Mark is responsible for leading sales activities at Interactive Mediums, focusing IM’s products on providing impactful solutions for our customers. Mark has spent almost 20 years consulting, selling and managing technical solutions that address business problems at a variety of companies including Information Advantage, Epiphany (now Infor) and ChoiceStream. Most recently, he led the Enterprise Sales efforts at Loyalty Lab, a company that more than doubled in revenue the two years he was there.

Mark is passionate about technology, early stage companies, food and college sports. He spends most Saturdays coaching or watching his kids’ sports teams or in the fall cheering the University of Wisconsin Badgers football team with his three kids and his wonderful wife. He graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering from UW-Madison in 1991.

This is a critical role in the evolution of our company and we’re all thrilled to start working with Mark as of today.

No company who understands social media directly messages its follows attempting to push product.  However, every company who has a presence on Twitter should post offers and other incentives that link off to a web page where redemption occurs and during which other data is obtained about the customer, such as channel preferences (mobile, email?), permissions and demographics.

It’s at that point where direct messaging could make complete sense.  After all, customers want relevant offers, not blanket ones broadcasted to a Twitter feed.  By facilitating the process of connecting a social follower to a digital marketing relationship, you do your customers a favor, not a disservice.

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Fortunately, emerging channels such as mobile and social are relatively new so the hurdle is lower than it otherwise might be. Still, it’s helpful to take a step back and look at how a lot of businesses can head down the path to achieving their cross channel dreams. This article outlines an example, centered on identifying, developing and targeting a segment of customers who are interested in a cross channel relationship.

Not only does reach suffer, but participating retailers must have hardware installed in each location that triggers the “check in” process. Limited reach, combined with hardware requirements, makes app-based location programs such as this one far less desirable than they otherwise could be.

To that end, the better solution is one that all customers may participate in while preserving the ability to create the most relevant offers and communications. Especially if the goal is rewarding loyal customers, it’s a shame to exclude customers based on the device they happen to be carrying.

The bottom line?  Customers who engage with you via multiple channels represent your most valued segment.  Identifying them, developing their loyalty, and growing their size are becoming the focus of the digital marketer.  And cross channel marketing technology platforms will make it all happen quickly, efficiently and with accountability.  Read more here.

Based on the research, it looks like a lot of consumers follow brands on Twitter to participate in a marketing relationship.  Consider this excerpt:

The opportunity to save some money was also prominent among followers’ motives for keeping up with a company via Twitter: 31 percent said they follow a company “to receive discounts and promotions,” 30 percent “to get updates on upcoming sales” and 28 percent “to get a ‘freebie’ (e.g., free samples, coupon).”

Like any channel, it’s not all about marketing, but the research suggests consumers view Twitter like they do any digital channel like email or mobile.

Brands fixated on Twitter as a listening platform to discern positive or negative attitudes among its followers should take advantage of the unique opportunity to develop their “socially loyal” customers – by attempting to understand their preferences and ultimately obtain permission to provide relevant and timely offers – not blanket, anonymous discounts or coupons.

Reading between the lines (or actually the press release) though, the acquisition was less about analytic overlap than it was around cross channel marketing execution.  Consider this statement from the release:

“IBM is assembling transformational capabilities to help clients create this consistent and relevant cross-channel brand experience to promote customer loyalty and satisfaction.”

Unica was recently named by Forrester Research among the leaders in a somewhat new category of software, called Cross Channel Campaign Management, or CCCM.  IBM’s move will likely trigger acquisitions of other established CCCM software vendors, the vast majority of which sell traditional on-premise solutions (as opposed to Software-as-a Service, or SaaS).

As these hugely in-demand cross channel offerings get rolled up into the large enterprise technology platform companies, they will become less accessible to the vast majority of businesses who stand to reap the rewards of CCCM.

Look for CCCM delivered via a SaaS model to be among the most in demand this year and into the foreseeable future — they will be easier to buy, offer a lower Total Cost of Ownership, plus advanced features and capabilities can be rolled into a multi-tenant architecture to the benefit of all customers much more quickly than upgrades made to custom on-premise implementations.  Given the speed of change in digital channels, especially mobile and social, this will be critical to CCCM success.

Today on eMarketer, an article titled “Email Dominates Mobile Web Time” cites Nielsen research showing that email is among the most common activities of mobile internet users.  Social networking is not far behind:

“Social should continue to make gains in the mobile realm, however.  comScore reported it was the fastest-growing mobile internet activity between 2009 and 2010, rising 80% in usage, while email grew more slowly.  Bridge Ratings predicted in June that mobile social networking would grow twice as quickly as email during the next 12 months.”

It’s going to be ineffective for marketers to target consumers in isolated, stand alone channels like mobile messaging, email and social media with all these activities taking place on mobile devices, most of the time.  Orchestrating marketing efforts intelligently across channels, in consideration of consumer preferences and permissions, will be key to success.

My colleague Amanda Gilmore today came across a radio advertisement by DVD-rental kiosk giant Redbox, in which they similarly promote a text interaction to help consumers find the nearest Redbox.  Click here to listen to an audio clip of the ad, courtesy of Amanda.  Consumers simply text the word Redbox to 50101, after which they are instantly prompted for their zip code then presented with the closest Redbox kiosk address.

For the curious, this ad was featured on B96 in Chicago, one of the city’s most popular radio stations.  To learn more about connecting customers to your store locations using ubiquitous text messaging, contact Amanda.

Titled, “CRM Is Still All About Location,” the article describes a session at this week’s annual CRM Evolution Conference, put on by CRM magazine.  An analyst chaired a session track and began by saying:

“If you’re trying to make a lot of money off Foursquare and mobile marketing, you’re in the wrong place.”

He goes on to explain a really fine point lost on many in the mobile marketing industry; that the ability to trigger an offer based on location is not the end game where a lot of value is created.  Value will only happen by blending location with relevancy, which is a function of powering these interactions by analytics informed with customer data.

“…he envisions applications that are dependent on location information but not reliant on it. Instead, these location services will utilize historical customer data, customer provided data and personalized information to instruct businesses on how best to interact with their customers. Also, location-based interactions will be less focused on marketing/advertising and will become two-way dialogues between customers and brands.”

Reading between the lines here I think explains why few mobile messaging-only technology companies have been able to grow substantially over the past 10 years.  Focusing so much on the plumbing and delivery to the exclusion of the hard stuff (analytics and data integration) has probably done more to gate mobile technology companies from greater success than any other factor.

Fortunately, Interactive Mediums has long foreseen this trend and has worked diligently to build an open platform that can quickly incorporate customer data to inform more relevant promotions, offers and alerts.

In fact, our value proposition is heavily geared around CRM-enabled features that offer marketers capabilities more often associated with traditional enterprise campaign management and CRM software.  That value proposition is about to gain strength as Interactive Mediums moves swiftly to add Cross Channel Marketing capabilities.

My sense is that firms such as Interactive Mediums, which is coming at the cross channel opportunity from a position of strength in mobile, will be the only viable approach given the built-in mobility of consumers.  As I expand upon in this Technorati article, “the mobile channel is going to be the place where all the cross channel marketing action happens.”

“According to the Nielsen study measuring online activity of 200,000 users and comparing results from 2010 to the previous year, e-mail use on the desktop dropped from 12 percent to 8.3 percent, and fell into third place behind social gaming like Farmville. Meanwhile, time spent on e-mail on mobile devices went up from 37 percent to 42 percent–clearly dominating other mobile online activities.”

While the article focuses on the viability of desktop email clients such as Microsoft Outlook amid this changing user landscape, it also helps explain why established email marketing software providers such as ExactTarget, Responsys, Lyris and others are all bolting on mobile channel components to their offerings.  Even the marketing services firms that specialize in email are getting into the act, what with Epsilon’s news today on MobileMarketer.  As consumers move away from desktop to mobile email, competition for consumer eyeballs intensifies with all the options available on a mobile device – sms text messaging, mobile applications, the web, and email.  So it’s natural that email providers hedge their bets by tapping into the mobile trend to remain relevant to marketers.

For marketers though, the cross channel marketing challenge is not about accounting for different best of breed communication platforms, it’s about orchestrating marketing campaigns that consider available channels and consumer preferences.  An additional hurdle for marketers will be discerning between the hype generated by email providers and legitimate cross channel marketing solutions such as offered by Interactive Mediums.

The example he highlights involves a Sears email promotion which also was pushed to the company’s pages on Facebook and Twitter.  The author raises the specter of coordination, which is really important with offers that at first target your email subscribers but then later become available in the social universe.  Staging this activity should be a key input into the promotional planning process.

Channel preference, message relevance and the sequencing of offer distribution/communication are all important elements marketers need to account for when considering cross channel marketing.  Notably absent in the article, however, are issues of timeliness and location.

The nature of today’s consumer – “on the go” and often armed with a really intelligent mobile device – I think places a premium on the time and location dimensions of a promotional offer.  Mobile-centric technology providers such as Interactive Mediums are well equipped to help marketers address these aspects of marketing effectively to today’s consumer.  The real-time, instant nature of messaging and emerging Location Based Services can be leaps and bounds more effective in driving response than an email centric approach.

The study found few marketers understand their customers’ mobile behavior such that they could not confidently craft a strategy for targeting them.  That basic research is absolutely essential.  The resolution?  Study a representative sample of your customers, how they engage yours and other businesses while “on the go,” and how their experience might be better served.  That seems logical based on these stats:

“63% of marketers told eROI they were not measuring how many of their email subscribers were viewing messages on mobile devices.”

“…just 23% of marketers reported having a mobile-optimized website. The vast majority of those sites were limited versions of the full company website designed to include information relevant to mobile customers.”

The barrier for social media, I think, is much lower for marketers.  Social is about injecting your business into the social universe, an audience of “fans” and “followers” who you engage with within a system controlled by a third party (Twitter, Facebook).  The rules of participation are much clearer in social networks, which are driven much more by the audience than the business.

