Mobile marketing enables organizations to engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network. Mobile marketing software encompasses two types of products:
(1) products that enable users to send marketing SMS (text), MMS (multimedia), and push notifications, and
(2) products that enable users to market their mobile apps. This is commonly called mobile app marketing.
In both scenarios, mobile is treated as a distinct marketing channel, with a dedicated strategy.
Mobile marketing tools allow users to:
segment their mobile audience
create messages, campaigns, and promotions, often using templates
reach their mobile audience via SMS, MMS, push notifications, and in-app ads
analyze campaign engagement
calculate mobile marketing ROI
Ease of implementation and integration are two major considerations for buyers of mobile marketing software.
Some vendors provide SMS, MMS, and push notification functionality as part of a multi-channel platform. Email marketing and marketing automation vendors like SendinBlue, Mailigen, and Iterable are a few examples.
On the other hand, WompMobile, Trumpia, Twilio SMS, Urban Airship and EZ Texting are examples of mobile campaign tools that serve only the mobile channel use case.
Mobile app marketing tools must integrate with the user's CRM, a mobile ad-serving platform, as well as the user's app itself. Examples of products in this group are Swrve, Apsalar, TUNE Marketing Console, Adjust, AppsFlyer, and Kochata. Mobile app marketing products tend to have stronger testing and measurement features, which overlap with the mobile analytics category.
Some mobile app marketing products also include features that allow users to promote their app to new users. This is done by increasing visibility of their app in the app store.
Mobile app marketing software buyers should look at the industries commonly served by the vendor. For example, mobile marketing software that serves mostly gaming apps may or may not be a good fit for marketers working on a retail, travel, finance, or on-demand services app.
Some mobile marketing tools offer pay-as-you-go models that charge per message sent. The price might start at less than one cent per message, and go down with greater volumes. Some also offer volume discounts or monthly subscription plans based on a planned level of use. Often the price per message will differ depending on the recipient’s country.
Mobile app marketing tools might charge per install, per click or per in-app event, or offer a flat-rate pricing structure.
EZ Texting promises to make text marketing fast & easy. With over 4 Billion messages sent and 50,000+ customers, the vendor aims to provide a text marketing service that's easy to use, easy to afford, and easy to customize. EZ Texting promises to help you send bulk SMS in the United States a...
SendinBlue helps businesses build and grow relationships through marketing automation, email campaigns, transactional emails and SMS messages. The vendor says that its world-class customer happiness team and their pricing plans are what set them apart. The vendor also says customers choose them ...
Twilio SMS is, as the name would suggest, Twilio's SMS platform which can be deployed for mobile marketing, or other use cases where sending a text in an automated fashion might be useful (e.g. two-factor authentication, push notifications, etc).
SendPulse is an integrated messaging platform providing user communication that includes emails, SMS, Web Push, SMTP and more. This solution includes 15,000 free emails per month. SendPulse also includes tools to manage users. This solution can be used on all devices.
Mailigen is a web based integrated marketing provider offering email, mobile and social marketing. In the SaaS platform, you can gather subscribers, prepare, send or schedule email campaigns and receive real time reports. One can leverage statistics for behavioral segmentation and lifecycle email...
Iterable is a growth marketing and user engagement platform. This platform is designed to help B2C marketers to send the right message to the right devices at the right time. Iterable supports all types of marketing campaigns (blast, lifecycle, transactional) across all messaging channels (emai...
WompMobile enables any website to be converted to a mobile-friendly format without the need to redesign or change the desktop site. It is a turn-key mobile development solution, meaning no IT involvement is required. This solution uses a proprietary JavaScript-adaptive platform. The vendor says t...
Leanplum is a mobile marketing automation and messaging platform with A/B testing and analytics, from the company of the same name headquartered in San Francisco, California.
TextMagic is a bulk SMS service for sending texts to customers, staff and suppliers from an online portal. TextMagic is compatible with PC & Mac. It supports long SMS messages, and allows users to send texts globally. Users can set up integrations to other applications using TextMagic's Gatew...
Localytics in Boston offers their mobile marketing applications which features personalized messaging and push notifications enriched with embedded video or GIF support, as well as user-lifecycle analytics for app optimization and discovery analytics.
Urban Airship is a mobile marketing and push notification application, supporting customer segmentation with highly personalized messaging, and email notifications.
MailUp is the eponymous email & SMS platform from the Italian company that was founded in 2002 that now has a modest but respectable presence across the western world with a diverse customer base (Yamaha, Amnesty International, Korean Air, etc.). Mailup's platform combines email marketing, wi...
Cordial Intelligent Messaging is an email marketing solution built around features such as triggered messaging, real-time data segmentation, and robust integrations.
Braze (formerly Appboy) is a lifecycle engagement platform that empowers brands to humanize their connections with customers through technology, resulting in better experiences and increased retention, lifetime value, and ROI.Braze is built for today’s mobile-first reality and tomorrow’s ambient ...
Upland Mobile Messaging is the result of Upland's acquisition of Waterfall. The product is a marketing app built around messaging and CRM integration.
OpenMarket headquartered in Seattle, Washington offers their eponymous mobile engagement platform.
Hustle, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their mobile marketing platform emphasizing peer to peer texting and event or cause promotion. The platform is for higher ed, labor and non-profit, political causes, and also enterprises carrying out marketing efforts.
TUNE Marketing Console is a mobile marketing platform with attribution analytics, app store analytics, and in-app analytics.
PushApps is a cloud based push notifications service that helps app developers, marketers and publishers to manage, send and learn more about their push notifications. Some key features include: Smart Segmentation, Scheduled Notifications and Analytics.
MobileBridge is a SaaS based mobile marketing automation platform.
