Since 1995 the world’s internet population has grown from 35 million users to 2.8 billion but even that stunning increase is dwarfed by growth in the world’s mobile phone fleet. Twenty years ago there were only 80 million mobile phones in the world – today there are 5.2 billion.
With consumers said to check their iPhones 150 times a day and with the overwhelming majority now using them at shopping carts and cash registers it’s no wonder that marketing dollars are chasing this mobile diaspora. Indeed Econsultancy, suggests there will be a 67 per cent increase in mobile marketing budgets in 2015.
The shift has happened to quickly that it’s easy to forget that for most marketers, mobility in a new concept.
In a new marketing guide titled “Mobile marketing: A Prescriptive Guide Fortified to Build Stronger Marketing” (LINK), Oracle Marketing Cloud has identified 5 key things brands need to know about Mobile Marketing:
- Market with cross-channel orchestration
- Use smart data and signals to inform your mobile communication strategy
- Create a holistic view of customer interactions
- Deliver personalised marketing experiences
- Prove the value of your mobile marketing strategy
The Guide explores each of these offering examples of the practical application of these concepts.
(1) Market with cross channel orchestration
As the ability to create a single view of the customer shifts from aspiration to reality, the opportunity to deliver genuine cross channel orchestration of campaigns is becoming easier.
According the authors of the Guide, that opportunity is not about buying a slew of individual mobile technologies to execute such as SMS, push, mobile advertising, or passbook.
In fact they argue that as with other marketing channels, the risk of creating new silos actually increases the likelihood that a brand will simply deliver fragmented experiences that frustrate customers and result in missed opportunities for marketers.
The real opportunity they say lies in “unifying mobile technologies and delivering orchestrated experiences that monitor signals from all channels (including connected devices).”
“These experiences speak to customers offering solutions based on who they are as individuals and how they’re interacting with your brand in their moments of need. By having the ability to send marketing campaigns out across channels, you can also track results that aren’t limited strictly to mobile.”
(2) Use smart data and signals to inform your mobile communication strategy
The Guide suggests that by integrating marketing technology into apps on mobile and connected devices across the Internet of Things, a new world of data driven possibilities emerges.
“By focusing on collecting these new types of smart data, marketers can sense and respond to real-time contextual information about the customer, giving them the ability to deliver relevant information in a way that was never before possible—both on the mobile device and in an orchestrated way across traditional marketing channels.”
(3) Create a holistic view of customer interactions
To deliver truly personalised experiences marketers need to understand the basics; who their customers are and what they’re buying, when they’re buying, and how they prefer to buy.
The authors argues that brands should centralise all their customer data and connect customer identities across touch points and channels.
“Today’s technology enables marketers to collect information on how individual customers are interacting with distinct channels and to analyse those interactions to glean information on what customers want.”
That information in turn should be used to deliver distinct customer journeys, which raises the important issue of segmentation.
“Segmentation is vital when it comes to establishing engagement trends. With the ability to identify the physical location of consumers, marketers can now even segment their audience by location, enabling them to connect with their audience at the right time and place. Behavioural targeting allows marketers to reach out to customer.”
(4) Deliver personalised marketing experiences
The authors note that services like SMS can be used to deliver deliver personalised messaging with content that matters to the customer and offers that are based on their needs at that moment in time to strengthen customer relationships and loyalty.
See: SMS marketing has “staggering” response rates
(5) Prove the value of your mobile strategy
The need for marketers to prove the worth their campaign strategy remains true in the world of mobile marketing.
While it is difficult to link long-term customer loyalty to any specific campaign, mobile or otherwise there are steps marketers can take to track the value of their mobile campaign, say the authors.
“Many mobile marketing platforms now have a link tracking capability which allow marketers to embed branded short URLs in their SMS messages to get deep insights into how well campaigns perform by monitoring SMS click through rates, conversions, and click recency. SMS click recency behaviour is recorded at the individual level and can be used for targeting.”
Clear goals need to be tied to business objectives from the outset and marketers should set up custom events based on KPIs, such as installs, in app purchases, or time spent on the app.
Takeaways
The authors conclude by suggesting that while mobile is a moving target a few things are very clear.
- Your website must be mobile friendly.
- You need the SMS and Push features.
- You have to have the data from both online behaviours and offline purchases.
- You need to track and use preference information to truly personalise the experience.
- You will probably be asked to quantify to justify and show ROI.
This article originally appeared on www.which-50.com