To market effectively to customers directly via mobile or other channels, the business must FIRST create a personal network of sorts with its customers tailored to their preferences.  That’s a wholly different challenge that I think explains why mobile trails social at this point.

Funny enough, an article posted by eMarketer a day later titled “Why Email Metrics Are in Decline”  suggests otherwise.  The challenge, it would seem, is that stand-alone email marketing is struggling against the tide of list fatigue and competing channels.

All signals are pointing to the question none of these articles asks – which is “how do marketers leverage digital channels in unison to meet their business objectives.”  As ExactTarget’s research points out, channels are not cannibalizing one other, but co-exist in the eyes of consumers.

The reason the title of this post asks how the audiences are the “same” versus “different” is because any consumer who opts in or follows your brand is a customer or potential customer. The key then is realizing it’s all about relevance, or how you approach the consumer, that determines success or failure. ExactTarget’s research suggests as much. Consider:

“The report suggests using Facebook for both informative and entertaining communications would be most effective.“

“Twitter appeals most to consumers who want to feel up to date and in the know, suggesting information about new products and services or other brand initiatives would be of interest.”

So it would figure that smartly marketing across these channels is a winning formula.

Emerging cross channel marketing solutions are purpose built for this challenge.  Recent research into cross channel marketing by Forrester, and reported on MarketingProfs.com, illustrates the need:

“35% also cite integrating traditional marketing with social channels (as key).”

The business case for investing marketing dollars in social media is a work in progress, with the outcome likely similar to that described in the Technorati article.  Businesses simply need to close the loop on their social community marketing efforts by offering anyone interested the chance to participate in a promotional relationship with a brand or business.

The “viral coupons” cited in the eMarketer.com article don’t help foster closer individual relationships with customers.  A focus on customer service or preventing a public relations disaster certainly have value but long term those are just not meaningful contributors to revenue.

This isn’t to suggest “spamming” fans or followers with irrelevant messages – what it does suggest is that there are customers who express positive views of a business or influence others in positive ways that marketers focused on loyalty should attempt a one to one relationship with.

To do so, you need some identifying information, such as an email address or mobile number along with opt-in permission.  It’s really that simple.  Less simple is the system which monitors the social universe, detects and segments the audience and helps connect the loyalty marketer with those “socially loyal” customers who deserve special treatment.

This an example of mobile crowdsourcing. He’s asking his fans to pick his finale performance, offering them a chance to vote via their mobile phones.

He has promoted  this on his twitter, and his facebook.

If you’re going to be in NYC, the show starts at 8 PM in Central Park with the New York Philharmonic. It should be a blast.

“Vote on Lang Lang’s Encore for July 13th with @NYPhil -Text FOLK (traditional chinese song) or KEY (Chopin “Black Keys”) to 839863 (US ONLY)”

My colleague, Amanda Gilmore, worked with lifestyle alcohol brand VeeV to connect its customers with the nearest store offering their product using the simple effectiveness of SMS text messaging.  Texting VEEV to 75309 prompts you for your zip code, after which the nearest store and address is returned in real time.  It’s a perfect example of how integration — in this case with a database of distribution points and location data submitted from consumers — is made easier with a technology such as our Engagement Platform, and drives real value in mobile marketing programs.  Imagine other possibilites, such as embedding a web link in these messages to redeem a scannable mobile coupon or pointing customers to drink recipes.

Just like another client Amanda acquired for Interactive Mediums, the Chicago Housing Authority, VeeV is providing an immensely valuable service to its customers that is both a convenience and direct revenue contributor/cost saver.  More brands that sell via distribution channels like VeeV need to take advantage of solutions like our new Location Campaign and make the interaction a centerpiece of any and all promotional materials.  Customers cannot consume your product if they can’t find it!  Contact Amanda to learn more if you’re interested.

Q – How are mobile projects typically sourced by agency clients?  Do clients come to them, or are agencies pitching projects?  If it tends to vary, what does it depend on?  As opposed to how it’s done today, do you think there’s a more ideal approach that agencies and clients alike should take?

A – They do tend to vary, however agencies, especially those with strong digital capabilities, are definitely being more proactive in pitching mobile ideas to their clients.  The more successful of these efforts tend to focus on using mobile to solve client problems, not specific mobile tactics.  So however mobile can reduce costs, sell more product, build customer loyalty, etc. is the way that successful proactive efforts are often being led.  This type of outreach is most well received when a client has some mobile experience under its belt.  Ironically, those clients without a lot of mobile background tend to align their efforts less with business problems than with point projects such as a standalone mobile application (e.g. iPhone app) – it’s the “shiny object” effect.  Clients with apps in their rearview mirror have typically evolved to a point where they realize the next steps are not just about apps, but rather how their apps and other mobile marketing efforts align with an overarching business and marketing strategy.

Q – When a project depends on technology, be it mobile, email, social media or another, how do agencies bring the right blend of capabilities to ensure projects succeed?  How important is it to consider integration with a client’s internal systems and data or does that vary based on the type of project?

A – The agencies and clients that do it right usually take a “top-down approach,” that starts with having a cross-functional team identify a client’s objectives and mapping some success metrics.  Doing so helps ensure  that the recommended approach reflects a solution tailored to solve a client problem versus trying to push a specific channel and/or tactic just for the sake of getting something into the market.  Once a plan is in place, the cross-functional team is then tasked with bringing the best technologies and technology partners together to bring a recommend solution to life.   With regards to your last question,  integration requirements will always vary, but the important point is that agencies and clients alike should always be thinking about how mobile technologies could be integrated with existing systems to help them better understand and/or better service their existing and potential customers.

Q – It’s hard to talk about mobile without mentioning social media or other digital channels like email or the web.  How are agencies dealing with the cross channel coordination among these channels that marketers appear to be wanting more and more?

A – Very soon, I think you will see emerge what are effectively “blueprints” for how digital channels best work with one another to meet various marketing challenges.  We are at a stage right now in the digital market space where there is a lot of testing and learning going on in various channels and best practices are starting to slowly emerge for different types of industries.  To get there faster, the more progressive agencies are doing all they can to understand these different channels and more importantly how consumers use them, hiring smart people with strong backgrounds in each and working with clients to map out approaches that lead with strategy and objectives versus standalone tactics.

Q – Large brands, who tend to be consumer goods manufacturers and among an agency’s blue chip clients, seem to fixate on mobile applications as a keystone of their mobile strategies.  Conversely, businesses that serve their customers directly, like retailers and large restaurant chains, appear to take a broader brush approach that could include apps but also a variety of other technologies like text messaging and the mobile web.  Aside mobile applications, are there other more direct consumer engagement strategies large brands can take advantage of in the same vein as retailers?

A – Yes, many brands have certainly launched their share of mobile applications as a first step into the mobile space.  Launching an app is a fairly low-involvement and low-cost exercise when compared to  pulling together multiple internal team resources and outside vendors to perhaps launch an integrated mobile couponing initiative.  While many brands are still testing to see if their branded app or mobile website can serve as a utility or destination that further deepens their relationship with a consumer they are all ultimately interested in learning if the mobile channel can be used to help them sell more product.

That said, there are branded goods companies exploring new approaches to leveraging Mobile.  These buyers are usually receptive to testing and learning about new ways to help drive their businesses forward.  Areas such as couponing, mobile media, CRM, mobile/social combinations, paid mobile search and to some extent mobile commerce are all being discussed at these types of companies.

Retailers on the other hand, as you point out, have a lot more control over their customer relationships by virtue of having the physical stores and point of sale systems (customer data).  Thus, most retailers are pretty much on board with mobile – at least with its promise of driving more foot traffic and sales.  They can and are experimenting with a variety of mobile initiatives such as couponing, location-based services and loyalty programs all of which are designed to help them build a better business.

Q – I’ve read articles suggesting that brands are frustrated by the lack of mobile smarts among its agency partners and that gap threatens the relationship.  What are agencies doing or could do to close that gap?

A – Mobile is still a relatively new and more technical marketing channel compared to others.  When you couple this with the fact that the channel is still rapidly evolving and doing so within a highly fragmented ecosystem you can see why some clients and agencies are scrambling to keep pace.  The smarter agencies have sought out experienced mobile professionals to help them build their expertise, some have forged strategic alliances with pure-play mobile marketing firms and others are investing the necessary time and resources to quickly scale their mobile in-house experience. 

Q – As is common to all our interviews, I conclude by asking the “year of mobile” question.  What do you think needs to happen between now and the end of the year for businesses and consumer alike to recognize 2010 as the year mobile became a significant marketing and interaction channel?

A – Depends on who you ask.  For many businesses, it’s already happened.  Consider the millions of dollars eBay has processed with its mobile efforts, or how financial services companies have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by deflecting phone calls to their call centers by using text alerts.  For these companies and many more, mobile has become a key and meaningful component of their businesses and will be years to come.  For other companies that are just beginning to take their initial steps into the mobile space it still comes down to the question, “what’s it worth to my business?”  It’s thus incumbent on agency and technology providers alike to help clients answer this question by proving that mobile can impact their business in meaningful and measureable ways.

The report echoes comments made in this blog post (Price Tops List of Retail Loyalty Factors; Makes Mobile Engagement Essential) where we describe the loyalty challenge facing retailers and manufactured goods companies.

Data summarized in the SymphonyIRI report is just the latest validation for the value of mobile-centric digital marketing.  The nature of today’s shopper, always “on the go” and often armed with a smartphone places a premium on targeting the mobile channel customer experience with timely and relevant messages, offers and calls to action.  Consider the following excerpts from the report:

“In an environment marked by intense competition, rapidly changing media, and fragmented brand loyalty, CPG marketers are faced with the fact that the “old way” of marketing is simply not bringing the desired results.”

