Snacking on Mobile Content
You’ve probably never heard the term “snacking” in reference to smartphone activity, but it’s out there.
Think of it like that natural instinct to open the refrigerator and grab a snack when you’re bored, but instead it’s the natural instinct to grab your phone and start doing something on it.
According to eMarketer, Americans armed with smartphones represent a different class of consumers: ones that stand apart from other Americans in the way they shop, communicate, consume media.
This class is referred to as the ‘smartphone class’ and there are about 100 million members.
How are the members of this class distinguishable?
They are always connected, excited by access to real-time information, pass time by watching videos or playing games on their phones, scan mobile barcodes, shop with mobile coupons, make mobile purchases, and more.
You know when you’re sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and you grab a magazine to read to kill the time? Well, the consumers in the smartphone class grab their phones instead—maybe to check their Twitter, surf the Web, play Angry Birds or upload a photo on Instagram.
Whatever it may be, their spare time consists of them engaging in some kind of mobile activity. They are constantly “snacking” on small portions of content on their mobile device throughout the day, keeping them more connected than ever before.
The path to purchase has been completely repaved by these snackers, giving marketers a tremendous opportunity to target them. Also, smartphone penetration and mobile gaming and video consumption are constantly growing, which means so are these opportunities.
I’m definitely a member of this smartphone class, and I’ll admit to being a snacker as well.
Are you part of this class of consumers?
Four Mobile Marketing Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid
Are you hesitant to dive into certain areas of mobile marketing for fear of making mistakes?
Strategy Analytics predicts that advertiser spend on mobile media will almost double from $6.3 billion to $11.6 billion. Certainly there are plenty of marketers diving in, and they’ve made their share of mistakes along the way.
The good news is that we now have lots of examples from which to learn, and many mobile marketing mistakes are easy to avoid. Here are four to watch out for:
1. Failing to optimize your landing page for mobile.
Solution: This is like putting the cart before the horse, and failing to optimize the landing page for your mobile display and search campaigns can cost you valuable conversions. To ensure you’re providing users with a fast mobile experience free of pinching and zooming, check out our guide on “How to Build a Mobile Website.”
Example: Mobile Marketer seems to have a new example every week of an advertiser that hasn’t optimized a landing page for mobile. White Castle, P.F. Chang’s and Target have all run into this problem recently.
2. Using the same paid search campaign for desktop and mobile.
Solution: Mobile searches are inherently different from those of desktop, and if you’re using the same paid search campaign for both, you’re missing out on an opportunity for better results. Google suggests modifying keyword selection, adjusting bids and utilizing mobile-specific ad formats to drive performance with a separate mobile campaign.
Example: At the time of writing, a search for “flower shop” on my mobile device yields results from businesses large and small. Local business Lawrenceville Flower Shop comes out on top with a click-to-call ad, while other small businesses have missed the opportunity.
3. Deploying QR codes that can’t be scanned.
Solution: If your QR code can’t be scanned, it’s just taking up valuable space. Thorough testing is extremely important, and be sure to follow these design-related best practices to improve reliability. Also, remember that your audience should be able to access the Internet (no subways) with the ability to stop and scan (no billboards).
Example: 60 Second Marketer featured a guest post on the “Top 5 QR Code Fails of 2011” – proof that with new technology, even the most seasoned marketers are bound to mess up.
4. Breaking the rules in an SMS marketing campaign.
Solution: There is an alphabet soup of laws or regulatory/advisory organizations that rule the SMS marketing land, including CTIA, MMA and CAN-SPAM. If you break the rules, you could have your campaign shut down along with those of marketers using the same short code. Become familiar with the MMA’s Best Practices (PDF), then for good measure, review the CTIA’s Playbook.
Example: T-Mobile famously blocked all messages from SMS marketing company Ez Texting in 2010 due to alleged violations from a single marketer.
Without a doubt, you will make some mistakes as you expand your mobile marketing efforts, but by following the suggestions above, you’ll avoid mistakes that even the biggest companies have made.
The Future of Money and Mobile Commerce [INFOGRAPHIC]
If you’re over the age of 20, you’ve likely used a credit card, counted change and maybe even written a check. But is all that about to change?
