30-second abstract
- Airship is a customer engagement platform (CEP) with a powerful emphasis on mobile utilities.
- Focused on the B2C area, Airship works with high brands comparable to Gamestop, Alaska Airways, and Accuweather.
- ClickZ spoke with Airship’s SVP of Technology, Mike Herrick, to study extra about how their expertise helps prospects.
- Airship creates experiences inside native mobile apps comparable to push notifications and in-app messages which are triggered based mostly on conduct. They even have mobile pockets expertise which allows firms to make the most of options like mobile ticketing.
- Alaska Airlines works works with Airship to facilitate an optimum mobile CX all through Alaska’s “Day of Travel” expertise.
- Customers can log into Airship’s person interface and craft experiences by way of the composer, enabling them to configure their messages through a dashboard.
- Half of Alaska Airlines’ 6.5 million customers test in by way of their mobile app through using Airship’s expertise.
- 68% of vacationers opt-in for “Day of Travel” messages, thus avoiding lengthy traces on the gate
- Alaska generates over 1,000,000 digital boarding passes with Airship every month.
Airship is a customer engagement platform that gives quite a lot of CX options inside one built-in platform with a powerful emphasis on mobile utilities together with SMS and mobile app push notifications, in-app messaging, and mobile pockets advertising.
Examples of mobile pockets passes created inside Airship
Based in Portland, Oregon, Airship is a part of a rising suite of applied sciences serving the customer expertise administration area.
The customer engagement options market was valued at $13 Billion in 2017 and is predicted to develop to $23 billion by 2017.
Airship at the moment focuses on the B2C area, working with main brands comparable to Gamestop, Adidas, Alaska Airways and lots of different high brands.
A pattern of Airship’s prospects
Airship can be utilized as a standalone platform or built-in with different CX platforms.
Per Airship, “We deliver one of the best of breed mobile capabilities to different advertising options together with actual time behavioral information and predictive analytics.
Airship integrates with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, IBM Universal Behavior Exchange, Adobe Campaign, Oracle and extra.”
ClickZ spoke with Airship’s SVP of Technology, Mike Herrick, to study extra about how their expertise helps prospects like Alaska Airlines attain prospects on their smartphones, enabling them to supply exceptional customer service by leveraging their prospects’ mobile gadgets.
A fast background on Airship
Mike Herrick has been with Airship for 9 of the ten years since its founding.
He describes Airship as customer engagement software program that helps brands orchestrate customer journeys throughout channels with a heavy deal with mobile, although they’ll attain individuals on any digital channel.
“We can create experiences within native mobile apps such as push notifications and in-app messages that are triggered based on behavior,” says Herrick. “We also have a product called Message Center which is a dedicated branded inbox for an app. Outside the app, we can reach people through SMS.”

Example of Airship’s Message Center inside an app
Through Airship’s mobile pockets expertise, Alaska Airlines sends boarding passes to vacationers through their mobile gadgets.
The system updates the passes based mostly on seat adjustments standing upgrades, and different components.
Example of an Alaska Airline mobile boarding go—supply: Airship
Airship additionally sends e mail, notably in help of the mobile app.
Says Herrick, “If we predict that someone is going to disengage from the app, we can trigger an email or SMS.”
Airship’s open channels allow them to succeed in individuals anyplace comparable to a set high field, gaming console, or proprietary messaging system.
Says Herrick, “We’ve built great technology specific to customer engagement with a focus on becoming increasingly more intelligent in how we orchestrate experiences personalized to the individual. We do this for enterprise companies around the world.”
All firms can profit from mobile CX capabilities
As famous above, Airship’s focus is on working with B2C brands.
“If you’re a B2C brand, you need to incorporate mobile CX,” says Herrick. “Focusing on advertising and top of funnel activities is complicated and expensive. The easiest way to grow is to take the customers that you have, keep them engaged, and get them to transact with you more often. The best way to do that is with a customer engagement platform that keeps them educated, informed and connects them with your brand.”
Alaska Airlines is an effective instance of the kind of engagement that Herrick is describing.
Airship works with them to facilitate an optimum CX all through Alaska’s “Day of Travel” expertise by leveraging the Alaska Airlines app and different channels.
Alaska’s focus with mobile CX is to be as helpful as attainable by offering well timed data comparable to informing vacationers about gate adjustments, upgrades, and boarding go updates.
“These are all kind of magical micro moments keep travelers informed and help them trust Alaska Airlines to do their job,” explains Herrick. “Alaska creates a really positive experience with the traveler who is more likely to choose them over a competitor in the future.”
Airship has been working with Alaska Airlines since 2013, they usually have been the primary airline to launch with their cross-platform, mobile pockets boarding go answer.
What onboarding with Airship seems like
The complexity of integrating Airship into your tech stack will depend on the use case and the customer.
Some prospects solely use Airship for SMS or restricted mobile pockets use circumstances, that are fundamental functionalities.
In every case, a tech staff isn’t required for implementation.
Says Herrick, “Generally, due to the complexity of B2C and the types of experiences that brands try to create, a technology team is involved in implementation. Our client teams typically include a marketer, product manager, and developer who create the experiences on the consumer side.”
Customer expertise groups work with Airship’s account administration staff which incorporates technical, enterprise, and strategic consultants to assist create nice experiences.
Customers can log into Airship’s person interface and craft experiences by way of the composer, which allows the customer to configure messages through a dashboard.

The Airship dashboard interface
“We have an SDK for a mobile app or website which is the other major integration point,” says Herrick. “Our customers can integrate our SDK in an hour or so for basic use cases. If they’re doing something more elaborate and customized, that can take longer. It depends on how precise the customer wants to be about the design or use case.”
Alaska Airlines reap advantages from Airship’s mobile CX platform
Airship helps Alaska Airlines with their “Day of Travel” interactions which span from the purpose of buy (e.g., ticket reserving) to baggage pickup.
“Within that entire span of time, they probably touch the traveler at least a dozen times,” says Herrick.
Airship’s expertise additionally helps Alaska talk with their staff.
“They created an app for their employees, so they had the same information as passengers. Thus, everyone is kept up to date in real time,” says Herrick.
Half of Alaska Airlines’ 6.5 million customers test in by way of their mobile app through using Airship’s expertise.
This has a huge effect on serving to to cut back the airline’s prices by minimizing the quantity of service calls coming in.
Additionally, 68% of vacationers opt-in for “Day of Travel” messages, thus avoiding lengthy traces on the gate and decreasing the burden on customer service personnel.
Alaska generates over 1,000,000 digital boarding passes with Airship every month, offering each price and environmental advantages.
“The biggest impact is in achieving a positive ‘Day of Travel’ experience by informing travelers about what’s happening throughout their travel day,” explains Herrick. “Alaska sees this impact in their bottom line because they’ve got such a loyal customer base.”
Herrick advises firms to deal with bettering customer expertise to remain aggressive.
“Price clearly matters,” says Herrick, “But consumers often pick the brands that provide the best experience. Many companies are under investing in mobile channels, but that’s where people want to be reached. The technology that comes out of the box in Airship’s platform is not something that brands can easily build themselves. They should be focused on growing their core business and leveraging a platform like Airship so they can compete on customer experience.”



