Mobile Analytics Archive

Having been in meetings with marketers and via anecdotal third party comments, I know many are sitting on the fence with respect to mobile, uncertain whether it’s a novelty, tactic, strategy, channel or alternative to email.  For better or worse, it can be some or all of these.

When you add to this mix that many businesses are reaping mobile marketing benefits, as shown every day on MobileMarketer.com and other sites, marketers in all industries sense urgency to at least try mobile marketing – be it developing a mobile optimized version of their website, an iPhone application or trying to employ SMS text messaging simply due to its reach.

I think this is the landscape documented in research covered today on eMarketer.com, in an article titled, “Mobile Marketers Demand ROI.”  Results of a survey suggest marketers will pursue mobile marketing efforts in 2010 – even allocating budget – but obstacles remain (as shown in the diagram included in this post).

“It appears that 2010 will be a year of experimentation and education on mobile marketing as marketers struggle to come to terms with its practicality and ROI.”

The greatest challenge – not surprisingly – is uncertainty around building the business case for mobile marketing, followed closely by a lack of ROI metrics and mobile not a part of the “strategic roadmap.”  I’d argue all of these issues fall under the heading of simply “I don’t know where to start, given my business, my product or service and customer base.”

For this reason, Interactive Mediums developed an exercise called “Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy,” that when complete identifies the best candidate projects that align with your existing marketing plans and channels.  This is based on our direct experience and observation of the ways leading companies are going to market with mobile as strategic elements of their business.

Taking time to experiment and educate is simply not an option for marketers given the pace of advancement among leading mobile marketers.  Even trialing various approaches will leave you behind the curve as competition for consumer mobile mindshare escalates.  Taking a thoughtful approach to mapping out a strategy can ensure your business plays a role in the mobile customer relationships that will surely separate the winners from losers.

I once before blogged at taking pleasure in reading contradictory views on important goings on in the mobile industry, and much to my delight (or chagrin) it has happened again.  It’s important to highlight and interpret these cases, as both savvy and novice mobile marketers look to supposed experts to help guide their decisions.

On one hand you have this February 4, 2010 post on MobileMarketingWatch.com citing expert commentary from a recent event, where the consensus view was that mobile advertising was “harder than ever…citing extreme fragmentation and a plethora of new devices sporting varying technical aspects as the main culprits.”  The situation sounds intimidating to say the least, begging for a wait and see approach.

Juxtaposed with this is research cited in a February 5, 2010 article in MobileMarketer.com titled, “Mobile ad campaigns 5 times more effective than online: InsightExpress study.”  Based on the title alone, you can imagine the article describes how much more effective mobile advertising is today than its online counterpart.  And that is the case.

You can read about the differences in effectiveness but it all comes down to “engagement and context” according to the study, both of which we describe as central to mobile marketing’s value proposition, be it a focus on advertising or direct engagement via SMS text messaging, email and mobile web.

I think the disconnect between “experts” and the facts on the ground is due to control; advertising networks are the gateway to this value while many experts working on the boundaries are left struggling for relevance with end customers who have cash to spend.  Marketers would be wise to quickly discern the quality and subjectivity of viewpoints they consider when prioritizing mobile marketing efforts.

2009 marked the beginning of an effort at Interactive Mediums to keep watch on the mobile marketing industry and lend our unique perspective on happenings as they relate to the value we bring to our clients.

The pace of innovation in mobile and urgency to begin engaging customers in mobile interactions demands we pay attention to news of the day.  More importantly is that we have a relevant point of view.  Hello Mobile! is our forum for communicating these views.  Others are listening as well, such as MobileMarketer.com which today recognized our article “9 Steps for SMS Marketing” among the “Top 15 industry-expert columns of 2009.”

As 2010 begins, look for further insights, commentaries and directives from our blog.  Before we look forward though, here are the top 10 most popular posts of 2009 – I wonder what this list will look like next year, the key trends and topics?  Stay tuned.