Mobile payment hasn’t become the de facto method of financial transactions just yet, but it is projected to overtake those archaic checkbooks and bank notes you’ve been lugging around.
Three types of mobile payments dominate the marketplace today: m-commerce (uses a mobile browser and online wallets), m-payments (uses mobile apps), and m-wallets (replaces your entire wallet). Furthermore, consumers can access several forms of transaction on their mobile devices, including scannable barcodes, mobile coupons and self-checkout.
But are consumers ready to wholeheartedly adopt the latest in mobile payment technology? Adults who are unbanked, for instance, may face a barrier to mobile transactions — there are currently 17 million unbanked adults in the U.S. But many smartphone users welcome the convenience of mobile payments (87% in the UK), while others worry about the privacy factor (79% in Asia). Still, 49% of consumers in the U.S. found shopping on a smartphone awkward.
Then again, many people found paper checks awkward and credit cards confusing the first time around.
Where do you fall in the mobile payment debate? What kinds of transactions do you handle on your smartphone? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
[Infographic] The Future of Social Mobile Communications in the Enterprise
The nature of work has been changed by the mobile phone. This is an undisputable fact. It’s also a fact that organizations and enterprises have not always coped well with this revolution.
The early stages of mobility in the workplace were fairly simple: A couple top executives had private cellphones with numbers that only the most important people could reach. The wall between the C-suite and the rest of enterprises began to erode with the rise of the BlackBerry, as mobile email became pervasive through the entire corporate structure. But we’re still waiting for the next step.
What is that next step? Look no further than what technologists refer to as SoMoClo (social, mobile, cloud, or the dreadful “mocial”). While enterprises may have been the first to push and adopt the cloud, consumers have done likewise with the rise of social computing. And everybody is mobile.
The infographic below shows “three generations” of mobile phones in the workplace and ponders what could come next.
The first generation is fairly simple. BlackBerries in the workplace dominated from about 1999 (from the CEO’s office) until 2007 (when the original iPhone was released).
In 2012, BlackBerries are no longer the de facto phone you find in office settings, and not many people still carry two cellphones in their bags, one for work, one for personal use. The norm now is one phone – and it can do just about everything.
That includes getting in touch with everybody you might know at any time. On a cellphone these days, work contacts mingle with private contacts. You might have Mork (your favorite sales rep) listed on your contacts list next to Mindy (your stepmother). Twitter lets people broadcast thoughts and connect with people everywhere. Facebook, often the bane of the enterprise, is one of the biggest ways to connect with friends, family and co-workers (and share embarrassing photos of them).
The consumer world of social mobility has bled into the enterprise world of social mobility, and many companies do not like that. Sometimes messages are innocent like, “Bill, you will be at the meeting tomorrow at 9 a.m., right?” Other times they can be damaging to the company; “Bill here is the confidential slideshow for the meeting at 9 a.m.”
The sender may not have meant to share private company data for the world to see, but we all know instances where that happens. The infographic indicates that 1% of workers have posted some type of confidential business material. That may not seem like a lot, but imagine if a prescription medication gave 1% of everyone who took it a stroke. The Food and Drug Administration would pull it off the shelves in a heartbeat, and the lawyers would have a field day.
The infographic – from Salesforce Rypple - predicts a third generation to follow today’s consumer-centric mobile workplace, and is a good way to start a dialogue about how social mobility will progress in the enterprise.
But it concentrates on services like Rypple, Chatter and Jive, (the former two owned by Salesforce with Jive one of the company’s partner services) which makes it a bit self-serving. There are plenty of other enterprise social clients – including Yammer (which just acquired oneDrum to compete with Jive), Jabber and a host of unified communications clients from Cisco, Telligent, SocialText, NewsGator as well as entrants from Microsoft, SAP and IBM. These are the shapes that SoMoClo has taken in the enterprise.
The question: are these enterprise clients really the future of mobile social in the workplace? Or are today’s consumer services now too popular and too pervasive to be supplanted? As we have seen with the Bring Your Own Device revolution, workers do not like having tools they do not like shoved down their throats. To succeed, enterprise clients will have to be as powerful and comfortable as the best consumer services.