“On any given day, 3,000 marketing messages reach the average consumer. As technology advances, this number will only go up. Information overload has become all too common.”

“Only 5% of shoppers are loyal to a single brand, and store brands have posted sizable growth, particularly over the course of the recession.”

“Old marketing tricks, it seems, just don’t work anymore. It’s time for a new playbook.”

“CPG marketers must quickly adapt, exploring new media and developing competencies which will allow communication with consumers at the next level.”

 “According to Colloquy, the average U.S. household participates in 14.1 loyalty programs. Such a crowded marketplace leaves competing retailers feverishly working to “out-do” one another. The result is definitely not customer loyalty. In reality, many of today’s “loyalty programs” are truly discount programs.”

The report also touches on the customer service aspect to shopper marketing, an attribute of digital channel marketing software described in this recent Technorati post.  Technology enabled Customer Relationship Management, inclusive of sales, marketing and service, will soon be as commonplace among retailers and CPG makers as it is in the b-t-b world.

“And, of course, customer service is essential. One-third of shoppers feel that additional staff would simplify the shopping experience. Certainly, it is not all about quantity of staff, but rather quality. Team members must be visible and engaging.”

It seem’s Vodafone, Europe’s largest carrier, has caught on. They’ve just partnered with developer Junaio to offer an augmented reality channel “Wo guckst Du?” dedicated to live game stats and public viewing places for upcoming soccer matches in the World Cup.

People in Germany wondering where the nearest public viewing place is to watch a game, can hold up their phone and get immediate locations of the nearest public viewing places and the games that are playing.

Those lucky enough to be in South Africa can get live streaming of game statistics right on the field. Anyone at the game who is watching can access real-time statistics such as goals, shots on goal, corner kicks, off-sides, penalties, time of possession, passes, fouls, etc., or simply review the team line-up directly overlaid onto the football field. All statistics and game data is from Impire.

Having real-time statistics and information about players displayed on the real playground is only a glimpse into the future of watching sports. Think of what this will do to the recruiting industry. Imagine scouts visiting college games and getting live data on each and every breakthrough player right on their phone! With more education the competition will only get trickier to find the next Lebron.

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Check back here for announcements of new Technorati posts.

Q – Since you come from the device side of mobile, you probably have a unique perspective on the “device as a marketing platform” concept.  To what extent, if any, do device makers consider the needs or desires of marketers when evolving or creating new mobile device experiences?  Or stated another way, how important is it for device makers and their software engineers to consider the viability of their platform to marketers?

A – The same steps required to make a mobile platform attractive to application developers applies to marketers.  By that, I mean supporting end user scenarios that delight consumers and keep them coming back for more, whether it’s opening and reading an email, sharing a photo or participating in a social network.  The better these are implemented the stickier the device will be with consumers.  Those same attributes allow marketers to craft equally compelling experiences to target their customers.

Q – Mobile applications got a shot in the arm with Apple’s integrated approach to distribution and device but the mobile web seems to be rising quietly as a better and more universal alternative to proprietary platforms.  How do you see the debate between proprietary apps versus the mobile web playing out, especially when it comes to mobile marketing?

A – What you’re getting at here is the emergence of HTML5 as a basis for web applications that appear and behave in some ways like native device applications.  I believe there’s really no substituting a rich native application experience with the mobile web; and while I expect the number of really innovative web applications to continue to grow, the best user experiences will be achieved with a blend of rich client-based apps running on the local device and cloud services.

Q – How do you think the device makers view text messaging as a peer to peer communication method and as a marketing channel for businesses?  Do you think it will still play a role in the super-rich smartphone world of the near future?  Do you think there’s any further innovation to be accomplished around text messaging?

A – I think the ubiquity of text messaging technology above all else makes it viable for the foreseeable future.  The fact nearly every mobile device is text message enabled means it won’t go away anytime soon.  For marketers, any alternative mobile technology requires a trade off.  Regarding innovation, there are limits to what text messaging can accomplish.  I think where innovation will be happen is in how customers employ text as part of their business operations.  Any use case where a timely and responsive interaction is merited is one potentially well suited to text.

Q – Social media is hot right now among consumers, marketers and device makers.  Can you envision the optimal way that marketers should tap into social to reach and develop relationships with their customers?

A – Like any mobile experience, you want to make sure you do social “right.”  You don’t want users trying out your application once, only to be disappointed and abandon your application or service.  The key is balancing the needs of a mobile user, the capabilities of the mobile device and the value promise of the particular social network.

Q – What do you think the key trends will be among the various device makers over the next 12-18 months?

A – It’s an exciting time in our space for sure, although it’s hard to foresee the future given the pace of change.  I do think two innovations you will soon see will be around mobile gaming and video; both will be bolstered by the availability of 4G.  Companies with gaming assets will be able to tap into a new distribution channel.   Video will have many applications including video conferencing.  Tablet computing is hot right now, but the right blend of hardware platform, operating system and services must be available to see that market really scale.

Q – Many pundits are predicting that 2010 will be the elusive “year of mobile.”  What do you think needs to happen for the remainder of this year for that to happen?

A – I think for this to happen, smartphones will need to achieve the same ubiquity as feature phones.  Right now, smartphones comprise around 10 percent of devices globally, so we are not there yet.  For consumers and marketers alike, mobile devices need to achieve a level of sophistication such that compromises around user experience and bandwidth no longer constrain innovation and great user experiences.  When that shift occurs, exciting things are bound to happen.

For those unaware, Apartments.com is probably the leading online rental property search brand (the name alone is “golden” in terms of their target).  They are a part of Classified Ventures, which consists of a group of advertising properties including Apartments.com, Cars.com, AparmentHomeLiving.com, and HomeGain.com.  Classified Ventures itself is owned by five large media companies, so reading between the lines you can see the vertical integration going on here.  I point out the chain of players involved because publishers, media companies and consumer online services are collectively leading the way with innovative mobile engagement strategies.

With text message integration and a popular iPhone application version of its service under its belt, Apartments.com clearly sees the mobile channel as a valuable extension of its core, proven online business model.  Note that these are Tim’s thoughts alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the company.

Q – Unlike a retailer, consumer online services would seem to view mobile almost exclusively as a fulfillment or service channel as opposed to a platform for marketing.  How does that impact such a business’ approach to mobile?

A – I think, in a best case scenario, both retail/e-commerce and service channels leverage mobile both as an extension of their core business and as a way to message to new & existing customers.  In my opinion, any business with an existing web presence and some level of transactional goals should start out their mobile efforts aiming to extend their existing service/fulfillment channels there.  This isn’t to say the outreach component isn’t important – it is.  To me, however, it would be backwards to start developing an elaborate SMS notification or couponing program before ensuring your existing web content is fully accessible to mobile users.

Q – Social media like Twitter and Facebook are probably on your radar screen.  How do you see social networking fitting into a consumer online business generally and in terms of the mobile channel specifically?

A – The phrase “mobile is social” is en vogue these days, largely due to the success of Foursquare and other location-based services.  While that statement strikes me as a tad hyperbolic, I do agree that the two concepts are heavily intertwined.  For consumer online businesses, I view social as requiring a two-pronged strategy: socializing the product and brand storytelling leveraging social tools and channels.  Mobile can be powerful in both efforts.  For most consumer online businesses, content sharing and collaboration among consumers are key opportunities to socialize the product experience.  Making content more portable and tapping common sharing methods like SMS, email, Facebook messages/status updates, tweets etc. to pass information to trusted advisors is a great example of how mobile plugs into the social ecosystem.

Q – The iPhone seems to be the “go to” platform for mobile applications for all businesses.  What about the iPhone makes it good for connecting with customers and how should online services approach mobile application development?

A – A heavy focus on the  iPhone is definitely a double-edge sword for marketers and online product folks.  The amazing level of innovation by developers on the platform opens up an array of unique opportunities to engage consumers, hence the boom of native application development, but it’s easy to forget that most Americans don’t own one.  In my experience, online businesses should view iPhone app development as an opportunity to evolve their existing products to leverage experiences only feature-rich devices like the iPhone can offer.  If your experience is search driven, how can layering in GPS or use of the phone’s camera add value to this process?  Don’t simply build an iPhone that does exactly what your website does.

Q – For consumer-facing online businesses yet to embrace mobile, can you recommend some ways they get started?

 A –The clear place to start for an online business new to mobile is to ensure you are not providing a degraded experience to mobile web users.  Don’t be seduced by the improving quality of the WebKit browsers used by iOS, Android, etc.  Your website doesn’t work on mobile, period.  Determine what core features your users will need if they visit your site on a mobile device and deliver that as elegantly as possible within the browser.  You will immediately see returns in your key metric performance by doing this.

Beyond that, I’d encourage online businesses to think about how features unique to mobile devices can deliver value to the bottom line.  Would your customers be willing to pay more for a premium version of your product that sent them an SMS message when a product they love went on sale?  Can you charge for a mobile application that offers a powerful (and unique to mobile) search experience that leverages mapping or photo search or bar code scanning?  Mobile commerce isn’t the only way to monetize the space and I’d encourage online brands that aren’t strictly e-commerce to find ways to add value both to users and their balance sheet in mobile development.

Q – My last question is a bit cliché, but gets the heart of what’s needed for mobile to succeed as a business and marketing channel: What will it take for 2010 to be considered the year of mobile among consumer online services businesses?

A – At a recent conference I heard someone say that we should stop trying to pin down whether this is the “year of mobile” and embrace the idea that this is the “time for mobile.”  From my vantage point, I think online businesses have reached the point where they know mobile is important and that they need to invest in a strategy there.  The Google/Apple arms race that has emerged in the past few months has certainly helped raise the mobile profile, but I feel confident in saying that the tipping point has already been reached.  The challenge moving forward is more or less one of education.  Marketers, product professionals and developers at these online businesses do need to avail themselves of all resources possible to help them navigate what is a complex landscape.

