers may use this to inform users in real-time if new content is available. It can also be used by e-commerce apps to provide relevant tips in using the app and/or their products and services.

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Recently this year, Apple revised their App Store Review Guidelines, allowing businesses to have their own mobile app for their store, as long as their business is properly licensed and legal.

This is a significant advancement for highly regulated markets, as most marketing channels are still restricted, not to mention the fact that the mobile app market brings huge opportunities to businesses.

How do you make your mobile app successful? Here are 6 tips to help you get started:

1. Understand how Apple and Google Android rank their apps

While neither Apple (iOS) nor Google (Android) has revealed rules as to how they rank the apps on their respective platforms, the following factors are generally accepted as among the top things they consider:

• Ratings and reviews – This includes the average ratings from users and the volume (total number) of reviews.
• Install and uninstallation rates – Download velocity (i.e., number of installs) is a huge signal of your app’s quality. This also includes the growth trend—how download counts and app ratings change over time. Retention (installs vs. uninstalls) is also more important than acquisitions.
• App usage statistics – This refers to how engaged users are with your app and how often they use it.
• Keyword density – This applies to the app title/name, subtitle/short description, and app description. Keywords are considered as one of the most influential factors when it comes to app ranking. We will discuss this in more detail in the next section. 

2. Create a communication strategy

Promoting your new app before, during, and after your launch is crucial so that your target audience will know about its existence. And it begins with a communication strategy. 

If you have an existing community, leverage it. You can send email or SMS announcements about your app’s launch to existing customers and subscribers. Additionally, share the news about your new app on platforms where your audience is most likely to frequent—Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. 

An important thing to remember here is that you optimize the content of your campaign depending on the platform you will use. SMS campaigns, for example, should be a lot shorter. Instagram campaigns, on the other hand, would require creative visuals. Email campaigns would give you more leeway in terms of content length.

Here’s a sample SMS copy that you can use to share the news:

Hi, [name of customer]. Our new mobile app is now live!

Now you can buy your products conveniently from your phone, whether you have an Android or iOS device.

Download now and get a welcome gift! 

[Download links here for each platform]

3. Optimize the title and description of your app

Just like search engines, app store algorithms rely on keywords to discover and display your mobile app to search results. When writing your app title and description, treat it as you would for SEO content. Use relevant keywords to help both the algorithm and your target users find your listing easier. A few things to consider:

• What keywords do people use to search for your business?
• What words best describe your app?

The content of your app store listing carries the heaviest weight in determining the ranking of your mobile app. Here are some tips to optimize your app title/name and description: 

App title

The title of your app should be simple yet distinctive. A good practice is to include your brand name and 2 to 4 words succinctly describing what it is. 

For the Apple App Store, the character limit for the app name is up to 30 characters. For Google Play, it’s 50 characters.

Subtitle/short description

For Apple, a subtitle is required along with the app description; it appears right below your app title. For Google, there’s no option for a subtitle, but there’s a field for a short description, which is the first text that people see when looking at your app’s details and can be expanded to view the full description.

For either field, this is where you can describe the value of your app in one glance. Subtitles on the Apple App Store are limited to up to 30 characters, while for Google, short descriptions can be up to 80 characters long.

Description

The best descriptions are those that are concise yet informative. It should also highlight the features and functionality of your app. Start with a strong introduction, then include a blurb on the benefits of using your app. List down the app features (in bullet points for easier reading), along with details on what value the users can gain from each feature. 

Remember to include your target keywords in all fields of your app listing, but especially in your description. It should read naturally and not forced—the algorithm will also look into the quality of your content.

For both Apple and Google, the description can be up to 4,000 characters.

To learn more about each of their guidelines on app listings, refer to their guides here:

• Apple App Store: Creating Your Product Page
• Google Play: Create Your App – Product Details

4. Request app reviews

Along with optimized keywords, app reviews and ratings also largely influence the ranking of your app listing. 

In a study, it’s been found that 91% of consumers trust online reviews the same way as they do with personal recommendations. In another study, 59% of mobile users check the ratings and reviews of an app before deciding to download it.

The challenge is that not all users are compelled to leave a review unless it’s a negative experience. How do you prompt users to provide positive reviews about your app? Creating a native app push notification is a good strategy to use.

Here are a few tips to request app reviews through native app notifications:

• Consider the timing: Timing is everything when it comes to push notifications. Determine which times of the day your target audience are most likely to be actively using your app. Give users time as well to explore your app first before requesting a review—asking less than an hour from when they downloaded your app won’t garner you results.
• Consider app usage and engagement: Utilize user statistics, particularly their usage and engagement. For example, a user who has opened your app at least 10 times in a period of 3 days is more likely to be enjoying your app. However, don’t nag if a user says no to your prompt—this will only annoy them and could lead them to leave a bad review or uninstall your app altogether.
• Optimize your message: Your push notification message must be simple, direct, and polite. Asking a question is the best way. For example:

Enjoying our app? 

