Here’s some ideas you can try using AIQ’s tool suite:

Offer a special ‘Pot O’ Gold’ reward or bonus points for customers by activating a Wheel of Prizes on your App. This is a great way to utilize gamification to promote your retail native app and engage customers. 

To add rewards to your prize wheel, create the offer in AIQ’s Discount Builder and switch the prize wheel toggle to ‘Yes’.

Create a special discount for customers who wear green or show St. Patty’s Day spirit when they shop at your store or online. Using AIQ’s Discount Builder, you can easily push this promotion to all of your customer’s Rewards Wallets so they can prepare to take advantage of this offer. To maximize visibility, use AIQ Campaigns to directly notify all subscribed loyalty members of this promotion.

Create a themed reward tier or badge for customers who reach a certain amount of points or purchases during the month of March. For example, you can name it “Lucky Leprechaun” or “Pot of Gold” and offer exclusive benefits or prizes for those who achieve it. To implement, upload a custom badge to any audience directly in the AIQ Audience Builder. Customers will see this badge in their Rewards Wallet as soon as they meet the requirements.

Run a contest or giveaway for loyalty members, making it themed for St. Patrick’s Day. You can reward them with things like free product, store credit or an exciting surprise, easily managed using AIQ’s Random Lottery Campaign tool. 

Create a St Patrick’s Day-themed quiz or survey and invite your customers to participate. You can reward them with points, coupons, or freebies for completing it, using AIQ Surveys to collect the information.  You can also use this as an opportunity to get feedback or reviews from your customers.

Want to learn more about AIQ and how it can service your organization?

In telecom, however, segments have a different meaning — but both kinds of “segments” are important when you’re implementing an SMS marketing strategy for your brand.  

What are segments in telecom?

Segments in telecom are the number of messages you can send at a time, based on the number of characters your message contains.

For the modern user, think of this as the character limits on Twitter. One tweet (segment) is equal to 280 characters. If you go beyond that, you will have to create another tweet.

In the context of telecom, think of the classic brick phones. When you type a text message, you will see two numbers on the upper-right side of the screen: 

• The first number refers to the number of characters that your message contains
• The second one after the / refers to the number of segments

One message segment is typically limited to 160 characters, or equivalent to 140 bytes of Unicode. When you go beyond that number in your SMS, your message will be split and your carrier will send it in two or more separate segments.

In other words, message segments are how telecom carriers and messaging systems such as Twilio and Alpine IQ count messages. For example:

• 160 characters = 1 SMS segment
• 320 characters = 2 SMS segments
• 480 characters = 3 SMS segments

How are telecom segments beneficial to marketing?

Ideally, you should only be sending your marketing messages one segment at a time — too many messages could easily turn off recipients, and it will also dilute the overall impact of your message.

Segments also dictate how much you will have to spend on your SMS marketing strategy. So if you aren’t mindful of the number of characters your message contains, you might end up having to pay more than your allotted budget. And little expenses like these could add up to become big expenses.

A good SMS marketing strategy requires compelling and succinct copy, and segments are a huge factor. Without proper segmentation of your SMS, your text messages may not be as effective.

How to Effectively Use Telecom Segments for Your Marketing

Here are 3 quick tips to help you make the most of your SMS marketing by properly implementing segments:

1. Keep your copy short and sweet

Since SMS has a 160-character limit, it’s important to write your copy succinctly. This can be a challenge but it can be done. There are many free tools you can use such as Twilio’s Messaging Segment Calculator to check the number of characters in your message.

It’s also crucial to include a call to action at the very end so that your audiences are guided on what the next steps are.

2. Tone down the emojis

Each element in your SMS has a certain number of Unicode bytes. Simple letters of the alphabet and spaces don’t occupy that many bytes, but emojis require more Unicode to be accommodated in one segment. Try to tone down the use of emojis to just one or two.

3. Be mindful of other factors that could affect your SMS segment

Three other factors that can often be overlooked are accented characters, smart quotes, and non-GSM spaces. Like emojis, they require more Unicode and could take up so much “space” in your message segment:

• Accented characters such as à, ñ, and ö can take a lot of Unicode bytes in one message segment, so be mindful when using them. However, other accented characters such as á, í, or ú don’t seem to affect the segmentation that much.
• Smart quotes are sometimes referred to as “curly quotes” because of how they look. Try not to use smart quotes as much as you can. Instead of [“ ”] or [‘ ’], use the simpler “straight quotes” such as [” “] and [‘ ‘].
• Non-GSM spaces are usually a result of copying and pasting. Not all mobile phones and carriers support non-GSM characters, so this will negatively affect how your messages are displayed and segmented. Non-GSM spaces are not always easy to detect, so you will need to use a tool to find them such as M-Zone’s Unicode Detection Tool.

