Titled, “Top 3 Opportunities/Challenges Ahead for Apartment Buildings,” the article immediately brought to mind Apartments.com, the online and mobile rental property search business that came to us to create an iPhone version of its service.

The topmost item on the list shows that competition among rental properties will escalate in coming years as more properties become available.  That would spell good news for a service such as Apartments.com, who provides a valued connection between renter and property that will be even more essential than it is today.

The second item caused pause, as it suggests that saltwater pools are becoming a table stakes feature of attractive rental properties.  Aside being another attribute renters may wish to identify while searching, it’s hard to envision how this impacts a service like Apartments.com.

The final item actually seems the most important by far; the emergence of online apartment ratings and the effect of negative reviews on occupancy rates.  Apparently many property owners are taking proactive steps to monitor their online reputations and addressing complaints directly.  That would seem to represent a significant opportunity for Apartments.com to create another value added aspect of its business.

As we have mentioned previously in our blog, social media is on the Interactive Mediums’ radar screen in a big way.  The most recent example is Hovewall, used to engage greater than 50 percent of the addressable audience in real time Twitter commentary at Mobile University 101, a conference held recently in Chicago.

The same applies to mobile or smartphone applications, such as the iPhone application we developed for Newser.com.  Today, Newser’s Ben McInturff was in our offices working with a couple of our mobile technology gurus on the next evolution of the application, which is no novelty but rather another platform for the company’s content distribution.

So much publicity is focused on the launch of limited life mobile apps that marketers forget that iteration applies just as much to an applications strategy as it does customer engagement around SMS text, email, social media or the web.

Pictured (right to left) is McInturff in the foreground, followed by Interactive Mediums’ Lead Architect Doug Barth and Director of Engineering Dave Farkas.  What’s in store for the next version of Newser for the iPhone?  Stay tuned newsfans.

“…stats…show it’s (apps) still a plaything compared to text messaging, which continues to deliver impressive year-over-year growth across all demographic groups.”

“only 18 percent of all phones in the U.S. are smartphones. Further, Juniper Research forecasts that smartphones worldwide will account for just 23 percent of all new handsets sold per annum by 2013, hardly representing the mass market for general consumer goods and services.”

“Strategy Analytics confirmed…with its October 2009 report that showed only four to six mobile apps are used on a consistent basis. Brands need to be aware that there’s intense competition for share of the mobile phone desktop. It stands to reason that consumers are not going to continue to download and use an unlimited number of mobile applications, and there are many questions over whether we have reached the saturation point already.”

Before abandoning your mobile app project, consider this statement:

“These are hardly mouth-watering statistics unless they’re your specific target market.”

This remains the sole reason to pursue an application on a particular mobile platform, iPhone or otherwise.  If the user demographics match closely your customer base, then it makes sense to consider a mobile application – only should one be pursued if the customer experience can be improved in a way that benefits the business.  This gets the heart of targeting the Mobile Customer Experience, which the article points to as THE point at which all mobile marketing efforts are converging.  Interactive Mediums thus to date has focused on helping its clients in this exact manner:

“Despite the relatively small user base, what is interesting from the known behavior of those who do download mobile apps frequently and own smartphones is that they’re massive users of text messaging and mobile Web sites. This shows that those on the leading edge of the technology curve are continuing to grow their engagement with texts, not reduce them, which is where the rest of the market will follow.”

Upon reading, I was quickly convinced that mobile augmented reality can reshape tourism, real estate and travel and is already beginning to.  From there I began pondering how it could be applied successfully to other industries such as retail.

Clearly the opportunity is there. Industry reports say that mobile handset integration will make a significant impact on Augmented Reality and catapult the industry size to over $350MM.

Secondly, It is a technology that when done well can add incredible levels of utility to a mobile device.  So far the mobile AR concept is simple, add live data population (metadata) to what you are already looking at through your mobile devices camera, or respond to an image capture with data. Whether it is a real estate listing, a state monument, or an important location in relevance to the Beatles’ history.  Once you point your camera, the information pops up right over it on your screen.

Given the opportunity & usefulness it seems like a wise choice for companies to adopt early. However, companies looking for ROI must enter this arena with the intention to offer utility & improve the lives of their customers, not just give them a fun gimmicky display of a new technology (see Fanta, or Coke Zero).  While some say this technology is going to be quickly “overhyped and abused” many will find new and innovative ways to increase convenience in consumer’s lives, in turn for brand allegiance.

Big box store IKEA is already testing out a future augmented reality catalogue showcasing building instructions. It’d be even better if you could use the pictures of your own home from your mobile device to find out while in store what that red chesterfield would look like in your living room.

As for grocery innovation, imagine walking into the canned beans section of your local supermarket on a hunt for the lowest sodium beans. With an application dedicated to healthy eating, you could potentially point your camera at the entire beans category and it could point you directly to the can with the lowest amount of sodium. Recipes would be a simple way to innovate & add useful data. Perhaps Mixology could help you think of drink recipes before hosting a party while you are shopping at the liquor store, all you would have to do is point your camera at a bottle of vanilla infused vodka and presto!

Whatever the use, AR is quickly becoming a respected medium and one of the most advanced marketing utility tools. As for other industries that can quickly be transformed the ones that come to mind are transportation, greeting cards, restaurants, and cinema. Those who adopt and integrate into their mobile strategies early will win customers & gain big shares of the opportunity, while those who sleep on this will likely get outshined by their competitors.

From Yankee Group:  “Nearly one-third of apps downloaded are purchased, up from 18% a year ago. Further, individual app prices have risen. The average paid app costs $2.85, compared with $1.99 last year.”

Contrast this with research from an apps analytics firm, which found “prices of iPhone apps worldwide have decreased by 15% during the period from Dec. 1st, 2009 through the end of February, with Australia having the largest relative price decrease of 27% overall…The most popular applications are the most expensive in Europe, the report suggests, with an average of $3.86 per app, and the least expensive apps are in North America, with an average of $2.43 and Asia, with an average of $2.69.”

No matter if prices are increasing or falling, the market for mobile apps is growing rapidly.  If anything prices will fall as more consumers are presented with greater choice and developers can monetize their apps instead by tapping into ad networks, as is planned by Apple.  You can be assured that viewing apps as a siloed revenue opportunity as opposed to a part of a larger mobile engagement strategy will soon be a thing of the past.

This article today on AdAge.com presents some generalizations to describe typical smartphone users:

iPod Touch: “The Touch user is young — according to AdMob, 65% of iPod Touch users are under 17 — and likes to game and listen to music.”

Blackberry: “The BlackBerry user is still very much a business user who uses the phone primarily for e-mail, instant messages and viewing attachments.”

Android: “According to Nielsen, 33% of Android users are single and, by Ad Mob’s count, 73% are male. Millennial’s Mr. Startzel calls it the ‘tough, terminator-like robot phone…’”

iPhone: “The iPhone user is tech-obsessed, wealthy and is less likely to have kids than other smartphone users… iPhoners are also using the device for much more than e-mail or messaging and are very active web surfers. They’re also more likely to buy things from their phones, download apps and content, according to Nielsen.”

While certainly good to know, such information doesn’t paint a full picture.  No matter what the generic user profile for a particular smartphone device looks like, it’s important to also consider whether or not consumers perceive a particular device as a viable application platform.  Although Google Android device shipments have been strong and are capable app platforms, the available market for applications pales in comparison to Apple’s App Store for the iPhone.

Right or wrong, currently the iPhone is perceived as the mobile app platform for consumers, due as much to its features and capabilities as the hundred+ thousand applications currently offered.  Some marketers invest in iPhone apps to reach their target demographic, others for the publicity which can accompany novel or interesting apps regardless of how well they are aligned to buyers.

Where trade-offs are not required is with SMS text message marketing programs.  These not only offer universal reach, but provide marketers the unique opportunity to learn more about their customers via direct engagement.  Marketers are not afforded the luxury of knowing who downloads their applications.

If not familiar with the movie reference, futuristic billboards presented personalized ads based on your actual identify as you walked by them.  The trial taking place in Japan is similar in that it features facial recognition capabilities to understand age and gender, and use these as inputs into personalized advertisements.

Although an interesting, if not very exciting marketing advancement, the article raises logical privacy concerns that arise with anything which consumers have little control over.  In this case, identities remain private and the scans are not saved following delivery of personalized messages.

Whatever form this takes in the U.S. or elsewhere, you can be certain that it will be followed by integration with location aware smartphones so that consumers may opt into being recognized and presented with personalized offers and messages based on actual identity, not just age or gender.

Preparing for this future now, marketers would be wise to develop mobile relationships with their customers using commonly available SMS text message marketing capabilities as offered by companies like Interactive Mediums.   Doing so successfully is equally a function of adhering to opt in standards which will not likely change even in the face of advancements like intelligent billboards.

I thought this was worth highlighting to show that mobile is not an “all or nothing” proposition, but that a phased approach to engaging customers in the mobile channel often makes the most sense.

Within the casino itself, mobile gaming is being introduced via proprietary mobile devices from a firm called eDeck.  These will provide on the go access to a variety of traditional games such that patrons can enjoy gambling wherever they may be within the property.  It’s an example of “micro mobile marketing,” in that customers are confined to a particular space that lends itself to mobile enablement in this fashion.  The upside for the casino will surely be more revenue while offering another channel of interaction with its customers.  Those two objectives are common among leading mobile marketers, whether their customers are more or less confined to a particular space or not.

While the article does not say so, this statement suggests the casino’s prior efforts around SMS text messaging programs to create an opt-in database of mobile subscribers will be used to help promote the new offering:

“Hard Rock will target its existing database and create eDeck awareness throughout the property.”

Other casinos will probably follow suit, or perhaps develop smartphone applications offering a similar experience in order to reach a greater number of potential customers than with a limited number of proprietary devices.

With 41% of iPhone users apparently actively checking prices, it’s obvious some retail CMO’s see these competitive applications as a threat. However the majority of big name retailers have already adopted and created their own integrated shopping applications to compete with these consumer advocate apps that threaten their pricing. North Face, Best Buy, Home Depot, Target, Nike, Gap, Wal-Mart, and Banana Republic all have integrated shopping applications, while Crate & Barrel, and Disney stores have their applications in development.

The challenge however is not to just develop a mobile shopping application, it is to create an incredible user interface that makes it simple and fun for your customers to shop with you. It is to create a fundamentally different way for customers to interact with your store.

For example, the NikeID store let’s you pick shoes out based on colors from photos in your phone. I found some great Nike Dunks just by showing a photo of a Fuji apple. Wal-Mart’s application lets you snap a picture of your living room wall to figure out an appropriate television size.

As more retailers enter the mobile ecosystem, it becomes clear that they must create a mobile shopping experience that goes above and beyond just acting as a portal if they want to keep their customers shopping with them over strictly shopping by price. With a combination of loyalty points, cool customization, interactive features, and convenience it’s still possible for the big name retailers (and brands) to win out.

Learn more about mobile application development at our resource center.

Moreover, should the network connection be lost, a user must re-start the browser session, which does not occur with native mobile applications.  HTML5 apparently has the ability to stage data in memory on a device such that the user cannot perceive the data transfer usually associate with web browsing.

Drew points out HTML5’s ability as well to access device functions that historically were the domain of native apps, such as the built in GPS capabilities of the iPhone.  What this all means for marketers, agencies and others considering mobile application development projects is that the mobile web offers essentially a “write once, run anywhere” experience that alleviates the need to create unique applications for different smartphone platforms.   At least for those devices with browsers supporting HTML5.  Of course, were it that simple, demand for iPhone applications would not be so strong, which Drew correctly identifies as a strength Apple brings to the table via the App Store.

This article I came across yesterday on InternetRetailer.com titled, “Apps versus sites,” doesn’t discuss recent developments aimed at closing the gap between the mobile web and applications, which illustrates how important maintaining touch with the technical community is so critical to success in the mobile channel.  Things are happening so fast, that once defacto stances around what works/what doesn’t are constantly being revised.  For example:

“M-commerce sites and apps differ in four fundamental ways: reach and discoverability, which favor sites, and experience and performance, which favor apps.”

In reality, apps are probably as “discoverable” as mobile websites given the visibility of the App Store.  Their point is that just like SMS text messaging, smartphones of all varieties have web browsers.  But with “experience” and “performance” becoming an immaterial aspect of the debate, it will be interesting to see what decisions marketers make with respect to mobile web and application projects.

Here’s a suggestion:  If torn between smartphone application development platforms due to the demographics and reach associated with each, why not create a rich web-based application that is universally accessible.  Then, in order to leverage the marketing-might of the App Store and other smartphone application stores, simply create small applications that offer a gateway to the mobile web app.  In this way, you lower your costs, ensure access to the widest audience possible while tapping into the demographic niches associated with different smartphones.  Don’t be surprised to see more than a few retailers and other industries begin taking this approach as HTML5 becomes more mainstream.

nextstop offers a smartphone app that finds your location and recommends entertainment spots and restaurants near you. The app is easy to use and blazingly fast — but it can’t be found in Apple’s App Store or in Google’s Android App Marketplace. Instead, nextstop built the app using HTML5 and delivers it via the mobile web. (Learn more about nextstop’s decision to forego the App Store.)

We’ll no doubt see more companies follow suit if for no other reason than economics. Google reports that 60,000 phones running Android are shipped every day. That’s a far cry from the 40 million iPhones in circulation, but it isn’t a drop in the bucket, either. The smartphone playing field is starting to level, and companies that want to reach the growing non-iPhone smartphone market will either need to build another app — which will double development costs — or find another solution. (Even Google agrees that native application development will be too costly to remain sustainable in the long term.)

It’ll be interesting to see if nextstop has timed this move correctly — will the public understand an app outside of the store? Will mobile apps be as successful in their adoption rates? I hope so, but I foresee some hurdles.

The largest challenge: marketing and distribution. People know the app store and rely on it to find and categorize apps. Using the App Store is largely a discovery process; I’m a news junkie, so show me popular news apps. I may never know your company until I stumble across your app in the store. That’s a potential customer/user base of 40 million people, and it’s hard to ignore that kind of exposure. With a mobile web app, the opposite is true; I have to start with you in mind, and know (or hope) that you have a mobile app.

