The day has come: Iterable’s Embedded Messaging is here. Time to cut the ribbon with giant scissors, pull the string to release the balloons from the ceiling, and do whatever else one may do to celebrate a milestone event. While we teased Embedded Messaging at Activate back in April, we’re proud to announce that today it’s available to all Iterable users.
If you haven’t been waiting on the edge of your seat since April and need a little refresher on what exactly Embedded Messaging is, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
What is Embedded Messaging?
Consumers are bombarded by thousands of digital touchpoints from various brands each day. They therefore tend to prefer the touchpoints that occur natively within their user experience, are personalized, and offer clear value by anticipating their needs by guiding them along their customer journey. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences and native ads receive a 5-10x higher CTR than traditional ads.
An example of an embedded message and what it looks like in the Iterable platform.
Embedded Messaging, a new channel within Iterable’s cross-channel offering, allows brands to deliver marketing messages that are natively embedded alongside other content in a brand’s apps and websites, without interrupting the user experience.
What are the Benefits of Embedded Messaging?
Embedded messages are designed to meet customers where they are. With a low technical lift, real-time personalization, and non-intrusive design, Embedded Messaging was built from the ground up, keeping marketers top-of-mind.
1. Low Technical Lift
Allowing for marketer-friendly creation and developer friendly implementation, it’s easy to hit the ground running with Embedded Messaging. Once initial placements are built, marketers can create new Embedded Messaging campaigns with easy-to-use templates—no app store updates needed, making content creation a breeze.
With Embedded Messaging, marketers also have full control over the ordering of the messages. You can prioritize and sequence messages at the placement level, ensuring that important messages are shown first, or certain messages appear together.
2. Real-Time Personalization With Our Real-Time Eligibility Delivery Mechanism
Let automation do its thing. Iterable’s Real-Time Eligibility Delivery Mechanism watches for changes in the user state constantly. The moment a user becomes eligible, or ineligible, to see content—based on the set segmentation criteria—Iterable updates which messages a user has available to them in real time.
Example showing different stages of a customer journey and the messages that could be displayed as a result.
This real-time flexibility provides value across the entire customer lifecycle—from activation to retention. If a user is in your app and subscribes to a paid subscription, for example, their messages will automatically shift from urging them to subscribe to showing them messages related to their subscription. And, if you’re worried about defining user criteria, user criteria can be changed while a campaign is running. So if you decide you want to change the target audience for a specific message, you can.
3. Non-Intrusive Messaging Allows Customers to Engage With Content When They’re Ready
Customers prefer touchpoints that occur natively within their journey which is why Embedded Messages are designed to appear in-line with other content. These messages are nothing like the flashy pop-up banners of the early aughts. Instead, these messages are delivered to users without interrupting their flow.
On top of that, message placements within your app or on your website can be hyper-individualized, giving marketers the ability to fully customize the user experience based on the story the marketer is trying to tell each specific customer.
When Should I Use Embedded Messaging?
Embedded Messaging can be used for strategies across the entire customer lifecycle. Although there are essentially an infinite number of use cases, all revolve around the following three main objectives of activating customers, driving sales, and encouraging loyalty.
Activate Customers
Use Embedded Messaging in the pre-sale stage to help drive a customer’s first impactful interaction with your brand. You can also use this first interaction to learn more about your customers in order to personalize their experience and help guide their next action in the customer lifecycle.
Let’s say you’re a marketer trying to get a customer to switch from freemium to premium by offering a free trial. Using Predictive Goals, you could create a segment of users with a moderate likelihood of switching to a paid subscription to ensure you only target users who need a little extra nudge to convert. Targeting only these users, you could create an Embedded Messaging campaign in the top carousel on the homepage of your app that encourages visitors to “Try a 14-day free trial for a paid subscription!”
Drive Sales
Embedded Messaging is great for driving sales of a particular product line or feature during a set time frame. This is important because each time a customer makes a purchase, it’s one more step towards becoming a loyal customer.
As an example, say you work for a retail brand and, now that winter is almost here, you’re trying to boost sales for your brand’s remaining fall inventory. You target the hero banner location on both your app and website to spark interest and sales for their remaining fall line products with messaging saying “Get 20% off on our Fall merch through Friday only with code FALLING INTO WINTER.”
For customers who claim the offer and make a purchase using the code, you could replace the banner with another Embedded Message that offers a sneak preview of your winter collection. For customers who don’t claim the original offer, the message would remain until the deal ends.
Encourage Loyalty
Embedded Messaging is also beneficial when trying to keep customers engaged with your brand and increase the likelihood they remain a loyal customer. You can message customers who aren’t engaged with your brand to prevent them from churning. Embedded Messages can help re-engage customers who might otherwise not feel inclined to take any action with your brand.
In this example, you’re a mobile marketer and you notice that after customers use your brand’s app to achieve a certain goal, they often don’t re-open it for a while. To help increase app engagement, you could set up two embedded messages. One message could go on your brand’s website, letting customers know that the app has some new features available. The second message could be within the app, letting customers know of the new feature with a deep link that leads them to the feature.
Embedded Messaging Every Step of the Way
Embedded Messaging is another channel that allows marketers to create custom experiences for each and every individual customer. Rather than interrupting a customers’ journey, Embedded Messaging fits right in, helping to guide customers to the next step in a way that’s specific and unique to them. The best part? It can be automated and edited in real time to deliver the best results possible for both your team and your customers. We’re excited to see what you can do with this new feature.
Want to learn more about pricing and how to add Embedded Messaging to your existing channel mix? Reach out to your CSM or schedule an Iterable demo today.