Improve Your Businesses SMS Marketing with the Right Tools

There are a lot of technicalities involved in SMS marketing, but with the right tools, you can make the process easier and more efficient. SMS marketing is an essential strategy — it helps you widen the reach of your marketing and drive more engagement to your business.

Whether you need help with segmenting your SMS or coming up with the best marketing strategy for your business, Alpine IQ is here to help. 

With our suite of SMS/MMS marketing tools and other AI-powered marketing solutions, we can help you automate and personalize your marketing messages, all while staying compliant with the dynamic nature of the industry.

Visit https://alpineiq.com/ to get started!

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Apps serve different functions and essentially make our lives easier. For businesses, apps are among the most convenient ways to reach customers at the touch of their fingertips, especially now as we slowly adapt to the new normal. Apps can be a mean for customers to:

• learn more about your products/services
• engage with your brand
• easily purchase your products

For businesses, having a native app is important — it can hugely improve the customer experience while staying compliant to regulations.

How can you leverage the benefits of apps for your business? Alpine IQ has the answer: our native app service offers an extensive amount of AI-powered features to help harness the power of apps for your business.

What is a native app?

An application, or app, is a type of software that allows you to carry out specific tasks that it’s programmed to do. Apps can run on various devices, such as desktop or laptop computers (desktop apps), web browsers (web app), smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices (mobile app).

A native app, in particular, are developed for a specific platform (i.e., Android, iOS, or Windows) and are installed directly onto a mobile device through application stores such as Google Play or Apple’s App Store. 

Native apps function as a standalone app (no web browsers are needed), so it typically performs faster and more efficiently than mobile web apps.

Another benefit of native apps is that they can take full advantage of a device’s native features and hardware — thus the term, native. For example, a native app programmed to edit photos can access a device’s phone storage and photo album; a ride-sharing app can have access to a device’s location feature; and so forth.

Alpine IQ’s Native App for Your Business

The decision to have an app for your business can be a difficult one — e-commerce apps, in itself, are not easy nor cheap to develop, and there’s concerns about the ever-changing regulations in highly regulated markets. 

Alpine IQ, however, has you covered. We can take the burden off of you by offering a native app that’s designed to work especially for you, whether you’re on iOS, Android, or Windows.

Put your brand just a tap away from your customers’ mobile home screens, and enjoy these features and more with Alpine IQ’s Native App:

• In-app ordering: Streamline the shopping experience with your own fully customizable e-commerce app. Enjoy features such as live embedded menu with checkout, custom splash page, customer onboarding, and more.
• Synchronized e-commerce and data management: Make the customer experience more seamless by syncing up your POS, e-commerce, and social profiles. Our native app is also cross-device compatible.
• Push notifications: Widen your reach and let customers be in the know of the latest updates about your brand through push notifications.
• Loyalty programs: Enable loyalty programs and refer-a-friend campaigns and sweeten the deal even further with discount tier progress, multiple redemption methodologies, and instant points and rewards right after signup.
• Smart APIs: If you already have an existing e-commerce app for your business, you can make it better and smarter with our suite of APIs, which includes granular data analytics, audience segmentation, and many more.

Why Choose Alpine IQ’s Native App for Your Business?

Since Alpine IQ’s inception in 2019, we have developed several groundbreaking tools to push highly regulated markets forward and help businesses like you reach your audiences much more easily, all while meeting multi-state/provincial regulatory environments.

What makes Alpine IQ’s native app service the best choice for you?

1. Proven record of excellent service 

Our support and proven ROI are two of the many reasons why we are supporting over 1,800 + stores.

2. We listen first and speak second 

We are a data company first. We believe that our customer’s data should be used to improve their experience. Our data analysis tools provide a clear picture of what your customers want. Listen to the data and watch as your conversions and ROI responds.

3. Built for highly regulated markets 

We understand highly regulated markets and built our platform for you. Operators both large and small rely on us because we are the only vendor that truly provides unparalleled support to single-store, multi-store, and multi-market operators.

4. Baked in compliance and peace of mind 

Compliance is our top priority. We know how fast this industry moves and how quickly regulations change. Hundreds of operators in the US and Canada rely on us to ensure all their consumer facing messaging is compliant.

