Tag: mobile marketing

Mobile Marketing

Mobile #101 – Essential Guide to Using Mobile Marketing (Series Post)

(Post 10 of 12)

Will my business benefit from a complementary mobile channel?

Mobile Marketing will help you to drive footfall, it will offer customer interaction, it will certainly offer voucher redemption opportunities which in turn can increase brand loyalty and significantly improve your consumer marketing and acquisition metrics.

However, although mobile channels provide the vehicle to reach consumers, your marketing content is king. Remember your reasons for investing – grow sales, reduce churn, increase spend, reduce costs. It’s not just about the technology, it’s how effectively you can interact with your audience. The best solutions are invariably represented by multi – channel solutions.

For example, I recently managed a content – driven campaign that was delivered by email due to the amount of copy required in the message. When supported by text message at a later point in the day to drive virtual footfall back to the email, the response rate doubled and our client enjoyed a 52% response to the campaign.

What is my mobile marketing plan?

So you understand your business strategy, objectives, challenges and goals and perhaps even how mobile marketing can help you deliver these today. But what about tomorrow, next year and in three years?

Mobile Marketing is consumer driven, with its endless and relentless appetite for content relevant to the individual at a time to suit, the challenge is to adapt and develop with your customers demands.

An effective mobile marketing supplier will be able to offer you a mobile journey that initially accommodates your immediate requirements. They will provide guidance around client engagement, regulatory compliance, database creation and development, then have the product suite to take you through a development journey, in-line with your customers expectations – incorporating content management, voucher redemption and virtual loyalty programmes.

What kind of success can i expect?

Mobile Marketing lends itself well to a B2C environment given consumers demand and reward. Customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and cross sell are leading anchor propositions. It is easy to see how retail has a great deal to gain from a succesful mobile marketing strategy.

In order to understand the art of the possible, you really should engage a partner with a strong consultative model and a robust and proven technical product portfolio representing presence and communication solutions. If customer acquisition is a business objective then a partner with opt in database capabilities is a significant advantage.

If this series has captured your attention or sparked your interest in mobile marketing, then working with a trusted mobile partner should be your next step.

 

Talk to me today and let me see if I can help you achieve more from your mobile strategy.

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Marketing

Mobile #101 – Essential Guide to Using Mobile Marketing (Series Post)

(Post 9 of 12)

Ask yourself this question – Do my customers want me to engage with them via their mobiles?

Now ask your proposed mobile partner the same question…

A professional mobile marketing solutions business will be able to evidence a clearly defined consultancy process. This will be scalable in its own right, offering workshops through to mobile strategy creation and commercial modelling.

Mobile Marketing is a very visual and engaging channel and as such requires many aspects of service from technical to creative design, campaign and multi-channel management, regulatory and consumer behaviour insights.

A mobile marketing partner will offer a suite of professional services. For example, many retailers don’t have in-house mobile campaign management and regulatory expertise, so will look to partners to manage on their behalf with strong marketing and CRM team collaboration.

Look to work with suppliers with experience and strong track records of effective professional service delivery.

If you run a retail business then your customers will almost certainly want to you to engage them via mobile. There is a lot of evidence in analyst reports, surveys and retail success stories to show you why. For example a recent survey, found 75% of UK consumers want to interact with brands via the mobiles and 81% wanted offers or vouchers sent to their mobile.

Source Gartner

With Smartphone penetration at an all time high, consumers have easy on the move access to the mobile internet and digital content. Some 80% of mobile internet traffic is generated by smartphone handset users with an average weekly browsing time of over 7 hrs – more than reading newspapers and magazines which both average less than 5hrs.

Mobile traffic has grown by over 500% in the last two years and the number of smartphone customers in the UK is now over 75% of the population.

Source Deloitte

Consumers browse the internet from a fixed network access point less and less. They browse the mobile web on the move and are influenced by the content they access by advertising, location, mood, time and day of the week and especially what they’re doing at the time – because that’s what mobile now enables them to do. Content and context is now relevant to the consumer – so imagine how powerful your consumer marketing can be if you understand your client’s behaviours and are able to engage with them at the most opportune time. Surely that provides great value to your customer and if managed well to you!

Good Luck

themobileexpert

Mobile Marketing

Mobile #101 – Essential Guide to Mobile Marketing (Series Post)

Part 2 of 12 

How can I take advantage of mobile marketing and link it to my strategic business goals?

The starting point is understanding your customers and their behaviours. Until you know how your customers will react with your company or brand via mobile devices, you wont be in a position to develop a strategy that meets your business objectives.