Mahesh joins us from Orbitz Worldwide where he was involved in implementing a number of key features of the booking engine for Orbitz’s international travel platform. He was also involved in improving site performance and scalability. Outside of the office you can find Mahesh tinkering with new technology, rock climbing, playing beach volleyball or trying different kinds of beer with friends at the The Map Room.

We’re all really excited to have you join the team Mahesh!

Non Backwards Compatible Changes

Unfortunately, some of the changes are not backwards compatible with previous versions of the Subscriptions API.

Some attribute names will be different in the new version of the API

Previous versions of the API returned very basic information about the subscriber. Some of that information was re-structured when we added support for custom user data attributes. We would like future APIs that also interact with custom data attributes to use consistent names for the attributes. So, we’re biting the bullet now by making this change. The API name for all data attributes, which is the name to use when referring to a given attribute in the API, can be found in the User Data section of the application.

Result from the list method will now be paged

In previous versions of the API, there was no way to limit the number of subscribers you would get back with a call to the list method. If you had 100,000 subscribers, calling the list method would return an XML response approximately 1,500,000 lines long. That can be quite a bit to swallow, and could choke some applications running on machines with limited resources. Now, the list method will return 250 subscribers at a time, and allow you to iterate through your subscribers by specifying a page attribute in the request. For example, not specifying the page attribute would return subscribers 1-250. Specifying page=2 in the request URL will return subscribers 251-500. Specifying page=3 will return subscribers 501-750, and so on. This should give you more control over the API response.

User data attributes with no value for the subscriber will not be displayed

In previous versions of the API, we returned all of the user data attributes, all of the time. Even if the subscriber had no data for that particular attribute. This wasn’t too big of an issue when we were working with a fixed set of attributes. However, you now have the ability to create as many user data attributes as you wish, which could dramatically increase the size of the API response. So, we’ve changed the list and read methods to only list the user data attributes that have corresponding values for the given subscriber. If you don’t see a particular data attribute for a given subscriber, it means that subscriber has no value for that particular attribute.

Testing The New API Methods, and Migrating Your Code

The new API methods are in production, and ready for testing. The create, update, and delete methods are completely backward compatible, so you should be able to continue using them as you were. To access the new versions of the list and read methods, simply add ?new=true to the end of your request. For example, /api/subscription_campaigns/{campaign_id}/subscriptions.xml will invoke the old list method, and /api/subscription_campaigns/{campaign_id}/subscriptions.xml?new=true will invoke the new method. This will allow you to test the new and old API methods side by side, and switch to the new version of the API methods at your convenience.

In a few weeks, after everybody has migrated to the new version of the API, we will make the new versions of the API methods accessible without the ?new=true URL parameter, and you can remove the ?new=true URL parameter at your convenience.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@interactivemediums.com.

I am referring to this blog post I came across from March of this year, in which the author cites his experience with Target’s mobile couponing program.  Target is often cited as a mobile marketing innovator so they are setting the pace for others to a large degree.  March 2010 for Target may be the same for less progressive retailers in June, July, August or any other month remaining this year.

I stumbled across the post while researching how retailers are adopting mobile – either directly from providers such as Interactive Mediums or through agency partners.

If you are not in retail, you might be surprised to learn many such businesses are creating jobs with the word “mobile” in the title.  These newly created roles are being tasked with bringing mobile competencies to their businesses in the most logical ways (usually couponing or offers).

In describing the untargeted SMS text message offer sent to him from Target, the author implies that the way retailers are sourcing mobile may in part be to blame for such ineffective marketing practices.  He claims that large retailers approach a mobile technology purchase the same as they would in choosing a marketing agency — but the criteria should obviously be very different for each type.

Without saying so, he suggests agencies are winning mobile business based on “how well it makes a product or brand look and feel,” which doesn’t address critical technology considerations.  Software providers, on the other hand, “must be selected based on campaign performance and execution.”  While Target may not have gotten it right out of the gate, I suspect retailers hiring dedicated “mobile talent” are more likely than not to evaluate mobile technology options appropriately.

I recently blogged about how the ease of engaging consumers in the mobile channel often conflicts with the need to integrate with other data sources and systems to deliver the personalized experience consumers expect on their mobile devices.  Perhaps that dichotomy was in part responsible for Target’s early struggles.

The author of the post mentions segmentation, personalization and preference centers as crucial for retailers to engage their customers in the most relevant ways.  We prescribe the same, and our platform today offers all of these capabilities.  Retail mobile buyers interested in getting it right with their “on the go” customers would be wise to evaluate technology options with an emphasis on these CRM-centric features.  If you would like to see how we do it, shoot us an email.

Once you shorten your URL you gain the advantage of getting real-time convenient click data right in our application.

This tool is great for anyone who needs to fit a lengthy URL into a 160-character SMS message.  It is also a great tool for pushing users to a mobile website, whether it be for information collection, to give them a coupon, or to push them to your mobile online store.

Once you’ve got a long URL in place, simply click the “shorten URL’s” text on the bottom left hand corner and voilah! You now have reduced your text, included a link, and can track the number of clicks it receives over time.

When you are ready to check up on the success of your links, go to our “tools” section and scroll down to “short urls”. Here you will have a page covering all of your links with their statistics.  It also gives you the ability to edit links in the event URLs change.

Last but not least we offer a customized QR (quick-response) code for you to download and utilize in your marketing needs. This acts as a visual representation of the shortened link, and sends the user to the same destination URL when scanned with a mobile phone’ camera. It is great for business cards, POS and magazine advertisements.

For more on QR Codes check out this Wikipedia entry: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code>

Questions? Write us: gettingstarted@interactivemediums.com

Phil Johnson of PJA makes a case for small agencies to quickly adopt a mobile strategy.

He points out that the three ingredients for successful mobile marketing are now all in place, making it the perfect time to adopt. Those 3 elements according to Johnson are the mobile audience, the advertising infrastructure, and the media channels.

These 3 elements when examined are quite convincing. Certainly the mobile audience is ripe with over 270 million mobile phones just in the US.  The advertising infrastructure has quickly solidified with Google acquiring AdMob, and Apple purchasing Quattro (both for hundreds of millions of dollars.) And lastly, the channels are growing exponentially, with over 1.5 trillion texts last year in the US, and over 4 billion dollars in mobile App revenue.

So how can my little agency take advantage of this?

In the article, Johnson points out that mobile is a great way for you to immediately augment your current marketing campaigns and grow your exposure, allowing you to reach consumers in more places.

Johnson points out that the advantages for small agencies to adopt a mobile strategy lay in the fact it can be scaled to reach virtually any audience large or small. In addition, getting started is a very quick process and your messaging can be crafted in real time, in comparison to traditional marketing efforts such as running a magazine ad, which must be planned and placed months before it reaches newsstands.  Small agencies also benefit from a less time-consuming corporate approval process, and can provide solutions to their customers in a much faster, more affordable fashion.

Identified in the article are 4 main areas of integration that small agencies should focus on helping their clients step into mobile with, those are Text, Mobile Web, Content, and Mobile Advertising.

Should you decide to take the leap into mobile, Interactive Mediums is a great partner to help you achieve success. If you’re a small agency looking to take advantage of mobile with your customers today, take a look at our “Mobile Imperative” webinar, or feel free to shoot us a question.

My colleague, Amanda Gilmore, worked closely with the CHA to ensure all their needs were met – no easy task when working with a government agency unaccustomed to sourcing technology enabled marketing services.

CHA administrators cleverly employ our platform to register anyone via text message interaction to receive updates via text as they become available.  Simply texting INFO to 75309 is all that it takes.  This call to action is being advertised across the city and is a completely hands free method of creating a list of families to later communicate with quickly and easily using our platform’s Alerting engagement action.  Hundreds of thousands of messages are expected to flow through our system during the registration period.

Speaking of registration, CHA was able to meet another objective virtually hands free using our platform – driving actual website registrations for the wait list.  Embedded in each text message is a short URL that links off to the CHA registration website.  These links are tracked with our platform so CHA will be able to observe a funnel effect – of the universe of text message recipients, some portion will link off to the registration site on their mobile phones, and some portion of that group will register right then and there.  Closing the gap between observing a call to action and following through to the desired end result is a unique value offered by text messages that provide a gateway to next steps.

That’s why I call this a “rich” alerting application.  There’s a lot you can do in a text message beyond sending a brief communication.  Embedding trackable short URLs, text advertisement footers, personalized messages and more are just some of the ways our clients are creating high performance interactions with our platform.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that these changes are live! When you log in to your account, you’ll notice that things look different, though not unfamiliar. Here are just a few of the highlights:

Refined navigation: campaigns + lists

Everything in our application revolves around campaigns and lists, so we’ve tightened up the navigation around those core functions.

To bring commonly used functions closer to the surface, we’ve added dropdown menus to the navigation. Many regular activities are now quickly accessible from anywhere in the application.

Better campaign filtering

You can now sort campaigns by type or keyword. We’ve also changed our default sort to show the most recently created campaigns at the top of your screen. Recently active campaigns and lists can also be accessed when you first log in to the dashboard.

Simpler campaign and message creation

We’ve revisited every create and edit page to streamline the process of launching and editing your campaigns.

Descriptions get promoted

We used to identify campaigns and lists by keyword. We’re now aligning them with the campaign description you enter when creating a campaign or list. We’ve used it this way for awhile now, and find it’s easier to locate campaigns and lists.

If you’re a current client of ours, we’d love to get your feedback on these updates, so please let us know what you think.

We’ll be introducing some exciting new features over the next three months. Look out for more frequent customer communication like this and please reply with any questions or feedback.

Some of the best and brightest minds in mobile are among our customers.  Many such folks also subscribe to our blog and one in particular seemed a great candidate for the first official Hello Mobile! Q&A.  Greg Janssen,  Manager of Mobile Products with Sears Holdings, sat down virtually with me to share his viewpoint on the mobile marketing opportunity within retail. 

