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Below is our recent interview with Jim Continenza, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Vivial:
Q: Jim, can you tell us more about Vivial’s mobile marketing services?
A: At Vivial, we help businesses reach their target audience. This means we help businesses appear wherever consumers are searching, regardless of device use. Earlier this year, we launched our latest mobile marketing solution: The Mobile Optimizer. This new service enables businesses to use texting for marketing efforts like lead generation and customer loyalty. Using mobile messaging to offer coupons and exclusive offers, company reminders and alerts, is a great way to engage with customers and prospects. The Mobile Optimizer helps businesses – especially mid-size companies – seamlessly integrate texting campaigns with their other digital marketing activity, all powered through the same easy-to-use Vivial Marketing Platform.
Vivial is proud to be a leading innovator in the industry and the only marketing provider with this robust set of offerings. With our Mobile Optimizer, we’ve brought enterprise-grade technology and network reliability, once only available to Fortune 50 companies, to local and regional business owners. On top of that, we are one of a select few companies with direct connections to the top U.S. mobile providers. These strategic relationships ensure messages are delivered within seconds of sending.
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Q: Why should businesses incorporate mobile messaging into marketing efforts?
A: Americans check their phones once every 12 minutes and more than 6 billion text messages are sent in the US each day. Whether your business is trying to reach millennials, baby boomers or any generation in between, texting is a critical part to any digital marketing strategy.
Research has shown text messaging campaigns to be extremely effective, both for reach and return on investment. Typically, 98 percent of text messages are opened, and 90 percent are read within three seconds (Source: Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2017).
So, if businesses are not including texting as part of their overall marketing strategy, they are missing a huge opportunity to connect with customers in a natural, non-invasive way.
Q: How can the Mobile Optimizer help businesses?
A: Vivial’s Mobile Optimizer connects businesses with new and existing customers throughout the entire buyer journey. No longer do businesses need multiple providers to manage their omni-channel marketing strategy. And with Vivial’s on-demand account support team, businesses have a partner to assist in the development, implementation and optimization of their campaign.
The Mobile Optimizer can help businesses enhance their overall digital marketing campaigns through tactics like:
• Increasing engagement with loyalty campaigns. Send coupons and exclusive sale information to frequent customers. They’ll reward you with repeat business and positive word-of-mouth.
• Delivering meaningful product information. Help consumers make informed decisions by sending them videos and other information on your products. They’ll appreciate the convenience and want to learn more.
• Generate brand awareness. Engage customers with messages that use videos, pictures, links and more. It’s a proven method that grabs their attention and makes them want to take action.
Q: How is online marketing today different that it was just a few years ago?
A: Digital marketing is rapidly evolving in the face of accelerated technology development and changing consumer habits. And businesses are taking action. According to a recent study, spending on digital marketing grew by 44 percent last year in the United States, estimating the global spend is approaching $100 billion (Source: Reuters). The technologies leading the digital marketing evolution are mobile, voice search, artificial intelligence (AI) and chat bots.
Text messaging has rapidly become a key digital marketing tactic as more consumers tend to open messages as soon as they receive them, compared to other messaging mediums such as email. It is also very easy to open and respond to a text message and consumers have more trust in mobile as Spam messages are rare because people only get messages after they have opted in.
When consumers are looking for information about a local business, they are no longer asking a neighbor or coworker. They’re asking their voice assistant. From Google Home to Amazon’s Alexa, there were over one billion voice searches made in January of this year alone. And it’s not just the occasional search. Forty-six percent of consumers look for a local business via voice search on a daily basis. (Source: BrightLocal)
AI is redefining business communication. In fact, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships with companies without interacting with a human. AI is being used in individual applications like business intelligence, providing the ability to analyze “big data” to understand actionable trends and patterns. It’s also used in predictive analysis, which is designed to predict unknown future events.
When it comes to chatbots, consumers are using them, and they don’t even know it. Chatbots provide brands with a personality and a way to provide 24-hour customer service without the need for 24-hour live support. Chat bots are also used in sales, package delivery and travel/hospitality.
At Vivial, we are dedicated to monitoring and analyzing the digital marketing landscape and sharing this knowledge to benefit our customers. By staying on top of the latest digital marketing trends, we can help our customers prepare for what’s coming next, so they can best adapt their business.
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Q: What are the benefits of Vivial’s Marketing Platform?
A: Vivial understands the challenges business owners face in today’s marketplace. It is a complicated task for business owners to learn, let alone stay ahead of the vast array of digital marketing technologies in the marketplace. That’s why we developed a SaaS-based platform to make it easy to manage all aspects of digital marketing in one simple platform.
Vivial provides a suite of solutions to help small businesses attract, engage and retain customers in the highly mobilized, uber-competitive online marketplace. It’s like having a full-fledged marketing department. Everything within the Vivial local online marketing solution is built to be robust and easy to use.
Combining the power of custom content with the reach of social media and the support of expert, on-demand service, the Vivial Marketing Platform allows businesses to promote content via text messaging, through Facebook and Instagram advertising, request and monitor online reviews, track Google rankings and monitor online business listings all in one place. Vivial’s suite of solutions also includes responsive website development, local search optimization, online advertising and local print directories.
Q: What’s next for Vivial? Do you have plans to grow, expand or diversify?
A: As the martech industry continues to evolve, Vivial is constantly looking for opportunities to develop, innovate, build and acquire entities that will allow us to meet the needs of our customers. It’s imperative that we always listen to the customer for their needs first, remain agile and work smarter to compete in a constantly changing digital and mobile landscape.
We are committed to facilitating connections – connecting companies to customers, people to products. In the coming year we will continue to look for new ways to grow these connections through innovative customer engagement tools that help businesses enhance the way they interact with their customers, build loyalty, manage content and track results.
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