Announcing the 2021 Mobile Growth Award Winners

It’s an honor for Branch to once again unveil the winners of the Mobile Growth Awards. This year’s awards process proved to be just as grueling as last year’s, as our judges had the unenviable task of narrowing a list of over 200 nominees down to just eight winners. In the end, we were left with a group of winners who truly exemplify the spirit of innovation and growth that is so closely tied to the mobile marketing industry. I’m so excited to see where they take their brands in the years to come, and what future Mobile Growth Award winners will have to show the world.

Here are the winners in all eight categories:

Best Mobile Engagement Campaign: Recognizes campaigns that reach customers on their mobile devices, bringing them to brand apps.

Name and title: Julia Miller, Executive Director, Creative Services at E*TRADE Financial Corporation

Company: E*TRADE

Campaign: E*TRADE had a mission to help customers better understand their IRAs and prepare for retirement. To do this, they added mobile messages to their historically email-only IRA communications strategy — mobile messages that reminded each user to max out their 2020 IRA contributions. Customers could link directly to transfer money, enabling them to easily take action.

Best Overall Growth Campaign: A look at the campaigns that created new and innovative channels, techniques, tactics, or strategies to increase mobile growth over the past year.

Name and title: Oleh Myslinskyy, Manager, Digital Activation

Company: Philips

Campaign: In order to integrate the NutriU app into the existing digital ecosystem of the Philips Airfryer, Philips launched an extensive, holistic campaign that included deep links and QR codes on product stickers, YouTube videos, and in-store flyers. Philips leveraged Branch deep linking and attribution to measure the overall impact of the campaign, which saw the NutriU app grow over 120% compared to the prior year.

Best Mobile Viral Campaign: Recognizing one of this year’s most viral mobile marketing campaigns.

Name and title: Julian Dunn, Head of Product

Company: BeautyBay

Campaign: BeautyBay and Disney launched a cross-brand promotional effort to promote the new DisneyColour Eyeshadow Palette. In order to seamlessly direct users from their social media pages to their mobile apps, they included Branch links in their organic social posts on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. In addition, given that a significant share of their audience is desktop-based, BeautyBay also added QR codes to the product landing page, backed by Branch links. For the launch period, BeautyBay saw a 350% increase in app users.

Best Phygital Experience: Campaigns that transformed traditional offline marketing by blending the best of physical and digital to improve the consumer journey.

Name and title: Tiago Lessa, Head of Marketing

Company: Globoplay

Campaign: Globoplay had a big challenge: more than 40 live streamings were happening simultaneously during the Olympic Games in different time zones. In order to help their users follow the events that interested them, Globoplay created a WhatsApp channel and advertised it on TV. Using the WhatsApp channel, the company disseminated daily customized event summaries. In total, more than 4.5 million messages were sent during the games.

Best Digital Transformation: Celebrates business innovation through digital transformation, resulting in increased engagement, user acquisition, or revenue.

Name and title: Blaise Lipan, Senior Manager, Software Management

Company: QVC

Campaign: In order to create a seamless OTT-to-mobile-app experience, QVC built a flow to direct users from the OTT app to the same content in their mobile app. Users viewing a QVC livestream receive a “send to mobile” prompt that allows them to send themselves an SMS message with a Branch deep link to the corresponding product page in the mobile app. QVC later determined that 40% of users deep linked to their app completed purchases.

Best Retention Campaign: Campaigns designed to keep users actively engaged with mobile apps and the brands they represent.

Name and title: Taylor Chew, Marketing Manager

Company: WayBetter

Campaign: WayBetter Inc. experiences an annual spike in interest around New Year’s due to weight-loss and wellness resolutions. With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, they wanted to encourage their customers to take charge of their lives with the resources that they had on hand. WayBetter created a series of fitness and weight loss games to keep users engaged, the most successful of which performed 60.3% above its projected goal.

Best Onboarding Activation Campaign: Highlighting a highly successful mobile onboarding activation campaign.

Name and title: Roberto Lancione, Director, Software Development

Company: Bell Canada

Campaign: Bell Canada did not integrate registration into its app onboarding process, which meant that customers who installed the app also had to register for an account there — which came with a lengthy verification process.To consolidate onboarding, they sent tokenized Branch deep links when inviting customers to create accounts. This allowed mobile customers to skip the verification process, transforming a 9-step onboarding process into a 3-step one. 

Best Mobile Innovation: Recognizing creative thinking and outstanding innovation on mobile.

Name and title: Mitul Lakhani, Head of Digital Product

Company: Showpo

Campaign: Australian online fashion retailer Showpo wanted to address problems surrounding rapid sellouts of popular products and the customer disappointment that inevitably results. Using the technology from iOS 14, Showpo launched an iOS widget that allows customers to see the latest fashion drops and their order statuses without having to open the app. In addition, Showpo added a visual AI feature that allows customers to find similar items when products become unavailable.