There’s also an existing understanding of how you ‘get’ an app. With native apps, you visit the store, find an app and install it. The process is entirely different with the mobile web. There’s no central, trusted repository, nothing to download, no recommendations, and nothing to ‘open’ on your phone (though you can add a shortcut to the mobile app on your phone’s home screen). Instead you fire up your mobile browser and navigate to the app. An evolution in the perception of what an app ‘is’ has to occur so users realize your mobile app is the same thing they would’ve gotten in the store.

I hope the early adopters of mobile web apps succeed, because the benefits to mobile web application development using HTML5 are pretty enticing (and yes, I’m aware the HTML5 spec is far from finalized):

• It’s easier to deploy. Launching and releasing updates to the app is dependent solely on you, not a third party’s review process.
• It’s cheaper. Supporting multiple mobile browsers is more cost-effective than supporting multiple apps and code bases.
• It’s native app-esque. HTML5 lets developers tap into many of the phone’s functions, including location awareness, thus blurring the lines between mobile and native app.
• It’s fast. HTML5′s offline storage makes the mobile app as responsive as a native app when loading new pages.

Until there’s a distribution model for mobile apps that mirrors the popularity of Apple’s app store, are we largely stuck building native apps? I’m curious as to whether other mobile developers are building web apps instead of native ones, or if you’re holding back for specific reasons. Hope you’ll chime in.

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.

The survey finds product recommendations accessible via mobile devices as a huge opportunity for retailers, with 65 percent of those surveyed saying they would make purchases were it easier to find products of interest.  Retailers heeding this advice will implement mobile-accessible product reviews and recommendations based on factors such as real time inputs by a consumer (looking for a plasma screen TV, what are my options?) and historical transaction data if available (purchased TV in the past, suggest a DVD player).

A potential battleground retailers need to keep eyes on is the mobile product reviews/recommendations/comparison space.  On one hand, retailers can develop branded mobile experiences for their customers that are essentially “closed” environments by virtue of product selection limited to that one retailer.  Combined with clever engagement strategies such as mobile promotions, this can effectively combat third parties that aggregate product information, prices and reviews across retailers.

These services could render retail store environments as mere “pick up” spots for products browsed, reviewed, and compared by mobile shoppers.  The retail sector may be in store for a complete shift in power unless mobile engagement strategies rise to the top of marketing plans and priorities.

“According to DM2PRO and Quattro, 15% of advertisers and agencies spent more than 60% of their app budgets on promotion in 2009, but more than one-third spent less than 5%.  Promotional budgets will need to increase along with overall investment for apps to find their way to users.”

Marketers would be wise to consider the immediacy of text messaging to communicate mobile application availability and directly link consumers to download and install it.  Consider the ease by which signage in store can point customers to a text interaction that includes a direct link to download the application.  Convenience is key to entice consumers to take action and matching their behavior (out and about) with a device in hand is a recipe for success.

At the same time, marketers have the chance to create or build upon their opt in database of mobile subscribers, and learn more about them using engagement techniques like surveys and others that collect information about mobile consumers (like their zip codes or product preferences).  This data can in turn be used to segment the mobile audience in ways aligned with unique offers and calls to action.

Standing out from the crowd is already key to app success, so hoping your effort is discovered in the App Store can no longer be considered an effective strategy to ensuring ROI.  I say “App Store,” because the article points to the iPhone as the platform of choice for the time being, well ahead of Android and others.  Remember, when it comes to budgeting for the promotion of your application, among the most effective means to do so is to connect consumers with your app via creative use of text messaging programs.

Just the other day we blogged about the hype around mobile advertising created by recent acquisitions.  We’ve also covered issues surrounding mobile ad metrics.

We’re keeping close tabs on developments in this area for our customers so they understand where to prioritize mobile advertising alongside their broader customer engagement charters inclusive of SMS text messaging, mobile optimized websites, smartphone applications and social media.

An integrated approach to mobile channel marketing – akin to creating more effective mobile ads – is an innovation which greatly increases the likelihood your mobile marketing efforts won’t suck.

Mobile advertising, just like traditional web ads, is an exciting area because of the reach and audience segmentation possibilities.  In parallel with significant investment moves by Google and Apple to get involved via acquisition, the hype around mobile ads is at a fever pitch right now.  I’m afraid customers and investors who fixate here are in for some disappointment down the line, however.

Click through rate, or CTR, is the measure by which mobile and traditional online ads alike are gauged, and the article highlights global research showing that the unlikely Symbian platform is the leader in offering high CTRs, even in the U.S. where it’s not as dominant in terms of market share.

Clearly, a lot of advertisers are thinking “I have to be on Symbian” yet the hype and press would never point an ad buyer at this platform as opposed to the iPhone or a Google Android device.

Advertisers need to remember as well, where are those who click through going to?  A mobile optimized landing page or website?  A smartphone application download?  A coupon or bar code for redemption at the point of sale?  If the answer to any of these is “none of the above” and instead “we’re just happy to have lots of eyeballs seeing our message,” a huge opportunity to drive sales, engender loyalty, or cultivate brand affinity is wasted.

Viewing mobile as an engagement channel that allows businesses to create highly personal interactions that induce action on the part of customers is the real opportunity represented by mobile advertising.  It needs to be viewed as just one part of the value equation, which is why marketers are increasingly coming to Interactive Mediums to leverage our mobile customer engagement platform and expertise around creating effective mobile dialogues with customers across SMS text messaging, mobile web, apps and social media.

Both attendees and exhibitors alike were apparently personally armed with the devices and reportedly had either iPhone apps already in the market or were preparing them.  Large technology vendors in attendance also had iPhone apps to talk about, from Oracle and Sterling Commerce to Intel.  Funny that Apple itself was absent.

The observations reported in the article highlight just how powerful a marketing platform the iPhone has become yet retailers should not forget about text messaging as an effective mobile marketing method that can reach almost any mobile phone user.  Although applications are popular, engagement via text messaging is being used by retailers to overcome challenges around loyalty and comparison shopping behavior.

The best strategy is a balanced one considering the impact but lower reach of a rich smartphone application as opposed to the almost universal reach offered by SMS text messaging, especially those facilitating promotions such as sweepstakes and contests.  Targeting the mobile customer experience first, then determining the blend of approaches to achieve your goals is becoming the standard of excellence for successful mobile marketers.

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

The article concludes with this statement, making it sound as if retailers attempting to create engaging shopping experiences raise their hands in surrender:

“Consumers will care less about where they shop and more about satisfying their purchase requirements.”

I bet you could find similar statements made about 10 years ago around how e-commerce websites would put brick and mortar stores out of business.  Yet that didn’t really happen, as brick and mortar stores such as BestBuy and others created complementary online stores.  Late to game retailers like Toys R Us paid a heavy price, however.  Why would it be any different if consumers can research and compare products while “on the go?”

One way the article suggests is that retailers will be forced to match lower prices if consumers can prove it by showing their mobile device to a cashier, or worse lose the sale as the customer leaves for another store.  Loyalty, already so hard to engender among customers, is literally out the door as a means of creating a steady flow of business.

In reality, I don’t think the situation will be this dire, but retail marketers have a new mandate to create engaging shopper environments to encourage customers to remain in store and make purchases.  Especially for considered purchases versus impulse buys, consumers will likely perform online research in advance of venturing out to stores.  Items such as plasma screen TVs or washing machines, for example.  In these instances it’s highly improbable a consumer will even perform a comparison price lookup in store because they did so already.

There will be exceptions, but I just don’t see retailers hurt too much by this trend, especially if they work hard toward creating highly engaging – and branded – mobile experiences for their customers.  Those who do will be more akin to the BestBuys of the mobile realm as opposed to the Toys R Us’.

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.

Yes, that’s a UPS truck snapped today outside the local Starbucks, in all the glory of Chicago winter weather on the company’s busiest day – some 20 million packages according to Donna.

Yet, the Blackberry application, like an iPhone version preceding it, is designed to enable business and consumer customers alike to find a drop off location, receive shipping quotes, order pickups and check on package delivery status.  Dig beneath the details, as we did with Donna, and you gain a greater appreciation for what was involved:

• UPS employs an Information Technology group 5,000 strong, who possess deep mobile application expertise and were responsible for creating applications which interact with UPS’ massive global network of package and delivery data.
• Considerable research went into creating the new mobile application, to understand how best to serve their customers and offer a differentiated user experience from competing delivery services.  To these ends, UPS discovered customers wanted a fully native application as opposed to be directed to a mobile website.  Why?  Because application code can be fully loaded on a handset.  From the user’s perspective, this offers a more natural responsiveness consumers associate with desktop computer applications, with time taken only to bring new data across the network.  Navigating a website, even one optimized for mobile, can often seem more cumbersome and of course in the event of a network lapse the session will end abruptly.  Moreover, the UPS app allows consumers to log into the application once, and automatically upon launch relate any packages to their account to view instant status – no keying in of lengthy tracking numbers are required.
• Some UPS business customers are beginning to request the ability to have text messages sent to recipients and/or senders, providing notification of package delivery.  Even greater reach could be possible were UPS to enable customers to text their tracking numbers to receive instant updates – all of which are capabilities available in Interactive Mediums’ Engagement Platform.

Few organizations have the staff, funding or internal systems to execute a mobile strategy to the extent UPS has; for those who lack any of these critical pieces firms like Interactive Mediums stand ready with a flexible Customer Engagement Platform optimized for mobile interactions as well as a wealth of experience developing mobile applications which map to the way consumers want to engage with a business.

As UPS says “What Can Brown Do For You?” we say “How can Interactive Mediums power more effective mobile interactions for your customers?”

In 2006, Budweiser partnered with Interactive Mediums to power a similar SMS text message sweepstakes at the point of sale.  As both established and smaller brands alike take their initial steps into mobile marketing, sweepstakes are a proven approach to engaging customers in the mobile channel to drive sales, improve loyalty or build a brand.  As 2010 is about to open, marketers and promotional services providers in any discipline – branding, demand creation, or loyalty – owe it to their companies and clients to investigate this powerful promotional tactic as part of their plans.

Budweiser’s news is especially timely given recent posts about why mobile sweepstakes and contests are an absolute necessity for brand engagement and best practices for executing winning promotions.

Just keep in mind that fixating on apps as your entre into mobile marketing is not the right approach.  Instead, you need to consider your objectives and how they can be met by available mobile marketing approaches, including apps.

The paper cleverly outlines a hypothetical conversation between a marketer and his executive team.  The marketer mentions that mobile presents a unique opportunity for deeper engagement with their customers (true), but the conversation quickly identifies a mobile app as the means (and many questions emerge).

The paper mentions the following:

• What devices, operating systems and handsets allow us to reach the target audience?
• Where does the transaction with the audience occur?
• Why would our audience seek brand engagement though the mobile channel?
• How will success be measured from both internal metrics and external user perspectives?

These are absolutely the right questions as they don’t imply an application is the answer; instead, they speak to mapping your objectives to the mobile customer experience.  Unfortunately, the paper poses them in line with the assumption that an app is in fact the answer.

The paper includes the same diagram we highlighted in this recent blog post where we commented on research into the types of applications most often retained and used.  Applications can be the centerpiece of many mobile marketing strategies, but certainly not all as highlighted in the research. 

Text messaging and other mobile interactions, as well as the mobile web are equal partners in executing mobile customer relationship management strategies.  All or only some may form the basis of winning mobile marketing strategies.  Partners like Interactive Mediums stand ready to prescribe and deliver the right mix for your business.

Both pieces of information contain useful insights for marketers, even those outside the realm of broadcast communications.

Like many companies, NPR jumped on the mobile apps bandwagon by first building an iPhone application that has thus far experienced a lot of success (millions of downloads and 15 minute average use times).

Although the iPhone made sense initially, NPR found limitations which has led to a revamped mobile strategy that greatly increases the population of listeners who can access NPR content on the go.  What’s interesting about their new strategy is that it is as much about reaching more listeners across a variety of mobile devices as getting its member stations to benefit from mobile.  To achieve this, Google’s Android platform was the ideal choice:

“With the Android app, we can let the stations incorporate their own apps into ours.  Some stations are more advanced digitally than others.  We’re working with them about becoming more robust providers of local news, which will keep them relevant. And we can share our programming and theirs on one app. That expands the opportunities for all of us.”

A much more robust mobile web presence is also part of the equation, and is apparently based on technology from that Finnish firm I mentioned.  Yet it’s the greater flexibility offered by Google Android, relative to the iPhone, that appears central to NPR’s mobile strategy.

This is the first example I’ve seen where the discussion is not about the reach (or lack thereof) offered by the iPhone.  Instead, NPR chose Android because it fit their business model better by offering its member stations a more relevant marketing platform.  That is the kind of logic and thoughtful approach which should help make 2010 the year of mobile.

The article describes the oft-cited displeasure that developers have with Apple and its policies, and how it may cause defections to other platforms.  Yet the article also says this about the iPhone:

“…for most consumers, their mobile device of choice is a lifestyle decision, a personal, ever-present extension of themselves…”

With the exception of the words “mobile devices,” this statement could apply equally to the clothes a consumer buys, car they drive or restaurant they frequent.  For those products, does it really matter what their makers think as opposed to what consumers want?  That seems like a question that answers itself when you consider as well that products require distribution channels.

The “developer versus Apple” debate so pervasive right now is missing the big picture; most developers drawn to mobile come from traditional b-to-b development organizations where for years they have become accustomed to a model “all about them,” more or less.  When taken into the realm of consumer marketing, that is a dangerous point of view for anyone interested in creating successful mobile applications.

The situation reminds me of Walmart’s long-standing reputation as being difficult with its suppliers, squeezing ever smaller margins from them in exchange for access to millions of consumers.

With Apple’s App Store expected to grow three fold in 2010 to 300,000 applications, the iPhone will remain the go to platform for marketers despite the emergence of Google’s Android.  When you consider the reported difficulties developers are having with Android and projections of perhaps 70,000 Android Apps in 2010, the situation isn’t likely to change.

Marketers would be wise to align themselves with mobile application developers who recognize success means taking on the perspective of the mobile customer.  Such firms are more likely to possess both the technical expertise and distribution channel know how necessary to build apps that stand out from the crowd.

A December 1, 2009 article on BrandWeek.com titled, “iPhone Apps Put Brands in Hands,” is a cleverly named piece describing the bandwagon that is the iPhone and highlights a number of successes.  More interesting, I thought, were observations about less than successful apps that others should keep in mind as they approach mobile application projects.