Q – There seems to be an almost limitless number of ways mobile marketing can help retailers. Where do you think retailers stand to gain the best bang for the buck given all the possible approaches?

A – I think the best thing retailers can do is test and learn about all manner of mobile marketing approaches.  Right now we are at the start of what is sure to become a primary channel for consumers to engage with brick and mortar stores, and retailers’ web experiences as well, and the ones to learn fastest, and adapt to get it right fastest, stand to lead the pack.  Apps are great when focused on a specific task or the targeted problem requires a deep level of engagement, but there are still trade-offs to be made among the different smartphones out there.  Text messaging, on the other hand, offers universal reach and although limited in terms of interactivity, it’s a great channel for distributing offers like coupons, soliciting feedback from customers and getting customers engaged in promotions in other mass media, and it’s also very measurable.  Wireless web is growing as predicted, and I truly believe it will overtake the wired web sooner than we even think possible – if the carriers can figure out the bandwidth issues.

Q – We live in a multi-channel world.  Where do you think mobile fits with the other channels retailers offer such as physical stores and online?

A – The biggest mistake retailers can make is envisioning mobile as a channel unto itself.  A mobile application can serve to facilitate a stand-alone purchase, but the most powerful mobile programs fit into the existing retail business model, or adapt that model to give the customer unique value through a mobile device. Whether it’s offering another and more convenient means of distributing offers or providing a real time source of customer service feedback, text messaging in particular plays a hugely value added role with retail. 

Q – We prescribe that marketers employ mobile as part of CRM efforts, not one off tactics.  Do you see that value proposition playing in retail and if so, how?

A – Absolutely.  Retail is a tough business where the customer experience often defines the difference between success and failure.  The mobile channel, by virtue of it being such a personal thing to consumers, offers retailers a unique opportunity to connect on a deeper and more meaningful level with consumers to help create that compelling experience. It’s all about the seamless experience between initial browsing, active shopping, sharing info with your friends and then, of course, buying!

Q – Exactly!  Speaking of sharing, social media like Twitter and Facebook are all the rage.  In what ways do you think mobile marketing methods and social media can complement one another?

A – Twitter was conceived as a mobile centric service and Facebook users I think check their accounts on the go in a more intimate way on their mobile devices.  So there is a really strong correlation between social and mobile.  The key for retailers is taking advantage of the unique attributes of each to create a new value proposition.  For example, mobile approaches such as coupons can be aligned with a retailer’s most valued customers by connecting POS/data warehouse data with mobile subscribers obtained as part of a mobile loyalty club drive.  At the same time, social media monitoring can identify a retailer’s most vocal or influential clients and critics in the social universe.  It’s all public information, so if people are willing to share, they also, I think, can receive some surprise and delight when other people, even merchants, actually listen to what they are saying!  Correlating unique offers, loyal customers and key social influences offers a chance to fine tune a CRM strategy that leverages internal customer knowledge, mobile channel marketing approaches and social media.

Q – Have metrics yet emerged to help retailers gauge the success of mobile marketing efforts?  If so, can you cite a few and also explain how they map into broader corporate objectives such as customer acquisition, loyalty, customer service, merchandise mix, and others?

A – That’s a really big question.  The most simple metrics to track around mobile are focused on acquisition and execution, such as how many subscribers you were able to obtain or the number of times your smartphone application was downloaded.  A level below that, you have metrics around your ability to retain your mobile subscribers (an attrition measure), which can be a really useful indicator of engagement or loyalty in the retailer’s brand promise.  On the apps side, it’s all about usage; as you know most apps are downloaded, used a few times, then never used again or deleted – it’s all about creating utility, or even harder, a unique app experience or feature that you just can’t get otherwise, like on a mobile web site.  Where things get trickier, but more interesting, is relating all this mobile centric stuff to the metrics most important to the business, such as share of wallet, product mix optimization, customer satisfaction and simply multi-channel sales.  There is room for innovation there for sure, and looking for ways to track what is happening, and where the influence points are across channels will be key as things evolve.

Q – Lastly, everyone is saying 2010 will be the “year of mobile.”  What has to happen between now and December 31st to make that happen?

Well, in retail, we do typically have till the end of January on our fiscal calendars…….so we get a little extra time!  It’s hard to say yes or no to a statement like that – certainly, it’s a good conversation starter that can be argued either way.  The “year of” anything usually isn’t anything much, other than a good marketing buzzword.  I think mobile is an evolution — consider that it’s the mix and interaction of widely available technology, “always on” connectivity, and even the slow pace of generational change, and you really don’t see things hitting a tipping point until you look in the rear view mirror.  So, let’s get together a year from now, and we’ll continue the conversation!

1) Login, click on Lists.

2) Click on the keyword of the list your managing.

3) Click on the Subscribers link on the left hand side.

4) Click on the Add/Remove Subscribers link and then put the number into to form field at the bottom of the page.

Now that you have select to “broadcast a message” from here you will highlight your list, or a list segment, which we discussed previously in the blog post “How to Broadcast a Message to a Segment of Your Subscribers”.

Next select the time you would like to schedule your message, and input your message description. You can call this “Birthday Message”.

From there go ahead and type your message, and make sure it relates to the data you will request from your customers.

I will suggest something like:

“Here at BIGBOXRETAILER we want to make sure we’re targeting you with the best deals based on your interests. Please respond with your birthday in XX/XX/XXXX”

next check the box that says “This message requests data from the participant”

From there you will see a dropdown of data attribute options. In this use case you would select birthdate.

You are also given the option to select an invalid & verified data response message.

For invalid you can say “ sorry we don’t recognize that as a birthday, please repond in XX/XX/XXXX format”

And for verified data you can say “thank you for helping us market to you more effectively”

The free trial includes access to all of the features available on the platform. You can create up to ten fully functional campaigns, create up to three user accounts to share with your colleagues, and interact with up to three mobile phone numbers. Best of all, is that when you decide to sign up, you can keep all of the campaigns that have created during the trail.

There really is nothing to lose. Click here to get started!

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.

To learn more about CouchDB please check out http://couchdb.apache.org/, and for information on Couchio, the company that provides services for CouchDB, please visit Couch.io.

This case study is just one example of how we’re always looking to improve the user experience of the Interactive Mediums platform.

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.

As I blogged about recently, mobile technology firms have the potential to cut agencies out of the loop as more businesses become comfortable and able to work direct with point solution providers to execute their mobile marketing plans.

Why more agencies don’t adopt the viewpoint of mobile as a means of collecting data about their client’s customers, and use that insight as a basis to pitch new business, is beyond me.  Without much thought, imagine:

• Client wishes to employ a mobile sweepstakes as a novel means of driving interest in their products during a slow period.  Client measures an improvement in sales correlated to the client’s locations by virtue of collecting customer zip codes as part of the process.  This data could be obtained easily via SMS text message interaction or via a web form which feeds the same datamart.
• Result?  Value proven, but apparently many agency clients stop there.  Instead, imagine:
• Agency strategists analyze information captured during the promotion in the datamart and discover distinct segments of customers.  Entry into the promotion required customers to provide some very simple demographic and preference details such as gender, marital status, and product affinity.  The agency’s client is constantly striving to increase same store sales by creating offers and promotions that align with their targeted customer but these tend to be very broad brush efforts which often take the form of a mass media effort.
• Agency strategists pitch the idea to re-target the identifiable segments with “buy one/get one free” offers aligned with insights from the datamart.  Client wonders how redemption will happen at the point of sale, how value will be tracked.  Unable to currently capture these offer codes at the point of sale due to technical and operational limitations, the agency prescribes a novel solution – simply inform store managers to expect the offers to be presented and instruct cashiers to honor them.  Post promotion, month over month sales per location can be analyzed related to the distribution of the offers by zip code.  In this way, an indirect yet very strong correlation between the promotion and sale can be established.
• Result?  Value indirectly proven yet the client must certainly be happy having taken a data driven approach to marketing as opposed to a “pray and spray” mass media method.  The client also now has a good sense for its most engaged customers.  Having seen the power of mobile centric marketing, the client decides next to implement a loyalty rewards program:
• The client, now on board with the notion of mobile marketing, calls the agency team to create a loyalty program that initially targets customers by zip code where sales increased the most during the “buy one/get one free” promotion.  These customers are invited to join via SMS text message, and do so by visiting an online web form on the client’s website where more details about their preferences and interests are captured.  These in turn trigger unique initial offers designed to drive more frequent visits and greater market basket value based on business rules established (e.g. mother with two children gets offered product X, single guy age 25 gets offered product Y).  Wouldn’t you know it, but the client recently upgraded its POS systems and the field operations team is no longer averse to extending the checkout process with mobile offer code redemption.  Now, redemption by these very loyal customers can be tracked directly.
• The client advertises membership into the club on its website for anyone to join at a cost – the free offer was only extended to those who participated in the earlier promotion.  These new customers who pay to join, are similarly presented with offers aligned to their interests.

I could go on, but hopefully agency readers and their clients get the point.  Mobile marketing is not about a one-time campaign – it’s a unique opportunity to reach your customers with their personal devices in ways that drive sales and loyalty.  To take any other approach is wasteful, shortsighted, and spells death for any agency hoping to compete for mobile budgets.

The only realistic solution to the “one and done” approach to mobile widely reported, is to help mobile marketers actually learn something useful about their customers to more effectively engage them again in the future.  Having a strategy — prescribed by many in the agency community as key to ongoing usage — is but one piece of the puzzle.  The technology has to be “there” to enable marketers to make use of their initial investments in mobile to reap even greater rewards down the line.

This requires not only capturing data in line with mobile interactions, but providing the means of using such information in the ensuing execution of smarter and higher performing programs.  To that end, the Interactive Mediums Customer Engagement platform features many capabilities marketers might associate with traditional CRM technologies, including profiling, segmentation, personalization, event triggers, and data collection to include any attribute capturable during a text or online interaction.