5. Transparency

Our goal is to maximize the impact you have on your customers’ experience while minimizing your financial burden. The structure of our partnership allows full transparency into your campaigns and marketing initiatives. When you work with us, you won’t struggle to find deliverability stats for your campaigns.

Apps in general are indispensable to modern life — this kind of cutting-edge software can have any number of functions depending on what it’s programmed for, and they essentially make life easier with just a few taps or clicks on your phone or computer.  

For businesses, having a native e-commerce app that customers can easily download to their mobile devices widens your reach and streamlines the customer experience. 

However, developing a native app isn’t as easy as it sounds, but Alpine IQ can help you with that — we offer native app development that’s especially designed for you.

Are you ready for the next step? Contact us at https://alpineiq.com/ to get started!

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

But one important yet often overlooked aspect is to thoroughly understand your customer.

The Value of Understanding Your Customers

Your customers are the bread and butter of your business. Whether you’re a B2C or B2B business, there’s a lot of value of understanding your target audience well:

• It helps you attract the right customers: Understanding the needs, wants, and pain points of your target audience is key in acquiring the right customers for your business. It also helps you develop your products and services even better. 
• It fosters customer loyalty and retention: Being able to understand your customers at a personal level sets the tone of your relationship with them. Having a positive customer relationship hugely contributes to their loyalty to your brand. In this way, you also reduce customer acquisition costs while also boosting your sales.
• It boosts sales and revenues: Brands that are customer-centric are found to be 60% more profitable than companies that don’t. Additionally, according to 73% of customers, great customer experience (CX) drives their buying decisions, and understanding and making them feel valued are two huge factors in delivering quality CX.

5 Simple Steps to Truly Understand Your Customers

The good news for brands is that there are myriads of tools available to help you gather data to understand your customers better. So how do you keep your customers satisfied while still keeping everything else together?

1. Apply intelligent customer engagement

One of the keys to better understand your customers is to gain and collect insight into their preferences, browsing/shopping behavior, and more. With this data, you can personalize your marketing approach and even individualize your engagement. 

Tools like Alpine IQ’s Intelligent Timing, for example, helps you identify the best times of the day when a certain customer is more than likely to engage and shop with your brand. Audience segmentation is also another great way to get to know your customers and help you identify their unique needs.

2. Leverage social media

Social media has become more than just a platform for brands to engage with customers. It has also evolved into a sales and customer service channel as well. 

It’s important for brands to leverage this since you can learn a great deal about a customer’s preferences by looking at their profiles alone or by directly interacting with them. Social media platforms also have built-in tools that can help you gain more insight about your customers.

3. Send customer surveys

Customer surveys are a great opportunity to learn more about your audience’s needs, wants, and issues.

The key here is to send surveys in the right context and to ask the right questions — for example, you can gain information about how you can improve your products/services when you send surveys after they contacted customer support. 

4. Deliver quality customer support

People in general desire to feel valued and be heard. As businesses, your role in the customer journey doesn’t end when a sale is completed — it must continue even after that, which is why it’s important to deliver quality after-sales customer support.

Around 66% of customers believe that valuing their time is the utmost factor in having an excellent online customer experience. Make it a point to resolve each concern in a timely manner while also making sure you understand their grievances and needs. This not only contributes to better customer experience; it also helps you understand your customers and gives you insight on how you can improve as a business.

5. Be consistent in customer communication

As we mentioned before, cultivating a good relationship with your customers is key. Knowing your customers and building rapport with them go hand in hand: when customers trust you, the more they engage with your brand. The more engagement, the better you get to know them.

Consistency is crucial when it comes to communicating with your audiences. Whether it’s sending email newsletters, push notifications, survey requests, or responses to concerns, every effort you make has to have a regular yet flexible schedule as it sets customers’ expectations. 

___

Understanding your customers thoroughly is one of the cornerstones of building a successful business. It not only helps in acquiring new customers; it also helps in customer loyalty,  retention, and boosting sales. 

A crucial point to remember is that knowing your customers isn’t just a one-off effort. As customers’ needs evolve through time, your brand must also be proactive in understanding these changing needs. 

Using the right tools is also key in helping you streamline your efforts. With Alpine IQ’s suite of marketing automation services, you can gather a multitude of customer data and insights to help you understand your audience better. Find out more by visiting https://alpineiq.com/. 

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

However, the latest data shows that people spend less time reading brand emails — 10 seconds in 2021 from 11.8 seconds in 2020. And this may be one of the many factors why users opt-out of brand emails.

On the other hand, with SMS marketing, the numbers are more promising: 91% of people are interested in opting-in to text messages from brands. SMS also has a bigger open rate compared to email marketing (98% compared to 21%, respectively).