By industry, the article highlights the following less than successful examples:

Retail: Gap’s StyleMixer was a terrific idea other retailers are employing or considering; the ability to create outfits based on clothing item combinations.  Gap’s app failed to resonate because there were too few options for customers to create their custom fashions.  Lesson learned: Understand how your customers want to use your application and interview a representative sample if necessary.

Banking: MasterCard’s Priceless Picks relies on user generated content which is moderated.  Users panned the application, which appears to allow customers to post their “priceless” moments, per the well known advertising campaign.  Users complained of censorship of posts and heavy advertising.  Lesson learned: If the intent is to promote a “fun” application with a social element, be certain that you don’t disappoint customers by building an overtly ad supported and patently restrictive forum.

Consumer Packaged Goods: Budweiser built an application designed to help consumers find the nearest location their product could be purchased.  While at first seemingly useful, the ubiquity of their product makes such an application seem unnecessary, which is how users reacted to it.  Lesson learned: “Finder” style applications are popular but be certain such apps have utility for your targeted customer.  In Buds case, it may have been w(e)iser to create an app which ties in store purchase promotions and a loyalty program designed to drive consumption.

Apparel: This one was out of left field.  Puma created an application which allows users to track the financial performance of their portfolios against the backdrop of a model who removes clothes as the market falls.  The sheer size of the application was its downfall, meaning it took too long to download.  Lesson learned: Even if this app were easy to download, there appears to be no connection between the application’s intended use and the company’s products, to say nothing of its tastefulness.

Media: The Wall Street Journal app requires users to pay a weekly subscription fee, even if one is subscribed to the traditional online version.  With so much news content freely offered online and in apps alike, charging a nominal fee such as this would seem to prevent widespread use, which has been the case.  Lesson learned: If you charge for content that is similar to what others provide for free, reconsider your strategy and think about incorporating advertising to support the investment.

Restaurant/Food: Burger King created an iPhone application that allows customers to place orders, but only from one area of New York.  The company has not yet rolled out the capability nationally, which is expected of a brand with locations everywhere in the U.S.  Lesson learned: For national brands, ensure that if you create a geographically limited application you plan to either kill it or roll it out widely within a reasonable timeframe.  From my POV, Starbucks, are you listening?

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.”

Continuing with this theme, radio stations are looking beyond text to other mobile marketing techniques to bring their content to “on the go” consumers.  Radio as an advertising platform no longer is limited to the airwaves, as more stations bring content online via real time streaming.  Even so, this recent post on MarketingForecast.com titled, “Brighter Outlook for Radio Advertising” suggests the opportunity relative to overall ad revenue may be small.

“Research concern SNL Kagan predicts that online radio revenues, which should reach $441.4 million or 2.7% of the industry total this year, should grow to $827 million by 2013.  At that point, online revenues would comprise close to 5% of the industry total.”

Yet, the post mentions as well that the future of radio is closely tied to a consumer behavior similar to what we are seeing in mobile applications.

“In 2009,  consumers said 19.4% of their media consumption related to radio, an increase of nearly 3% from 2008…U.S. consumers say they find TV to be the most credible information source.  However, radio ties with newspaper for second place with each media form claiming 6.3% of the total share.”

Obtaining news and information is probably among the most used mobile applications so it’s not surprising to see as well researchers suggesting mobile applications are on radio station radar screens as much as online investments:

“…they’ll be embracing online streaming and mobile apps to drive their local base to their multiple platforms.”

As radio marketers provide access to their content in convenient ways that map to the mobile customer (across online, text and mobile apps), they should continue to attract a strong audience ripe for ad messages, as pointed out in the post:

“Marketers who want to broaden the reach of their messages  may continue to find that radio represents a unique and effective way to deliver consumer attention.”

“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.

Although the move hasn’t been confirmed by Google, the article notes that “the carriers won’t love this,” no doubt because doing so subverts their immense sunken costs in traditional cell networks.  Even so, AT&T has supposedly lined up to provide data network access, because if they don’t surely another will.  With Google Voice offering phone service over data networks, Google will effectively have a tightly controlled alternative to any other mobile phone, and one that could be given away free if supported by built in advertising – that Google also happens to provide.

Long term, moves like this could render voice networks irrelevant.  On the device side, should Apple and Google move toward free, ad supported devices, traditional makers like Motorola will struggle to manufacture hardware at anything approaching a profit, no matter what operating system is used.

This post titled, “Developers only now realizing Android is not a platform” expands on comments recently made around problems facing open source software used in customer facing applications (versus the back office, or closed environments closely monitored and managed by IT staff and developers).  It’s a sobering point of view that if publicized further may discourage application developers and marketers from investing in Android mobile applications.

The other, titled “Microsoft: mobile apps aren’t important” cites claims just made by Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie (remember Lotus Notes?) that apps are not important unless developers are able to write a single application that runs across many devices.  He implied that the operating system itself and its built in features would be the key to this future – a line parroted by Microsoft for years, but historically more around its desktop operating system.

Both of these points of view may drive an even deeper wedge between Apple’s consumer friendly, yet closed approach and more open or device/OS centric approaches to mobile applications.  Unfortunately for anyone but Apple, the mobile customer experience is very personal and so the winner long term is likely the one who recognizes the large market opportunity is about ease of use and friendliness.

Comments such as those of frustrated Android developers and Microsoft (who has its own issues around mobile) make it more likely that iPhone app alternatives will be relegated to purely B2B applications, as in the case of sales force automation or field service support.  Basically, tightly controlled, back office solutions.

While that sounds cumbersome and unappealing, the implication is that Apple may be seeking to subsidize in part or fully the cost of iPhones and other devices via “ad supported hardware.”  The article cites recent word that Apple was in discussions with AdMob before it was acquired by Google as evidence the company is interested in moving in this direction.  It’s also tacit acknowledgement that the real money is in advertising, ala Google, as opposed to creating costly proprietary hardware and software.  With ownership of its ecosystem, Apple would seem positioned well to execute on this strategy.

Should this happen, it would be very hard for device makers like Motorola to earn a profit.  You might imagine Google getting into the device business at some point, following a similar strategy.  For marketers, it would offer a much more visible presence on consumer handsets, elevating the value of such advertising to levels seen in the wired web world.

Statements like these will make it hard for developers and their salespeople to claim an Android app offers access to the rapidly growing base of Android device users:

“A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a ‘nightmare,’ they (developers) say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models.”

“For users, it means apps in the store could be buggy, might not work well depending on their handsets, and could deliver a frustrating experience. Unaware of the increasing back-end complexity, they would then be more likely to leave bad reviews for those apps.”

“Instead of working on updates to our apps, we find we are trying to make each app work for multiple versions of the OS and different hardware capabilities.”

“You may build an app that works perfectly with all three firmwares, but then when you run it on carriers’ ROMs it completely blows up.”

The article draws a connection with the introduction of Java and its promise of “write once, run anywhere,” and how that didn’t really work in practice.  Google apparently offers emulators to test applications on different devices yet according to one developer these don’t work consistently, making it hard to confidently create a multi-device compatible application.

If the same holds true with Android, you will soon see charts of device market share split across different Android-based devices as opposed to one monolithic category – especially when talking about the market for mobile applications.

Apple must see these as good signs and validation of their tightly controlled model.  The mobile web is another story, and it looks as if Android is a great platform for developing a rich, user friendly web experience.  Emerging statistics like these November 17, 2009 ones on eMarketer.com bear that out.

To what extent might Android be a better m-commerce platform than the iPhone?  I’m not entirely sure, but this November 10, 2009 article on Forbes.com titled, “All Eyes On Mobile Commerce” highlighted a key difference between the iPhone and other platforms that marketers need to consider if mobile commerce is in their sights.

“Apple’s iPhone users create an iTunes account upon iPhone registration, if they did not already have one, where credit card information is stored for future one-click purchasing.  This enables over 50 million iPhone and iPod owners to purchase media or games on a mobile device, inputting their password to access their iTunes account.”

“T-Mobile, which will launch four Google Android handsets by the holiday season, has been working with Google to integrate the Android Market into its billing system by Thanksgiving.  Historically, which may or may not still be relevant, bill-to-carrier models have been less attractive to the mobile merchant due to delays in payments and the high cost.  Given the billing cycle of the operator, payments can be extended 45 days to a couple months.”

Getting paid fast is important in any transaction and so for the foreseeable future Apple’s model seems to represent an easier path toward booking revenue – for Apple at least.  You can be certain Apple is considering broadening the iTunes model to include other products given the ready-base of buyers able to transact rather simply.  Apple could become an Amazon.com like player quickly if it wanted to, slowing mobile commece on other platforms.

It’s doubtful that mobile will serve as a standalone handheld shopping cart for purchases of all kinds any time soon, given shopping behavioral differences between impulse and considered purchases.  Yet, as the article points out, all well known online stores, from Amazon to Wal-Mart, are heading in this direction, and technology vendors like IBM are gearing up their e-commece platforms for the mobile channel.

The mobile industry is exploding. In just a few short years, everybody will have a smart phone. A tiny, internet connected, mini computer right in their pocket. As each month passes, we learn more and more about what the future of this industry holds, and what the mobile handset landscape will look like. If one thing is for certain, it’s that nothing is for certain.

As it stands right now, Apple is king with consumers. Though not the first ones to market with an internet connected mobile device (the Blackberry has been around for a long time, and still holds the majority of the smartphone market share), Apple appears to be the first to really understand what the average, non-corporate consumer wants. A true mini computer. An open device that can play music, run applications, take photos, and provide a pleasant web browsing experience. And they did it in true Apple fashion, making the device extremely easy to use. As a result, the iPhone has become extremely popular with consumers, and is widely considered ”the device to have”.

With the majority of people still without a smartphone, much of the market remains up for grabs. Apple’s competitors are scrambling to catch up, trying to ensure that they they get a piece of the pie. But, one very important question lingers. What can Apple’s competitors offer that would give the average consumer a reason to buy their device instead of buying an iPhone? To me, the reasons are few, and becoming fewer.

(I’d love to hear your reasons in the comments. So please, chime in.)

A comparable feature set

This pretty much goes without saying. Any challenger to the iPhone crown must offer similar features to that of the iPhone. It is very unlikely that a competing device will lure anybody away from the iPhone if it is missing a feature that is now expected to be there. The device must be capable of running apps, taking photos, playing music, etc, for it even to be considered.

A better network

AT&T’s network leaves much to be desired. Having never been an AT&T customer, I can only relay the opinions of my friends and family who are AT&T customers. However, their opinions are one in the same. I’ve not heard a single word of praise when it comes to AT&T’s network. All of my friends and family with iPhones have expressed frustration that the device they love is frequently crippled by a network that is spotty and congested.

It’s no secret that Apple has an exclusive agreement with AT&T, and that agreement has an expiration date. Rumors have been circulating about a jump to another carrier, possibly Verizon, sometime next year. The more wireless carriers offering the iPhone, the less valid of a reason this will become for not purchasing one.

A comparable application ecosystem

Competing devices will need to have an application ecosystem that is at least comparable to the iPhone’s. This is no small task. There are over 100,000 applications in the App Store. Sure, several offer the same functionality, and many are of very poor quality. However, nobody can argue with Apple’s tag line of “There’s a app for that”. There really is an application, in most cases many, for everything you could possibly want to do with your iPhone.

Given their head start, beating Apple at this game will not be easy. Google’s Android OS currently stands the best chance of challenging Apple on this front, with over 10,000 applications already available. The Android OS is open, and capable of running on hardware from any manufacturer. In addition, applications written for Android are capable of running on any device that runs the OS (for the most part). Next year is going to be a big one for Android, with several new devices coming to market from many different manufacturers. Some analysts are even predicting that the number of Android devices in the hands of consumers will surpass the number of iPhones by 2012. This will no doubt attract more application developers to the platform.

However, Android has its own set of challenges awaiting. The fact that manufacturers are free to run Android on devices with very different hardware specifications (screen size, input controls, etc) poses a major challenge for application developers. Perhaps the risk of rendering thousands of existing Android applications useless by releasing a device with dramatically different hardware specs will be enough to convince manufacturers not to do it. Perhaps Google will provide a set of Android APIs that can help application developers deal with this issue. Perhaps a set of best practices will emerge as a guide for developers looking to tackle this issue. Perhaps we’ll see something similar to the PC application market in the mid-late 90′s (and the Blackberry application market today), where only certain devices will be capable of running certain applications. Only time will tell if these issues will prevent the development of the Android application ecosystem.

A killer feature

One wild card that is always in play is the killer feature. Apple’s competitors are only one, innovative, killer feature away from stealing the spotlight for themselves. By “killer feature”, I mean a feature so awesome that when you see it in action, you say to yourself, “I need one of those!”.

Version 2.0 of the Android OS took a stab at this with the introduction of Google Maps Navigation. A fantastic feature, Google Maps Navigation morphs your mobile device into a fully functional GPS unit, complete with a synthesized voice telling you where to go, real time traffic information, and several map overlays showing you the location of everything from ATMs to gas stations. But, is this a killer feature? Frankly, I’m not sure. But, its announcement was enough to cause a significant drop in the stock price of traditional GPS manufacturers, and it certainly has potential.

An incredibly easy to use device

Making devices that are intuitive and easy to use has always been one of Apple’s strengths. Look no further than the iPod for an example of this. Competing devices will need to be as easy to use as the iPhone is to appeal to the average consumer.

How do I get my music onto the device? How to I get the photos I take off? These operations should be simple and intuitive. Motorola’s new Android 2.0 device, the DROID, is seriously lacking in this area. Several steps are required to store data on or pull data off of the device:

For the iPhone, the list of steps is much smaller.

Are the steps required to store data on the DROID too much to handle for an experienced computer user. No, of course not. But, there is still a large percentage of people out there who would struggle with completing those tasks. Believe me, I know. Many are family and friends of mine who I help complete “simple” tasks on their computers all of the time. These people make up a significant portion of the market. If you want them to buy your device, then you have to make it stupid simple to use.

Summary

Apple has set the bar high with the iPhone, very high. While I can think of several reasons why developers and techies would prefer a different device, I can’t think of many reasons why the average consumer would. And, there are a lot more average consumers than there are geeks.

