When it comes to unifying the brand experience, marketers have a tough task ahead of them. Leading brands like Amazon, Nike, and Starbucks, have set the bar high, and marketers are feeling the pressure to exceed these expectations and leverage data in more meaningful ways to attract consumers.
With the ubiquity of smartphones and the importance of personalizing the user experience, it is even more crucial for marketers to reduce friction across channels and take full advantage of mobile content to drive engagement throughout the lifecycle.
One of the ways marketers can maintain a seamless brand experience is through mobile deep linking.
What Is Mobile Deep Linking?
Mobile deep linking is linking to a specific piece of content on your mobile device and redirecting to the mobile app to open the link, as opposed to opening the link on your mobile web browser.
Deep linking provides many benefits including better tracking, higher conversions and an optimal user experience across different channels, devices, and platforms.
How can Iterable clients take advantage of these benefits? Enter Branch.
Branch is the leading mobile deep linking and attribution platform that helps you engage, acquire, and measure across all devices, channels and platforms.
Branch’s business has exploded quickly in the mobile space, “supporting 40,000 apps with more than 3 billion monthly users. The company counts Airbnb, Amazon, Bing, Pinterest, Reddit, Slack, Tinder, and several others as customers.”
Here’s an example of how Branch drives mobile growth for brands: Imagine you work at a major retailer and are interested in promoting a specific product to a user. In addition to providing an e-commerce website, you offer a mobile app for users to easily browse the catalog and make a purchase.
Instead of directing the user to the website, you can deep link the user to a specific catalog item and enable the user to view that item within the mobile app, creating a seamless cross-platform user experience.
Why Do Web Links Not Work in Mobile?
Deep linking is specifically designed for mobile users because traditional web links don’t connect users to mobile apps. This is primarily because of the fundamental differences between desktop and mobile.
Mobile has different operating systems (OS) and platforms, including the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Apple iOS, Android OS, email, and mobile web (browser-based internet services accessed from mobile devices).
These OS don’t naturally excel at passing information between each other because the user is moving between different platforms that don’t talk to each other. As a result, there is a lack of data sharing and siloed platforms where deep linking is needed to solve this problem.
Web, on the other hand, does not have these issues since there aren’t multiple OS and platforms. All the browsing occurs in one browser (i.e. Google Chrome) no matter where the user may go.
How Does Deep Linking Improve Engagement?
Deep linking improves engagement by unifying the experience between devices, channels and platforms.
As a result, mobile marketers can do the following seamlessly with deep linking:
- Activate new users by directing them to the mobile app to view specific content
- Increase personalization by directing users to custom links in the mobile app
- Improve campaign performance by analyzing and tracking marketing campaigns across different channels and devices
How Does Deep Linking Work in Iterable?
Iterable offers native deep linking functionality built into the platform. With our native deep linking capabilities, marketers can offer a seamless, cross-channel experience regardless of where the user engages with your content.
Deep linking can take place in the following ways:
- Browser to app
- Email to app
- App to app
- Social media to app
- Mobile web to app
What If My Business Already Uses Branch?
We understand that many companies already have deep linking providers like Branch in place before they start using Iterable.
Now you can continue to use Branch in Iterable to maximize engagement and track mobile attribution.
What Can Marketers Expect With the Iterable + Branch Partnership?
We’re excited to be partnering with Branch and committed to offering our mutual customers the best-in-class technology throughout the MarTech ecosystem.
The integration between Branch and Iterable allows customers to engage their users while maintaining a seamless experience across multiple devices.
You can send messages through Iterable with Branch links to capture full attribution and engagement data from activation to reactivation campaigns.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these options.
- Universal Email: Automatically convert your email links into multi-platform deep links that take users directly to content in the app on mobile devices, while still maintaining the same web experience for desktop and mobile users who don’t have the app installed.
- Mobile Attribution: Attribute credit for an install, purchase or in-app event to the message from Iterable that drove it. Now you can clearly understand the LTV and ROI of your messaging campaigns.
- Behavioral Data: Automatically ingest install and in-app event data captured by Branch in Iterable to complete the feedback loop.
Already an Iterable user? Learn how you can set up the Branch integration.
Interested in taking a tour of Iterable’s growth marketing platform? Sign up for a custom demo today to understand how your brand can benefit from deep linking and power world-class customer engagement.