Options: Not really / Yes!

If they answered “Yes”: How about rating our app?

Options: No, thanks / OK

Landing page: Your app listing

If they answered “Not really”: Would you mind giving us feedback?

Options: No, thanks / OK

Landing page: Feedback form/email (not your app listing) – This gives you the opportunity to solve the issue and improve your app

5. Create a push notification strategy

As a related point, native app push notifications can be used beyond requesting app reviews—they can be used as a direct marketing channel as well. 

For highly regulated markets, in particular, 75% of customers who install apps opt-in to receive push notifications, with a promising open rate of 20% to 25%. This means you have fertile ground to increase your conversions and sales. 

Trigger-based and behavior-based push notifications aid in personalizing the shopping experience with your app even further, which increases customer satisfaction. Create a push notification strategy that covers every step of the user’s journey:

• A welcome gift (e.g., discount vouchers, free shipping)
• Abandoned cart
• Birthdays
• Exclusive in-app offers
• Shipping updates
• Items on wish list now restocked/marked down

6. Have a loyalty program

Another way to boost customer retention is to have a loyalty program for your app. A study showed that 75% of consumers reported they are more likely to make a repeat purchase after receiving a loyalty award. Another study also found that brands with strong loyalty programs grow revenue 2.5 times faster than brands that don’t.

What are ways you can cultivate loyalty through your app? Here are some ideas:

• First-time purchase/new customer discounts
• Tiered discounts: For example, free shipping or discount vouchers if customers make a certain volume of purchase each month
• Milestone coupons (e.g., birthday, signup anniversaries, etc.)
• Referral bonuses
• Unique offers in exchange for reward points
• Early access to new arrivals

Create a Mobile App to Boost Your Business

As we mentioned, mobile apps offer huge opportunities for growth to businesses. 

With a mobile app, you gain the upper hand over the competition by offering a more convenient way for customers to purchase your products. A mobile app also offers a host of other benefits:

• Boost brand recognition and loyalty – Seeing your brand logo (i.e., app logo) regularly on their devices will help customers remember your brand. The accessibility and the ability to create loyalty programs also cultivate customer loyalty and retention.
• Increase sales and revenue – Mobile apps streamline the buying process and thus increase customer experience. This in turn, can lead to more sales and increased revenues.
• Improve customer engagement – Mobile apps give you an easy form of communication with customers through app push notifications. This, along with loyalty programs and a more convenient shopping experience, improves customer engagement.

Considering a mobile app for your business? Alpine IQ offers a completely customized mobile app solution for you. Contact us to get started!

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This goes without saying that mobile apps offer businesses a huge opportunity to maximize their marketing strategy, especially for those in highly regulated markets. Businesses need to one-up their approach to have an edge over the competition — ​​and a native mobile app can help you achieve that.

Here are three ways a mobile app can drive your business to success:

1. New marketing channels 

On June 7, 2021, Apple changed its App Store Review Guidelines, allowing legal and properly licensed highly regulated businesses to have their own apps. This paves the way for new marketing channels for retailers, as the highly regulated markets are still restricted in most marketing channels. 

Additionally, one of the most important features that a native mobile app offers is push notifications. These are messages that pop up on mobile devices and usually appear at the top of your screens. 

For marketers, native push notifications enhance your strategy by allowing you to provide tailored content to consumers, such as location and behavior-based alerts. It also widens your reach, as you can send them notifications at any time (as long they opt-in), whether they are actively using your app or their device. 

According to FlowHub, 75% of customers who use a mobile app opt-in to receive push notifications. The same study revealed that mobile push notification open rates for businesses are between 20% and 25%.

2. New way to easily increase revenue

Another good reason why people prefer mobile apps is that it makes everything easier: the buying process can all be done conveniently at the tip of their fingers. Several studies have also been conducted supporting the fact that purchasing decisions are highly influenced by the quality of customer experience. 

This is all the more significant to businesses—having a dedicated retail mobile app adds a new way to reach customers and increase revenue. And as we ease into the new normal, having the option to buy products online provides a huge advantage to businesses.

Additionally, one of the appeals of mobile apps is the ability to offer loyalty rewards and discounts to customers. What delineates this from discounts provided by retail websites is that with mobile apps, there’s more personalization, and rewards can be tailored to fit the needs of each of your customers.