But make no mistake, Apple’s competitors have the iPhone in their sights. The tide can shift very quickly in this market, especially since most people get a new phone every couple of years. Will the iPhone challengers be able make a dent in the iPhone’s market share? Or, will the iPhone be the de-facto standard for smart phones? Only time will tell.

This issue is likely to be raised increasingly by top marketers not interested in the details, but who control the dollars and wonder why the rich mobile web cannot be leveraged to achieve the same ends as with a dedicated Smartphone application.  Today I came across a great article that doesn’t seek to answer this question, but does anyway, by describing how close (or far) we are from being able to approach mobile apps with a “write once/run anywhere” promise, like was promoted by Sun Microsystems when the Java programming language debut.

This November 10, 2009 post titled “One Mobile App for Multiple Platforms Almost a Reality” on the ReadWriteWeb.com site points to three approaches which offer the potential to develop a single application capable of running on nearly all devices.  The key qualifier is the word “potential,” however, as a poor Mobile Customer Experience represents a huge gating factor.

The author cites HTML 5, Adobe Flash and JavaScript Native Applications as three approaches, and each has its good and bad points.  I will get to the good points in a minute but the key issues with the first two are the potential to lose a network connection and thus have an application “close” abruptly.  This is a psychological hurdle significant enough to discourage users from these apps relative to ones which are fully operable on a device without a connection.  The latter of the three suffers from a user interface which works for many but is optimized for none; Javascript allows rich applications but that require interface technologies which are general purpose.  These lack a Smartphone app’s native look/feel which attracts consumers to mobile apps to begin with.  Now the good news:

• HTML 5: Think mobile optimized web pages with significant database access, and this offers a lot of application-like capabilities.
• Adobe Flash: Similar value to the above, maybe more so by virtue of greater visual and interactive controls.
• Javascript: Allows creation of encapsulated, self standing applications, which can run on multiple devices.

It goes without saying that customers demand more from a mobile application than they would a desktop one; it must “fit” more in line with their “on the go” behavior and so the design and user experience are as important as any other factor in a successful application.

Given limitations, real or imagined, around the connectivity between a device and the network, and the role a native look/feel has in ensuring an apps’ adoption by its target audience, we are not going to see “write once/run anywhere” mobile apps anytime soon.  Instead, marketers will have to pick their battles, so to speak, based on alignment of their customer demographics with those of Smartphones.

I say they bought more than AdMob, because in fact Google’s move illustrates the giant “gets” mobile, and that it means a lot more to marketers than hyperlinked words alongside search results (AdWords) or appended to websites in an ad network (AdSense).  It’s about providing a platform for marketers to reach their customers in the most relevant, timely and effective manner, based on the mobile experience.

Moreover, it’s recognition of the powerful marketing platform that is the iPhone, despite last week’s release of the Motorola Droid and what is sure to be a flood of Android-based phones in the coming year.

Oh, wait, Google owns Android too.  Hmmm, seems like they have their bases covered pretty well with the leading and arguably most effective mobile ad network used on the competitive iPhone, and the top contender to dethrone the iPhone.  Those Google people are really smart.

In AdMob, Google now has a wedge to use in its efforts to compete for marketer’s mindshare and dollars.  Over time, you can imagine those dollars spent advertising within iPhone applications will find their way into apps for Android.

These thoughts came to mind upon seeing an article on eMarketer.com today titled, “eMarketer Cuts Through the Mobile Penetration Hype.”  The article debates whether distinctions between “mobile subscriber” and “mobile subscriptions” are material in research suggestion the penetration for mobile ranges between 75 and 90 percent of the U.S. population.  Some multi device owning mobile subscribers may be double counted in estimates using subscriptions as the measure, as in figures published by CTIA – The Wireless Association.

As a marketer, whenever I see presentations illustrating the vastness of the mobile marketing opportunity based on the number of people with devices, I cringe a bit.  By now, it should be common knowledge that the majority of people you would wish to market your products or services to have a mobile phone.  The discussion should instead be focused on (1) who are my customers, (2) how can I serve them better, (3) how can I serve them better via the mobile channel, and (4) what means are at my disposal to do so.

Almost everyone has a text message enabled phone, some demographics more closely align with the iPhone and Smartphones more generally, and soon most mobile device users will be capable of receiving a rich mobile web experience.  The mobile industry does itself a disservice by emphasizing the vastness of mobile device penetration, particularly when talking to marketers who will only achieve results by focusing on relevant and timely interactions with their customers.

This question came to mind today as I read an October 30, 2009 post on MobileMarketingWatch.com titled “Apple Hits 100k Apps, Does Quantity Matter?”  As the number of applications available for the iPhone passes the 100k barrier, the question of quantity versus quality logically arises.  Particularly in light of its popularity as an advertising and marketing platform.  Is the iPhone somehow less attractive to marketers if their message has to compete with 99,999 others?

I agree with the author’s point that many consumers are drawn to the iPhone due to the sheer number and diversity of apps available – like the ad slogan says, “There’s an app for that.”  With respect to advertisers and marketers, the challenge is ensuring a targeted, high quality application is the goal, along with making it patently clear to consumers that the app is available.  The most successful applications today follow this formula, which is why the iPhone should remain a popular choice for the mobile marketer, particularly for reaching its typical user demographic.

The emergence of Android as an alternative this year and into next seems to pose a threat to Apple’s dominance in mobile applications, assuming that it achieves parity or better.  The post points out, however, that:

“The question remains if Android Apps, which there will be fewer of, at least at first, will be of any higher quality than the Apple apps.  According to AndAppStore, there are 259 apps available for Android including ‘aBubblePop,’ so let’s just say the quality competition, if Android hopes to win it, has yet hit its prime.”

I’d like to suggest that the number or quality of applications may be irrelevant, particularly to marketers.  Applications as a segment may continue to be dominated by Apple into 2010 and beyond simply because of the marketing might Apple brings to the game.  The iPhone business blends the niche, maniacal loyalty of Apple’s traditional computer business with the volume market dominance in MP3 music players.  Overlay Apple’s powerful promotional and branding engine, a single app store and a loyal and growing consumer-base, and Android has an uphill battle to say the least.

I sense already that Android will become a great platform for the mobile web, but not so much applications, due simply to the lack of a strong consumer friendly marketing message, and a single, very easy to use app store.  I’m not confident that a diverse market of carrier App stores will be as appealing as Apple’s.  Marketers should note this as they look to take advantage of Android in their marketing plans.

(Additional Context Note: My colleague John Wood, upon reading this post, brought to my attention that Google is in fact hosting its own large scale App Store at http://www.android.com/market/, and that the number of apps for Android today is closer to 10,000, not the 259 as quoted in the MobileMarketingWatch.com post.  In spite of this, I think Apple’s super consumer friendly approach is going to be a tough nut to crack, but if anyone can do it, it’s going to have to be Google).

The article is about an iPhone application designed to promote Toyota’s new Prius as part of a broader product launch intended to take the third generation vehicle mainstream beyond its initial customer base.   Although the app is interesting, I thought the details surrounding the mobile customer experience and target customer were equally so.

The connection to Times Square is a concession to the power of targeting the “out and about” consumer, but in this instance there’s a linkage between application users and the message:

“Using the application, people were able to draw on the Reuters Times Square digital billboard Oct.26-28.”

But why an iPhone as opposed to another platform or none at all?  Although I am sure Toyota considered the platform’s demographics, the company also had data to support an iPhone application as opposed to other platforms; more than 60 percent of traffic to the company’s WAP (mobile optimized) website comes from iPhone users.

The WAP site itself is a centerpiece of the iPhone application’s promotional effort, which also includes interactive print magazine advertisements and the company’s Prius Facebook fan page.

Marketers planning product launches and other marketing programs who have the similar luxury of analyzing mobile web traffic and their sources would be wise to do the same to make more informed decisions when targeting the mobile customer experience.

Given the escalating adoption of devices capable of providing a decent mobile web experience, the argument at first makes sense.  Yet, a lot of research tends to support mobile commerce for certain types of products not usually associated with large e-commerce stores (such as those of big retailers).   To me it’s a question of relevance given the active, on-the-go nature of a consumer.  The fact a rich mobile web may be a ways off is another consideration.

Ordering a pizza or burrito via mobile device, even choosing topings or ingredients, is today a great mobile commerce application.  It seems though that for purchasing items of greater value — considered purchases – a more thoughtful process is required which means consumers will tend to use a desktop PC — or some combination of online and in-store activity.

I think mobile commerce around considered purchases will be most effective when it’s part of a strategy focused on the mobile customer experience.  Many businesses are taking this approach successfully today and if I’m right, it suggests you won’t soon see full on e-commerce sites as stand-alone profit and loss centers anytime soon.

Two days ago, The New York Times ran an article titled, “Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System.”  By offering a free, open source, rich platform — unlike Microsoft — and that features capabilities similar to that of the iPhone, Google is doing more than either Apple or Microsoft to accelerate the promise of mobile.  If both scale and capabilities are key to a large potential market, Android seems to be satisfying both requirements.  Consider:

“Twelve Android handsets have been announced this year, with dozens more expected next year. Motorola has dropped Windows Mobile from its line entirely in a switch to Android. HTC, a major cellphone maker, expects half its phones sold this year to run Android. Dell is using Android for its entry into the cellphone market.”

“All four of the largest carriers in the United States have now agreed to offer Android phones.” – even AT&T, home of the iPhone.

“Android is ramping with more manufacturers and more price points. It is going to have a pretty significant impact.”

“Android is free, while Windows Mobile costs manufacturers $15 to $25 a phone.”

“Android has attracted far more applications for consumers in the first year than Windows Mobile has in a decade.”

The article raises the specter of failure, however, given the general lackluster response to the initial three Android devices available.  Still, the marketing and commerce possibilities today will pale in comparison to those available once a majority of consumers replace today’s devices with those supporting a rich end user experience like Android offers.

Marketers with an eye on iPhone applications now should look to partners with diverse capabilities so that application requirements, work flow concepts and user experience plans can be re-purposed for creating versions for Android and other rapidly improving platforms such as Blackberry.

Having been in meetings with businesses considering iPhone development projects, I can say not all view the mobile web this way.  Without a well researched understanding of how a customer would interact with the mobile web and derive value from such interactions, many businesses have been offering mobile versions for some time simply because it makes sense (be wherever possible customers might want to find you, convert your site to size correctly on a small screen).  Next, they are looking at Smartphone apps, iPhone in particular, as “must have” novelties to be pursued quickly via re-packaging existing small form web content into an application “container.”  Smart business people are choosing these short sighted paths.  How could this be?

Today I came across two different articles that help explain the situation.  One, titled “The sad state of the mobile Web gets even sadder,” from an InfoWorld blogger, describes how ill-suited the mobile web today is for application developers – especially those using tools such as Adobe Flash, which  recently has been positioned as a rich app development platform to run within mobile browsers.  It goes without saying (but I will anyway), that this means the mobile web for now is a viable content delivery platform alone, to complement other mobile interaction strategies – it cannot practically be otherwise.   So the mobile web has a valuable place within the mobile customer experience, but as basis or reason for developing a Smartphone application it is not.

The other post, from the TechFlash blog, “Microsoft’s Ballmer: The Internet is not designed for the iPhone,” quotes Microsoft’s Steve Balmer answering the question of whether mobile phones could supplant PCs as the technology of choice for mobile consumers:

“Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC.  The Intrnet is not designed for the iPhone…That’s why they’ve got 75,000 applications — they’re all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.”

Of course his answer is colored by Microsoft’s position, or lack thereof, within the Smartphone space, but it also illustrates how many businesses are incorrectly viewing the mobile web versus applications.

Without widely adopted best practices for navigating the mobile customer experience based on business objectives, too many marketers are taking siloed approaches to mobile.  No, the internet was not designed for the iPhone, but it can provide a conduit to real-time data for an application designed for the unique form factor of a handset and intended to help a consumer perform some task or make a better decision.  The internet was also not designed for the mobile web, but likewise web content can be a powerful contributor to mobile interaction strategies.  Some businesses are doing it right, like Newser, and others would be wise to follow their lead.

Read between the lines, and you realize that like many content-based web businesses, Newser is ad supported.  So anything it can do to provide an attractive platform for serving ad messages to a highly engaged audience drives revenue.

Relative to the mobile web, Newser on the iPhone immediately is a more effective ad platform – users are engaged on a level very different from a mobile website with its load times, page to page navigation, scrolling and general user interface themes that are shared among content websites.

Applications also encompass a great deal of logic stored locally on a mobile device so a user generally perceives a swifter, friendlier experience.  As the mobile web gets better, that many change, yet remember that even with broadband internet now nearly ubiquitous, there is still a healthy market for well designed desktop applications.

Pages views of a mobile web presence can outpace application downloads, but the value of ads served in a native Smartphone application should be generally higher given greater user engagement.  Businesses looking to expand their footprints to the mobile channel, but especially those in content businesses, need to remember this distinction and seek partners like Interactive Mediums that can help best take advantage of native device capabilities.

Similar to how Interactive Mediums client Newser recently extended its service to mobile via an iPhone application as part of an ongoing mobile channel strategy, Coupons.com is also making progress beyond its initial steps.

Although the notions of replacing loyalty cards with mobile devices and presenting digital coupons or bar codes at the point of sale are very sexy, in practice these face all sorts of challenges – technically and process-wise.  Coupons.com appears to have learned how to overcome them by focusing on the mobile customer experience.

“…integrating digital coupons with loyalty cards is the most practical solution to enabling downloadable discounts in busy stores where consumers often have multiple purchases eligible for discounts.”

“We’ve seen the [couponing] industry flirt with all things of digital format for some time, all the way from the absurd—the notion of presenting barcodes on phones in high-volume checkout lanes—to the legitimate and tested, including digital loading onto loyalty cards.”

With a shopping list iPhone application already under its belt, in taking its mobile strategy to the next level Coupons.com has done the following:

• Offer traditional and mobile optimized websites which allow consumers to register their loyalty cards, browse coupon offers, and elect to have certain offers digitally attached to their accounts so at the point of sale they are redeemed as a group, as opposed to one at a time.
• A revised shopping list application which allows consumers to take photos of product bar codes to automatically have items added to a grocery list.  The application also integrates with the coupon program so that eligible products are flagged for addition to the consumer’s loyalty card account.
• Recognize the difference between coupon redemption associated with multi-product purchases (grocery) versus those associated with one large purchase (restaurant).  To that end, the mobile site allows selected offers to be saved on mobile devices for presentment at checkout without need for a loyalty card or account.

