Driving ROI With Mobile Marketing Best Practices
Retailers are always looking for new innovations to improve their strategies and return on investment, but in order to properly accomplish that it's necessary to understand what creates the most effective mobile marketing campaigns. In order for a mobile marketing campaign to be successful, you need to start with traditional marketing fundamentals that can be applied to other media channels. Retail brands need to stop worrying about what can be the coolest mobile app, and instead get an accurate understanding of how consumers are using mobile devices on a day-to-day basis.
Let's analyze the current reality of mobile and determine key methodologies to best deliver successful mobile marketing campaigns.
Mobile Apps
In the order of popularity, Americans are using mobile applications to play games, read news, find locations in maps, connect to social media and listen to music. Brands are using these key trends to develop their own applications where consumers are able to find nearest store and product locations, highlight promotional deals, and gather data about consumers to personalize individual shopping experiences. Although many brands have apps available for consumers, how many users are actually using the apps they're downloading?
Studies show that one in four mobile apps once downloaded are never used again. With development prices averaging $30,000 and more, mobile apps are already way too expensive for brands to create and not have used by consumers. Furthermore, it's not practical for most consumers to use multiple branded apps when researching products from every brand they're interested in. If this were the case, consumers would have hundreds of different apps downloaded on their phone for each brand they like. This is one of the fundamental reasons why consumers use branded apps once or twice before never using them again. Any successful mobile strategy needs to engage and incentivize customers to move this relationship one step further and download their branded app. Based on recent research quoted above, it's not easy.
Mobile Web
Consumers today are using mobile devices to go online and research brands when comparing product prices, reviews and other relevant information that will influence their final purchase decisions. Having a mobile-optimized website is crucial for any brand to ensure its visitors will have the best user experience when finding all the information they need at ease.
The latest studies show that about only 10 percent of websites are mobile optimized. When brand websites appear poorly on mobile devices, it's very difficult for consumers to find the necessary information they need quickly and efficiently. A bad user experience may cause some consumers to never visit a brand's website again. Chances are very high that the same consumers would rather shop with a competitor that has a mobile-optimized website. Mobile web is essential to increase ROI since more consumers are already using web-enabled devices to search on the go and the odds are that a significant part of your web traffic is already coming from mobile devices.
QR Codes/NFC Tags
QR codes and near-field communication (NFC) technology provide a cost-effective method for consumers to retrieve content from their favorite brands. By scanning QR codes or NFC tags with a mobile device, consumers are able to receive information from brands on the go, such as links to download mobile apps, videos, mobile websites, promotional offers or other exclusive content.
Currently, only 24 percent of users in the U.S. are scanning QR codes, and less than 6 percent of mobile phones have NFC capability built in. Although more users are shifting to using QR code and NFC technology, the overall market usage is still quite low due to several factors. First, there's much effort needed to educate the average consumer on how to use both technologies. Many brands make the mistake of putting QR codes and NFC tags in places where it's difficult for consumers to scan and retrieve content, such as on city buses or on subway trains where consumers have limited or no internet coverage, which prevents them from downloading and accessing the content.
Most consumers who have NFC-enabled smartphones are even unaware they have the technology and don't know how to use it to retrieve content. To make a seamless experience for every consumer interacting with your brand, it's important to offer alternative methods to retrieve content such as a short code implementation with mobile messaging.
Mobile Messaging
Mobile messaging allows brands to create a personal communication channel with their consumers. Messaging is considered a "push" strategy because brands control when content is sent to consumers. Unlike the mobile web, QR codes or apps, mobile messaging enables all consumers to receive content where they can view promotions at home or on the go regardless if they have an internet-enabled phone. With market penetration rates nearing 100 percent, brands are guaranteed consumers will open and view messages they send, unlike other "pull" strategies we analyzed that require consumers to retrieve information themselves.
With new advances in messaging technology, also known as rich media messaging, brands are now able to deliver a rich content experience going beyond the simple SMS 160-character limit. This new technology gives marketers the ability to deliver images, audio and video to over 96 percent of all mobile handsets in the U.S.
Leveraging consumers’ behavior with messaging via a push mobile strategy combined with rich content delivered directly to consumers’ mobile phones can produce exceptional results. Recently Avenue, a nationwide women's apparel retailer, switched from using simple SMS to Rich Media Messaging to send consumers weekly promotions to drive in-store traffic. Avenue reports it's achieved a ROI of over 6,600 percent for this campaign as well as over a 30 percent increase in opt-in list membership per month.
As retail brands work to monetize their content through mobile media outlets, they need to be mindful of not only emerging trends but also applying the same marketing fundamentals to mobile as they do to every other channel. Begin by understanding the way your customers behave, layer key mobile strategies over that core and then finally pay focus to the larger ideas once a solid base is in place to guarantee wins. This process will not only produce long-term ROI for your company, but your customer will also be able to access the information they're looking for on the move.
Cezar Kolodziej, PhD is the president, CEO and co-founder of Iris Mobile.
- Places:
- U.S.