In every facet of life, we recognize that engaging with people in a way that enhances their experience brings great rewards, and mobile push notifications are a tool that can enable us to better engage clients. We try to understand the pain being experienced by potential clients so that we can address how the products we are trying to sell may help alleviate that pain. When we go out on a date, we dress up in a way that we believe our date will find appealing. When going to a job interview, we often research the company and the individual we will be meeting. When I was being interviewed to join IBM, I identified that one of the interviewers and I shared common musical tastes. Being able to start the conversation with some informal chitchat on mutually interesting topics can go a long way toward setting the tone of a conversation.
When thinking about our clients, we should try to achieve as close to an individualized, personal engagement as possible. In order to do so, we need to learn as much as we can about the specific clients and the context within which we are engaging them. We have to begin by knowing our audience.
The value of a well-timed mobile push notification
In May, I was in Bangkok for meetings and I received a mobile push notification from an app called HotelQuickly. The notification read “Curfew in Thailand between 10 p.m. and 5 
a.m. Need a hotel tonight?” HotelQuickly is an app that enables users to find a hotel for the same evening. After noon each day, the app makes available at a discount rooms that hotels feel would otherwise go unsold. Using this app minimizes the steps needed to reserve the room in order to maximize the user’s ability to make a decision at that very moment.
Had I been in Singapore instead of Bangkok, this push notification would not have been beneficial to me. Had the notification come a few days later, it is unlikely there would have been the same urgency to find a room. As it was, I had already reserved a room for that evening, but I did notice that traffic was outrageous just ahead of the curfew. Taxis were hard to come by and yet I didn’t get any push notifications from the various taxi booking apps. They missed out on quite an opportunity!
The right message to the right people at the right time
So how can we ensure that we are able to send out a message to the right person at the right time? Our customer relationship management (CRM) systems hold a great deal of information about our clients. We know where they live and work. We may know their birthdays and the makeup of their families. Our financial systems may tell us how much time a client typically takes between invoicing and payment. We should be able to identify when a client is likely to buy a plane ticket or place a new order based on similar orders in the past.
IBM Mobile Push Notification enables organizations to make use of all the existing knowledge they have about their clients, and to add in contextual information about their current and past locations and more in order to engage them in a way that is very specific to them. It becomes easy to perform A/B testing to try out a campaign with one segment (for example, clients currently visiting a city where they typically stay in hotels) and to see how it compares with a campaign sent to another segment (perhaps clients currently in their home city). This deeper level of engagement will ensure that your marketing plans have a better chance of success.
What is the most interesting and engaging targeted mobile push notification you have received? Connect with me on Twitter @davidleeheyman and tweet a screenshot of it using the hashtag #IBMCoolPush.
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