The last point is notable as it recognizes that coupons and offers may not be one in the same, and can have different practical applications:

“Mobile presentment has been a technology looking for a use…Where it works best is in low-volume, high-margin transactions—consumer electronics and things like that– and at the local level. We have over 12,000 offers with restaurants, dry cleaners and professional services, and phone presentment works very well there.”

“It’s all about moving people quickly through those checkout lines…Searching for multiple coupons on your phone, then showing each one, perhaps dropping your phone in the process—those are not conducive to speed.”

What is speeding up is the rate at which mobile marketers are learning from, evolving and improving upon their initial experiences.  Exciting times for mobile marketing.

“42% of 18-to-34-year-olds and 33% of 35-to-44-year-olds are at least somewhat interested in receiving opt-in mobile alerts from their favorite places.”

“Among respondents who would opt in to location-based alerts on their mobile phones, more than one-half were interested in messages from restaurants, followed by movie and event tickets, weather, and clearance sales.”

Just like any business strategy, however, it isn’t just a question of attitude toward mobile communications; it is as much about actual consumer behavior “on the go.”  Mobile can be a powerful tactic, but its ultimate value derives from programmatic use as part of a broader strategy targeting the mobile customer experience – in this case competing for consumer dollars in a down economy.  The research supports use of mobile as an ongoing customer relationship management strategy which takes advantage of natural shopping behavior:

“90% of consumers have made impulse purchases while out shopping because of a sale, and 22% of mobile users did so weekly. Marketers that let consumers know about local offers at the right place and time might take advantage of such behaviors.”

The fact consumers will make impulse purchases independent of mobile interactions represents a major untapped source of business for retailers.

To take advantage of this quickly, retailers need to partner with firms like Interactive Mediums who will help shape the best path toward meeting business objectives.  Starting by developing a mobile marketing strategy map is a logical first step.

• Active Customer Engagement Comes to Life for Mobile Marketers
• Retail and Consumer Products Companies Must Confront the Mobile Challenge
• What’s up next for Hooters? Reality “Augmentation”?
• The Death of Email…Long Live Email!
• The question of branded versus syndicated mobile applications for retailers
• A definitely not “wet behind the ears” retail example of Mobile Marketing Strategy
• Retailers Focused on Customer Experience Need to Consider Mobile

I thought it would be useful to view this capability within the context of the initiatives facing marketers and which have strong applications for mobile, as we talk about in Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy.

Loyalty Programs: Registering customers for loyalty programs and having them use text interactions to log activity (e.g. via product codes for points) are useful, largely “one way” communication strategies.  Newly supported capabilities can add value to loyalty programs by enabling marketers to identify targeted “best next actions” for customers, based on richer profiles and interaction history.  For example, rather than simply registering customers via SMS, marketers can now, in real time, prompt customers for additional information, such as product affinity, consumption frequency, and channel preferences.  Whereas in the past, such details may be obtained over time and from other data sources, they can now be captured at the initial point of contact.  In cases where a marketer has already developed an opted in list of mobile customers, they can alter the “points redemption” process at the point of mobile interaction to include capturing more details of customer behavior.  Once captured, profiles and consumption data can be used to develop offers for logical product bundles or product bridges.  Blending speed to market with customer knowledge is an enormous benefit of these new capabilities for loyalty programs.

Demand Generation: To increase floor traffic and close more business, marketers will offer subscriptions to discount, sales or other promotional message programs.  Whereas in the past, this registration was limited to a homogenous list of existing and potential customers, now within a single system marketers can develop immediate, and more detailed profiles of interested consumers for serving more relevant offers.  For example, marketers can now offer these programs and at the same time request details such as age, sex, marital status, product interest and others which can then be used to segment responders into groups to be matched up with appropriate offers designed to drive purchases.

Brand Awareness: Brand marketers are gated from their customers via the built in separation between manufacturers and their sales channels.  And while couponing can offer insight into consumption behavior, text messaging can connect brand marketers directly with their customers in ways which are mutually beneficial.  For example, a food company might offer recipes with their products as key ingredients in exchange for a text interaction whereby the marketer obtains insight into consumers’ perception of their brand.  A measure of brand engagement may be derived by how willing consumer segments are to engage in multi-question interactions.

Champion/Challenger Testing: If understanding customers “on the go” is an objective but there is uncertainty around how much information can be obtained via text message interactions, these new capabilities allow marketers greater flexibility in testing their strategies before a full roll out.  Question threads of different depth and/or length can be tested to see in advance which approach will yield the desired results.

Customer/Market Research: A survey instrument may not always be the best approach to gaining insight into customer preferences and behavior for use in creating new products, packages or services.  A marketer interested in obtaining this type of information can use the new capabilities to identify segments of opted in customers to ask increasingly more specific questions.  This process of closing the loop only serves to inform better decision making.  Key to success is ensuring customers are incented to engage in these dialogues, and offering registration in trial product programs is one such approach.

When attempting to use this with my Jewel/Osco grocery preferred card, it failed to work, leading me to conclude that widespread adoption was far from certain.  This evening I had a chance to try the application again, this time with my Blockbuster account.  And it actually worked.

Perhaps Blockbuster stores have more advanced scanning equipment.  No matter why it worked in this case, the experience would have been enhanced further by connecting my debit or credit account so I would not have to separately pay for my DVD rentals.

Assuming other cards may work as well as this example, you could say the application is redeemed.  Just like like mobile codes at the point of sale should.

The article describes a technology called SnapTag which is a unique coded circle intended for placement around a company’s logo, then printed in magazine advertisements and presumably posters as well.  This coded circle corresponds to a pre-defined mobile interaction which is instantiated when a consumer takes a photograph of the logo with their device then sends it via MMS or email to a number or address posted alongside the logo.  Read the story quickly and you envision a ubiquitous bar code-like technology which does not require special software on the mobile device, as is the case with Quick Response 2D bar codes.

Step back a moment though, look more closely and in fact what SnapTags actually do is make a mobile interaction more complicated than it needs to be.  The encoded circle serves the same function as an SMS keyword.  In the case of SnapTag, a photo must be sent via MMS to some phone number or mobile email address.  In the case of a traditional text message communication, a consumer instead texts a keyword to some shortcode number.  In both cases, the action causes a response to be sent back to the consumer, potentially driving a visit to the mobile web or triggering an email.

Where I can see SnapTags being useful is in connecting a brand to mobile by virtue of combining the two in a single image a consumer must capture with their camera in order to engage in the interaction.  However, given the greater ubiquity of SMS text and the added steps involved for the consumer with SnapTags, I think the same is possible simply by placing a keyword and shortcode alongside a logo.  Real bar codes encapsulate data which is interpreted on a device and potentially contains information, pointers to mobile web or text communications — all independent of the transmission of data over the network.

Setup was a snap.  I simply keyed in the numbers on my cards and the application generated visual bar codes that presumably serve the same function as the code or magnetic strip on the cards.  I had visions of being pushed discounts and special offers to enhance my shopping experience.  So it was with this excited point of view I stopped at Jewel last night to pick up a few things and try out my new mobile loyalty card.  I handed my iPhone to the cashier, they hovered the device’s brightly lit screen over the scanner, and…

Nothing.  It didn’t work, so I had to fish the plastic card from my wallet for the cashier to scan as usual.  If Jewel needs to replace its scanners and point of sale systems for this to work, we are a long ways away from replacing plastic with mobile devices.  My hope is that there was just some kind of glitch, but if not, then it suggests ubiquitous SMS text message-based loyalty programs and coupons have a strong future in enhancing the shopping experience.

Yet, the article mentions an often “lost in the shuffle” player in the Smartphone market; Microsoft, and its Windows Mobile Operating System.  Microsoft recently launched a new version of its mobile platform, to unfortunately unflattering reviews.  The eMarketer.com article more subtly implies the same:

“Smartphones running the Symbian or Windows Mobile operating systems aren’t even a part of the conversation, even though they run on the majority of smartphones, according to the report. These platforms do not adequately support the consumer-oriented functionality that new adopters of smartphones desire.”

That would not be of much consequence for mobile marketers if not for the fact Windows Mobile is currently and for the near future among the most popular Smartphone interfaces. Symbian too:

“In spite of that, iSuppli Corp. expects the installed base of Windows Mobile smartphones to reach 67.9 million worldwide by 2013, putting the Microsoft OS in second position—with Symbian in the lead. Together, the two systems will account for 62.9% of the worldwide smartphone market that year.”

In the U.S. and across the globe, marketers will need to consider this aspect of the Smartphone space as they go about developing their plans.  Understanding the demographics of Smartphone users and targeting applications based on those realities means the ubiquity of text messaging will not be soon eclipsed by applications.

In past posts, I have characterized email as a communication tool best used “out of line” with a customer’s daily activities, and I think that still holds even if email can be delivered to a mobile device. Email is often more verbose and detailed than text messaging, and less interactive than text, mobile websites or applications. I would now add that in addition to thinking about email in the context of “out of line” versus “in line,” it should be viewed in terms of a marketer’s customer development objectives.

• Interactive Dialogue: text messaging, websites, applications
• Communication: email and phone

The former has greater relevance in real time as a customer shops, is driving somewhere, approaching a restaurant or browsing a car dealership. The latter are activities which require sudden and dedicated attention to speak and/or interpret information, which do not lend themselves well to calling customers to action. We have also said that the Mobile Customer Experience may soon be the most relevant interaction channel, underscored in the article with respect to email:

“The day when more people read and respond to email via their handhelds than any other platform is approaching, underscoring how critical it to build email campaigns that are optimized for mobile devices.”

“The bottom line is that all handhelds are growing in importance, and more and more consumers will be accessing marketers’ email on the small screen while they’re on the go, not just the big one while they’re sitting at their desks.”

I think the real bottom line is that email has its role in the Mobile Customer Experience alongside other communication and interactive approaches, but marketers must let objectives drive the choice and scope of technologies used to achieve them.

• “…by the end of the second quarter only about 7% of U.S. consumers bought goods or conducted financial transactions via cell phone, according to a Nielsen Mobile survey of more than 90,000 people,” but this is growing rapidly.  “In January, consultant ABI Research projected North American sales of physical goods ordered via cell phone would reach $544 million this year, up from $346 million in 2008.  Now, Mark Beccue, senior analyst at ABI, is considering updating his 2009 forecast to $800 million.”  What is interesting about this figure is that investments in mobile marketing in 2009 were forecasted at about $400M by Forrester in a July 2009 report titled “U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014.”  Do the math and that reflects a super high return on investment, given that the $400M figure is inclusive of all mobile marketing investment, not just that associated with commerce applications.
• Ebay and Amazon.com accounted for 70 percent of physical goods sales conducted via mobile in 2008.  If nothing else, this illustrates consumer adoption of m-commerce as a viable transaction platform, and concerns over data/credit card privacy should wane as Visa and other companies provide secure solutions optimized for mobile, as pointed out in the article.
• “By the end of 2009, about half of established retailers may have mobile Web sites, up from less than 20%.”  Given escalating adoption of Smartphones capable of providing a rich mobile web experience, retailers should reap considerable benefits.  “In the second quarter, 28% of all handsets sold in the U.S. were smartphones, up from 19% a year earlier, according to consultant NPD Group.  And more Americans will be able to gain access to the mobile Web soon.  One-third of consumers without a Web-enabled phone plan to purchase such a device within the next year, according to a survey of 3,305 U.S. consumers conducted in March…”
• Mobile is becoming the only channel that matters, in some cases replacing the traditional desktop PC.  “A large portion of the customer base is totally replacing their online experience with mobile, says Ensign of Papa John’s.  We think a lot of the times they were customers of Papa John’s [before] but ordered from other restaurants, too.  But now there’s a new convenience with Papa John’s, and we are getting a greater percentage of their purchases.”

The article concludes astutely that the development of this picture is entirely dependent on the network which connects consumers with businesses.  The “iPhone is morphing into a kind of predator parasite on the wireless network, sucking out the value and leaving networks gasping for air,” which means more than the risk of slow networks stalling m-commerce.

In the event networks play catch up mode with Smartphone adoption and usage, mobile marketers with strong ties to their on the go customers will more likely benefit from a greater share of consumer spending simply for the sake of convenience and prior experience.  For that reason, retailers and businesses of all kinds need to begin engaging their customers now in mobile dialogues based on business objectives mapped to the Mobile Customer Experience.

If retail marketing leaders are as fixated as described in the following quotation, I strongly suggest they tap into knowledge bases like Hello Mobile to see how retail and other industries are moving beyond the novelty factor to leveraging mobile strategically:

“The retail CMO is looking for some new-fangled, high-tech way of engaging with this itinerate shopper.  The sage truth is that the marketing department is chasing shadows…Instead of focusing on the consumer and how they are leveraging mobile in their stores, they are investigating widgets and apps that have little to no reach or frequency in their consumer base.”

The author lumps retailers and packaged goods firms together in making two recommendations to their marketing leaders:

• Learn from history: We blogged about this idea in a slightly different context here, but the gist is that the desktop computer/Internet/email drama is again playing itself out in the mobile space and leaders unable to see the similarities are missing the boat:  “I-want-one-too CEOs are running to their agencies and IT department and developing application that only five percent of consumers are returning to after a lonely month on the phonetop.”
• Learn from your consumer: We talk about a focus on the Mobile Customer Experience, and the author wisely recommends observing your customers in the store environment to see how they use a mobile device while shopping.  “They are doing two things in your aisles: using their phones to browse and text. Is the consumer opening the browser to find tips and information to help with their shopping experience? Are they messaging home for the shopping list? Possibly. But the shopper is certainly not scanning 2D codes with their phones. They are not opening the security on their Bluetooth settings for inbound offers. They are not all downloading your app to their phone.”

The greatest challenge marketing leaders have is knowing how to start and who to partner with to realize their mobile aspirations.  There are numerous technology, consulting and agency resources ready with capabilities and proven successes to share best practices and prescribe the best way for retailers and packaged goods companies to begin using mobile strategically to develop and improve customer relationships.