The diagram included in line with this post illustrates the promotions roller coaster in a way that shows how capturing and re-using interaction data should improve targeted business outcomes over time — generally speaking, either increased sales lift or greater reach.  Nearly every business has revenue generation and increasing the pie of available customers as top line goals, and helping them achieve them is the driving force behind our Customer Engagement platform.

My Coke Rewards only recently added a mobile component, but was initially designed around a website whereby consumers registered and submitted codes on bottle caps and cans as a means of collecting points that could be redeemed for merchandise — and not just Coke-branded hats and pens, but lifestyle products such as concert tickets.

At first glance, this sounds like very standard stuff.  The secret sauce which made this program so successful were a complex mix of business rules and predictive analytics that, when applied to customer profile data, customer preferences, and rewards redemption history, would suggest a reward the customer would actually want.  Essentially offer optimization, or as we called it “predicting passions.”

Assembling this solution was expensive so why bother?  Coke could correlate lift in sales by region, city or household with patterns observed in the frequency and quantity of codes submitted by consumers through the website.  They called it “consumption” and although indirect, the closed loop insight was very real to Coke such that the program continues.  Having access to POS sales data for its products was key.

You could imagine that with the advent of smartphones and widespread adoption of text messaging, the mobile channel probably trumps the online experience here, especially for registering codes.  In that manner consumers can simply log points and discard the trash rather than carrying a plastic cap or can with them until they sit down in front of a PC.

Mobile marketers who don’t see the value in providing a similar program to their customers need not be put off by the cost and complexity of what Coke has done.  The Advanced Edition of our Customer Engagement Platform has been built from the ground-up to make these types of interactions extremely easy to manage with limited staff and resources.

To make this possible, we extended the core mobile campaigns of the Platform with features more commonly found in traditional CRM software — profiling, segmentation, personalization, event triggers, and of course data collection to include any attribute capturable during a text or online interaction, not just the mobile number.  Note I said online interaction, as the Platform now includes the ability to power engagement strategies rendered on the web for times when that medium makes more sense (such as registration forms to capture detailed consumer information that may underpin targeted and more brief text messages around offers).

With retailers having access to their POS sales data by location, you can see how simple it would be to correlate increases in sales with the implementation, monitoring and ongoing improvement of offers delivered using a system such as our Engagement Platform.

This short story comes courtesy of observations made during last week’s Mobile University 101 event here in Chicago, where the blanketing theme was: mobile needs to be thought of strategically, not the basis of a “one and done” program like a sweepstakes to be conducted for the sake of novelty.  You can be assured Coke does not view the mobile channel in that manner.  Our mission at Interactive Mediums is to help every other business embrace the same viewpoint.

To address the first question, imagine a typical b-to-c marketer who’s job it is to create demand for his or her products. At their disposal are in house and third party resources, internal customer data and applications, pre-existing segmentation schemes, sales and distribution channels and of course, the mandate to drive revenue. How does a mobile marketing campaign appeal to this marketer?

With an eye on revenue generation, any outsourced marketing service needs to provide some means of proving an impact on sales. Closing the loop and seeing that activity in a timely and easy to use format is an absolute necessity. Integration on some level with back office transactional systems is necessary (or a third party working on behalf of the customer). Integration can be complicated and expensive, and is an IT centric problem not easily solved by agencies, interactive or otherwise. This is a hard problem to solve, relative to providing a means of developing an opt in database of mobile subscribers and developing that base as an island unto itself.

Of course there is tremendous value to creating a mobile relationship with your clients, but most businesses already know something about many of their customers. Surely, tying data obtained via mobile programs to internal customer knowledge helps inform mobile strategy, yet that “integration” word comes up again. Customer data integration is a hard problem to solve, one best left to technology pros. Social media, as “hot” a topic as mobile and projected to be funded at even higher rates than mobile, faces the same challenges. At some point, businesses will need to connect the actions and activities of the social universe with the bottom line – otherwise it’s an exercise in presumed value.

Lastly, consider the channel from which many marketers source their initial mobile marketing projects, at least those that tend to involve a variety of elements such as media buys, creative design and execution and general project management. Yes, agencies, interactive or otherwise.

We love working with agency partners to help them deliver high impact mobile marketing programs on behalf of their clients. Yet, the agency business model and integration issues so critical to creating sustainable long term value beg for a different approach. As I blogged about recently, mobile technologists like Interactive Mediums should be sitting right alongside agencies in client meeting rooms as mobile projects arise. If not, the “one and done” mentality will persist OR wise marketers will begin coming direct to technology firms who possess the products and know how necessary to integrate mobile into business in a meaningful way. A good example is the work Interactive Mediums has performed around mobile applications, whereby we tapped into APIs developed for the web to bring unique functionally to the mobile channel.

While much of the early event content focused on the magnitude of the mobile marketing opportunity, this session was all about what marketers should expect, in terms of hard results, based on real world experience.

The presenter is a consultant focusing mostly on the quick serve restaurant (QSR) and multi-location retail markets, but the insights presented here should provide valuable targets for anyone new to mobile or more experienced practitioners looking for something to compare their results to.

I’ve summarized the content I found most valuable, and suspect would be as well to any mobile marketer.

Start Simple

• Create and grow your mobile subscriber base FIRST: Use events, point of purchase incentives, email, and integrating calls to action into existing media buys.
• Understand your customer: Implement tracking, build analytics, poll your members, begin mining the database for trends.  Engage in creative ways to uncover more than just a mobile phone number, such as short surveys.  A maximum of 4 questions is about what the average consumer will answer via SMS text message interaction.  Good survey oriented campaigns yield 43 percent response rates, and of those who do opt to participate, completion rates exceed 90 percent.
• Market One-to-One: Marketers make the mistake of focusing here initially. The benefits of one to one marketing accrue based on establishing solid practices around the preceding two activities.  Sending individually targeted offers, creating profiles of customers to deliver content they want is what happens here.

Mobile Ads are Hype/Lack Reach

• The mobile ad ecosystem is too complex for the average marketer.  All display advertising, the kind that is very engaging, is all happening on the iPhone and Android, both of which pale in comparison with the market share of phones capable of sending and receiving text messages.

Advice to Mobile Marketing Services Providers

• Talk to the market thru SMS, lead with it, because all marketers are drawn immediately to promises of expansive reach for reasonable cost.  If alternative mobile marketing approaches are desired, such as applications or mobile web, so be it, but these offer far less reach than SMS.

5 Flavors of Engagement

• Banner and display ads
• Text messaging
• Mobile search
• Commercial Applications
• In Application/Games Ads

Engagement Metrics

• Member growth rates
• Opt in and opt out rates
• Viral growth rates per engagement
• Redemption rates
• Average sale per redemption
• Average engagements per month
• Cost per redemption
• Cost per engagement
• Cost per member
• True ROI for the overall program

Media Buy Effectiveness in Supporting Mobile Programs – From Worst to Best

• Billboards
• Radio
• Sports venues/events
• On site ambassadors
• TV
• Festival or parade
• Print
• In store signage (posters, table tents, etc.) – 90 percent success keeping subscribers opted in who are acquired in this manner

Use Email to Create Mobile Fans, Not the Other Way Around

• Use your email list to promote mobile campaigns, achieve a 20 percent join rate

What to Expect in terms of Results

• 250 members per location (retail/QSR) in 90 days is average
• 500 members per location in 90 days is exceptional
• 700 members per location in 12 months is average
• 1200 members per location in 12 months exceptional

And remember, even if the total universe of subscribers appears small, these represent your most loyal customers.

For context, consider that average QSRs generate approximately 20,000 unique customer visits per month, exceptional cases like McDonald’s obtain around 40,000.

Houston, We Have a Problem

If opt out rate exceeds 10 percent, you have a problem with the program.

Typical Offer Redemption Rates by Medium (i.e. coupons)

• Mobile 7 percent
• Email 1.12 percent
• Paper Coupons 1.18
• Direct Mail 1.12

Promoted via an in-bag insert, the Hoverwall is a novel solution that allows participants to engage with the event in never before ways.  The Hoverwall offers a visual, running commentary dedicated to happenings at the event.  The audience has two ways of engaging with the Hoverwall, via their Twitter account or SMS text message.

Twitter integration is seamless.  Visiting http://ix.ly/mobiu101 via either a desktop or mobile optimized website, users are prompted to login to their Twitter accounts then are returned to begin “tweeting” their comments and thoughts on the event.

Alternatively, direct to Hoverwall interaction is enabled via SMS text messaging.  Simply texting mobiu101 to 50101 begins a session allowing text messages to be posted to the Hoverwall.

Look for more about the Hoverwall from Interactive Mediums.

Gary described the utility of siloed campaigns such as sweepstakes but that the effort required to execute one in the mobile channel is no less than projects marketers undertake around longer lived work, such as websites.  The upshot was that marketers waste the effort by not planning to use the mobile channel more strategically, a part of which could be limited life programs such as contests.

To help marketers to that end, Gary underscored the importance of tying mobile programs to business results such as actual product sales.  This is as of critical importance for marketers to get out of a “churn and burn” cycle.  The onus is on mobile marketing product and services providers to help their clients see the value of mobile to achieving their daily objectives, not just executing a one time campaign.  We could not agree more.

Companies such as Placecast, Wavemarket, and Xtify are VC backed, and ready to power it in scalable ways.

The statistics make a marketers’ mouth water:

“Placecast has reported consumers reacted positively with 79 % saying these messages increased their likelihood to visit a store and 65% made a purchase as a result of a ShopAlerts message.”

The Starbucks example makes plenty of sense.

“Imagine the message as your walking to work past your favorite Starbucks location on the way to work, “Vanilla Latte half price until 10am!” If you take action on this coupon, it’s a win-win situation; both the customer & Starbucks are happy with the result.

