Tag: mobile messaging

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 Using Mobile Marketing (series post)

Post 8 of 12 – Choosing a Mobile Partner

So far in this series we have talked about the things you need to consider when looking to establish your mobile strategy. We have read about the types of things you can do to link your mobile strategy into your existing business goals. I have spoken about how to use the mobile channel to enhance your existing communications and sales channels and we have read how to test our organisation’s understanding of what mobile can do for our business.

We know our mobile strategy can be scalable and should fit into our over arching marketing plan and we are ready to move onto choosing a mobile partner.

Start by doing your research and shortlisting mobile partners based on their capabalities and sector expertise. Consider if they provide a holistic approach or specialise in specific types of technologies or solutions. Your chosen partner should work with you and your business to understand the companies objectives and advise appropriate solutions.

The next question to ask is how will they do this beyond the initial sales staff? Are they really consultative with well defined processes to engage and understand?

Do these processes actually engage the right part of your business ensuring a well balanced understanding?

Next you need to know what they offer in both knowledge and product functionality across the key elements of the customer lifecycle.  How can they help you at each stage from targeting and acquiring new customers through to growth and retention strategies.

Customer Lifecycle Generic

Next you need to know that they offer a full suite of mobile marketing solutions, these may be sector specific solutions or in some cases the partner in question may just offer technology and expect you to have a certain amount of infrastructure to go around it.

An effective end to end solution provider will cover all aspects of mobile marketing including database management, customer acquisition, loyalty and mobile commerce. They will have a deep understanding on how to apply this thinking to individual business sectors and will be able to illustrate their recommendations using previous examples which they have implemented.

If a specific type of technology is employed to create, for example, a retail voucher redemption solution, then how does this integrate with your EPOS, database and possibly loyalty card vendors, can is support high volume redemption and customer interaction, will it offer service availability levels conducive to my business demands?

A professional mobile marketing solutions business will be able to evidence a clearly defined consultancy process. A good mobile partner will have a suite of professional mobile marketing solutions and services and I will talk through this in more detail in the next post in this series.

thanks

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 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.