Mobile Messaging 2018: These are the trends for the coming year

Customer Journey – the mobile user

What used to be word of mouth is today social media. If you want to reach customers in a targeted manner, it’s simply not enough just to advertise at your own front. Every potential customer must be able to find you, your entrepreneur or your offer by every step of the customer journey, in blogs, forums, as an infographic, in video tutorials, and even in small marginal notes.

How and where the customer ultimately makes his purchasing decision has changed a great deal over the past year. Starting with the web search, which mainly starts on the mobile phone, up to the payment method, which can be via Paypal.

As smartphones are becoming ever more firmly established in the lives of consumers and users are ‘mobile’, success as a company in the coming year will depend even more on their mobile presence.

• Expand products in the online shop through blogs, reviews, application notes, etc.
• Update responsive webdesign for your own company homepage
• Integrate apps with push notifications
• Make mobile payment options available
• Offer multiple communication channels, also for feedback

Companies can offer many options to attract customers. Although some companies still don’t believe in it: the technology is ready. Be it loyalty programs, customer accounts on your website, automatic tracking of shipments or comprehensive marketing campaigns – every step of the customer journey can be accompanied on a mobile basis and can invite to your product / brand.

RCS is intended to become successor to SMS

The next relevant issue for Messaging Trends 2018 is Google’s ‘RCS’. The manufacturers expect a new, more developed form of SMS. The messaging solution is intended for both Android and iOS and should act as a SMS across networks and independent of installed apps, but with additional functions. Sending and receiving of media data, also via WLAN and other features equip the communication more extensively than it was the case so far.

With this, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Co. get serious competition. It remains to be seen whether RCS will completely replace the SMS, but as a secondary communication tool, it definitely brings with it a lot of potential, depending on the company, target audience and purpose.

Text2Speech – Let messages read out

Every day, customers are overwhelmed by innumerable impressions and stimuli, mainly visually. To differentiate itself from other companies, Text2Speech or the integration of a Voice API can be a useful choice. Especially when it comes to customer loyalty, the familiar voice of a contact person with personal message can make a big impact. But even automated calls now have a lot of advantages, including that they can be customized in different languages ​​and through interactive features.

If you start a marketing campaign in the coming year, audio messages could complement them optimally, for example in conjunction with SMS.

Business messaging in form of mobile employee communication

Let’s not forget the internal application of various communication tools. In the future, employees will be less likely to pick up the phone or enter emails, but instead chat mobil. This is not only easier and faster, but also provides optimal solutions for the exchange of media data. Screenshots, notes, thumbnails and more can be integrated directly into the conversation. The participants of a working group e.g. can then communicate individually and yet interactively with each other, without being disturbed in the work rhythm.

Some are already using instant messengers like Whatsapp, but so far they have not been able to fully convince with privacy and reliability. Especially for sales representatives, it is sometimes important to have full access to the company network even without the Internet. SMS and perhaps RCS will definitely prevail at this point.

Header picture by geralt via pixabay.com