Is Mobile's Mistake Following Tradition or Intuition?

Life's biggest mistake: following tradition vs.  intuition.

When it comes to statistics, everyone has them, but when it comes to mobile shopping, intuition tells us there's a gargantuan gap.

Salesforce's latest September report indicates 68 percent of all e-commerce visits come from mobile phones. However, based on past mobile purchase statistics, retail digital marketers believe that in 2018, holiday purchases coming from mobile phones will account for only 24 percent of purchases.

Math tells us there's a 44 percent gap. So what gives?

The statistic (24 percent of purchases coming from mobile) isn't incorrect, but incomplete.

Salesforce's data correctly indicates 68 percent of e-commerce visits are coming from mobile devices.

So both are right, and the Christmas story of 2018 is this: "Yes, Virginia, there is a funnel."

Busy retail execs and CFOs want things in simple packages, but consumers aren't so simple. CFOs think in terms of matching principles — "I spent X dollars this week, and I got Y sales." The desire of retail simplicity is a one-to-one relationship.

Retailers, however, use a myriad of advertising channels to reach consumers, including TV, display retargeting, display prospecting, Facebook, paid search, product listing ads (PLAs), radio, CRM email and direct mail. That's nine channels so far. As you can see, simplicity ain't so simple.

Take those nine channels and calculate the number of possible combinations across two types of devices (desktop and mobile), and you end up with 512 different possible combinations of ways a consumer can be influenced to make a retail purchase. Now add brick-and-mortar to that mix and there’s 19,683 possible combinations.

When it comes to mobile, which will have that 68 percent visit impact on retail e-commerce, the opportunity is in connecting Susan Smith's mobile behavior to Susan Smith's desktop/tablet behavior to understand the impact of mobile visits on desktop purchases. If you can do that, you can close the 44 percent chasm.

Between GDPR and the missing Google ID from DCM (replaced by GDPR-compliant Google ADH), it's harder than ever, but attribution makes it possible to understand the funnel and the increasingly important role mobile plays

Once upon a time, we might have thought mobile only had a 24 percent impact on the bottom line, but intuition tells us it's very different. Just look at your own email, your own subway stop, your own coffee pickup line, or a bus full of high school teenagers — everyone is staring down at their phones.

Today, we're complexly connected with multiple devices, and this is the new retail reality. It's intuitive.

Start counting to 19,683.

Mark Hughes is author of "Buzzmarketing" (Penguin/Portfolio) and CEO of C3 Metrics, a cross-channel advertising measurement and accountability solution.