One study found that 75% of customers favor brands that have built-in loyalty programs—it makes them feel special and highly valued. People are also naturally more eager to take advantage of good deals, which translates to better conversions and increased sales.

3. Keep your customers coming back

As a related point, the combination of personalization, loyalty programs, and trigger-based push notifications all add to the customer experience, which will entice consumers to keep coming back to you.

A study has shown that 80% of consumers are more inclined to buy from a brand that offers tailored experiences. With mobile apps, customers can create profiles and save their details, which will allow you to gain more insight into their unique preferences, purchasing and browsing history, and more.

Businesses can then use this information to customize the customer’s experience through personalized SMS, email campaigns, and push notification messages. In turn, this fosters a stronger relationship and increased loyalty with the business and the brand.

Get a Fully Branded Mobile App for Your Business

Highly regulated related mobile apps are still sparse in the app market now, and this means you have a huge advantage over the competition by launching your own mobile app.

Here at Alpine IQ, we offer a completely customized mobile app solution for you. Get your own fully branded mobile app that is fully compliant with Apple and Google App Store regulations, in addition to the following features:

• Highly customizable white label solution 
• Ability to enable push notifications
• Syncs seamlessly with your POS, e-commerce providers, and social profiles

With Alpine IQ, you can onboard customers to an app that is truly yours. Your app, your brand, no marketplace competition.

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Here are key things you need to know about iOS 15 and how you can prepare your email campaigns the update that is set to be released on September 20th.

What is happening to email with the iOS 15 update?

Apple will be introducing Mail Privacy Protection with the iOS 15 update, which will make it more difficult for marketers to get insight into Apple users’ email behaviors. With iOS 15, users can now:

• Disable open tracking – Marketers will no longer see whether an iOS 15 user has opened their emails.
• Hide IP addresses – Marketers will no longer be able to implement IP-based segmentation in their email campaigns.
• Hide email addresses – Users can opt to use randomly-generated email addresses for signups.

When is this happening?

The update is expected to be released on September 20, 2021.

What You Can Do Before and After the iOS 15 Update 

A/B testing subject lines

Get your email campaigns right by starting with a well-strategized and compelling subject line. For every campaign, create variations of your email subject line and do A/B testing. As open tracking will no longer be relevant to Apple users with iOS 15, you can measure the effectiveness by their click-throughs.

Clean your lists

Weed out inactive contacts and invalid email addresses from your list as early as now. It’s also considered best practice to regularly evaluate your lists to avoid high bounce rates, which could affect your overall deliverability.

Back up your channels

Start utilizing Waterfall to use backup channels for your marketing campaigns. With our l technology, you can set up preferred channels for your campaigns based on what works best for your customers. You can also protect your campaigns even further by using automatic backup delivery through Waterfall to ensure that your messages are actually delivered. 

How will I know my audience is engaged going forward?

You can gauge the performance of your email campaigns by the number of clicks in your call-to-action (CTA), as well as unsubscriptions and conversions.

We will discuss more on this in the next section.

What Metrics Matter Now

CTR

The click-through rate (CTR) is the most common metric in determining the effectiveness of your email campaign. It actually provides far more insight than email open rates, because you will know how your contacts are engaging with your content. 

Top Tip: Be sure that your email has actionable content (a CTA) so that your readers will have a clear guide on what to do next. 

Unsubscribes

While unsubscriptions can be a negative metric, they can still be used as a good baseline for creating your email list growth strategy. 

It can also help in cleaning up your email lists and improve the quality of email recipients. This is more preferable than continually sending emails to uninterested parties and increasing the likelihood of being reported as spam.

Top Tip: Include a feedback option on your opt-out landing page. This gives you a prime opportunity to learn what worked, what doesn’t, and what you can do to improve your campaigns.

Conversions

On a similar note to click-throughs, conversion rates give you insight into how customers complete specific actions through your emails. Whether it’s completing a sale, signing up for a free trial, or making an inquiry, conversions tell you the progress users make from your email campaigns.

Top Tip: Provide something of value in your CTA so that email recipients are more compelled to take action, increasing your conversions in the process.

Final Notes

It’s important to note that since the update will only apply to Apple-related products, users who use other email apps (e.g., Gmail or Microsoft Outlook) on an iOS 15, iPadOS 15, or macOS Monterey device are not affected for now—that is, marketers can still gauge email open rates.

However, it’s safe to anticipate that other email providers will likely follow Apple’s lead in protecting email users’ privacy in the future. It will be practical for marketers utilizing email marketing to take precautions as described in this article as early as now. 

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However, email marketing still has to deal with avoiding spam filters. According to Statista, spam emails account for nearly half (47.3%) of email traffic globally—and your carefully crafted email marketing campaign could be one of them.