• Is Apple the Mobile Walmart?
• The Key to Mobile Customer Data
• Acxiom Clients Seeking a Differentiated Mobile Offering Should Look Elsewhere
• Advice to Marketers: Don’t Confuse Mobile Advertising with Mobile Marketing (or Active Customer Engagement)
• Establishment Converges on Active Customer Engagement
• Lessons From Less Than Successful Mobile Apps
• Thankfully, More about Active Customer Engagement
• Vendor Lines Blurring but One Thing is Clear: Active Customer Engagement
• Insight into Apple’s App Store approval process
• Best in Class Marketers to Focus on Customer Engagement in 2010

Today I came across an interesting post on GoMoNews.com about the emerging challenges associated with measuring the effectiveness of mobile advertising; specifically tying results from different ad networks together in a consistent manner such that they can be compared.  The post recommends that ad networks begin offering APIs (application program interfaces) such that the raw data can be accessed by clients and then massaged into a consistent display for assessment by marketers.

While that sounds like a terrific step or opportunity for consulting firms, as I point out in a comment on the post I don’t see many marketers taking advantage of APIs to this end.  Instead, I see:

• Marketers partaking in mobile advertising across multiple networks without any expectation at resolving the metrics across them, at least not at first.  All forecasts predict that mobile advertising will explode in the next few years, suggesting marketers are either unconcerned or unaware of the issues described in the blog post.
• Because marketers generally are drawn to mobile because it is among the most trackable and accountable channels, they soon may bump into the metrics integration issue.  Those marketers who do will fall into two camps: those who lack the resources or business case for integration regardless of API availability and those who will integrate because mobile advertising directly supports sales.

Let me explain: Many businesses utilize mobile advertising for awareness, branding and demand generation.  If resolving metrics across networks becomes an issue, I expect many marketers to narrow their network partners to one or two that offer access to the most targeted group of potential customers – to undertake an integration exercise is simply not worth the effort.  Other businesses that can drive sales via mobile transactions, however, will find it imperative to integrate metrics and tie these back to sales since the advertising directly supports the business.

With awareness/branding and demand generation representing arguably the largest mobile ad market opportunity, it suggests that mobile networks as a segment will narrow to 1-3 leaders with others either acquired or rendered irrelevant.  Thus, pretty quickly a consistent view of mobile ad metrics should happen almost automatically.

When it comes to engaging customers in the mobile channel, there is a strong analogy.  A single system which allows marketing objectives to be tailored to the mobile channel, executed and tracked, should be high on marketers’ priority lists in 2010.

Technology-wise, I am talking about SMS text messaging, mobile optimized websites, mobile applications, mobile email and social media.  In practice, marketers enabled with a solution that stitches each of these together will have a significant advantage over those who don’t.

For example, imagine engaging your customers via SMS text messaging, let them forward the invitation response to their Twitter followers, send text responders a thank you email, point them to a mobile website to redeem a coupon or to download a mobile application designed for their handset to enhance the shopping experience.  And, track this activity across all these mobile channels in a single system that easily integrates with the only system that matters — the one registering sales.

The other day I came across a July 2009 report titled, “SMS Marketing: Direct Route to Consumer Engagement” from a firm called Opus Research.  The paper contains a lot of useful ideas on marketing applications of SMS text messaging, including actual examples.

Notable was a reference similar to one made this past week during MobileMarketer.com’s webinar, “Mobile Marketing in 2010: Up, Down or Flat? Experts Offer Strategic Advice for Campaign Planning and Management.”  During this live discussion one of the panelists mentioned a practical application of SMS text messaging was as both a call to action and media buy effectiveness measurement tool.  The very same is described in the analyst report this way:

“Beyond customer acquisition short codes allow marketers to ‘close the loop’ between ads, media and the point of sale.  Given these advantages, we expect short codes begin to replace (or supplement) URLs in most traditional media ads.”

Such applications are a great way to prove the value of SMS text messaging as a step toward taking greater advantage of the channel to develop customer relationships.  Segmenting media buys by text keyword allows responses to be tracked by dollars invested in different mediums.  ROI — as a function of response rate and cost — thus can be calculated and the results should inform a more efficiently allocated media spend in the future.

