Leaders from Airship, Vodafone and Invisible Stuff share how marketers can eliminate silos across teams, channels and data and overcome an engrained reliance on developers to optimize end-to-end customer experiences across digital and physical touchpoints.
Today, we’re hard-wired to expect unified, personalized customer experiences wherever we choose to engage with brands. But, too often, brands still fall short when it comes to delivering on that expectation. And that’s costing them revenue, retention and loyalty.
Borrowing from Maya Angelou, Airship’s chief strategy and marketing officer Thomas Butta, says: “People will forget what you say. People will forget what you do. But they'll never forget how you made them feel. And so, at the end of the day, the experience really matters.” In fact, customer experience is widely regarded as the last bastion of competitive differentiation.
“People will forget what you say. People will forget what you do. But they'll never forget how you made them feel.”
Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Airship
Butta was speaking at a recent LinkedIn event which took place at The Drum Labs alongside Sienne Veit, founder of Invisible Stuff and former chief product officer at Kingfisher, and Nithin Ramachandra, Vodafone’s head of new services.
As we head into 2025, rising consumer expectations and shrinking budgets mean brands are under more pressure than ever to serve up better customer experiences. Leaders agree that optimizing mobile-first customer experiences unlocks better results and greater long-term value. So, what’s standing in brands’ way? Why is delivering a seamless, unified customer experience becoming harder, not easier? And how can they learn how to slay common obstacles, optimizing value for both customers and brands?
Why is mobile the linchpin?
As referral traffic from search engines and social networks plummets and paid acquisition costs soar, owned channels have become crucial for deepening engagement and connecting customer experiences across online channels and the real world. Veit thinks of cross-channel customer communications as dynamic “data capture channels” which allow marketers “to create real-time, personalized and very rewarding experiences.”
And the glue between these channels? It’s the “always there, and always on” mobile “assistant” that accompanies consumers throughout their day. Customers spend around 5.5 hours per day on their phones, and screen time is climbing year on year as mobile is the gateway to all digital experiences.
Mobile is also vital for collecting that crucial zero- and first-party data which Veit says shines a light on those “end-to-end missions, journeys…and points of interaction” which allow marketers and product teams to pinpoint opportunities for innovation, optimization or elimination.
The problem is, too often, brands are still using mobile apps and websites as blunt promotional channels instead of relationship-building vehicles. And that’s not the only issue when it comes to unlocking exceptional mobile-first customer experiences.
Sweep away the silos
Consumers’ disjointed brand experiences are partially caused by disjointed production and decision-making processes between marketing, sales, services and IT teams.
“Businesses are operating in siloed channels. Distinct teams support those channels, and resulting data — also siloed — is used by them to make independent decisions,” explains Butta.
Vodafone has seen the customer-centric benefits of scrapping these silos. Ramachandra says: “Working together as a cross-functional team with the same objectives right from the beginning means everyone has the same idea of the customer.”
“Working together as a cross-functional team with the same objectives right from the beginning means everyone has the same idea of the customer.”
Nithin Ramachandra, Head of New Services, Vodafone’s
Ditch developer dependency
This siloed approach is amplified by marketers’ dependency on developers to improve customer experiences. Not only does this cost brands time and customer loyalty, it distracts developers from creating the next market-differentiating features. According to Airship research, most developers say it takes multiple weeks to create, code, deploy, and test a multi-screen experience to improve adoption or activation, while one-third of developers at enterprise-class companies say it takes a month or multiple months.
That’s why canny marketers are turning to new no-code solutions to create, test and deploy native experiences quickly and on their own, without burdening already strained technical resources. Experience platforms using low- and no-code solutions empower the brand’s entire team to create, deploy and adapt in-app and on-site experiences that deepen customer engagement.
Butta says: “By adopting no-code tools such as our no-code Experience Editor, marketing teams can become more agile, and not only respond faster to customer needs, but progressively gain rich customer understanding to make every future interaction more efficient and effective. That’s why we recently extended this tool and others, originally developed to capture more value from mobile apps, for websites too. Doing so has enabled market-leading brands such as ASDA, eToro, France TV and NBC Universal to create relevant, unified customer experiences across apps, websites and all channels more easily.”
“By adopting no-code tools such as our no-code Experience Editor, marketing teams can become more agile...”
Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Airship
of major US news publishers require smartphone users to perform an action (save an article, follow a company or create a free account) prior to serving them a prompt to opt in for email communications.
Get better at onboarding
The most crucial digital experience is the first one. Digital brings unlimited choice a mere click away, and most brands will rarely get a second chance to make a positive first impression. Onboarding plays a critical role in establishing the value and setting the tone for a brand’s customer experience. “57% of all consumers will decide whether to delete an app after their first or second experience,” Butta says. An effective onboarding process doesn’t overwhelm new customers with excessive data requests — it quickly establishes a clear and compelling value exchange.
But is that message filtering through? Perhaps not enough. Airship evaluated the websites of 25 of the most influential US news publishers using both smartphones and desktops to examine the first-time visitor experience. Nearly one-third required smartphone users to first perform an action (save an article, follow a company or create a free account) prior to serving them a prompt to opt in for email communications. This reactive approach leaves ongoing engagement up to chance, and perpetuates a costly cycle of paying to acquire and re-acquire customers.
Seamless onboarding also extends to cross-channel consistency. Brands need to encourage customers to self-identify through registration or loyalty enrollment so they can be recognized wherever they choose to interact. Not only does this ensure continuity and seamless customer experiences, it eliminates friction in truly understanding their needs and motivations, further building trust and engagement.
Little wonder brands are increasingly turning to no-code experience solutions to optimize the entire mobile customer journey – from the point of discovery to loyalty. It drives greater value for everyone involved.
“57% of all consumers will decide whether to delete an app after their first or second experience”
Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Airship
Prioritize zero party data to deepen personalization
Nearly half of online adults in both the UK and US say they wish more companies would use what they know about them, to create more relevant experiences across their channels.
Effective use of customer data is critical for delivering personalized experiences. Brands should capture and analyze data across the entire customer journey to optimize experiences in real-time, so that customers “are willing to share information if you treat our data appropriately and you transparently communicate that to us,” says Butta.
For instance, Orange used Airship’s no-code Experience Editor to quickly deploy a native survey within its app that gathered as many responses in a single day that previously took a month when using a survey delivered through an HTML WebView.
Meanwhile, Vodafone’s mobile-first strategy focuses on metrics that assess customer goals rather than just internal business goals. "It’s very data-driven... It’s customer-centric, but we need to ensure all of this comes together in a way that works for them,” Ramachandra says.
And often, that’s about embracing a trial-and-error approach.
“Experiments reduce risk. The notion of failing small before you fail big... is a great way of innovating.”
Sienne Veit, Founder of Invisible Stuff & Former Chief Product Officer at Kingfisher
Experimentation accelerates innovation
In today’s competitive marketplace, brands need to foster a culture of experimentation to stay agile and innovative. Successful marketers and product teams are those who aren’t afraid to experiment boldly and intelligently prior to rolling out a campaign or new feature to their entire audience. And that experimentation increasingly means letting new technology solutions do the heavy lifting; for example, instantly creating multiple variations for testing through AI.
As Veit says: “Experiments reduce risk. The notion of failing small before you fail big... is a great way of innovating.” Marketers should use no-code tools and AI to test new experiences, learn quickly, refine ideas, and minimize risk before full implementation.