Check out the infographic and let us know what you think about the future of enterprise social communication in the comments.
Starbucks Can’t Get Enough Mobile
Just as loyal coffee enthusiasts can’t get enough Starbucks, the folks at Starbucks can’t seem to get enough of anything related to mobile.
From mobile apps to mobile payment platforms, Starbucks is on the vanguard of mCommerce advancements that may soon be far more pervasive throughout the retail space than they presently are.
According to new details that have come to light this week, Starbucks has already processed more than 42 million mobile payments. That’s not bad considering that the program just began last year.
From VentureBeat:
In December 2011, Starbucks revealed that it had processed 26 million mobile payments. Adoption continues to grow exponentially, the company said.
“You’re going to see us as a company that will push the envelope around mobile pay,” Starbucks chief digital officer Adam Brotman told VentureBeat. “We want to innovate in that area before others catch up.”
Give Me More SMS Offers
THIS JUST IN: Mobile users prefer to receive offers via text message!
I know, I know. This may seem like old news. But the data just keeps pouring in, which only helps solidify my argument that SMS is an effective marketing medium.
According to new information released by YouGov, mobile users are very open to being sent offers via SMS.
In the past, the industry has experienced negative attitudes toward text message offers on the consumer side, and reluctance of marketers to utilize them due to doubts regarding their success.
But the tables have turned.
The survey by YouGov and the related infographic yielded the following results:
- 65% of people like offers on their mobile phones.
- 75% of smartphone users prefer receiving offers via SMS.
- 83% would prefer to receive no more than two offers per month.
I know, you’re probably wondering “then why don’t all businesses use SMS to reach their customers?” And all I can say is, it’s only a matter of time.
SMS allows businesses to deliver strategically-timed offers to a very captive audience. They can gather SMS opt-ins and deliver value-driven messages to those customers to reward them for their loyalty.
But marketers and businesses need to be aware of how to maintain the sanctity of SMS so it can keep moving in this positive direction, so this data should be taken to heart.
Remember:
- Don’t overwhelm your customers with a billion text messages a month—they WILL get over it and they WILL unsubscribe.
- Don’t send messages that don’t deliver some sort of value to your customers—they WILL lose interest and they WILL unsubscribe.
So, let it be known: the most effective mobile marketing medium for eliciting a consumer response is SMS. Are you making the most out of your marketing efforts?
Mobile Adds a New Dimension to a Customer’s Value
Best Buy Co. Inc. has found its more valuable customers are ones who don’t just visit the e-commerce site or the bricks-and-mortar store. They also shop using their smartphones and tablets.
How valuable are these customers? The multichannel Best Buy consumer who uses a mobile device makes 15% more e-commerce purchases than the non-mobile consumer, said Chris Moroz, Best Buy associate manager for digital analytics. And, for in-store purchases, the mobile Best Buy consumer is 25% more valuable.
Speaking at the Adobe Digital Summit 2012 in Salt Lake City, Moroz said Best Buy calculated these figures by measuring three sets of data. One was connecting the BestBuy.com visitor data to its database of registered customers. Another was the result of surveys sent to e-commerce visitors who filled their shopping carts, but abandoned the sale. The third was a survey at the point of sale about the consumer’s shopping experience. The data then was screened through digital analytics software from Adobe Systems Inc.
“We found that on any given day a BestBuy.com visitor is more likely to purchase in-store,” Moroz said. Of consumers using a mobile device to visit Best Buy’s m-commerce site, one-fourth were found to make an in-store purchase within two weeks of their visit, he said.
Best Buy, incidentally, fared best in a recent survey by market research firm ClickIQ of the behavior of consumers using smartphones in stores.
To find out what happened after the in-store research was complete, survey respondents were asked to state where they eventually purchased the product they were researching. Best Buy did the best job of retaining the sale. 35% of those that researched at Best Buy ended up purchasing at the Best Buy store with another 14% purchasing at BestBuy.com. However, 21% purchased the product from Amazon.com. The rest did not purchase.
