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Starting Situation
Mobile engagement is the next big topic in the BI environment - and rightfully so. Potential customer contacts at any location and in all kinds of contexts offer huge chances for relevant communication and a highly effective relationship management. Against this background, the ´Mobile App´ channel with all its possibilities should be integrated into the intelligent management of campaigns. In this context, existing mobile app engagement solutions offer (only) the basic requirements - and thus need professional integration into the existing CRM strategy and central campaign intelligence.
Solution Strategy
A number of tools offer extremely well developed functionalities for in-app tracking of events and measurement of customer behaviour as well as subsequent reporting. In clear contrast, it must be noted, however, that key functions and knowledge about state of the art campaign management are often still in their infancy. This implies that an off the shelf integration of the mobile app channel into a business's central campaign management is not possible.
The approach of the project is the connection of the mobile app channel to the central campaign management system. Selections are to be implemented across channels based on 360° information and communication is to be held via the channel "App" in near real time. Subsequently, responses and feedback are collected in the central and customer-centred data mart via data integration within the meaning of a closed loop. Only in this way, knowledge about a customer can be completed and used for targeted communication strategies, and thus, one can avoid contacting the customer in a way that endangers the relationship, is inconsistent or redundant, which is frequently caused by data silos (no general overview) within the system architecture.
The project targets are defined as follows
- Transferring the campaign management logic from the mobile engagement application into a best of breed campaign management system with customer-centered database
- Enabling cross-channel and coordinated management of the communication in near real time across the channels in-app messages, push and email
- The return and central analysis of responses in the customer-centered data mart
- Avoiding data silos via the aggregation and logical integration of information on an individual customer
- Achieving a central 360° view of the customer across all channels
Approach
- Analysing requirements and existing campaign management architecture
- Mapping requirements on the existing infrastructure
- Deriving a target image for system architecture and campaign management
- Evaluating solutions for mobile app communication
- Testing per campaign use case (optional POC)
- Analysing data and system architecture
- Analysing integration and implementation options
- Creating decision template and roadmap for the further development
- Implementing solution
- Conceptualization and realization of data management
- Technical implementation of interfaces
- Implementation of uses cases
Key Learnings
Mobile engagement solutions generally offer simple features for the campaign management - but in no event replace a central campaign intelligence and efficient management of campaigns via appropriate specialized systems. Fundamentally required functions are missing, such as e.g. the penetration management (number of communications in contact history), control groups for the success measurement and creation of simple customer profiles (customer-centered data mart).
Normally, the implementation of mobile engagement applications via SDKs is possible efficiently - the further integration into the existing system architecture, however, has to be planned and considered in the course of the evaluation in order to minimize subsequent complexity and expenses.
The data model implemented in solutions, the data management and the existing API technologies are critical for success. They require analysis in the planning stage and mapping with regard to existing requirements from CRM and customer management perspective.
Conclusion and Outlook
The mobile use of services and products via smartphones and tablets will continue to increase and inevitably belong to the consumers' everyday life. The customer journey within the mobile channel offers countless possibilities to communicate with customers, both promotionally driven and for the purpose of customer service. From every perspective, it is required to build knowledge of the mobile customer and to expand it by existing or context information from other divisions. Only in this way, consistent and effective customer communication can be achieved - and thus, the expectations of the customers can be met.
Against this background, it should be ensured that experienced experts are consulted as early as in the course of the requirement analysis and evaluation of mobile engagement solutions - up to the embedding in the existing CRM system architecture and data modelling.
