Udonis Inc.

Posted on Dec 6, 2019

3 Game-changing Mobile Marketing Campaigns Explained

More and more users are replacing desktop for mobile. It’s no wonder businesses are focusing on mobile marketing campaigns more than ever before. However, that also means the competition is ruthless. If you don’t step up your game, you’ll become irrelevant and forgotten.

So, what makes a mobile marketing campaign effective and successful?

Well, a lot of different factors. That’s why we have dissected 3 game-changing mobile marketing campaigns from the past few years. These examples will show you what it takes to create an innovative and successful mobile campaign that produces measurable results.

Snickers’ “Hunger Spotter” Mobile Marketing Campaign

Both Snickers and Spotify are brands that have a great track record when it comes to mobile marketing. When Snickers partnered up with Spotify for a mobile campaign, the results were outstanding.

Snickers had an ingenious idea to target Spotify users who are listening to songs outside of their usual music genre. The idea behind it being the users must be hungry since they suddenly changed the genre. Whether that correlation is real makes no difference here, it is a clever trick. The ad featured a song by a made-up rapper called Anita Snickers. The lyrics delivered the message of “You’re not you when you’re hungry” with the solution being a Snickers bar. The users were then sent to Snickers’ Spotify playlist “The Hunger List.”

Needless to say, the users were surprised and impressed with the clever ad. Who would expect to hear a rap about Snickers in the middle of their playlist? Nobody. And that was the whole point.

The results of Snickers’ Mobile Marketing Campaign

The “Hunger Spotter” campaign was a huge hit and there are numbers that prove it. Snickers’ innovative campaign generated almost 80,000 ad clicks, 1.7 million unique reach, and almost 7 million impressions. Plus, it opened space for other brands to use Spotify’s incredible user database and insights.

What Made Snickers’ Mobile Marketing Campaign So Good?

This mobile campaign is a great example of smart targeting. Over the years, Spotify has collected an impressive amount of user data. By partnering up with Spotify, Snickers had access to crucial insights into user behavior. Add to that the immensely creative idea to target users based on their music choice, and you have a winning mobile marketing campaign.

The element of surprise was also an important factor in Snickers’ mobile marketing strategy. The users were not expecting that ad at all. That’s why it grabbed their attention immediately. Plus, it had a humorous element that’s on-brand for Snickers.

BookMyShow’s Avengers: Endgame Mobile Marketing Campaign

Avengers: Endgame made history with world record-breaking box office numbers, even beating Avatar. Many people call this Marvel blockbuster the biggest movie of all time. The movie was particularly successful in India where movie theaters had to screen it 24 hours a day to meet the incredibly high demand. It also made records for the biggest number of advance tickets sold for a Hollywood movie.

What happened in India was not a coincidence. It was the result of cleverly planned and innovative mobile marketing strategy. It was created by BookMyShow, a leading ticket company in India, in collaboration with CleverTap. The campaign relied on smart user targeting, customized push notifications, and content marketing.

The Results of BookMyShow’s Mobile Marketing Campaign

5 million tickets sold a week before the release
100% increase in click-through rate due to carousel-based notifications
Higher conversions
Successful re-engagement
Improved user retention

But that’s not everything that was achieved with this mobile marketing campaign. BookMyShow’s Avenger Endgame campaign won the 2019 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards for the most innovative campaign. And that’s a huge deal.

via GIPHY

What Made BookMyShow’s Mobile Marketing Campaign So Effective?

Let’s break down this superb mobile marketing campaign and find out what went into creating it.

Contextual and Interactive Push Notifications

One of the biggest reasons for the success of this campaign were push notifications users got on their BookMyShow app. Notifications were sent before and after the movie was released. However, these were not the usual static push notifications you’re used to seeing. BookMyShow’s push notifications were carousel-style. That allowed them to place multiple images in just one push notifications and thus promote multiple films at once.

Since carousel-based notifications are not a built-in feature for Android users, BookMyShow created a custom tray. And that made all the difference

Relevant Content on Multiple Channels

This mobile marketing campaign didn’t rely just on push notifications. It included many different types of visual and written content distributed through many different channels including Google, email, and social media. All of it was relevant to the users and based on their interests and likes.

This type of relevant content was particularly important post-release since it was the main driver behind user re-engagement and user retention.

Smart User Targeting and Segmentation

With the help of CleverTap, BookMyShow nailed user targeting and segmentation. Clever Tap’s real-time, automated, and psychographic user segmentation allowed them to group users in an innovative way.

