Key to a successful mobile strategy is understanding how your customers can be best served in the mobile channel. Yesterday we blogged about UPS and its research which showed that a native Blackberry application provided its targeted customers a better experience than prior efforts or those offered by competitors.
Homefinder.com drew a similar conclusion when analysis of mobile website traffic showed most browsers used iPhones (that’s a photo of Reuters’ ticker in Times Square displaying the news). Leading with a focus on the mobile 
customer experience is no longer emerging as a best practice – it just is.
That’s what marketers should take away from this news today about Target, a retailer ahead of the curve when it comes to mobile channel marketing. As we have discussed here before, mapping your strategy to the mobile channel identifies the most logical first steps into mobile marketing. Target has done that across all elements of the mobile customer experience; SMS text messaging, mobile smartphone applications and the mobile web.
It is equally important to ensure ongoing analysis of these efforts. This can take the form of metrics around specific programs, such as response rates and transactions, but forward thinking marketers like Target take it a step further. Target integrates a feedback step into many elements of its mobile marketing programs to see what works, what doesn’t – and uses this qualitative and quantitative data to drive better mobile marketing decisions:
“ To overcome these challenges (of getting into the mobile space), we are focused on understanding our guests’ needs by creating mechanisms that allow them to provide us with feedback.
Then, we use this feedback to inform our decision-making and to optimize and improve our mobile tools.”
In practice, marketers need to consider partners that offer this capability in a manner that closely relates to the mobile interactions being evaluated, and offers the greatest reach possible. Interactive Mediums’ Engagement Platform offers SMS text message based survey capabilities that allow multiple questions to be posed to consumers and answered in real time – using common feature phones carried by virtually every consumer.
