Mobile marketing campaigns are an effective way to increase customer engagement and improve customer retention rates. Let’s understand the concept of mobile marketing and look at some of the most remarkable mobile campaign examples.
What is Mobile Marketing?
Mobile marketing can be defined as any type of marketing activity optimized for mobile devices. The marketing campaigns are essentially designed for mobile technology and are in the formats of push notifications, SMS and MMS, popup forms, and mobile-optimized ads, among others.
Creative mobile marketing provides you with the opportunity to implement conversational marketing strategies that help you to interact with the customer in real-time. Moreover, with the increased use of smartphones, strategies that are personalized to users are seen more quickly. This motivates the users to take action, leading to higher customer engagement that generates more sales and increases retention.
Importance of Mobile Marketing Campaigns
Ever wondered how your favorite brands capture your attention on your phone? Mobile marketing isn’t just about flashy ads, instead, it acts as a dynamic tool to capture the attention of the user.
Some of the most effective mobile campaigns focus on the following goals:
- Raising Brand Awareness
Imagine scrolling through your social feed and stumbling upon a captivating ad from a new brand. That’s mobile digital marketing at play, pushing tailored brand campaigns right where your thumb swipes. It’s all about racing new audiences and turning them into loyal users.
- Customer Retention
Personalized communication plays a key role in customer retention. This mobile phone marketing strategy works to keep the customer engaged and hooked so that they keep coming back.
- Gaining Opt-in Requests
Mobile platforms facilitate easy growth of your email or SMS lists. Whether through social media, SMS marketing, or websites, streamlined opt-in forms encourage users to subscribe, expanding your audience reach.
- Feedback Collection
Mobile devices simplify the process of obtaining reviews and testimonials seamlessly. This is because people are used to texting on their devices, therefore, providing feedback using the same process makes it more convenient for the users.
- Upsells and Cross-sells
Mobile purchases open doors for upsells and cross-sells.Through pop-ups and notifications, brands entice customers with additional offerings, leveraging the ease of mobile transactions.
- Running Referral Campaigns
Mobile platforms have made it easy for customers to refer their friends and family. Sharing links of recommendations has become effortless. This helps in driving new traffic through referrals.
Best Mobile Marketing Examples
Many brands have leveraged omnichannel marketing strategies to generate great brand awareness. So, let’s look at some of the most successful marketing campaign examples that have left an impact on users all over the world.
- Domino’s- Piece of the Pie Rewards
Domino’s went big by launching their Piece of the Pie rewards program. It allowed customers to sign up for a rewards program where they can earn 10 points each time they order a pizza online. In this program, all you had to do was scan the pizza you had ordered.
Domino’s went one step further by allowing customers to scan any pizza, even if it was not from Domino’s. Once a customer collects 60 points, the participant will receive a free pizza from Domino’s.
This guerilla mobile marketing campaign leveraged a simple AI-driven pizza-scanning mobile app. This led to tons of user-generated content and increased brand awareness.
- Burger King- Burn That Ad
Burger King crafted a real-time troll campaign known as “Burn That Ad.” It allowed smartphone users to download an application on their mobile where they could digitally burn the advertisement of Burger King’s rivals.
The app used an Augmented Reality (AR) scanner to locate and burn the ad. Users who participated in this campaign won a free Whopper. This marketing campaign was fun for users and led to further engagement and revenue.
- Starbucks- Mobile Order and Pay
Starbucks championed the use of placing orders and paying through mobile devices a decade ago. When Starbucks launched its app, it showed the customers their menu and accepted payment for the order. All customers had to do was visit the cafe and collect their orders. The app also showed which outlet was closed.
Over the years, the app has significantly evolved and provides more personalization to users. From special offers, and loyalty programs to personalized messages, it laid the foundation for other ground-breaking food delivery apps.
- Swiggy- Swiggy Genie
Swiggy has launched various marketing campaigns and one of its most notable campaigns include “Swiggy Genie.” In this campaign, Swiggy introduced a delivery service that allowed users to deliver anything, from anywhere in the city.
The convenience of this service was highlighted through various digital channels since users could deliver a variety of things and not only food. Users could get quick delivery and experience the ease of ordering on the Swiggy app.
- Spotify and Snickers- Hunger Spotter
One of the best examples of mobile marketing campaigns was when Snickers partnered up with Spotify. They launched a campaign with the motto “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.”
This campaign was quite successful offline as well as it generated 7 billion overall impressions. It also put Spotify in the spotlight. When the Spotify app registered that users were listening to musical genres that were unusual from their usual playlist, a mobile ad pop-up delivered the Snickers ad. The banner came with a call-to-action button that redirects users to the Snickers’ Hunger Hits.
- Cheetos- Snap to Steal
This is another one of the mobile app marketing examples that leveraged the use of AR. Cheetos wanted to make a big impression with their Super Bowl commercial. The AR technology allowed users to scan any part of the “Snap to Steal” commercial using the Snapchat app.
Whenever a user did this, a hand showed up onscreen that appeared to take a bag of Cheetos Crunch Pop Mix right out of the commercial. The smartphone users had to click the bag which gave them a coupon for a free bag of Cheetos. With over 50,000 coupons claimed, this campaign generated a lot of buzz, leading to an increase in sales.
