Mobile marketing platform Kiip is extending its in-app messaging capabilities, allowing brands to use its platform to create their own loyalty programs.
Kiip’s technology lets brands place their promotional messages within the apps people use, rewarding them for their in-app activities with discounts, free trials and other gifts. Now, instead of having to place these rewards in other people’s apps, brands can place them in their own, rewarding people for in-app engagement with an instant rewards program.
Here’s how it works. Before, companies could place their promotions in external apps, such as a reward for a free Vitamin Water bottle, after completing a workout in a fitness app. Now, those companies can place those same promotions within their own apps, with the goal of promoting in-app usage, engagement and customer loyalty. For example, a bank could start offering instant rewards for customers using its app to deposit a check.
Kiip CEO Brian Wong says these types of instant rewards are well suited to casual use customers, who don’t have the time and resources to enroll in the long-term points and rewards loyalty programs offered by credit cards or airlines. “We learned through our testing that in a world where everyone is so obsessed with instant gratification, long-term rewards aren’t always the most suitable type of promotion,” says Wong. “While high-value, repeat customers will always be able to take advantage of long-term loyalty programs, the rest of us can engage through instant rewards on our mobile devices,”
In addition to in-app engagement, Kiip will also enable social media engagement where a brand can reward someone who tweets favorably about it by posting a link that takes them back to the brand app for a promotional gift. The platform can also integrate on top of a company’s existing CRM system, so that current customer profiles can be accessed and targeted for maintaining brand loyalty.