At the conference, Moroz said the next step for Best Buy is to automate much of the data collection process and to get more data about how consumers use Best Buy’s smartphone apps. “The mobile-savvy customer needs to be heard,” he said.
Best Buy is No. 11 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide and No. 16 in the Mobile Commerce Top 300.
Lynn Lanphier, director, digital analytics, Best Buy Co. Inc., will speak this June at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2012 in Chicago in a session titled “The new age of analytics: Creating a data strategy that leads to increased sales.” And learn more about the Mobile Workshop at IRCE 2012.
What to do When a Mobile Campaign is Struggling
While marketers may have an elaborate mobile campaign – whether it includes mobile advertising, SMS, applications or QR codes – it might not always garner the engagement and results expected.
Many campaigns may not get the expected click-throughs or opt-ins they initially anticipated. However, it is never too late to refresh an idea.
“Mobile is experiencing explosive growth and is a new and exciting way to reach consumers at the moment when their intent to purchase is strongest,” said Wilson Kerr, vice president of business development and sales at Unbound Commerce, Boston.
“As such, few of the old rules apply,” he said. “Outdated CPM or CPC models might suffice for generalist branding campaigns, but smart mobile marketers are linking mobile campaigns to actionable, commerce-enabled mobile pages where success can be measured by lift and increased revenue.
Rethink mobile
According to Mr. Kerr, it is essential that marketers rethink their goals.
It is important for marketers to see who they are looking to target and find out more about their user.
Additionally, testing is key and helps marketers see what works and what does not.
“Try some things in a limited way, to learn,” Mr. Kerr said. “Are you prepared for NFC? Tried QR codes? Location to push ads to shoppers?
“There is real value in learning and gaining experience in this space, as mobile continues to grow and evolve,” he said. “Mobile consumers want to act, they do not want to surf off to some Web page and read a lot of branding messaging on their smartphone.
“Ask yourself how easy it is for a mobile consumer to complete an action, then tweak the campaign.”
For example, if a company is running a mobile advertising campaign, it is important to link the campaign to mobile-optimized landing pages where an action can occur, as well as be able to track the lift.
“No mobile campaign can succeed if the mobile consumer lands on a page not formatted for mobile,” Mr. Kerr said. “Also, target mobile ads for max effectiveness by using mobile-specific variables like realtime proximity to your locations as a prequalification.
“Consider proposing a revshare arrangement with ad networks, where they share the tracked upside, in exchange for tweaking the campaign for max effectiveness,” he said.
All about SMS
Currently, many marketers are dabbling in SMS.
However, a SMS campaign might not get enough sign-ups or opt-ins that are expected.
Sending messages to consumers can help build a dialogue between the brand and the customer.
However, bombarding them with messages or sending them texts that are not relevant can help diminish that relationship.
“Messaging campaigns fail for a variety of reasons,” said Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer of Hipcricket + Augme Technologies, Kirkland, WA.
“One is a lack of strong call to action – the mobile subscriber needs to be incented to do something and the CTA must be prominent or it will be lost,” he said.
“A second is poor execution – it took more than five hours for me to get a bounceback message after I responded to the NFL’s Super Bowl spot call to action.”
Mobile subscribers are all about instant gratification, per Mr. Hasen.
To succeed, marketers should start by mapping a strategy for their business goals.
According to the executive, several best practices include working with a provider that offers technology with strategy and creative, testing before diving in fully and providing multiple ways for consumers to engage.
“Hipcricket client Macy’s does this extremely well,” Mr. Hasen said. “For instance, its Backstage Pass program has elements including a QR code, SMS, mobile Web and MMS.”
Many marketers are also using QR codes in their campaigns to drive user engagement.
However, consumers are still not educated on what a QR code is or what they need to scan it with – therefore, they are not getting the scans they had expected.
“With any digital marketing tool, it is critical to measure your results and adjust your approach if it is not meeting objectives,” said Mike Wehrs, CEO of Scanbuy, New York. “QR Codes should follow the same rules.
“Create your codes with a tracking tool so you can look at the performance on scan rates and engagement,” he said. “If your campaign is not getting the scans you expected, you may want to rethink where the code is being placed and revise the call to action around the code to be more direct about why to scan.