How do you avoid email spam filters? In what ways could your email be considered spam?

What Is spam and how is it detected?

Spam, in the context of marketing, is unsolicited messages that are sent to recipients in bulk. As such, spam emails are also known as Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE).

Spam messages are detected by spam filters. These filters work by sifting each email and putting them up against a list of criteria to determine whether it’s spam or not. If it’s considered spam, it will go straight to your Spam or Junk folder. 

Another way spam messages are discovered are through email firewalls. They function the same way as spam filters, but the main difference is that if your email is flagged as spam and reported as such several times, your IP address and domain name will be communicated with other firewalls, blocking all incoming emails from you.

Spam Laws

Unintentionally creating and sending spam-like email marketing campaigns can be damaging to your reputation. Additionally, if your organization does not comply with spam laws, you could also face serious penalties, including civil and criminal charges.

Each country has different laws and policies in place for commercial emails; for example, the United States has CAN-SPAM and Canada has CASL. Here are the things you need to know about these two laws:

1. CAN-SPAM

CAN-SPAM is the short name for the United States’ Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003, which is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Act aims to protect consumers from any unsolicited business emails, regardless if they were sent in bulk or not. 

Additionally, not all B2B or B2C emails are considered part of the coverage of CAN-SPAM. Emails that are transactional in nature are exempted—for example, following up an ongoing transaction. For emails that have both commercial and transactional content, the primary purpose of the email will be the deciding factor

Penalties

CAN-SPAM has heavy penalties for non-compliance, amounting to $43,792 for each separate email in violation. And if there is more than one organization involved, all of them can be held responsible. 

Additional fines might also be incurred if aggravated violations are also present in the case, as well as criminal penalties and imprisonment. Among these violations are any fraudulent ways to digitally access or use the information for commercial gain.

How to avoid violating CAN-SPAM Laws:

The FTC specified 7 main requirements for commercial emails:

1. Keep your header information accurate: This applies to the information in your “From,” “To,” and “Reply to” fields, as well as the domain name and email address.
2. Be honest with your subject lines: It must clearly and concisely describe the contents of your email.
3. Be honest that the message is an ad: You must also be honest that your message is commercial in nature. It can be as simple as including a fine print that says, “This advertisement is brought to you by XYZ Corp.”
4. Disclose your business location: You must include a valid, current, and accurate physical address of your business. PO boxes can also be used.
5. Must include an opt-out notice: Provide a conspicuous notice in the email, clearly stating how recipients can opt-out of any future emails at any time. Opting out must also be easy and straightforward to do—for example, requiring only one or two clicks to do so.
6. Honor opt-out requests within 10 business days: These requests must be promptly and unconditionally honored.
7. Be sure that third-party email marketing tools/solutions you use are compliant: It is your legal responsibility to check and ensure that all aspects of CAN-SPAM are being followed.  

2. CASL (Canada)

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) regulates and outlines safe practices in email marketing to protect both businesses and individuals from spam and other digital threats. 

CASL is reinforced by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and it applies to commercial messages sent by Canadian and global organizations to Canadian recipients. As opposed to CAN-SPAM, CASL is a more recent law, created in 2014, and is considered as one of the toughest yet most effective laws concerning spam. What sets it apart from other laws is its stringent requirement for people to opt-in—that is, you must have consent from recipients before you can send commercial emails to them.

Penalties

Penalties under CASL are quite severe, consisting of fines up to $1 million for individual violators and up to a staggering $10 million for corporations. This amount applies to each violation. 

In addition to the heavy fines, victims can sue for damages if actual harm or loss after receiving the spam message is proven. Organizations are also subject to vicarious liability for any wrongful acts done by the company itself, its employees, or any third parties they work with in relation to email marketing.

How to avoid violating CASL Laws:

To summarize, CASL requires organizations sending commercial messages the following:

1. Clear identifying information about their business is provided in the message, including the company name, current physical address, and contact information.
2. Express and implied consent are knowingly given by the customers before organizations can send them commercial messages. Records of the consent must also be kept (i.e., date, location, and manner).
   1. Express consent refers to recipients saying yes to email opt-ins. It also includes any verbal or written consent to receive emails from the company. There is no expiration for this type of consent but it can be revoked by the recipient at any time.
   2. Implied consent refers to certain activities with the customer that imply being in agreement with the company to receive emails. CASL stipulates that the validity for implied consent for a purchase is 2 years; consent for an inquiry, 6 months. Once the consent expires, the contact information of the recipient must be removed from the mailing list.
3. All messages must have a clear and straightforward unsubscribe option. All opt-out requests must also be honored within 10 business days.

