The disruption taking place in the affiliate and partner marketing space coupled with the continued adoption of mobile is creating ample opportunities for the world’s largest enterprises and their marketing partners to drive margins and growth. These opportunities and the variety of marketing partners will grow exponentially as new technologies like wearables, virtual reality/augmented reality and IoT open new doors to commerce where activity can be tracked with fine-grain accuracy.
With the emergence of these new channels and partners, it’s critical for marketers to outline what success and measurement looks like in a mobile-first world. There’s been a lot of debate around the pros and cons of native mobile apps versus mobile web. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages in regards to cost, performance, functionality, UX/UI and brand awareness. Ultimately, this depends on the company, but in general, success can be looked at in three stages.
Mobile Web Measurement: Starting most broadly, marketers should evaluate their ability to measure traditional mobile web traffic and conversions/sales and subsequently reward their partners for that activity. This is the most basic foundation and many of the world’s largest companies in retail, travel and financial services are already doing this.
App Installs Measurement: The next step is to look at various marketing partners and think about changing or adding a performance/success metric based on app installs and driving traffic to app stores. You then need to think about how to reward partners appropriately for that traffic and subsequent installs. However, it shouldn’t end there. App uninstalls is an issue that continues to plague all companies with recent research reportedly showing that for every 10 apps that users install on their phones, more than three are ultimately uninstalled.
Deep Linking and App-to-App Measurement: Mobile deep linking (linking to specific destinations within a mobile app vs. simply launching the app) provides robust opportunities to target customers with the most relevant content. Marketers need to think about whether to deep link directly to the app or mobile web. Providing customers the choice – even if they don’t have the app installed – provides the best experience and journey for path-to-purchase.
To learn more about how you can optimize your mobile app tracking, contact us for a conversation or demo about our capabilities.