- Ford- Send Us a Text
The well-known automobile company, Ford implemented a simple yet effective mobile marketing strategy to promote their Escape and Taurus line of vehicles. In this campaign, the target audience was requested to text “FORD” to 63611 to know more about cars.
This call-to-action strategy helped the company collect prospective details about their customers and understand the type of vehicles they were interested in. Apart from the SMS marketing, the brand also ran retargeting campaigns to win the interest of the customers.
- Nissan- Diehard Fan
Nissan leveled up with its innovative marketing strategies with the “Diehard Fan” campaign for the Nissan Rogue. The company made use of augmented reality where users could experience the features of a car using their mobile app. Users were able to see the interior as well as the exterior of the car of their choice which increased engagement and immersive experience.
The company also launched a customer loyalty challenge in the form of a rich SMS mobile marketing campaign. By using personalized data about each customer, the company started sending SMS messages to keep a stronger connection with the customers throughout their ownership experience.
- IKEA- IKEA Place
IKEA is one of the best home furniture companies that also provides a wide range of home accessories and interior design items. The company used a hyper-localized marketing campaign which was specifically customized according to the culture and trend of different countries to trigger their interest.
IKEA identified the pain points of their customers when selecting the right size of furniture for their home. To solve this problem, they introduced Augmented Reality (AR) in their mobile app which helped to overlay a life-scale image of the furniture against the backdrop captured by the user’s camera.
Now, customers could not only browse the catalog of furniture and other items but also see if it was a perfect fit for their home. This mobile ads examples showcases how IKEA earned over 350,000+ monthly active users globally and increased the engagement rate to an average of 8 minutes which used to be 3 minutes.
- Duolingo- Push Notifications
The Duolingo app is a language-learning app where users can learn over 40 languages. The company created an April Fool’s Day mobile advertising campaign to elevate its brand awareness as well as increase its service use by existing customers. The marketing strategy included sending push notifications to their users and reminding the mobile users to practice their language lessons.
Moreover, the company made use of their mascot in the online as well as offline campaigns. Their mascot Duo, a green owl, started showing up in the user’s notifications. They also launched a fake marketing campaign claiming that Duo would show up in person to remind the users to practice their lessons.
They also created a funny video campaign showing people how Duo was interrupting people at work, at class, on dates and various other places. Duolingo promoted this video on different social media platforms, recording a skyrocketing increase of daily active users, and revenue.
- Scrabble- Free WiFi
The advertising company Ogilvy and Mather partnered with Scrabble. They offered smartphone users access to free WiFi connections, especially in poorly-network areas. The aim of this campaign was simple- users had to show off their spelling skills and increase their points to gain internet access for a longer duration.
This is one of the marketing campaigns examples where the result was exceptional. Users unscrambled over 6,000 words to score more than 110,000 minutes of free WiFi. It increased the install rate of the mobile apps along with user engagement.
- Pokemon Game- Pokemon Go
The Pokemon GO mobile game created a massive marketing wave all over the world. This augmented reality-based (AR) game had users exploring the real world to capture Pokemon.
The app used location-based technology, encouraging participants to visit various locations to find and catch different Pokemon. This innovative use of mobile technology and gamification made it a groundbreaking marketing success.
- Nivea Sun- The Protection Ad
Nivea Sun’s smart phone advertisement strategy is aimed at parents who were their target audience. The brand distributed tear-out bracelets in Brazilian magazines and parents were encouraged to place this bracelet around their child’s wrist.
The next step included downloading the Nivea Protects app which monitored the child’s location and alarmed the parents if they went too far. “The Protection Ad” lived up to its expectations, leading to a significant increase in sales. It even led the brand to win a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the Mobile category.
- Calvin Klein- #MyCalvins
This example of a marketing campaign utilized an existing opportunity to increase brand awareness and engagement. Supermodel Miranda Kerr used the #MyCalvins hashtag in one of her Instagram posts which unknowingly kicked off a mobile marketing campaign for the brand.
The brand leveraged this, developing into a hashtag campaign by roping in other celebrities like Trey Songz, and Chiara Ferragni, among others. The brand also collaborated with influencers like Bryanboy and Aimee Song to propagate the hashtag further. Although this trend started back in 2014, it has stayed relevant even today.
- BookMyShow- My Coupons
BookMyShow is a popular ticketing platform. Users can use this platform to reserve their movie tickets along with tickets for various events and programs. This is one of the successful cell phone advertisement examples where the target audience was mobile users.
The app allowed personalized discounts and offers on movie tickets, events, and shows. Users received offers through this app, incentivizing them to book tickets through the BookMyShow’s mobile platform.
Conclusion
Thus, the world of marketing has been revolutionized through the aid of mobile technology. Through mobile marketing apps, many brands have successfully elevated user experience and engagement. The diverse digital marketing ads examples highlighted in this article showcase how many brands have successfully leveraged mobile platforms to foster brand loyalty, create memorable interactions, and expand market reach.