On the side of “going it alone” are benefits such as: 1:1 marketing potential, meeting custom requirements, ensuring intellectual property and data protection, and easier integration with internal systems.

On the side of partnering with a third party are: convenience, market reach, lower initial cost of ownership, and faster time to market.

The last point that straddles both is Shopper Loyalty, which can be met via some combination of both individually developed and branded applications and third party services.  Ultimately, that conclusion is the answer to question; it fully depends on the retailer’s business objectives then determining how best to meet them with available mobile marketing approaches.  At Interactive Mediums, we call this process “Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy.”

Another term I would add is “involvement.”  Creating mobile experiences that involve consumers in the buyer/seller relationship in a value added way itself has the ability to render cards worthless, static and forgotten – as the article points out is happening already:

“The use of many loyalty cards has become almost automatic and mundane, and that there is little consumer engagement with many of their offers. One study found that over 30% of consumers never remember to carry their loyalty cards, or have lost them, and almost 20% of active loyalty point collectors never actually redeem them.”

The fact mobile devices are always on hand instantly creates a much larger base of potentially more loyal customers.  The key is implementation and target audience; broad reach using an SMS text messaging approach, or potentially less reach but a targeted demographic via Smartphone application?  The answer is probably some blend of the two, raising again the importance of the Mobile Customer Experience in leveraging mobile most effectively.  As marketers discover every day, the mobile channel’s high engagement factor transforms traditional static marketing methods like loyalty cards into high-po strategic relationship enablers:

“Already, test campaigns and live promotions in the field have shown that mobile voucher redemption is dramatically different to paper-based promotions (for example, Heineken achieved a redemption rate of over 80% in one campaign).”

With its eye on the Mobile Customer Experience, Wet Seal recently launched an iPhone application designed to help in store shoppers assemble logical outfit combinations and share these via email with friends.  The company has a history using SMS text messaging as well, and although the specific application is not mentioned, you can imagine that they have built a database of opted in mobile customers via promotions and discounts used as calls to action.  A mobile web presence is next up on their priority list, bringing the value of their brand to the mobile consumer.

Interactive Mediums recently published a paper titled, “Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy.”  It features a diagram marketers can use to build mobile into their plans strategically, and Wet Seal is a perfect example of how this is accomplished.  The accompanying diagram shows how Wet Seal is leveraging the Mobile Customer Experience in meeting its business objectives:

• Red: A Smartphone application intended to support sales (demand generation) at the point of sale (POS) and transform shoppers into virtual salespeople by enabling them to share outfit suggestions with friends (via Email).
• Green: Text message marketing actions, presumably used to build an opt in database of mobile customers, using calls to action such as promotions and discounts, advertised in traditional media such as print or billboards.
• Yellow: A mobile optimized web presence, to bring the value of their brand to the mobile device in a manner appropriate for the form factor and intended use by mobile consumers.

The movement to create apps is akin to a modern day gold rush, which means a time is coming soon when demand coalesces around real business needs more so than novelty.  When this happens, the supply side of the equation (i.e. application developers) may experience a shock as customers look to them not for novel applications, but guidance in taking advantage of the mobile channel to achieve real business results.  The same is likely to occur in the text message marketing arena, which is seeing demand driven often by price and one-off tactics.

Marketers with the vision to see mobile as the interaction channel that it is would be wise to partner with firms focused on solving business problems.  Demand for developer talent may be outstripping supply, and low cost text messaging services commonplace, but you can be assured that these extremes will soon come together as the overall mobile marketplace gets closer to an equilibrium.

Despite the fact browser capable mobile devices outweigh any one category of application supporting Smartphone, just a small percentage of activity is actually driven through the web experience today.  I would argue that given the far greater interactivity and capabilities available via rich applications – in spite of a smaller user base — the potential business value offered by a rich application experience places apps in line with the importance of having a mobile optimized web presence.

This is another example of the reach versus value paradox of mobile; the capacity to reach anyone, yet the most effective interactions target specific segments or even individuals.

Location oriented businesses like real estate are increasingly adopting mobile applications to bring device-specific capabilities like GPS and augmented reality to their services – and in so doing adding a layer of value not possible while tethered to a computer.  I was wondering how these capabilities might be of use to me as a car buyer and iPhone user.

At the onset of my buying cycle, I like to browse dealer lots when they are closed, so that I can look at vehicles without being prodded by a salesperson.  I know many people do the same.  Imagine being able to point your device at a particular car, and see instantly its price, features, options, engine/interior photos, reviews, warranty information, financing details, sales contact/test drive scheduler and other information to help inform a buying decision.  How could this be possible?

Not being an iPhone developer, I can only imagine, but I have read how in Asia there are applications of the camera feature being used by consumers to snap pictures of codes from posters which are then scanned at the point of sale to redeem discounts.  Why not match a photo of a VIN or other visible identifier on a vehicle with a database, to then call up all related information about a particular car?

Say I don’t like the color, or the car is used and mileage too high for my taste.  I want to see where I might find the same model in a different color or with lower mileage, and be directed to other dealers in my area, sorted by price.  Using the same lookup described above, a list of matching alternatives could be presented along with the option of point to point directions.

I like to plan this process in advance, but having the ability to change course instantly based on what I discover in real time would be of tremendous value to consumers, I think.  Even “discover” cars that match my preferences by pointing a device at a dealer lot as I drive by and pull up a list of matching inventory automatically.

The key is identifying what problems a mobile application can solve, and there appear to be many.  Moreover, an eye on the Mobile Customer Experience can lead to additional value, such as price change alerts sent via SMS text message with links to details on a mobile optimized website, or the ability to set alerts via an application.  Maybe even a link to grab the vehicle’s CarFax report in real time would add value to the shopping experience, as in the case of a used car.

With Smartphone adoption escalating rapidly, consumers will soon come to expect these and as yet thought of ways of interacting with online services.  In August 2009, analyst firm Gartner Group issued a Smartphone market report (see chart) showing sales gaining 27% in the second quarter over the same time period last year, and penetration as a percentage of all mobile phones increasing to 14% from 10% a year ago.  On the device side, Nokia leads with 45% share, but Apple’s share increased the most, from 3% to 13%, and all observers expect this to accelerate as the proliferation of applications available continues to dominate all other devices.

Unfortunately, that was not the case.  The editorial was all about how the magazine had updated its binding, paper quality and design.  Pretty traditional stuff.  The editorial does conclude with a note that an iPhone application is coming soon, and will serve as a gateway to current and archived content.

The title of the editorial is a “A Changing World,” which for all publishers is an apt description for how their business models may change in the near future, as Apple and other device/software makers bring connected mobile content readers to market.

Some images I have seen of Apple’s tablet device makes it appear as a super-sized iPhone. The Mobile Customer Experience will soon encompass content consumers on a scale impractical with the small form factor of most mobile devices today.

• The Mobile Imperative
  Marketers need to embrace mobile as a means of engaging their customers in more profitable, insightful and engaged relationships.  Read about Interactive Mediums’ unique perspective on how this can be accomplished with a focus on iterative Mobile Dialogues, capturing and reusing interaction data in a Mobile Data Asset, and developing a strategy considering the entire Mobile Experience.
• The State of Mobile and Email Metrics
  Marketers employ both mobile and email marketing techniques to target their customers and often use similar metrics to measure these efforts.  This may lead marketers to compare mobile and email for the purpose of prioritizing one over the other.  In practice, the two methods are complementary.  Read about how Interactive Mediums views mobile and email from the customer’s point of view, and using this perspective to drive measurable, more effective marketing programs.
• Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy
  Mobile is increasingly finding its way into the strategies of marketers at the onset of their planning process.  Read about a structured approach Interactive Mediums prescribes for marketers to identify ways mobile can enhance and build upon marketing plans to maximize return on investment.

“The new applications are designed for Apple iPhone and Blackberry Storm users.  A new, streamlined version of the company’s Web site is also available to all mobile phone users.”

“The new applications and mobile Web site deliver a better user experience on mobile devices with smaller screens and potentially slower Internet connections. By eliminating much of the graphic and multimedia extras, the clean interface quickly links users to business functions.”

Insurance is not the most exciting product nor is one anyone wishes they needed, but it is essential for every consumer.  Providing a gateway to their services across popular mobile devices via purpose built application as well as a mobile optimized web presence, is a smart move for a company playing in highly competitive, frankly price driven industry.  American Family has wisely taken advantage of mobile’s real time interactive capabilities to facilitate a positive customer experience, which should only improve customer retention measures:

“…the new applications will allow customers to immediately report a claim from the scene of an accident and even locate nearby vendors that can help repair their vehicle.”

That is a great application of mobile’s ability to meet the needs of time or event-based product or service customers.  Perhaps the application also allows customers to capture photos of an accident which can be annotated and attached to a claim – if not, that would be another valuable capability to bring to these mobile applications.

Flurry displayed their data in a very Gartner Magic Quadrant-like way, that lends insight into the types of applications that find the most use and are retained over time.  Aside from helping marketers set their expectations for how adoption of their mobile application will play out, this type of research also should help advertisers hone in on the applications they want to associate themselves with to reach the on the go consumer.

Although the alignment of application categories to this taxonomy is a bit intuitive, the data is what is really useful to marketers interested in leveraging mobile applications most effectively.  If a marketer’s business is not about News, Reference or Weather, how do they create an often used and retained application?  They can’t change their business, but they can change their perspective on mobile applications.

Considering the Mobile Customer Experience and a business goal ahead of an application project can help marketers penetrate the upper right quadrant regardless of their industry.  The key is developing effective calls to action that propagate intelligently across mobile marketing techniques such as text, mobile web and applications.

Few marketers would argue with the value of giving customers the ability to use their mobile devices as literal gateways into all their business has to offer, and that is exactly what a company called GeoVector has done via an application called World Surfer, available for the iPhone and Android platforms.

“With its technology, GeoVector can attach any type of data to a place on Earth or via latitude and longitude coordinates.”

This capability has the potential to transform any storefront type business into a “mobile business,” by connecting a store with its customers and customers with relevant advertising messages.  The possible applications are endless, as noted in the article, yet all of this rich interactivity is designed to encourage commerce on a level unheard of before.

Static signage, hoped for brand awareness, billboards and the Yellow pages will no longer matter once every business is represented in a database such as GeoVector’s.  Customers will still need to opt into this environment.  But applications like GeoVector will facilitate and manage consumer “commerce networks,” ironically an idea I blogged about after seeing Motorola’s Cliq and its focus on social networks.

The real killer app will be the one that seamlessly blends the social and commerce side of the mobile customer experience.  It’s also important to note that this is ultimately about data.  While the application layer is not entirely an incidental piece of the puzzle, a focus on data ensures a company like GeoVector can take its value proposition to any kind of device in the future.

Thankfully I work for a firm with mobile technology experts who have an intimate understanding of what’s possible, particularly with location and GPS capabilities.

My colleague Doug Barth raised a good point; when it comes to location it’s not simply a question of rich iPhone application or nothing (or dumb phone using tower triangulation).  The often forgotten mobile web has the potential to become the defacto and preferred means of utilizing location based mobile services.  Consider Doug’s insights:

“In iPhone OS 3.0 (the latest version), Safari includes a JavaScript API for finding the current location of a user.  Websites can use that API to get the same location tracking that they previously needed to write a native application under iPhone OS 2.0.

A few sites have taken advantage of this functionality.  Flickr’s mobile site can show photos near you using the location services.  Google’s Latitude service is available as a web app.  It allows visitors to update their location by visiting the website.  Google also supports location-aware searches on supported devices.

Webkit, the browser engine Safari is built on, is also used on a number of other devices (Android, Nokia, Palm Pre, and soon Blackberry).  That may mean that future versions of those devices will inherit the same location aware APIs.”

For mobile marketers, what this means is that it’s more important than ever to understand all the ways by which you can target the on the go consumer, given your business objectives.  A time is coming soon when today’s iPhone-limited location and augmented reality app is available in similar form via mobile web on nearly any device.

I can now eat (or drink) my words because at 5 pm Central time today I received an email promoting two new iPhone applications direct from Starbucks. The message was addressed to me as a loyal customer, which either means I am part of a unique group of frequent customers or they classify everyone in their opt in database as “loyal.”

I was so excited, perhaps due to caffeine addiction, that I bit the bullet and finally upgraded my Blackberry to the latest iPhone. I just had to have these apps. One of them looked as if it would allow the device to be used instead of my black plastic discount/loyalty card at the point of sale. I imagined now being able to have an interactive, on-the-go relationship not just with Starbucks, but another strong brand I prefer, Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Then after buying my new iPhone and thinking about all this, I looked more closely at the email. Apparently, the ability to pay using one of the applications is for now limited to locations in California. As a Chicagoan, I have to wait to enjoy this feature. The second of the two apps appears a more traditional store finder, still a useful application if not similar of what others have already accomplished.

It’s interesting how I adopted the iPhone because I got an email from a brand like Starbucks, with which I have an tight relationship. I imagine that in most cases, iPhone purchases were not based on wanting access to a particular application; rather they were driven by a desire for the experience offered. If nothing else, this was a great example of brand power.

The GPS-feature of the iPhone is being used increasingly in mobile applications to provide a unique and higher value user experience.  From being directed to the nearest restaurant to redeem a coupon to pointing a mobile device’s camera at a restaurant to see its menu and read reviews via augmented reality, location aware applications offer real value to businesses of all kinds.

For that reason, it’s a shame few mobile devices feature built in GPS capabilities.  That is why this article stood out.  A company called GloPos has created the ability to use cell tower triangulation in a new and highly accurate way to achieve the same result as GPS.

It seems as if the technology is in its early stages, yet you can be sure its impact would be huge given that location-based mobile marketing could be directed toward mobile device users worldwide.  With many marketers drawn to mobile because of its potential reach, only to be handcuffed by device-limited capabilities, the ability to use a ubiquitous technology to target customers based on location will allow a level of personalization, relevance and reach simply not possible today.

In case you haven’t heard of the Cliq, it is Motorola’s first handset based on Google’s Android platform and features an exclusive feature called “Blur” which provides users access to unique views of updates to social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.  This capability seems to be the device’s defining characteristic, if not just a marketing focus to take advantage of current social networking trends.

The focus of the presentation was on how Motorola developed the device, which resulted after a yearlong effort involving a lot of research and design.   The choice of Android was a topic of certain questions, in one case relative to Windows Mobile.