Ironically, the report also cites the example of Wetseal using a text promotion as a means of building a loyalty program database.  We highlighted the retailer in this recent post due to its expanded mobile strategy inclusive of text messaging, mobile applications and mobile web – the mobile customer experience.

If not already, marketers and their trusted agency partners should have plans for taking advantage of mobile in 2010.  Getting started by proving the value of text as a media buy measurement device is a logical way toward realizing the even greater benefits of targeting customers at the point of device.

Today I came across a November 25, 2009 MarketingSherpa.com article titled, “One-Two Campaign Punch Grows Email & Mobile Lists: Segmentation Delivers 40% Lift in CTR” that is a great example of Active Customer Engagement in action.  As we have said before, Active Customer Engagement is not so much about mobile as it is targeting consumers “on the go.”  In this case, the targeted customers are truly active, as the example cited in the article is for a retailer of sporting goods, bicycles in particular.

Similar to what we described in our Point of View on Active Customer Engagement and this actual customer example, email, web and mobile communications work together as part of a larger effort consisting of media buys supporting a promotion.  It isn’t apparent that the retailer had access to a system encapsulating all the components required to configure, execute and measure the program, but you can be certain if it did, ROI would have been greater.

A tidal wave of buzz is building around Active Customer Engagement, as illustrated by another recent article outlining the solution here on the Illinois Technology Association website.  Today as well, we were featured in a brief article titled, “Time to market with mobile” at brand-e.biz in which we say the following that gets to the heart of what Active Customer Engagement’s value is all about:

“What should drive mobile marketing investments is a strategy which focuses on the customer experience, what you want to achieve with your customers.  Developing ideal mobile paths for your customers to follow to achieve your goals should yield the best results…And in practice this will almost always mean some combination of text message interactions, mobile applications, mobile optimized web and even e-mail.”

Today on MobileMarketingWatch.com a post appeared titled, “Applying Email Strategies To Mobile Marketing,” which suggests email marketing best practices have applications within mobile.  While I agree that strategies like targeting and relevance apply to either discipline, as noted here marketers should remember that email and mobile often have different or interdependent applications.

More interesting than the recommendations were references to an earlier November 24, 2009 article on MarketingVox.com citing Direct Marketing Association (DMA) ROI research for email and search marketing:

“…commercial email now returns $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009…”

“…search advertising..is the next most effective channel with an ROI of $21.85 for every dollar spent.”

A simple conclusion would be that email’s return is about 100 percent that of search.  Consider as well that, with respect to email, “41% of consumers find that promotional offers are irrelevant, according to a study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).”  That means despite nearly half of those subject to email marketing rejecting those offers, ROI is greater than 4,000 percent!  It isn’t clear if ROI was calculated based on direct sales driven by email promotions.

Even so, you could argue that relevance is a key determinant of return for email and search marketing investments.  Paid search may help connect consumers with relevant results, yet search by its nature is rather broad, pointing consumers to some destination rather than calling them to action.  An email communication pushed to a consumer by a business should be more targeted, relevant and contain a compelling call to action.

Considering mobile — especially SMS text message interactions – by its nature must be relevant, ROI should exceed both email and search.  Extrapolating figures cited in the article, ROI for mobile marketing could be another 100 percent greater than email, offering upwards of $80 for every dollar spent.  Even if it’s no better than email, mobile’s ROI is highly relevant to marketer’s interested in making the most of their budgets.

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.

In our Point of View titled, “Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy,” we describe Champion/Challenger testing as one of the most logical – yet overlooked – applications for mobile marketing.  It’s both important in determining where to align your efforts but is also among the more measurable applications since measurement is the entire focus of the effort.

“Mobile may be the killer tool for testing the effectiveness of marketing messages and various media before a full scale rollout. Text message interactions are often used to this end, and also serve to measure return on investment for advertising across media such as print, billboards, radio and television.”