Spam filters and how to avoid them 

While every spam filter, email firewall, and spam law are different from one another, there are certain widely accepted best practices in sending commercial emails. Here are a few tips on how to avoid having your email flagged by spam filters: 

1. Boost IP Address Reputation and Sender Score

The reputation of your IP address is one of the factors in determining whether your email is safe or not. Email providers use your Sender Score (also known as IP reputation, IP score, or email sender reputation) to gauge if your email should be filtered to the spam folder or sent to your inbox.

If your IP address is new, consider IP Warming:

Mailbox providers view emails from a new IP address as suspicious until they establish a positive sending reputation, which can take between 4-8 weeks. Warming could take longer if email providers perceive the email as “unwanted” by the recipient. This is why Alpine IQ recommends starting with your best-performing messages or campaigns to your highest engaged audience. The goal during the warm-up process is to send to your subscribers who are least likely to bounce or complain. During your IP warm-up, the more consistent you are with volume, frequency, complaint, and bounce levels, the faster you will establish a positive sending reputation.

IP Warm-up Plan:

• Weeks 1 & 2:
  Send frequently to your most active subscribers – those who have opened/clicked, or opted-in within the past 30 days
• Weeks 3 & 4:
  Expand to subscribers who have opened/clicked, or opted-in within the past 60 days
• Weeks 5 & 6:
  Expand to subscribers who have opened/clicked, or opted-in within the past 90 days

A few other factors that could also affect your Sender Score are the following:

• Having a high hard bounce rate, which refers to failed email deliveries, such as the recipient’s email address being invalid or incorrectly spelled.
  Pro Tip: To avoid hard bounces, make sure you are cleaning your lists often. There are email verify softwares availble that can bulk verify.
• Using purchased email lists and thus giving you low recipient engagement and more spam complaints.
• Sending poor-quality content.

2. Ensure all metadata is accurate

Metadata in emails is the information in the Date, From, To, and Subject of your email.

Spam filters are more likely to flag your email if it’s addressed to your recipient’s email address and not their name. Alpine IQ recommends that you use our macros to personalize the “To:” field of your email. Also, spam filters will check if your recipients already know you. This is why it is important to use a verified domain to send your messages.

Having misleading metadata or thumbnails in your email could lead to your message being filtered as spam. Additionally, any misleading information that’s intended to trick users into believing the content to be something else is against both CAN-SPAM and CASL laws.

3. Remove excess code

The code behind the email templates you use must be kept simple and clean. Having a messy code, including broken or incomplete tags, could prompt spam filters to flag your email. 

4. Tailor your content to boost engagement

We briefly mentioned earlier that recipient engagement is a factor in determining Sender Score. A practical tactic to boost engagement is to segment your subscribers and then tailor your email content to their interests, needs, and preferences. In a study, it has been found that 72% of consumers prefer to engage with personalized messages over generic ones.

5. Provide quality email content 

The quality of the content constitutes the majority of the factors in determining whether an email is spam. Here are some tips to avoid being flagged by spam filters:

• URLs: Use descriptive text instead of naked URLs as the link text. Avoid using URL shorteners as well. 
• Links: Make sure all links included in your email are working properly.
• Images and text: Balance the ratio of images to text and links to texts. Be also sure that images are mobile-responsive and are optimized for web viewing.
• Grammar and spelling: Emails with poor grammar and spelling errors could make it appear unprofessional, and recipients may likely report your email as spam.
• Trigger words: Avoid spam trigger words and, as mentioned earlier, make sure that your subject lines are accurate and honest. There’s an exhaustive list of trigger words (nearly a thousand!), but here are a few to give you an idea:
  • Calls to action that denote a sense of urgency: Act now / hurry / open this
  • Competitions: Congratulations / you’re a winner!
  • E-commerce: Order today / wants credit card
  • Financial: Double your income / earn extra cash
  • Health: Lose weight / life insurance / Viagra
  • Marketing: Dear friend / 100% free / free sample
  • Special offers: For you / instant access
  • Sales: For only (amount) / join millions / save big

6. Properly format your email 

Another factor is the formatting of your email. An unprofessionally formatted email does not only make your content look spammy, but it also affects your bounce rate and engagement. Avoid the following formatting mistakes as much as possible:

• Using all caps
• Using multiple punctuations (e.g., “Hello!!!!” or “What do you think?!?”)
• Using too many colors
• Using too many different font styles and/or font sizes

Professionally Craft Your Email Marketing Campaigns

A lot of effort goes into email marketing campaigns, and being mindful of whether you’re compliant with spam laws is just one of its many facets. One way to streamline your process is to work with professional marketing solutions providers like Alpine IQ. 