It is interesting that unlike Microsoft, Google is being far more flexible in how device makers can unbundle the included applications to create unique experiences targeting a particular user demographic.

For example, a Moto developer cited the contacts database in Android as having a customized implementation on the Cliq but that the data itself is a foundation that non-Moto apps could access should they need to.  It’s a level of openness that Microsoft hasn’t shown in the past, wanting instead to probably be the definition of the user experience, with the device makers relegated to commodity players.  Smart move it would seem on Google’s part.

While the demo showed how a user didn’t have to log into separate social networking accounts to enable the Blur experience, I immediately thought how similarly people might manage their “Commerce Networks” – the interactions consumers have with various advertisers and brands as part of a commerce relationship (loyalty programs, discounts, coupons, alerts, etc.).   Instead of Blur, they could call it Buy.

It would seem an opportunity exists for this “single sign on” approach to helping consumers manage their purchase centric relationships via mobile device and incorporate emerging technologies like location awareness and augmented reality.  As long as consumers had control over their preferences, this would be mutually beneficial.

“What really is the role of the mobile application?”

“…why would anyone want to have an application when an easily accessed mobile-friendly Web site would offer the same information?”

The obvious answer today is that it depends on the marketer’s goal and who they are targeting.  Until bandwidth is no longer a constraint and a richness of experience can be created within a mobile browser similar to what is possible on a proprietary platform like the iPhone, applications will continue to play a significant role in successfully marketing to the mobile consumer.

As I’ve said many times here, smart marketers are looking at developing effective mobile customer experiences first, then considering the technologies available to them to execute their programs.  The article raises frustration from app developers on the difficulty of marketing their apps within Apple’s App Store.  I would argue it’s incumbent on app developers or those who hire them to have a plan for engaging on the go consumers such that applications are proactively found as part of a planned experience.  As the article points out the number of apps available today is huge and growing fast, meaning marketers cannot leave to chance that their hard work is recognized among the crowd:

“If marketers and consumers cannot handle 150,000 applications, what will they do one year down the road – when the number may quadruple?”

There are exceptions such as when a stand-alone application has value, but over time I think those examples will be a minority of the successful ones.  As with anything, a focus on cost can cloud judgment, leading marketers down a suboptimal path that fails to see the forest through the trees:

“In many cases, it is far cheaper to build out a mobile or mobile-friendly Web site than it is to create a mobile application.“

“While the site is accessed from all devices, the application is limited to the handset model and platform. This limitation is factored into the cost comparisons.”

Perhaps looking at the relationship between PC applications and the websites of their developers can add to the discussion.  Few see desktop apps going the way of the dodo in spite of high speed internet access and rich web applications.  In fact, the web is a channel for selling, distributing and supporting many software applications.  In time, in spite of Apple’s current day stranglehold on smart applications’ mindshare, I think this will ultimately happen.  You would have to agree if you buy into the notion that it’s the device agnostic mobile customer experience which matters most, not a specific technology like a mobile app or gated app store.

A panel this week at the digiday: Mobile conference in New York discussed the notion of brands focusing on “several different mobile ad units” in their marketing efforts, from SMS to rich media.  While the focus was on advertising, the panel recognized that the mobile customer experience was critial in targeting  the “on go consumer” effectively.  This is a viewpoint we espouse at Interactive Mediums.

The article is peppered with comments that speak to a focus on the mobile customer experience:

“Brands need to get into the flow of consumers’ lives.”

“…brands need to incorporate all channels and platforms into their mix to reach campaign objectives.”

“Brands should not overlook the power of SMS…the trajectory of text from the past 12-18 months shows incredible growth for a sector some brands have moved away from in favor of applications or the mobile Web.”

“Brands should look beyond applications to market themselves, as more rich media is being brought to mobile browsers and wireless networks improve.”

“The panelists agreed that brands need to embrace all aspects of the mobile platform, including SMS, mobile sites and applications.”

“…to woo a chief marketing officer, a shift needs to occur away from pitting SMS and rich display against each other.  There should not be an emphasis on novelty, only results.”

That last quote is similar to what I wrote about in this recent blog post; that although much of the publicity today in mobile marketing is around creative applications, focusing on that aspect more so than developing customer relationships via the mobile channel is shortsighted.

The article also raises the issue of customer knowledge as foundational in proving the utlity of mobile marketing, the heart of which is a Mobile Customer Data Asset:

“…marketers need to learn everything they can about consumer behavior and that means listening to consumers on all levels of communication including email, Twitter and mobile usage…brands must look beyond rich media and banner ads to get chief marketing officers excited about mobile as an efficient medium to interact with consumers.”

As I mentioned, the article shares similarities to a prior post.  The following quote nicely summarizes both our points of view, and is why many forward thinking marketers are increasingly coming to Interactive Mediums for our counsel and capabilities.

“Mobile is not about devices, carriers or subscriptions.  It is about consumers…mobile marketing consists of consumers allowing brands to have a personal relationship with them via their handsets.”

Please let me know if you have any questions. This was a quick 10 minute talk, thus I’d love to deep dive into this further.

A different flavor of location intelligence came to light today as I read an article titled “Loyalty Card Marketing Meets Location Intelligence” on IntelligentEnterprise.com.  In this case, location intelligence was all about giving managers geographic based insight into loyalty-based marketing.  It immediately brought to mind how such insight could add value to mobile marketing.

Mobile marketers are accustomed to looking at metrics like opt in rate or reach, but imagine looking past these bird’s eye measures to see what’s happening on the ground – of those opted in, who were they, are they valuable customers, should I invest in retaining them?  The classic funnel view.

An initial foray into mobile marketing would make such answers difficult to answer.  Yet, taking an iterative approach, and building a Mobile Customer Data Asset, then using both data collected from mobile dialogues and internal transactional data, marketers could use these insights to develop more effective programs.  Or, if drawing the connection between transactions and mobile interactions were technically or fiscally challenging, using the “integrated customer” approach could be an option.

The following quotes from the article would seem to apply as much to a marketer engaged in mobile as in any channel (somewhat validating the notion of mobile as an interaction channel not just an advertising vehicle).

“…I can zoom in and do a population-by-county overlay…The software also automatically geocodes locations by zip code, and in markets such as New York City, where there might be five locations within one zip code, I can geocode and color code each individual location.”

“One of the things we’re trying to do is tie loyalty card penetration to a higher-than-average year-over-year sales lift…So I might color code sales by loyalty program penetration or by which stores ran the most promotions.”

The visualization I posted here from the article shows a cluster analysis of student home towns for a university, but it could just as easily show distribution of opt ins to a mobile marketing program designed to drive store traffic and sales.  Color might also be used to indicate proximity to a store location or the potential value of a customer.  It’s this kind of thinking which will drive mobile increasingly into the mainstream of marketing.

I won’t repeat all the recommendations, but needless to say the author focuses on the mobile customer experience in describing how device appropriate websites facilitate reservations much better than sites not optimized for the small screen.   Also covered are the strategic use of opt in text marketing interactions and clever uses for mobile applications.

While the author mentions CRM, the paper does not delve into the customer knowledge to be captured as part of these interactions, and how it can be repurposed to drive more relevant higher value mobile dialogues with customers.  So in addition to recommending this paper to any hotel marketer, I would add that focusing on customer knowledge objectives at the onset of any mobile marketing plan be top of mind.

Back when text screen MS-DOS was the defacto PC operating system and the internet was just emerging, there were bulletin board systems (BBS) where people could exchange information using words.  It was very cutting edge at a time when the term “baud” meant something.  Shortly thereafter as Windows emerged as the PC’s user interface, online services CompuServe and America Online came into being as gateways to online communities, content and messaging, walled gardens of sorts.  These services offered local phone number connections to their communities, and the whole experience was bundled together making it easy for newbies.  Hmmm…text-based communications over a network followed by easy to use online walled gardens — these seem to parallel what we’ve seen already in the mobile space.

Fast forward, and as bandwidth increased, the graphical web emerged (remember Netscape?) and email became the standard for internet communication, everything got big really fast (the number people online, the number of companies involved and the amount of money flowing in and out).  BBS systems and online services are now really just quaint reminders of how it all got started.

Mobile is of course different in that telcos control consumer access to the types of devices, software and network access offered (voice, text, mobile web).  And aggregators provide the keys to the marketer’s car, offering a single route to mobile users over a variety of networks.  Yet, a time is coming soon when broadband internet access via cheap mobile devices with rich graphical interfaces will be commonplace.  Such an event will likely trigger an explosion similar to the 2000 time period because the applications for consumers and businesses will be nearly endless.

In this world, what roles will walled gardens, aggregators, text messaging, and proprietary platforms play?  When consumers have access to rich mobile web experiences without limits on who can see what, including diverse device appropriate web-based applications and services, probably not much.  Telcos will take their rightful place in the world as the utilities they are – large scale services providers.  It’s already happening.  AT&T offers its U-verse service inclusive of television, land line phone, internet and mobile access.  It is not trying to create a gated community for advertisers, it’s focusing on what a utility does best – make access easy and affordable to as many consumers as possible.

What role will Apple play amid an environment of easy access and device choice?  Apple’s current day nemesis appears to be Google and its Android mobile operating system, rather than Microsoft.  If Google executes a Microsoft like plan to provide rich internet experiences on mobile devices without limits, Apple may see history repeat itself except this time it won’t be the Mac which loses, it will be the iPhone.

For marketers, this story has a happy ending as they will ultimately benefit from an interaction channel unhindered by the roadblocks between them and their customers today.  Focus will shift entirely to effective mobile customer experiences, so devices and their capabilities will play central roles in the future of mobile marketing (unlike my prediction in this recent blog post).  It’s a good thing we can learn from our mistakes.  Marketers would be wise to partner with firms that anticipate this day, and are developing innovative approaches to engaging customers in effective mobile dialogues.

At first, you would not imagine any given the legacy customer base falling outside the typical mobile user demographic. Yet, thinking about it further, there could be several high value applications (and pretty cool ones too) that the brand should move on immediately in my view.

The Motor Company has seen demand crash for its products in recent times due to the economy and as a result has had to layoff workers. At the same time, they have made strides to expand the pie of available customers by tailoring products to a younger, hipper demographic. That’s where “Twist Grip” comes into the picture.

Imagine an iPhone application that allows you to select any HD model, then use the iPhone itself as a virtual “twist grip” to rev the engine up and down (utilizing the iPhone’s motion sensing capabilities).

HD famously tunes the exhaust and engine sounds of its products and I am certain has existing digital sound files which could be repurposed in this manner. The brand is so closely aligned to the sound of its products this would seem to have a lot of appeal to anyone who has ever wondered what the allure was all about.

The Twist Grip application would then be linked to a WAP mobile website with more details about each product so the user could view additional photos, options and features. Moreover, the iPhone application would use its internal GPS to point the user to their nearest dealer to test ride the actual bike.

I am certain an application like Twist Grip would be hugely popular if not as effective at increasing product demand for a variety of demographics. My colleagues and I at Interactive Mediums would be more than happy to help make it happen.

In five short questions, the exec touches on the most important issues marketers need to consider when going mobile.

• Think about mobile as an interaction channel, not any one mode of communication or device: “…we have downloadable applications on 500 plus handsets, including apps on the iPhone, the Blackberry, the Android and Windows Mobile. We are also about to launch on the Palm…we have a presence on the mobile Web…we have a text messaging component using shortcode. Consumers can text a location, city name or ZIP to the shortcode ‘4cast’ and receive the weather in that location by reply text.”

• Think about mobile as central to your customer relationship efforts, not an add-on or one-off experiment: “Our whole approach to mobile has been that mobile is not an add-on at the end from a product development point of view, but it is strategically central to us.” For The Weather Channel this has huge implications for its ad supported business, as anything it can do to add value to its advertisers in terms of reach must be top of mind.

• Speaking of advertisers, Interactive Mediums customer Anheuser Busch is cited as currently taking advantage of the multiple mobile touch points offered by The Weather Channel (placements on mobile web and iPhone).

All businesses, but particularly ones which are content based and advertiser supported, should take a cue from The Weather Channel and view mobile as not simply a potential business extension, but a powerful interaction channel that should be part of the entire organization’s go to market plans.

With so much attention around mobile on marketing to consumers, it’s easy to forget that mobile has equally powerful applications for enabling businesses, particularly field sales teams. “Mobile CRM” in this instance is used to describe the role of mobile supporting the sales, service/support and marketing efforts of business. However, the paper really focuses on the productivity benefits of mobile technlogies to sales professionals, not the broader application a label like “CRM” might imply.

I blogged recently about a similar point of view, which I also noted was too narrow in my opinion.

Here are some quotes from each of the white paper’s sponsoring authors that underscore what I’m saying here:

“For me, the concept of mobile CRM is all about personal convenience, mutual efficiency, and business productivity.”

“Today, most major vendors of CRM solutions offer mobile versions of their products. These mobile CRM applications mesh with the work-style of on-the-road sales professionals, and that makes it easy to understand their value.”

“It may seem obvious, but if the objective of arming uses with mobile CRM is to assist them in being more productive and responsive to prospect and customer needs, it helps if the application itself is user-friendly and responsive.”

All reasonable statements, yet I submit that true mobile CRM would extend to using mobile as a “personal marketing channel” for salespeople to connect with prospects and customers using the convenience of mobile. Just as marketers can leverage mobile dialogues to accelerate the process of engaging, acquiring and retaining customers, so too can field sales professionals use mobile marketing approaches to drive the sales process from inception to close faster.

“Not only is the scanning equipment and point of sale integration a black hole of challenges and issues, the consumer usability issues are numerous.”

He is referring to a number of variables in this statement, including low adoption of mobile devices capable of displaying digital bar codes, limited scanning capabilities at the point of sale (POS), to say nothing of the integration between the couponing campaign and sales transactions necessary to determine ROI.  Perhaps most importantly for any such program to succeed is the customer experience, which is not enhanced by customers fumbling with their devices at the POS, a point also raised.