The fact remains, however, that there is still a significant number of people who opt-out no matter the channel being used. 

What are opt-outs?

Opt-outs or unsubscriptions happen when leads from your marketing distribution list decide that they no longer want to receive messages from your brand. 

The terms opt-out and unsubscription also apply to any brand communication, including:

• Emails – Emails, as mentioned, are widely used today. Users with a valid email address can send and receive messages to and from anyone.
• SMS – SMS refers to “short message service,” or what we simply call “text messages” that we send and receive through our mobile phone’s SMS service.
• Push notifications – Push notifications refer to short messages that can be sent to a user’s web browser or mobile device.

What are opt-out rates and why do users unsubscribe?

Opt-out rates or unsubscription rates refer to the average number of users who unsubscribe in relation to the number of emails you send. Users unsubscribe for various reasons, and sometimes, the likelihood can also depend on the industry your brand is in. 

For example, real estate and agencies are seen to have the highest opt-out rates (0.27% and 0.35%, respectively), while media and entertainment have the lowest (0.12%). From this data, we can surmise that demand and interest for the product/service have an impact on users’ decisions to opt-in or opt-out. 

It must be noted, however, that other factors come into play, such as the frequency of the emails, the value that people are getting from your content, and so much more. We will discuss more on this in the next sections.

How can high opt-out rates affect your business negatively?

When customers opt out of your marketing list, they will no longer be aware of any new updates, promotions, or special deals from your brand. Without this knowledge, they are less likely to engage with and shop from your business, which will ultimately hurt your conversions and sales.

High opt-out rates also affect your marketing strategy’s efficiency. When you are constantly building your leads and distribution list but users constantly opt out, you will be stuck in a vicious cycle: you won’t reach the number of people you’re targeting, time is wasted, and eventually, this might hurt your business in the long run.

However, it’s important to remember that it’s a brand’s legal obligation to ask for consent from users to include them in their marketing list, as well as provide them the option to opt-out at any time for any reason. 

Opt-outs can eventually happen, and that is beyond a brand’s control. However, the number of unsubscriptions can be adjusted when you adopt the right strategies and use the right tools.

4 General Tips for Reducing Email and SMS Opt-Out Rates

1. Set expectations

People value consistency. From the start, be clear of the frequency of the messages you will be sending. It’s also best practice to provide choices, such as preferring to receive daily messages or once-a-week roundup emails. 

Most importantly, follow through. When you are not consistent with your email or SMS campaigns, this will lead customers to question the integrity of your brand.

2. Segment your audiences

Audience segmentation refers to the strategy of dividing your audience into distinct groups based on different criteria, including interests. When crafting your email and SMS marketing campaigns, segmenting by interest is essential to ensure that every message you send is relevant to the reader.

Segmentation also helps you personalize your approach, which in turn, makes customers feel more valued. Interest and cultivating a good relationship with your recipients is key in improving retention rates and decreasing opt-outs.

3. Craft your subject lines carefully

While it’s important to create subject lines that stand out, some tactics can be off-putting to readers and can even be considered spam triggers. The key here is to be mindful of the format of your subject lines and the copy you use:

• Avoid unprofessional formatting: This includes using all caps and multiple punctuations (e.g., Hey!!!!), and using too many colors and font styles or sizes.
• Avoid trigger words: Certain words could also trigger spam filters, and there is an exhaustive list. But generally, steer clear of copy that denotes a false sense of urgency (e.g., Hurry! Open this now!), deceptive or misleading subject lines (e.g., You’re a winner!), and over-promising (e.g., Lose weight now). 

Write to your audiences like you would to a friend, family, or colleague — friendly, honest, and not aggressive.

4. Ask for feedback

Lastly, the best way to know how you can improve is to ask the customers themselves. When they opt out, provide a quick survey to ask why they’re unsubscribing. Current customers in your distribution list can also be asked for feedback on what areas they think you can improve or fix. 

Improve Your Marketing with the Right Tools 

High opt-out or unsubscription rates can be detrimental to the success of your email and SMS marketing campaigns. It lowers your reach and decreases your communication touchpoints with your customers, which can ultimately hurt your sales and conversions.

Email and SMS unsubscriptions, however, are inevitable because customers have the right to opt out for whatever reason and at any time. While this is beyond the control of a brand, there are strategies you can practice to adjust those numbers and continue to grow your marketing distribution list. 

And with the right tools such as Alpine IQ’s suite of marketing solutions, you can further improve your marketing strategy. 