You would think that this new technology would be an instant hit for the real estate industry, retail shopping, government services, & restaurants.  You would think that consumers would be excited about the opportunity to get deals sent to them from their favorite brands when they are already near shopping centers.

However, a very large portion of the feedback on blogs is coming from consumers who say they feel like this is another potential opportunity to be spammed & that it will surely negatively impact their relationship with the brands (see here).

Given the design of LBS mobile services, I would think consumers would only opt-in to brands they are truly interested in, and that those brands would act in a respectful manner.

The relationship should revolve around improve customer satisfaction, offering more relevant deals, & thus increasing sales.

If a brand says, “we can send you more relevant, highly contextual messages about deals, etc. if we know where you are.” Then users will have to decide for themselves whether it is worth participating.

From what I have read I disagree with the skeptics. I don’t cut out coupons, and at the same time I don’t like receiving Target Brand text coupons weeks before I am going to Target.  I know I would find convenience in receiving coffee coupons when I am near a coffee shop, and North-Face coupons when I am near a Northface & I would likely be one to opt-in.

Only time will tell how this extremely young industry develops, and what features are enhanced to ensure customer participation.  One thing is for sure, if companies like Wavemarket and Placecast are raising millions of dollars from VC backers, it might be worth betting on.

For more on this topic I recommend this article: http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2009/12/why-location-based-couponingadvertising-wont-work-in-its-current-form/

For those interested in how it applies to real estate in more detail: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/property-management/searching-for-real-estate-made-easy-geo-fences-plus-mobile-phones-1030410/

Essentially a back/forth interview between a text messaging provider and MobileMarketer staff, the article attempts to convey the value of blending location-based data with data obtained from panel surveys often conducted by brands and market research firms to understand trends among targeted customers.  If you are not paying close attention, you might say “yep,” but think about this for a second and maybe like me you say “uh, yes,  but, you seem to be co-mingling several different ideas here:”

• First off, survey panel questions can include a request for geo details such as zip code or phone number area code, to connect survey data to location, so where is the mobile value add?
• Secondly, the article describes obtaining opt in permission from survey participants – which alone yields some pretty hard to believe benefits including “Increase the value of their marketing panels by having travel patterns, shopping preferences and lifestyle patterns, Strengthen value of existing customers by knowing proximity to stores and when they are likely to shop, Obtain competitive insights – consumer visits to competitive stores and how often, Use location as a media planning tool – armed with travel and work patterns, advertisers can create an optimal mix media mix.”

The article fails to prescribe exactly how benefits like these flow to brands and researchers.  Readers similarly confused would be wise to view their options as follows:

• Obtaining mobile opt in permission during panel surveys is a great idea but a plan of action for how to use that permission should be a key consideration.  What’s the goal — provide targeted offers or coupons, or pose follow up questions via multi question SMS text message survey capabilities like those offered by Interactive Mediums?  How does the researcher mitigate the risk of inaccurate answers from mobile survey participants?  One best practice is to present a call to action matched to survey response data that yields a relevancy-based offer (such as one based on age or product preference).  What if the client’s channel preference is email rather than mobile?
• Market researchers owe it to themselves to take advantage of mobile-enabled Crowd Sourcing, or the ability to attract an audience on demand to achieve their research goals.  It is becoming commonplace to promote a strong mobile call to action such as a sweepstakes across various media segmented by keyword in an effort to learn more about customers, including their location.  A text messaging survey instrument such as the one architected by Interactive Mediums offers a very flexible way of posing multiple questions in a single session and feeding these into a database for later retrieval and analysis using common tools like Excel.  Survey responses can be instantly segmented by mobile number area code, or to be more accurate, questions can be posed around zip code or home town location.

Consider the typical agency business model in light of the realities of the corporate marketing department, as reported in research cited in the article.

Agency: Focus on low overhead, little technology ownership, lots of outsourcing on demand as required, focus on creative and relationships, and retainer-based revenue.

Corporate Marketing Departments, per the article:

“… businesses have access to more digital tools and are using customer data integration processes to build better relationships directly with customers.  This, in turn, allows them to design and deliver ‘market-ready product and services.’  Because agencies lack access to the customer data, they cannot play a role in the important emerging fields of customer analytics, predictive modeling or performance measurement.”

“Traditional agencies often lack capabilities to execute viral and mobile campaigns, especially on a national level.”

Add in the reported ease by which marketers are coming to manage multiple outsourced marketing relationships (a reversal of a recent trend), and you have a situation that promises to push agencies even more to the periphery when it comes to mobile marketing.  Adding fuel to the fire are emerging customer data capture, reuse and analytic capabilities becoming foundational in services such as those offered by Interactive Mediums.

As marketing departments become more customer data focused and less averse to working with multiple third parties to meet their business objectives, you will likely find mobile technology experts sitting at the table with their traditional agency peers when it comes to mobile strategy.  Agencies who create value added relationships with mobile technology firms are likely to be around for the long term as marketers look for innovative approaches to customer engagement.

Today on MobileMarketer.com an article titled, “Rolex taps mobile to make print ad more interactive,” describes not a 2D bar code, MMS or text messaging call to action, but rather something much more simple.  The article describes a magazine ad program which allows readers to photograph any advertisement in the publication, then send it via email to a third party service that somehow recognizes the photo, ties it to the advertiser, then sends value-added content back to the reader and enters them into a promotional sweepstakes.

The key distinction between this approach and others we have talked about before is that email is the transit mechanism as opposed to mobile messaging techniques like SMS or MMS, and the provider somehow is able to recognize programmatically images sent via email and trigger relevant content to be sent back to the reader.

The benefit to advertisers is no need to modify existing ad creative to incorporate bar codes or require their readers to have smartphones equipped with software to interpret such images.  Negatives include a more narrow demographic accessible than with messaging techniques as opposed to email, but is probably immaterial in this instance since Rolex consumers probably have among the most advanced mobile devices available.

As mentioned yesterday, you just can’t beat the ubiquity and reach of a text message interaction as a call to action.  For magazine advertisers in particular, who should be interested in offering insight into the response rates of ads by factors such as geographic distribution or variances in issues based on local market considerations, text message keyword segmentation is an easy approach to proving the value of print ads for use in direct response programs.  The Rolex example offers no such targeting or tracking.

JagTag Creates One Of The Most Successful 2D Barcode Campaigns To Date, Over 100,000 Mobile Engagements

If you were to view reach or ubiquity offered by various mobile calls to action on a scale, from massive to less so, it might look like this:

SMS Text Messaging –> MMS/Camera Phones, Smart or Feature –> Truly smart phones with still/video cameras and the ability to download and use rich applications via network or Wifi.

What JagTag has tapped into (rather smartly, I must say begrudgingly), is the greater reach afforded by MMS/Camera phones than smartphones, as well as the current buzz around 2D or Quick Response Codes as a high-po direct response mechanism.

Marketers looking for unique mobile engagement methods surely view this solution as bridging the gap between the casual magazine browsing experience and spurring an audience to action in an engaging manner.

Yet, I can’t help but imagine the results reported around the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue program could have been even more successful with an SMS text interaction requiring only a short keyword to be sent to an equally short numeric code.  The user experience would have been much the same – a return message pointing to more swimsuit content.  With response rates for strong SMS calls to action reportedly as high as 30 percent, you should expect far greater than 100k interactions given the popularity afforded this high demand magazine issue.

This leads to the headline of this post.  Considering the audience and content in question, could there be any doubt response would have been strong given a quick and easy method of obtaining more eye candy?  The lesson here is to balance hype, your audience and the strength of your call to action when considering mobile as part of a broader marketing campaign.

Quicker Creation and Duplication

Setting up new routing campaigns is now easier with a single page to fill out. The only required information is a description, keyword, and a URL to send messages to. If you have a routing campaign that is mostly right, you can choose to duplicate that campaign. You will be presented with an already filled out form, which you can edit and submit to get up and running quickly.

Export SMS Messages

We added support for exporting all the MOs and MTs associated with your routing campaign. After clicking the link in the sidebar, confirm the information name and email address in the form and click “Export Now”. The export process will occur in the background and an email will be sent when your file is ready to download.

Recent Activity

At the bottom of the campaign overview page is a listing of the 25 most recent messages that have passed through your routing campaign. You can click the See all link to view all your messages for the past two days, or to adjust the timeframes.

Enhanced API

We added some additional parameter to the message we send to your systems. We in addition to the raw message the user sent, we now call out the identified keyword in their message and the message with the keyword stripped off. We hope breaking apart the message like this will make it easier to handle user requests in your system.

The article, titled “Multichannel Retailers Upgrade, but Not to Mobile,” describes e-commerce retailers as planning upgrades around site design, search engine optimization and social media capabilities – but strangely not mobile.  The chart included in the article shows scant evidence that retailers who sell online (which ones don’t?) are not engaged in a great deal of mobile marketing.

Therein lies the opportunity so many forward thinking retailers are taking advantage of – creating the mobile customer relationships which will surely determine the difference between success and failure among retailers in all segments.  Confidence in network capacity appears to be a leading cause for many to hesitate:

“The report suggested that retailers could be put off investing in mobile by carriers’ failure to keep up with consumer demand for mobile data service.”

Establishing a database of mobile subscribers using compelling engagement actions such as sweepstakes and coupon programs is a low-risk and minimally bandwidth intensive mobile marketing tactic proving useful on a daily basis by many leading retailers that others would be wise to follow.  Having this data asset as a basis for creating a deeper understanding of mobile customers that underpins an insight-based approach to creating sales via more timely and relevant messaging is emerging as a retail marketing best practice.

Regards,

The Interactive Mediums Team.

In the past, web form support varied greatly from campaign type to campaign type. In addition, there was limited support for customizing how those forms looked, and how they behaved. The newly revamped web forms fix that by providing a consistent experience across campaign types and by giving you complete control over how the forms look and behave.