In this recent blog post , I raise the concept of the “integrated customer” to facilitate effective and measurable customer engagement programs such as coupons or loyalty.  The approach I describe gets to the very heart of the author’s prescription:

• Focus on SMS text because it’s most widely used, as opposed to iPhone which has a loyal but currently smaller following.
• Make the goal engagement, so that customers remain “opted in” to your program over time.
• Focus on closing the loop to understand effectiveness and ROI:   “A well developed mobile solution should provide information on member growth, redemption rates, purchasing behaviors, predictive purchasing patterns and ROI – down to the store location and individual member level.“

The author notes as well that “the devil is in the details.”  To that end, it isn’t readily apparent how a marketer could implement a measurable program in the absence of POS/transaction integration.  That is why I proposed creating an “integrated customer” to serve as that glue, by incenting them to play this role and by doing so remaining engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the marketer’s firm. In this way, marketers can accelerate the deployment of effective loyalty and couponing programs which are measurable and long lived.

Funny enough, this morning on MobileMarketer.com there was a brief story (“Chipotle Mexican Grill enters the mobile commerce arena”) about the new application, which I didn’t realize supported mobile payments and also utilized the iPhone’s location sensing abilities to find the nearest restaurant from which to place an order. Another interesting attribute of the application is being able to save your order to make repeat purchases faster.

As a frequent diner at Chipotle I was excited to see them extend their service in this way, but as a Blackberry user with no plans to go iPhone, I was disappointed they don’t support other Smartphone applications right now. That’s why I say they should have “grilled me” about my Smartphone usage.

The company claims their customer demographic is a good fit with iPhone users, but I am not among them apparently. It’s especially too bad because as a loyal customer, I would appreciate occasional discounts or special promotions aligned with my eating habits, something I imagine iPhone-toting customers will soon enjoy.

Waiting in line behind large parties staring at the menu debating what to order is never enjoyable, but especially after a long day at work. So submitting my order and paying via mobile has a lot of appeal to me. I could just drive up, pick up then go eat. Hopefully Chipotle will expand the concept to other devices, in recognition that it’s the mobile experience which matters more so than a particular device. Or I need to get an iPhone.

The article describes a session at the event whereby a speaker excitedly described the application of mobile technologies to field sales, to bring greater connectivity to the sales leg of CRM (marketing and service being the others).

Of course he is absolutely correct, but I’d like to suggest he expand on his ideas for mobile applications. He cited these in his talk:

• Voice to text transcription
• Voice queries paired with GPS
• Intelligent hardware (e.g. a phone going into silent mode if it knows you are in a meeting)

I think mobile applications for sales professionals could easily extend into the marketing arena, helping accelerate the sales cycle.  I’ve just begun talking about mobile marketing methods facilitating the customer life cycle, from engagement, to acquisition to retention, a process which translates more or less directly to a typical sales cycle.

Virtually all field salespeople enjoy a certain amount of latitude in marketing their products or services to customers directly, and mobile marketing methods present an easy, effective and highly automated approach to what I have called “active direct response” marketing.

For example, using any common sales force automation system, a sales rep could execute an email to all contacts asking them to opt into receiving messages via mobile on any number of topics; new products or services, company news/information, promotions or limited life offers, notification of travel to an area or a conference/event where customers may also congregate, and many others.

It’s this type of thinking which could greatly accelerate adoption of atypical mobile applications for salespeople.

While this advances the discussion toward connecting mobile marketing to sales, it doesn’t address the need to optimize the mobile customer experience across the various ways mobile permits marketers to reach their customers.  It is for this reason I am starting to think it’s datable whether mobile is completely distinct from both traditional channels and advertising methods.

In a call center, the measurable focus is the call itself, the time of day, duration, reason/topic and outcome.  Likewise, on the web it is about visit duration, path, terminating link, etc.  And at point of sale, it’s the transaction, the contents of the market basket, etc.  In mobile, the measurable unit is less identifiable as it depends on the form of interaction (text, mobile web, smartphone application or even interactive voice response).

As a “swiss army knife” of sorts, I think mobile will eventually require the concept of a “mobile session,” such that users will be identifiable units tracked either anonymously or authenticated across text interactions, mobile website browsing and smartphone application usage (or car navigation systems).  Disparate mobile technologies will need to talk to each other, at a minimum exchange “mobile session” data in such a way that the movement and activities of users are tracked among them.

This capability would surely be a powerful tool toward developing richer, higher value mobile interactions.  To create the most relevant and cohesive mobile experiences, content providers should desire this depth of insight.

You can imagine a mobile consumer interaction across text messaging/mobile email, mobile web and smartphone application as follows in a simple retail clothier example:

• BaggyPants develops a loyalty program aimed at retaining its highest value customers while also growing this base, via targeted and relevant offers.
• A multi-channel marketing campaign is initiated, directing customers to sign up for the program via text message or website.
• Those opting in are directed to redeem a discount online, then download the “SmartSizer” application.  This application allows customers to take a picture of themselves and have potential wardrobes in their probable size overlaid on their likeness.
• A mobile enabled e-commerce site is auto populated with a market basket full of their “customized” clothing order, based on current catalog item availability and pricing.
• Discounts based on customer value are redeemed at checkout.

Analyzing the activity around the individual elements can be useful, but overlaying mobile sessions across this entire mobile experience should be as much, if not more valuable.  For example:

• See conversion from text message, application downloads and basket purchases – the buy pipeline.
• Combine data gathered from application usage and product purchases to design higher yield product combinations – the “best next action.”
• Observe behavior on the mobile website, including deviances from the instant market basket purchase – market basket abandonment.

Or perhaps more interestingly, observe a real or near real-time visualization of the ideal process, with variance from the norm highlighted to see what’s happening – and make corrections to affect the outcome as the program executes.

As mobile marketing technologies advance, there is a danger of mobile suffering the fate of pre-CRM marketing; fragmented customer data and widely varying concepts of “customer.”  No doubt you will soon be hearing more about “customer centricity,” “the 360 degree customer view,” and “one version of the truth,” but within the context of mobile.

The portability of netbooks combined with a PC operating system and applications, plus almost ubiquitous wifi access makes my mini-laptop a “must have” wherever I go.  Yet, the abilty to use it as my phone and be able to connect to the web wirelessly no matter where I am makes Nokia’s proposition no doubt attractive.  Ok, maybe not to use as my phone, but if you can imagine an earpiece device used in tandem with a 3G netbook, the phone scenario is plausible if not a killer application.

While not as fashionable a device as an iPhone or other smart phone, nor as portable, the low cost and increasing utility of netbooks may present a challenge to mobile marketers fixated on form factor.  As I read the Nokia article, I was reminded of this recent blog post in which I posit that “the medium becomes the message” in effective mobile communications, when you boil it down:

“The way a customer perceives the delivery of a message via mobile medium, as well as the contents of the message itself, work in concert to achieve a desired outcome.  For this reason, I think it’s key for marketers to remember that when considering mobile as a marketing channel they also plan the message accordingly, for both its content and form.”

In the end it doesn’t matter if someone has an iPhone or wireless-enabled netbook.  What does matter, is the relevancy of a marketing message, so that consumers are exposed to the right information given their circumstances at any given time (on the go, sitting in coffee shop, driving their car or at work).  What real impact netbooks have on the mobile marketing landscape remains to be seen but marketers can prepare themselves by focusing on the mobile customer experience more so than a particular device or message format.

Let’s do the math: According to Apple, it employs about 40 full-time, trained application reviewers–the App Store receives about 8,500 new app submissions and updates each week, which translates to 212 apps per reviewer per week. Except Apple reports that all apps are subject to approval by two different reviewers, so that number doubles to 424 apps per staffer each week–assuming reviewers work the standard eight-hour day, that means each app is approved or rejected in the span of about six minutes. No wonder Apple admits to making “occasional mistakes” in the approval process, according to its statement to the FCC.

Given the shear volume of applications that Apple reviews on a daily basis, it’s no surprise that developers encounter such varying experiences with the submission and approval process. In our experience, the process has been very straightforward and time expedient. One application was submitted to the App Store and live within seven days. In our opinion, the process works pretty smoothly as long as you follow Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and code around common issues that apps are rejected for.

Other interesting tidbits:

• In the past year, Apple has reviewed more than 200,000 applications and updates
• 95 percent of all apps are approved within 14 days of submission
• Roughly 20 percent of apps are not approved as originally submitted

“Quick-service restaurant Pizza Hut used mobile to generate buzz about its new Hershey’s Dunkers offering and built a mobile database of consumers to remarket to.”

 and

“The results were outstanding, and more than enabled the client to build a vast mobile database which they could use for future marketing.”

The pizza chain’s creative application of a text message sweepstakes was driven by another strategic imperative around using mobile — cutting through the clutter of competitors and other messages:

“Pizza Hut was faced with the challenge of trying to find a way to make its new product launch stand-out from all of the other offerings being launched by competitors in the same market.”

Not only is Pizza Hut building a foundation on top of which it can craft new mobile programs, it is also considering the entire mobile experience as part of its plans.  The above quotes refer to their recent text messaging promotion for Hershey’s Dunkers, yet Pizza Hut has been viewing the mobile channel more holistically for some time.

The article points to Pizza Hut’s recent launch of an iPhone-based order placing application, and a Chinese-only market promotion whereby customers snapped photos of ad materials with mobile devices that could be redeemed for discounts and other prizes.

Driven by the launch of a new product amid an environment of competing messages, Pizza Hut is applying mobile marketing best practices by taking a data-centric approach emphasizing an iterative, ongoing dialogue with its customers considering the entire mobile experience.  Other marketers should take note.

Heretofore, my thought process around mobile couponing as an application involved digital renditions of paper coupons represented on a mobile device, which were then scanned at the point of purchase.  Or, more realistically, some collection of mobile coupons represented on a mobile device that are scanned en masse at check out, since that is how shoppers usually redeem coupons.

The beauty of this new offering, however, is that the shopper redeems their coupons as they would a loyalty card discount – they  supply the cashier with their card and coupons are processed as products are scanned.

Participating shoppers now have a digital coupon account associated with their loyalty card, and this couponing bin serves as a repository for offers accepted by shoppers via interactive media such as online banner ads and mobile messages.

Perhaps the real beauty of this solution is that it offers value to both consumers and their suppliers and marketers.  Consumers save time by no longer clipping coupons, while brand managers receive real time data about coupon redemption and retailers gain equally fast insight into shopper behavior.

This is yet another example of data centric value taking hold in the mobile space.  Brand managers can create and execute coupon programs direct to web and mobile much faster without need for the typical print/distribution cycle, accelerating their test/trial efforts toward developing stronger brands, while retailers stand to gain from increased shopping basket value due to better targeted and more effective coupon programs.

For mobile marketers the lesson is apparent; when crafting a program incorporating the mobile channel, take on the viewpoint of your target customer and how they want to interact with you.

I was reminded of this when forwarded this article from the User Interface Engineering website, titled “Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications.”

The five challenges and how they map to mobile marketing applications is readily apparent, and should be considered by marketers when evaluating services providers.

1. Scalability: The article points out that the number of potential users and the amount of data collected are key to ensuring a web application can meet your needs.  In the mobile marketing world, this means ensuring multiple users can access an application, but also means different users have unique requirements and the application needs to reflect that (some may want high level information, others need to get their hands dirty).  A strong data-collection component is especially key, as the mobile channel represents a new and rich source of customer insights.
2. Visual Design: Poor design not reflecting the marketer’s task can distract from their work, slowing them down and making them more likely to require help.  In the worst case, when an application becomes a part of an organization’s revenue generation efforts, poor design hurts the bottom line.  Mobile marketing is rapidly evolving in this direction.  Applications designed from the end user’s point of view, and that are well documented and adaptive to the ongoing requests of marketers, should be top of mind.
3. Comprehension: Ensuring an application makes clear how a mobile campaign will be executed is key for marketer’s to be confident their idea will play out as expected.  The analysis of post-campaign data is equally key, as it needs to be presented in an easily understood manner so proper insights can be gleaned.
4. Interactivity: The article states that users don’t always follow the “happy path” intended by an application’s designers.  Users may need to enter a process at multiple points, be able to undo their actions and interact with an application in multiple, yet structured ways.  Attractive mobile marketing applications are those that attempt to account for such actions, and/or make clear how application functions are accessed (like using the browser back button versus a “back” button on a page).
5. Change Management: Once marketers are accustomed to using an application, changes need to be presented in such a way as to minimize the impact on their work, while maximizing the value of the new capabilities to the user.  As new features and capabilities are added to an application, marketers need a heads up to know if and how any such changes affect the application’s workflow or execution.  Mobile application providers that take this approach, but also pay attention to how user’s adopt changes and incorporate their behavior into the rollout of successive improvements, should be shortlisted.

User Interface Engineering sees these five attributes as unique to web-based applications.  Mobile marketing software available via this channel has the advantage of being easy to buy, if not try, and enables marketers to quickly begin developing expertise and success targeting customers through the mobile channel.  Just be sure to choose one designed around the way you work.

“Given that the user’s actual identity has no value for this purpose, it would be prudent for Palm to remove all personal information, anonymizing the collected data and treating it strictly in aggregate.”

Even were Palm to take this step, what the company is ultimately doing is creating a rich database of consumer behavior data at the mobile interaction channel.  And even when scrubbed of user identities, this asset can have tremendous value to any firm doing business with Palm.

Developers, advertisers, and marketers alike may all wish to access this data to create more relevant and targeted content based in part on anonymous user segments.  And Palm surely cannot ignore the value this would have.

Marketers should watch developments in this area closely and prepare to act quickly if they hope to connect with consumers effectively via the mobile channel.  Starting to build a Mobile Consumer Data Asset, and analyze interaction data to develop higher value customer relationships, is a logical first step.

However, more interesting is that Starbucks itself declined the developer’s request to endorse/provide the application to its customers, so the author is “going it alone” and adoption apparently has been strong (just how I like the coffee).

While Starbucks may have its own plans for the mobile consumer, I think it’s worth mentioning that Starbucks and other brands place their customer relationships at risk when they allow third parties to own what should be the brand’s domain.

For this reason, brands like Starbucks need to own and nurture the mobile customer experience.  A sure fire way to this end is to develop a mobile consumer data asset, on top of which a solid understanding of consumer preferences is derived, and then is used iteratively to provide increasingly relevant content and applications to consumers.

As a loyal Starbucks customer and black discount card/debit card holder, I would be highly responsive to such an approach, and I bet quite a few other people would be too.

If you’re looking for an innovative iPhone app, we’re here to help. Send an email to hello@interactivemediums.com and we’ll follow up with you.