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

Here, we’ll outline some of the best practices for implementing a web push notification strategy:

Optimizing Web Push Notifications

Content 

Title/headline

This is equivalent to an email subject line, so ensure that it’s catchy, impactful, yet simple: 

• Your title should briefly describe what your message is about.
• Add an element of intrigue to stoke the receiver’s curiosity.
• Include relevant emojis if it makes sense to your branding and the message of your content. Emojis have been found to increase open rates by 4.51%.
• Keep it short and sweet. The character limit is 38 characters maximum (with spaces).

Description/message

Your message should be relevant to your target audience, emphasizing the value and benefits if they take action. 

• Make sure your message is in sync with your title. 
• Keep your tone friendly and personable.
• Ensure the content is personalized to the recipient; segment your messages based on their past actions, preferences, where they are in the sales funnel, etc.
• Localize and send your message in their browser language.
• Be concise. The character limit is 46 characters maximum (with spaces)

Logo/website icon

It’s best practice to include your company logo in your web push notifications to cultivate brand recognition. 

Be sure to optimize the size of your logo. Different browsers and operating systems each have their own ideal sizes, but a 360px by 240px image with an aspect ratio of 1.5:1 works well for both desktop and mobile. The image file type is ideally JPG or PNG.

Images

Adding images and rich media to your notification can help grab readers’ attention. However, only Chrome on Windows Desktop and Android (version 56 or above) have image support for push notifications. 

• If you use images, use a unique one for each notification.
• Ensure that the imagery you use aligns with your message.
• Optimize the size: Landscape images with 2:1 aspect ratio. The recommended maximum width is 2000px and the minimum width is 300 px. The file type should be JPG or PNG.

Call to action button

A call to action (CTA) button is critical to the success of your web push notification. You need to clearly guide your audience on what to do next.

• Design the button in a way that it stands out. Use contrasting colors and make sure that the color you pick makes sense to your branding.
• Use strong, action-oriented words. For example, “Get your free trial,” “Buy now,” and “Order today.”
• The link should take the audience to a dedicated landing page—directly to where you want them and be able to easily complete the desired action.
• Be mindful of the length. A maximum of 5 to 7 words is ideal; the shorter and more concise, the better.

Timing 

Web push notifications are consumed in real-time, so timing is crucial. While there is no perfect time to send notifications, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

• Be mindful of timezones. This is especially important if you’re targeting an international clientele.
• Respect their routine. Knowing your target audience’s profile is the right way to start. Typically, the hours after dinner are when internet users are most available and more likely to see your notification.
• Use trial and error. Evaluate your performance and do A/B testing where possible. That way, you’ll find which hours of the day and days of the week that your target audience is most active.

Whom to send to 

We mentioned before about segmenting and personalizing the content of your web push notification. Doing so helps in increasing your click-through rates (CTR) and conversions.

At Alpine IQ, you can add metadata to your web push notifications and set certain criteria to segment and personalize your content:

• Demography (age, gender, nationality, etc.)
• Location (country, city, etc.)
• Browser language
• Browser type and platform
• Behavior and events (past purchases, frequency of purchases, liked products, etc.)

Segmentation also helps in creating more targeted and effective notifications for every step of your customer’s journey. Triggered notifications allow you to send your messages to the right person at the right moment.

Types and examples of web push notifications:

• Event-Triggered Notifications

These are push notifications that are automatically triggered based on key events of a customer’s sales funnel journey. Examples include abandoned cart notifications, reactivating dormant customers, and achievements/milestones (e.g., welcome notifications). 

• Behavior-Based Notifications

These are notifications based on a customer’s past actions in your website, such as previous purchases, products they recently viewed, etc. A good example is relevant product recommendations.

• Alerts and Reminders Notifications

These are usually prompted by transactional triggers. For example, order confirmations, payment reminders, and shipping updates.

• Location Notifications

These are notifications that are geographically significant. A classic example is automatically adjusting the language of the push notification based on a customer’s location. Other examples include tailored promotional notifications based on the nearest e-commerce store.

Maximizing Your Web Push Notifications

Sometimes, web push notifications delivery can be blocked by various reasons despite customers providing their consent to opt in. Ensure message delivery and maximize your reach by using Alpine IQ’s Waterfall Delivery.

With Waterfall, you can designate backup channels for your campaigns—whether it’s web push notifications, email, or SMS—and protect your messages from being lost in spam folders or being blocked by cell carriers.

The technology also helps you capture new browser push notification subscribers with a seamless one-click in-app push request.

Ready to learn more about Alpine IQ’s messaging features?

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