A common mistake made by businesses is to start with the technology first and then wrestle it into something that resembles a solution to a business problem. A new Mobile App might sound like a good idea for your business but you need to look beyond the technology. By understanding your customers behaviour on their mobile device you will generally find that you can only really engage with them if you have a mixed proposition across several different channels.

Think about the key attributes that the mobile channel gives you… its personalised, portable, immediate, ubiquitous and trackable.

63%

 

of consumers feel a coupon is the most valuable form of mobile marketing

 

54%

of consumers would consider ending their relationship with a retailer/brand if they are not given tailor-made, relevant content and offers

 

Look at the latest industry statistics and do some research into your database to begin to understand your customers and where they fit into your mobile strategy.

For more specifics on this particular topic see some of my other posts on this site or give me a call or email me at scott.threlfall@eagleeye.com

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Marketing

Mobile #101 – Essential Guide to Mobile Marketing (Series post)

Post 1 of a series of 12 – Introduction to Mobile Marketing

This blog and everything I talk about here should provide company owners and senior managers with simple steps that they can take before investing in a mobile channel strategy, either independent or as part of a multi channel plan.

Consumers are now truly mobile in their browsing and shopping habits. They increasingly expect companies and brands to deliver mobile – enabled services that meet their needs regardless of what device they are connecting on.

All customer focused businesses need to be aware of the many challenges that come with the development of mobile strategies. These can include mixed and confusing messages, claims of astonishing achievements, a lack of technological understanding and the added complication of where to turn for expert guidance.

The starting point for all businesses is to understand that the rush to engage with consumers using mobile technology involves more than the development of an App or loyalty program. As I will explain throughout this post series, its important to develop a fully considered mobile strategy before starting any technical development and companies that take a considered long term approach tend to out perform in the increasingly important mobile space.

Mobile is ubiquitous, it has taken less than 20 years to revolutionise the way we communicate with each other. It offers instant gratification, constant contact and an immediate payment system.

However utilising its fantastic power to gain brand loyalty from your new and old customers alike is a tricky business. Get it wrong and you will struggle to ever get it right again. Get it right and you will grow revenues, gain brand loyalty and acquire new customers.

Over this series you will learn the types of questions to ask prospective mobile partners, questions a senior manager should ask their sales and marketing or commercial teams and questions that senior management should ask before adopting a new mobile channel strategy.

mobile-698624_1920

I hope you enjoy and learn from this series

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Marketing, Mobile Supplements

6 SMS TIPS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The holidays are fast approaching, so it’s more important than ever to keep your digital marketing program running as smoothly as Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. Over the course of nearly two decades in marketing, 10 of these in Mobile technology businesses I have been witness to the rise of mobile as a major force in the digital communications landscape.

Yet less than 50% of British businesses give more than 5% of their marketing budget to mobile communications. (Source: Forbes)

There are a number of factors in a business not taking full advantage of the mobile channel, from reluctance of senior management to take the leap through to internal infrastructure issues that ultimately need fixing before a mobile strategy can be fully realised.

However, it’s easier than you think to judge the success rates of mobile over other more traditional channels, it’s even easier to track the effectiveness of SMS in increasing open rates of an email for instance.

Mobile Messaging via SMS is proven to increase interaction, engagement and promote faster buying decisions from your customers.xmas sms

 

So… Its Christmas… and if you’re not using Mobile as part of your strategy already, then your behind your competition… the question is… what are you going to do about it…

Want some ideas to get you started?

Take a look at my six benefits to SMS Marketing this holiday season….              

Source: IPSOS Survey

 

6 Ways to gain more revenue this Holiday season through SMS marketing…

  1. Notify your customers of special offers, low prices, instore sales etc..

People respond to mobile, the average text message is read within 90 seconds of hitting a handset and is the number one channel for making purchasing decisions whilst on the move.

  1. Reminders for appointments

Run a leisure business, restaurant or salon? Use SMS as an appointment booking service and remind your customers when an appointment is due. Get the customer to respond to your reminder or booking SMS and opt them in to receiving marketing texts going forward.

  1. NEWS FLASH! Let your customers in on your secret… notify them early of pre-sales activity.

Send your customers an SMS giving them vital information on a pre-sales event in your store or online business. Make them feel special and offer some good deals or offers and you will gain not only price based loyalty but customer brand loyalty too.

  1. Competitions

SMS is a great way to gain instant buy in for a competition or an offer linked to a competition entry. Collect data by adding in a mobile web page as part of the sign up process. Make it a Christmas themed competition for extra interest from your customer base at this time of year.

  1. Gift Card Sales

Not sure you’re going to sell enough gift cards this year? Mobilise them by offering gift cards via text messaging…send your customers a message to get them to visit the website or go in store to purchase a gift card for a loved one this xmas. Give them a small discount code in the message that they can use at the till point to get some money off their gift card purchase.