All our solutions are backed by stringent security measures to make sure that your data and that of your clients’ are safe and secure. Our email marketing service, in particular, is equipped with the best tools to efficiently automate your email campaigns for you. We also ensure that every email you send is compliant with spam and data security laws. 

To get the latest updates on our suite of services, make sure to subscribe to our blog today!

Yes. Major carriers like AT&T are blocking messages sent by dispensaries to loyal customers. You read that correctly. Dispensaries in legal markets are still suffering from outdated federal policies. For more details, read this

This isn’t your typical pot-patriotism. This is serious business because this affects cannabis businesses all over North America. 

Fear not, Alpine IQ will not allow the voices of dispensaries to be silenced. 

To give cannabis entrepreneurs a fighting chance to change the world for the better, we invented two business-saving technologies that maximize deliverability. What does this mean for your dispensary marketing team? With a few best practices enabled, your team will be able to maximize deliverability and grow your business! 

Increase weekly conversions with email marketing 

The days of logging into multiple softwares to get through marketing todo lists is over. 

When Alpine IQ learned our dispensary partners struggled with data silos and blocked emails, we set out to develop a powerful email marketing software that would automate email marketing and campaign management, and give non-technical dispensary employees the power to customize emails to a variety of customer personas – all while ensuring emails get to inboxes. 

Maximize SMS deliverability with Walled Garden 

Consumers scroll through their phones for hours everyday looking to satisfy their desires. 

When telecommunications companies announced the rise of their filtration policies, Alpine IQ shifted gears to create Walled Garden. In short, Walled Garden is an advanced post-click landing page technology that helps businesses get past carrier filtration technology. Without Walled Garden, SMS marketing would be virtually impossible for a majority of cannabis brands. 

Guarantee customers hear from you with Waterfall

Can you imagine working in cannabis and being stressed out all of the time? Cannabis censorship by the federal government and telecommunications carriers has made that nightmare a reality for countless cannabis professionals. At the end of the day, most dispensary stakeholders want to send out their hot drops, new product announcements, and go home to enjoy their favorite flowers.

To help dispensaries reduce brain strain and sell more high quality strains, we’ve created a powerful technology called Waterfall. If a marketing channel is halted for any reason, a backup channel can be designated to deploy messaging. With the guidance of Alpine IQ’s genius support team and Waterfall, dispensary owners are overcoming cannabis censorship, increasing campaign performance, and evolving how they build and maintain relationships with new contacts and loyal customers. 

Does this sound familiar? 

Many operations managers juggle multiple tasks and may not have time to conceptualize and deploy compelling marketing campaigns. However, marketing is a critical function for all businesses. Without marketing, businesses rely on luck to grow. 

Price drops and discounts are great tactics to increase foot traffic but effective digital marketing can compel consumers to purchase without lowering pricing. When there’s a steady supply of high quality products ready for purchase, it’s important to use the right technology to market your businesses products. 

No technology is created equally. There are pros and cons to all software. For example, some email providers have been known to permanently ban highly regulated companies and virtually all telecommunications companies block highly regulated messaging. When employee time and marketing budgets are wasted due to highly regulated censorship, it’s important to take a step back and decide: will I do what is necessary to succeed? Will I find the right technology to help my business evolve its marketing capabilities? 

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you’re ready for Waterfall. 

To improve the marketing strategy for your company, it’s important to ensure your messages will be delivered. Waterfall is a proprietary technology that gives you the power to overcome highly regulated carrier censorship. How does it work? Designate additional channels to deploy your brand’s messaging if a channel is halted. Yes. It’s true. Highly regulated marketing isn’t cheap and most businesses aren’t able to write off operations related expenses. Take control of your margins with delivery assurance. 

Waterfall not only guarantees your messages will be delivered but gives your business the power to discover which channels your contacts prefer. With these insights, your team can tailor messaging in ways that grow your business. 

Say goodbye to wasted marketing dollars and say hello to profits. 

Ready to climb higher? 

Learn more about Waterfall here.

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Social media channels come and go but email will live on after we are gone. If your business hasn’t allocated a marketing budget to email marketing, your business is missing out on significant growth opportunities. Unlike SMS, email marketing has significant advantages. 

As our team of engineers and experts collaborated with our partners to design and develop our latest email marketing technology, we put together a guide on email marketing best practices for both beginners and email marketing pros. If you’re not sure where to start or are interested in brushing up on what you already know, this guide is for you. If your business is an online highly regulated market, email marketing can be used to increase customer trust and revenue. 

