This is an interview with Thomas Klingebiel, Senior Marketing Manager – Mobile Apps at Intuit. He is scheduled to be a panelist at our upcoming Postback event, July 17-18.
To begin with, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you fit in the marketing industry?
I’ve been all over the place in my 12 year career. I started as a teaching pro at a golf course in San Diego and now I’m helping teams at Intuit successfully launch and achieve commercial success with their mobile applications. I’ve done just about everything digital marketing in between. I really enjoy my role today as it gives me a chance to wear many shoes (I prefer shoes to hats). From customer research to product enhancements, and from drive to app store campaigns to mobile analytics, I’m really fortunate to work with such great people across our organization.
Are there any recent advertising trends that really caught your attention?
The shift to less disruptive mobile app install experiences is something I’ve noticed in the past year. Facebook started it, Twitter and Yahoo have adopted it and there are others that are following suit. With customers, specifically mobile customers, being more in control now than ever, advertisers need to find a way to introduce their brand to consumers without becoming obnoxious. Publishers, like those mentioned previously, are now making that experience much better. It’s a win for the advertiser because it drives installs and action, it’s a win for customers because it’s easy to get what they want if they want it, and it’s a win for the publishers because it keeps the customer in their app.
What challenges are mobile app marketers currently facing in terms of increasing app engagement? What can be done to meet these challenges?
It’s not only about trying to increase engagement with your own apps, it’s also about “winning mobile time” from other apps. With the nearly infinite number of apps available to consumers, keeping your app on a user’s device is crucial. As marketers, we need to make sure we value our customers’ time by making every engagement relevant and purposeful. That includes developing highly personalized experiences not only after they download the app but before they engage as well.
What strategies can marketers take to better connect with users across multiple devices (i.e. mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops)?
Make sure you are appropriately and securely capturing as much information about your customers through every channel and you are mining that data carefully. Tracking how engaged they are with your brand, where they are in their purchase cycle, etc. can put you in a much better position to create a relevant offer or message. Create a unique customer identifier that can be shared cross-channel for a much more targeted and relevant customer marketing experience.
What advice do you have for those just entering the mobile advertising space?
Think long and hard about who your best customers are and what makes them great. Identify key attributes and make sure you are able to track those attributes before launching any type of marketing campaign, either internal or external. Make sure to invest in a good analytics and mobile measurement solution that’s able to integrate with all of your other marketing channels and data management platforms. I’d also recommend you spend time prior to the campaign making sure bugs are fixed and the experience is seamless. Any issues within the app are going to be magnified with more customers and more traffic. Bad customer ratings will have a tremendously negative impact on your campaign performance. Users simply don’t download 3 star apps.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for marketers right now?
There is a tremendous opportunity to deliver content in the form of advertising that’s both beneficial to the consumer and the advertiser. We as marketers have done a pretty good job of making advertising relevant through the tremendous amount of targeting options available, but we can do a much better job of providing value to prospective customers. This will come in the form of more engaging content via more pull marketing strategies. As advertisers, we have to give before we take.
This year’s Postback event will be held July 17th & 18th in Seattle, WA. Featuring keynote addresses from Twitter and Google, 10 panel sessions with discussion from 25+ industry experts, and training for HasOffers and MobileAppTracking products, Postback is a can’t miss event for all serious marketers. The event also includes a rooftop happy hour, boat cruise along the Seattle waterfront, and a private concert, giving you plenty of opportunity to connect with other professionals in the industry. To register or learn more, visit the Postback website.
Author
Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she handled content strategy and marketing communications at several tech startups in the Bay Area. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned home to Charleston, SC, where you can find her strolling through Hampton Park with her pup and enjoying the simple things between adventures with friends and family.
http://www.minelouisvuitton.com/