The users were not segmented just by their behavior, but by their interests, likes, habits, personality, and lifestyle as well. That allowed BookMyShow to reach users at the right time with messages tailored to what they like and need.

Clever User Re-Engagement and Retention

BookMyShow’s mobile marketing campaign didn’t just create a huge buzz before Avengers: Endgame was released. It also kept users interested in their app after the release. That was done by engaging users with special offers and discounts. Again, users were targeted through CleverTap’s smart segmentation.

For example, if a group of users showed an interest in action and adventure genres, they received promo codes for those kinds of movies.

Automation

Automation technology also played a huge part in the success of BookMyShow’s campaign. Their VP of Technology, Viraj Patel said “We have significantly automated and deployed applications that improve our performance. There was a time when it took us months to launch a new server, but we’ve brought that down to a few seconds in the recent past. Now it takes us hardly any time to scale up and add more application instances, making the process more reliable, better, and faster.”

BBC Good Food Alexa Skill Mobile Marketing Campaign

As of 2019, 20% of searches are voice-based, but according to ComScore, that number will go up to 50% by 2020. Also, according to eMarketer, there are 74.2 million smart speaker users in the US. So it is no wonder that many marketing experts emphasize voice as one of the leading mobile marketing trends in 2020.

BBC Good Food, a leading food media brand in the UK, created an innovative voice-based campaign. They developed the “Alexa Skill” for Amazon’s smart speaker. The Skill allows users to communicate with the BBC Good Food through their Alexa device.

This enables hands-free and voice-guided cooking of the future by combining the BBC’s website and app with Alexa’s voice technology.

“We thought about voice as the most effective interface for the smart home, something to connect the dots and bring appliances and experiences together. This is a vital role for voice—and we’re really motivated to pioneer that territory.” – BBC Good Food

The Results of BBC Good Food’s Voice-based Campaign

Revolutionized the way users cook and interact with their app
High user acquisition
Increase in engagement and user retention
Increase in brand awareness
Higher in-app ad revenue
Partnership with Amazon – BBC Good Food is now the default result for any recipe search on Alexa

The app is a huge hit among users, and it is hailed as the best recipe application in the world. It has also won the 2019 Effective Mobile Marketing Award for the most effective voice assistant app.

The Strategy Behind BBC Good Food’s Mobile Marketing Campaign

The first step in their plan was to enable users to search their 11,000-recipe database using Alexa. Not an easy feat considering the searches are performed using voice. That’s why BBC Good Food had to include advanced filters.

For example, the user says, “Alexa, ask BBC Good Food for an easy pasta and chicken meal for two.” Several different filters like ingredients, difficulty level, and serving size are automatically added. This ensures the user gets the recipe they want. Then, the user has the option of a step-by-step guide that helps them cook the recipe they searched for.

“We had to shorten sentences, we had to eradicate abbreviations, we had to replicate ingredient quantities as well as other ingredients in the method. Now that’s an editorial overhead. But optimizing for voice in this way also optimized for web search, which is time well spent,” said the head of digital content at BBC Good Food, Hannah Williams.

You’re probably wondering how do they monetize the app?

Three ways. One, there’s premium app content the users need to pay for. Second, affiliate deals bring them revenue every time users purchase an ingredient. That’s a booming market since smart fridges are coming to the scene. Third, Good Food sells brand partnerships. Clever, right?

To keep users engaged, they have created an incentive for them to sign up. If you register with BBC Good Food, you get the option to save your favorite recipes.

"We are looking to deepen analytics to the product to improve our research into how users interact with the skill," said Williams.

To Sum Up

Mobile marketing never stops evolving. Consequently, campaigns get more creative, innovative, and smarter. Learn from these game-changing mobile marketing campaigns and get inspired to create your own.

The key takeaways from these successful campaigns are: innovative approach, smart user targeting, effective use of relevant content and notifications, and implementation of voice search. If you’re thirsty for more mobile marketing examples, click here.

In the comments, tells us which campaign you liked the most and why!

About Udonis:

In 2018 & 2019, Udonis Inc. served over 14.1 billion ads & acquired over 50 million users for mobile apps & games. We’re recognized as a leading mobile marketing agency by 5 major marketing review firms. We helped over 20 mobile apps & games reach the top charts. Want to know how we make it look so effortless? Meet us to find out.