Email marketing is older than social media marketing. While consumers may choose which social media platforms suit their lifestyle, email is used by virtually everyone. It’s true. Email is needed to log into social media platforms, book airline reservations, and so much more. With email playing a crucial role in the lives of consumers, it’s important to define how crucial your business is to your contacts. 

When customers and patients visit your business, it’s easy to understand each visitor has different needs. The same can be said for email. While it is not realistic to manually write individual emails to thousands of customers, there are a few strategies your team can leverage to ensure customers read your emails and find value in what your company has to offer. 

To improve marketing with email, read on. 

Most Effective Email Messages  

First Timer Email 

When a new customer leaves your store, it is imperative to use email marketing to extend their experience. Why? An experience doesn’t end when a customer leaves the store. As customers use products purchased from your store, your business is top of mind. Use Alpine IQ’s email marketing software to welcome new customers into your brand with high-value creative such as branded videos and stunning photography. 

New Inventory Email 

What could be more exciting than being the first to try a new product on the market? Nothing. That’s what. When new products are acquired, compose an email to customers. Tell them where the product comes from, what the benefits of the product are and why they should stop in the shop to get a closer look. 

Promotional Email 

If your business has excess stock of a particular product, send a promotional email. If your business has data that proves a specific product has the highest profit margins, send a promotional email. Yes. There is always a good reason to send a promotional email. 

Event Email 

If foot traffic in your business is down, plan an event. Partner with a local business to offer an incentive for customers who arrive between certain times.

Newsletter Email 

Most newsletters suck. Your business’ newsletter doesn’t have to. Encourage your internal team to create content for your company’s newsletter. Share customer success stories. Build an email list of customers who have only shopped with you once or twice. Send your newsletter to that list too and see what your open rates are. 

Customer Survey 

Your customers are the lifeline of your business. Transform customer complaints and praise into business opportunities by using your email marketing software to send out customer surveys. Business stakeholders can also have one-to-one relationships with customers. 

Corporate Social Responsibility

If your business is up to all good, it’s important to let your customers know. Use your email marketing software to build community. 

Best Practices 

Know Your Audience 

Before sending an email to a customer or a list of customers, identify the needs of the person you’re sending an email to. If you’ve ever received an email that is anything less than helpful, you’ll understand why it’s important to know who your audience is and what your email can do for them. Prioritize email messaging under customer needs. 

Segment Your Audience 

Don’t worry. Knowing your audience is easier when you have the ability to segment them. We give you the power to identify and group customers based on many factors. After you’ve segmented audiences, you’re ready to deliver customer-centric messaging that moves your business forward. 

Follow The Law 

Before you segment audiences and send messages, your business needs to know what’s allowed and what could get your business in trouble. For the most up-to-date information on email law, read FTC’s compliance guide. 

Avoid Becoming Spam 

Spam filters are designed to protect customers from malevolent senders but they aren’t perfect. To ensure your emails don’t land in your customers’ spam folders, ask your customers to check their spam folders if they don’t receive your business’ emails. You should also ask customers who have received your email to save the businesses email address in their contacts folder; this will ensure emails are received. 

Subject Line 

Your subject line is the first line of messaging that will either compel a contact to open your email or ignore it. To ensure emails are open, craft enticing subject lines that evoke curiosity.

Example:

Good:
New Lemon Cookie In Stock 

Better: 

GSC or Lemon Cookie? Learn the difference 

To get the latest updates on our suite of services, make sure to subscribe to our blog today!

From the start of our partnership with our very first client to our newest client we’ve helped generate revenue for, our team continues to recognize entrepreneurs as brave, passionate, and pioneering. These entrepreneurs are climbing higher than ever to establish themselves as thought leaders in an underdeveloped market that’s growing at an unprecedented rate. 

While each business has a unique brand with a varying assortment of products and services, they all have one thing in common: they want to succeed while remaining on the right side of the law. However, success isn’t achieved by being a spectator. Success is achieved when we do our best work – our most important work. Alpine IQ’s most important work is helping our partners grow. To succeed, we get to know our partners’ business goals and pain points. 

We are honored to announce that through extensive (and fun) collaboration with operations managers, clerks, executives, and a wide variety of business decision makers, our team of strategists and engineers have developed a new set of tools – all inspired by our partners’ needs, their customers’ pain points, and how highly regulated industries are changing. 

Increasing revenue goes beyond having the right products and services. Building a successful business requires developing a solid pipeline of advocates who are willing to listen to what your business has to offer. However, most businesses fail to convert prospects into repeat customers because their business’ marketing channels and messaging aren’t aligned with the customers’ goals and preferences. When channels aren’t aligned with each other and the customer, the customer suffers. To ensure the end customer doesn’t suffer and your messages actually reach them, our new tools give you the power to align your business to your customers – this is what we call omnichannel marketing. 