An article today on MobileMarketer.com brought this to mind, with a list of tips for testing your mobile strategy before executing holiday marketing plans.  I thought the tips were excellent, but marketers should not view testing as a single threaded activity; take the opportunity to test multiple approaches simultaneously against similar populations of targeted customers to see which one represents the greatest potential return.

Strictly speaking, champion/challenger testing is about comparing results of new ideas with those already in production.  So, in a marketing context, this would be akin to testing different discount offers as incentives for signing up for a mobile loyalty program, and comparing the effectiveness of different discount levels at attracting sign ups with those associated with a pre-existing non-mobile program.  The net result offers two benefits: a focused effort you can be more certain will meet your objectives and a direct comparison with non-mobile marketing efforts which should help align marketing budget more wisely.

So when reading the article’s suggested steps to creating a test plan, do so with an eye toward multiple scenarios and comparing results at the conclusion.  For reference, I have paraphrased the prescribed 10 step process:

• Identify the testable “entity” – For example, an SMS text message offer for joining a holiday discount club, the attractiveness of a dedicated holiday shopping application or new e-commerce enabled mobile website.
• What is the metric you are trying to measure?  # of responses, # of new sign ups, conversions between text message interaction and receipt of a discount?  Identify one or multiple attributes which can be measured and compared.
• How will you determine success?  If you are relatively new to mobile, it may be difficult to establish a target for your metrics beyond “finger in the air” guessing.  This is why the champion/challenger concept is especially suited to mobile given you will be able to compare results — ideally with past programs — to use as inputs into creating realistic targets.
• What criteria is necessary to identify when a test should be stopped?  If your test runs several weeks, you may want to cease testing if you observe little to no material difference in measures, or if one idea is simply generating far greater results than the others.
• What measures will you want to monitor for your targeted segments, independent of success metrics?  Migration among value segments/tiers would be one example.
• What other factors could affect the test, such as concurrently running marketing campaigns/promotions or those of your competitors?
• What resources are required, both technical and creative, to execute the test?  Consider both your internal staff and their potentially competing priorities as well as agency and technical third party partners.
• Be sure the proper stakeholders are aware of your plans; sales in the event demand generation is affected, brand marketing in case new messaging, visuals or brand-attributes are components of the test.
• Who is the “test sponsor” – basically the most senior person who signs off on the program.  Have this person identified – be it you or someone else – so you can quickly address any escalations that may occur.
• Time horizon for having the results: have this in mind from the beginning and back off this date to create a testing plan.  With Black Friday just a few days away it’s too late to implement these ideas now but keep them in mind to start off strong in 2010.

Nielsen has long offered marketers a powerful tool to inform marketing decisions called PRIZM – 66 segments of American households based on lifestyles, media usage and purchasing patterns which can be as granular as zip codes or household level.

In what can only be described as implicit acknowledgement of the mobile channel as a pervasive bridge between business and consumer, an article on OnlineMediaDaily.com titled “Nielsen To Refract Digital Media Planning, Brings PRIZM To Online Consumer Targeting” describes how PRIZM clusters can now be related to online users.  Applications are numerous and include better targeted interactive media buys to more relevant and higher performing online campaigns.

As the mobile channel becomes the preferred one over all others, distinctions between on and offline behavior blur.  Unlike state-based channels like a desktop PC or the point of sale, mobile can be at once an offline and online channel simply based on what a consumer is doing at any point in time; for example, sitting on the couch watching television or walking through the mall.  In either case, mobile provides a connection between the marketer and consumer.

Marketers should look at PRIZM as a great opportunity to develop more relevant mobile dialogues with their customers; it can act as a surrogate for an even clearer picture of customer behavior that emerges over time as mobile interactions feed new insights into a Mobile Customer Data Asset.  As I said here:

“It’s like adding a mobile attribute to your existing customer understanding, but it is a multidimensional view inclusive of demographic, attitudinal and transactional data all collected as part of mobile interactions.”