  1. Footfall Driver Offers

SMS marketing is fantastic for driving footfall into bricks and mortar stores especially in the holiday season. Offer customers a free glass of Mulled wine with a purchase over £5 for instance or a free mince pie when they order a coffee etc..

The holidays are just around the corner and consumers are starting their quest for the perfect gifts and bargains. A well worded and timely text message to a consumer giving value can entice shoppers to buy your products or services.

“85% of shoppers are highly likely to buy from brands that offer highly personalised discounts.”

 

Good Luck

themobileexpert

Mobile Marketing

Using Mobile for New Customer Acquisition

The mobile phone is increasingly central to consumers lives with SMS in particular continuing to grow at an unprecedented rate. The mobile phone is the perfect mechanism with which to engage the consumer, particularly as it is location independent and the one device most of us carry with us 24/7. Capturing data from the consumer whether for research purposes or as a registration process enables offline advertising to have a call to action that can be responded to immiediately.

Invite your customers to text a word to a shortcode thenImage by return the customer can recieve some promotional content such as link to a mobile website or a data capture page to capture contact or demographic information including an email address so you can engage them online.

The mobile phone is an ideal medium through which to interact with consumers for market research purposes, SMS gives immiediacy and delivers the richness of an internet experience via rich media mobile web pages. In most instances this delivers a much higher response than email to internet based communications, data that is captured in this way can then be delivered real time messages.

For any form of consumer registration to a new service,mobile can achieve the same result as a live operator at a fraction of the cost. Mobile can be particularly effective when the information required is routine and requires no human interaction. Also where required mobile responses can be set dependent on the type of trigger sent in from the customer, leading to messages that are full of value, personalised and relevant to each of your customers which in turn will increase loyalty and encourage ongoing two way customer interaction for your brand.

SME Guides to Mobile Marketing

Beginners Guide to creating a mobile marketing list…SMEs

Every company, whatever size, started off without any mobile marketing department or without a list of mobile numbers for their customers and they had to perform data gathering exercises on their potential mobile customers.

As members of the SMe community, your small business will be in a similiar position.

You will know the power of mobile based on how you communicate with your friends and how you can recieve content and alerts from your favourite programs, sports clubs etc.. but you may not know how you can achieve this level of communication in your business (however small) with the customers you serve every day.

Whether you have a bricks and mortar store or an online business the ability to perform simple data gathering exercises to increase / or start your mobile marketing program is something you can do with very little time and effort required.

Whatever your business, product or service, you have to create something that offers the customer something special and gives added value to your customers.

Mobile Marketing allows you to communicate with your customers on a one to one, personal basis in the first instance, but it has many more benefits than just that.

It’s cost effective, meaning that you can use mobile to cut costs on call centre staff, administration roles and to some extent even the way you advertise across other channels can be streamlined to improve cost efficiency.

It’s convenient, it allows people to receive and digest your communication when and wherever they are best placed to do so and likewise they can text back whenever they want too. It is also very easy to set up and manage for your business.

It helps to increase relationship building, as you can keep your customers in the know and up to date with your business as well as ask them for their opinions etc, increasing that feedback which is so important as you grow your business.

You have the ability to mass market your message very quickly and easily making it totally personal to the end recipient.

You can integrate your mobile campaign with any other form of marketing communication, making it the most adaptable marketing channel ever.

And when your campaign is done, you can sit back and check out the results to a deep level of understanding. Or perhaps check the results as you go, using real time reporting, so you can stop your campaign and make alterations if you feel the need.

So when we start looking at building a list of subscribers for your business we can assume that anyone who joins your program or list will be specifically interested in your products or services.

Here are the 3 stages to creating your very own opted in mobile numbers list;

STAGE 1- ACQUIRE & GROW

Create a product or service that offers something special of gives added value to your customers. Bricks and Mortar stores have 2 for1’s and BOGOF’s whilst for Online Business you can use online only discounts or offers that arent available anywhere else and that the customer will gladly give his or her details to get.

*TIP* – Dont ask for more than 5 fields of information when data capturing for mobile, use Name, Address, Postcode, Email & Mobile as standard and amend accordingly, but if you ask for too many you will switch people off.

Include signage and Point of Sale for your offers to gain greater publicity and if your an online business then your primary way to gather user data is to offer a rich, rewarding & satisfying customer experience from the initial opt in point to the re-engagement communication and beyond.

Make sure you include permissions and a link to a privacy policy on your website & let the customer know where they can find information relating to what you will do with their data.

STAGE 2 – MAINTAINING YOUR SUBSCRIBER DATABASE

It is really hard to “ACQUIRE” a client, but its even harder to keep them for any length of time… On the flip side you can lose a customer in 5 seconds flat if you dont keep them interested.