Why is this important? The rise of online highly regulated markets makes it challenging for brands to create long-term loyalty. In-person experiences give businesses a chance to create an emotional connection between the brand and the customer. The good news is we’ve studied how hundreds of businesses communicate with their customers. After analyzing millions of business-customer interactions, we’re confident that – with a little testing – our new omni-channel suite of products will grow your business beyond expectations. 

New from Alpine IQ: 

Waterfall 

Virtually all businesses in America have experienced censorship in some way. For example, blocked SMS campaigns are the most common. To solve highly regulated censorship, we’ve created a new technology called Waterfall.

We give you the power to designate additional channels to deploy your brand’s messaging if a specific marketing channel is halted by carriers or providers. Yes. Create your marketing campaigns with Alpine IQ’s Waterfall technology and take that vacation you’ve been dreaming about. 

Ready to overcome highly regulated censorship and grow your business? 

Walled Garden 

SMS campaigns lead to conversions but telecommunications companies still suck. Despite the truth that there are sick patients who need support from businesses, messages get blocked by carriers. But don’t worry. We’ve put our brains to good use and have developed a post-click technology called Walled Garden that gives businesses the power to maximize SMS deliverability. We’re honored to stand by our partners to do what’s right because we believe no patient should be left behind. 

Email Marketing 

Social media channels will come and go based on popularity but email is forever. Email marketing is an art and a science. To aid professionals in creating compelling emails that build brand loyalty and drive conversions, we’ve designed an entire email marketing system that’s easy-to-use and designed to grow your business. With drag and drop builder functionality, beautiful templates, and a media library to host native branded content, your business will be equipped with the right tools to create powerful narratives that prompt customers to take action.  

Ready to grow your business’ revenue with email marketing? 

Browser Push Notifications 

Website traffic is highly valuable. To help businesses convert website visitors into customers, we’ve designed browser push notifications for both desktop and mobile. With enhanced scheduling, event-triggered automation, and multiple browser support, we give your business the power to delight consumers who have yet to purchase from your business. That’s not all. 

Your team can now scale repeat orders by giving target audiences the power to indicate interest in your business without sharing contact information. 

Ready to use browser push notifications to convert website visitors into customers? 

Push Notifications

There are numerous companies competing with each other for the attention of a single consumer. We now give you the power to use push notifications to reach customers faster than ever. Our dynamic segmentation and hyper personalization gives your business the power to target push notifications to the right customer at the right time. How does it work? Segment customers based on browsing behavior, transaction history, interests, preferences, and demographics. This feature is a game changer for operations managers who aren’t sure how to get more customers to show up and shop. 

Ready to use push notifications to increase sales during slow periods? 

Native App

Your business deserves its own app to scale customer loyalty and we’ve made that possible. Our fully branded native mobile apps are designed to work with your entire tech stack. Enable push notifications and generate sales like never before. Available on both iOS, Android, and Windows devices.

To learn how our technology will increase your business’ revenue, schedule a complimentary demo. For current clients, please contact your account specialist. 

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To continue empowering our customers, we’re serving up a new integration with Tattle…and yes – we promise they’ve been up to all good. Our powerful partnership with Tattle gives companies a second (and sometimes a third) chance to win over their customers. 

Alpine IQ + Tattle Integration:

     This integration will improve our partners’ customer experience by seamlessly uncovering vital operational improvements through post-purchase surveys. The days of being blindsided by customer angst is over. All customers who purchase from participating retailers will be sent a link to an automated survey via SMS or email, pre-installed with their unique transaction data such as the location of order, timing, ordering channel, and more.

Upon receiving the survey, the customer will be able to share their experience in a quantifiable way. There are two customer flows: 

1. Advocate’s Journey 

If the customer experience is superb, the customer will be prompted to share compelling feedback on owned brand channels such as Google properties in order to boost SEO and foot traffic. 

2. Redemption Journey 

If the customer has any complaints, they will be given the opportunity to provide feedback through the survey. The results of the survey will be available to your team in Alpine within the analytics section. 

The core benefits of the integration include: 

• Survey platform to collect guest feedback data after purchases.
• Leverage improvement opportunities managers can understand/ implement directly within Alpine IQ reports.
• Protect your business’ reputation. 
• Trigger marketing outreach for customers with specific customer experience scores.
• Use Alpine IQ SMS to obtain higher survey open rates.

Finally, there’s an acceptable reason to Tattle! 

To learn how survey technology can transform your business, schedule a complimentary call with a member from our team here.

 To get the latest updates on our suite of services, make sure to subscribe to our blog today!