Acxiom Clients Seeking a Differentiated Mobile Offering Should Look Elsewhere

Earlier this month I came across an article about a consumer segmentation method launched by Acxiom for telcos to understand loyalty patterns among mobile subscribers.  It was notable simply due to the fact a large marketing services company was launching a mobile marketing data service not for marketers generally, but for marketers of mobile services specifically.

Before reading about something like that I expected to see Acxiom instead enter the mobile marketing fray like its cousin in the marketing services market, Experian.  So it was not surprising to see this headline today: “Acxiom, Partnership Infuses Consumer Intelligence in Mobile Channel.”  What was surprising is that the company is partnering with a third party to provide mobile marketing capabilities to its clients as opposed to developing something itself.  Moreover, Acxiom is partnering with the exact same firm as Experian to provide the service.  Sadly for their clients, even the benefit is the same, down to the quote in the announcement: mobile as an enabler of effective “customer life cycle management (CLM).”

That bit of déjà vu was not in the announcement, no doubt because Experian and Acxiom often compete for business.  While the news highlights the importance of the mobile channel to large, established marketing services companies, it also shows they don’t exactly know what to do with mobile (other than tack it onto their services as a means of ensuring their clients don’t look elsewhere).

Marketers who use these companies for services need not be locked into using a commodity third party for mobile messaging.  The beauty of many offerings in the marketplace are their openness and ease of integration with third party data sources to help segment mobile customers and inform more relevant dialogues.  Firms like Interactive Mediums also offer services encompassing the entire mobile customer experience, which is fundamentally the focus of marketers looking to achieve real business results at the point of device.