“Both of those are critical to create relevance and value for the consumer. If you are not seeing engagement results, then you need to ensure you are doing the basics like delivering mobile optimized content that gives the user a compelling experience. Think about what that user would want at the time they scan your code and deep link them into the best possible experience.”
Where to start
According to Marci Troutman, CEO of SiteMinis, marketers should use mobile as an A/B testing ground.
“If a campaign is not getting enough lift, try a different approach with the same campaign, change the order of the action item, move a click-through to the top and add another action item for two in one,” she said.
“Just because one campaign is not getting the proper amount of lift does not mean that the mobile application itself is a failure, it simply means a different approach should be taken.”
If a campaign is not performing well, Ms. Troutman suggests that marketers either revise the campaign with a different approach or start fresh.
“The revising of a campaign shows an A/B testing that can be valuable for future campaigns as they move forward,” Ms. Troutman said.
“For example, if a campaign has one action item and there is a scroll on the micro site or landing page, and it is not extremely intuitive what the action is, then taking that same campaign and moving some of the pieces around to change this campaign could make a difference, and if it does, it gives valuable insight into the next campaign that is sent out as to where and how the action should be displayed,” she said.
The executive also says that marketers should never feel intimidated about launching a campaign.
“If you keep it back and over analyze, you will never learn what works and what does not work,” Ms. Troutman said. “You only learn which campaigns will be effective by creating and sending these out.”
Is the Death of Text Imminent?
Nope, not likely. At least not in the United States.
Questions have surfaced lately regarding the sustainability of text messaging amidst the rise of free social messaging apps like iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Blackberry Messenger, and more.
Phone companies allegedly missed out on $13.9 billion in 2011 because of these free messaging services, according to a report from Ovum.
Do these companies have something to worry about? Should they re-strategize and reevaluate their services to compensate for the losses?
Ovum suggests that telecommunications companies should collaborate with others in the industry, such as app developers, to leverage their relationships with subscribers, share end-user data, and integrate with social gaming connections.
It turns out these phone companies may actually may find some opportunity in this situation after all!
But even with the potential for industry-wide collaborations in the future, text messaging probably isn’t going away anytime soon amongst the U.S. population.
This article by Luke W Ideation + Design sums up the reasons why:
- Texting in the United States grew 10 percent in the first quarter of 2011. That was down from 16 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2010.
- In September 2011, 73 percent of American cell phone owners were texting.
- Americans aged 18 and 24 exchanged an average of 109.5 messages on a typical day. The median user in this age group sent or received 50 messages per day.
- This month, the volume of texting among teens rose from 50 texts a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the median teen text user.
- Adults in the U.S. traded an average of 41.5 messages a day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily.
- The average email is read 48 hours after it is sent, while the average SMS is read in four minutes.
- In the first half of 2009, Americans sent 4.1 billion texts per day.
While hope for text messaging in the U.S. still lingers, other countries are seeing a significant decline in the number of text messages being sent.
A blog article on the New York Times Blog Bits stated that Finland, Honk Kong and Australia are a few parts of the world that are experiencing this drop.
On Christmas day 2011, text messaging numbers were much lower in Finland, which is typically the busiest day of the year for texting. They were also down 14 percent in Hong Kong and 9 percent in Australia compared to 2010.
Why is this? Experts suspect the decrease is due to alternative messaging services.
But remember, text messaging is still the number one mobile activity among Americans.
Certainly, “free” is an undeniably convincing price point. But don’t drop your data plan just yet–text messaging is here to stay.
The Radical Growth of the App Economy [INFOGRAPHIC]
Since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, the production and mainstream usage of smartphones has exploded. The device opened a world of innovation in mobile technology, which was soon followed by a similar boom from apps.
Today, we rely on apps to do just about everything, from keeping us organized to pure entertainment. Millions of downloads later, the app economy is as strong as ever.
App development has created 466,000 jobs across all available platforms, according to a survey performed by TechNet. This includes local baristas, since many developers rely on coffee shops to get work done.
Our friends at Frugal Dad have created this infographic about the economy and how it’s been affected by smartphones and apps.