Send mobile exclusive deals, information, rewards, offers and vouchers to increase the value of your mobile program for your customers.

*TIP* – Make sure your content is worth sharing!! If you have great content your customers are more likely to spread the word.

Try sending messages to your customers that include a call to action. A simple text back keyword response to recieve a voucher or bring their phone into the store & show a code to the till assistant etc…

This allows you to monitor responses rates & judge the success of your offers by the number of delivered SMS messages against the number of responses back.

STAGE 3 – ENCOMPASS SOCIAL MEDIA INTO YOUR MOBILE CAMPAIGN

Call out some of your mobile exclusive offers on social media sites like Facebook to encourage people to visit you & respond to the CTA. If your an online business ensure you add your links back to your website in any socila media ads. This way you can direct them to your privacy policy, email or newsletter subscription or simply other areas of your website.

DATA SECURITY

The easiest way to start managing your mobile data, is to look at the initial data you have from your customers, this should be in the main customer database, with other information on that client. You may decide that you need a separate database for Mobile than for other communications like email, direct mail etc…

Whichever way you maintain your mobile data, you need to remember that you need an initial database of “opted in “numbers with which to start your marketing from. As you promote your company / product / offers you will inevitably receive some “opt outs” back, people who no longer want to receive your offers.

To comply with legislation on spam messaging, you must withdraw the numbers that “opt out” within a time period of no longer than 1 week later. This will maintain a healthy, concise database, with lots of live data to send your messages out to.

Manage your “opt out” lists on a weekly basis; take time to do this right, make sure you keep your lists separate, have one “opt out” list and one “opt in “ list. The “opt in “list is your “live” database and should always be up to date, as this list is your catchment area, this list will provide you with your actions, whatever they may be.

Good Luck

themobileexpert

Mobile Supplements

SMS Marketing

SMS Marketing, and the process of communicating and exchanging information and value with our customers, is changing the way that marketers manage relationships with consumers. Used effectively, it can help you to generate brand awareness, convert prospects to customers, maintain customer relationships and allow you to take your customer care to a new level.

Each text you send is immiediate, with 96% of text messages read within 90 seconds of landing on the handset.

Its personal, with you all the time and generally speaking its always on and it carries with it a built in payment system, extremely accurate user statistics and is available at the point of creative or copy development.

When you start to think about your companies mobile strategy, you may want to use this formula below;

UA + CCO + CC = SMS

The formula contains the three things you will need for a succesful strategy for your mobile campaign.

“understanding audience + confirming company objectives + corporate commitment = Succesful Mobile Strategy!”

If you know who your audience is then you know what they purchase, what services they like, which they dont, what drives them to interact or buy from you etc… you will also know what catergories they fit into which type of customers buy what type of products and why. Make a list of the different type of customers you have, keep it short (no more than 5 types) here is an example:

Segment your customer base, try and put each one of your customers into a particular user profiles, like the ones below;

The Careerist –                    24 – 40 years old  / Has bill paid for by the company?

Early Adopters –                 They want everything first, before their peers get it

Young & Hungry –                15 -29 years old / Want the latest gadgets and are always texting

Over 40s –                             Generally happy with a phone that allows basic texting and calls

In Touch Organizers –          Like to keep connected / 30 – 64 yrs old / Have busy professional and Social Lives and like to organize their family and friends

Only by doing this deep analysis of your customer demographic will you give yourself a better chance of fulfilling their needs and having success with your mobile marketing program(s).

Now lets look at confirming your companies objectives and getting sight of what they actually want to achieve from this marketing channel.  To do this you need to answer the following three questions;

1. Who is my audience?

2. What value do I deliver to my audience?

3. What objectives am I trying to achieve with my marketing and how will I know when I achieve them?

Finally you need to gain corporate commitment decide what your corporate objectives are, consider available resources (Internal / External) and consider the affects on the rest of your business only when you have done this can you gain corporate commitment for your mobile programme.

Once you have gone this far into establishing your mobile marketing programme, you can now start concentrating on the Five Key Elements to any Mobile Campaign, these are below:

  1. Customer Knowledge
  2. Appealing Value Proposition
  3. Development of Creative / Assets
  4. Promotion Strategy
  5. Reporting & Evaluations

The next step is to create something your customers/ prospects will like, something that gets your message across in a simple, easy to understand way, without complicating the process from a technology perspective.

When starting, start simply.  Pick a simple program, one with the broadest reach and ease of use for all concerned; moreover, first focus on accomplishing just one of your objectives; don’t try to do everything at once.

Thanks

themobileexpert