Introducing Web Form Themes

The new web form functionality introduces the concept of a web form “theme”. A theme contains an HTML template, as well as images, css files, and other resources that define how the web forms look. You have the ability to create, customize, and upload a theme that looks just the way you want. Web form themes can be uploaded and modified by navigating to Tools -> Web Form Themes.

Once a theme has been uploaded, it can be used by any of your campaigns. At the moment only Voting, Sweepstakes, and Subscription List campaigns are supported. But, we plan on rolling out web form support to the other campaign types very soon.

Default Themes

The platform provides a default theme that you can use to get your web form up and running quickly. The default theme is optimized to look great on a desktop web browser AND a mobile browser (on a smart phone). If you just want to get up and running quickly, and don’t need the ability to fully customize the look of your web form, then the default theme is a great choice.

Creating Your Own Themes

If you need more control over how your web forms look, then creating your own theme is the way to go. Web form themes are like any other web page. They consist of HTML, CSS, images, etc, and can be created and modified using the web authoring tools of your choice. However, the platform does enforce a few rules. First, your theme must include a file named template.html. This file serves as the template for all of the web forms using this theme. Second, the template must include a few placeholders that tell the platform where to insert the campaign’s header text, footer text, captcha, data collection, and campaigns specific content. Third, all images, css files, and other web resources must be located in a directory named resources. More information on these requirements can be found here.

Creating a new web form theme from scratch can be a little intimidating. So, the platform allows you to download any of the existing themes as a zip file, giving you a great starting point for creating your own theme. Simply download an existing theme, and start customizing it to suit your needs. When you’re finished, simply zip up the files, and upload them as a new theme.

Creating a Web Form For Your Campaign

To create a web form for your campaign, click on the Web Form option on the side when viewing the details for that campaign.

If a web form doesn’t already exist for that campaign, you will be prompted to create one. Creating a new web form is as simple as giving it a description, and selecting the Web Form Theme that it will use. After clicking Create, your web form will be live if your campaign is active.

After the web form has been created, you can customize it to fit your needs. Several configuration options are available, including the ability to use a custom domain (vanity domain), a custom URL, captcha, data collection, custom messaging per campaign, redirect to a specific website after submitting the form, prompt user to subscribe to a subscription list, and more. All configuration options are described in detail here.

More Information at the Resource Center

You can read more about the new web forms at our Resource Center. As always, please don’t hesitate to email us if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.

This article attempts to clarify the landscape for marketers by identifying a specific, best of breed provider such as Interactive Mediums, who specializes in mobile channel interactions.  Many long established companies lacking experience or focus in mobile are entering the fray with the might of their sales organizations and marketing dollars.  Marketers should not be distracted from identifying providers with the credibility and track record to ensure mobile marketing success.

Although, paper coupons, FSI’s, e-mailed & web-printed coupons represent the vast majority of coupons used, the transition to mobile is starting to unfold quickly. Currently CPG brands as well as retailers are deploying various types of mobile couponing programs to help fight the private label threat.

We have heard many reports of technologies being deployed that vary from a numeric code delivered via SMS text message through actual digitized bar codes that render on a mobile device for scanning at the point of sale.

Unfortunately these types of mobile coupons are often very laborious, and take too much time in the checkout lane. Delivering coupons via mobile or handheld device should represent a timesaving convenience for consumers, not add more steps to the money saving process.

The purpose of mobile couponing is indeed designed to eliminate the need for clipping and sorting, and help retailers & brands cuts costs on coupons that frequently head straight to the trash bin.

What we see at A&P and a few test market Krogers is different. It is a mobile couponing program that links directly to your loyalty card/account at the retailer.

This means all of those text codes, & screen capture bar codes can be eliminated. A customer can opt-in to receive SMS coupons on their mobile device, or browse a selection via application or mobile web, and when they find one they like, they just click save & it’s automatically saved to their loyalty card. Now when they are in Target this weekend they will get the deal on toilet paper just by scanning their card.

In this scenario, the consumer has received their savings in convenience, the retailer/CPG brand have sold a product through a targeted price-reduction approach, and cut the cost of one paper coupon in the process. Everybody wins.

This is exciting and the analytics & tracking capabilities will definitely make marketers happy. Only time will tell if this will emerge as the best shared practice, and how quickly this could be adopted industry wide.

With marketers more accountable that ever, many are drawn to the built-in measurability of mobile channel interactions – as illustrated in this recent post where we outline mobile metrics tracked by our Engagement Platform.  We state these in terms all marketers identify with because they are at the foundation of marketing measurement:

• Stickiness – A measure of retention
• Acquisition – Permission indicator
• Loyalty – Propensity to engage
• Response Intensity – Relative measure of engagement
• Reach – Indicator of scale
• Engagement Mix – Relative engagement contribution

Viewing mobile metrics in this way helps marketers relate the mobile channel to stakeholders in other aspects of business who don’t want (or need) to understand intricacies around opt in/opt out rules, keyword campaign segmentation or the differences between Mobile Terminated (MT) and Mobile Originated (MO) messages.  The Forrester Report includes a diagram — included in this post – into which these mobile metrics fit quite clearly.

Mobile marketing can be about text messaging or smartphone applications, but for mobile to take hold as a strategic component of business, marketers need to work diligently to relate channel-centric concepts to mainstream marketing metrics to communicate value.

regards,

the Interactive Mediums Team.

“…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.”

Metric: Stickiness
Within the context of SMS text message mobile marketing, stickiness refers to the ability of a campaign to hold onto its opt in subscribers, such that customers may be targeted repeatedly over time.  The utility of a call to action has a great deal of influence over how many customers elect to opt out of your list.  Marketers want to see the trend in this analysis track positively over time as an indicator of stickiness.

Metric: Acquisition
Marketers need to view as a significant “win” the permission provided by customers to engage in text message interactions.  At-a-glance, marketers can instantly view the magnitude and trending for acquiring subscribers, by campaign.

Metric: Loyalty
Although referred to as “Retention,” this measure offers insight into the “mobile loyalty” of your customers.  Opting into communications is different from subscribing to receive messages proactively.  This view offers insight into the relative number of customers who have opted in that also elected to subscribe to a campaign.  Marketers can interpret this as an indicator of consumer receptiveness to mobile engagement, much as loyal customers engage in repeat purchase behavior.

Metric: Response Intensity
The ratio of messages a marketer sends versus those responded to by customers can be used to evaluate calls to action as contributing to mobile engagement.  MT, or Mobile Terminated messages, are those sent by the marketer.  MO, or Mobile Originated messages, are those sent by customers.  The greater the number of MOs for a given MT indicates superior engagement for a campaign.  Viewing MOs in isolation quickly across all Engagement Actions provides instant insight into the campaigns working best to pull customers into mobile interactions.

Metric: Reach
The value of SMS text message marketing is often described as offering universal access to consumers.  This is realized by analyzing the number of subscribers to a particular campaign, which is shown by keyword.  Keywords are how marketers connect their customers with mobile interactions and so viewing the aggregate number of subscribers per keyword illustrates the reach afforded by a campaign and its call to action.

Metric: Engagement Mix
Increasingly, mobile interactions are becoming “multi-mobile” in nature, inclusive of both SMS text messaging and the web (both mobile and desktop).  It is therefore crucial for marketers to have a single view into the interplay among these channels as part of mobile campaigns.  This analysis provides insight into the mix of distinct interactions stemming from text and web, which illustrates customer engagement channel preferences.

Competing for customer loyalty strictly on price is a losing proposition unless you’re Walmart, who pairs with price the equally powerful message of value.  Both rule the day in a down economic climate:

“Our 2008 index showed that loyalty marketers worked within a significantly diffe5rent retail landscape,” Colloquy partner Kelly Hlavinka said in a release accompanying the latest research. “Customer service, store environment and a wide product selection were the underlying factors for customers’ self-professed loyalty [in the 2008 study.] But our 2010 index proves that the Great Recession became the great equalizer. Low prices have stepped up to become retail’s strongest loyalty lure, according to consumers.”

One of four recommended actions retailers should take is an especially strong fit with mobile engagement strategies such as text message promotions:

“Be data-driven, using loyalty programs to collect information that can make your communications, pricing and inventory more relevant to your best customers. Hlavinka points to the examples of Kroger and CVS as two brands using customer data effectively to win the loyalty contests in their categories and regions this year.”

With price the leading decision factor around loyalty, mobile comparison shopping enabled consumers need incentives to visit and remain in-store long enough to discourage leaving for a better deal elsewhere.  We’ve blogged recently about ways marketers can meet this challenge using mobile: 

• Marketers’ Priorities All Screwed Up with Respect to Loyalty
• Marketers Striving for Loyalty Should Make Mobile Engagement the Target
• Brand Marketers Break through the Engagement Barrier with Mobile Promotions

You can also download a paper on a similar subject.

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.

Dunkin Donuts’ Twitter efforts:

“…include tracking customers that sign up for the company’s rewards programs and sweepstakes offers via Twitter, and assigning a dollar value to those customers that can then be tied to an actual ROI.”

The ease by which this is possible using solutions such as Interactive Mediums’ Customer Engagement Platform across SMS text messaging and the web makes these practices an essential component of any social media strategy.  As shown in the attached recent “Tweet” from the Dunkin Donuts Twitter page, broadcasting a contest to followers which incents them to purchase can also be used to collect valuable information about followers otherwise unavailable to marketers.  The opportunity for engagement encompasses both action (purchase) and knowledge (follower demographics).

In case you doubt the mobile nature of Twitter users or the value of understanding the audience, consider research into the Twitter user base:

“Since Twitter is pushed as a service that can (and should) be used from mobile phones, it also comes as no surprise that Twitter users are more likely (by fairly significant margins) to use their cell phones to go online and send text messages than the overall online population. In fact, Twitter users tend to use and consume all sorts of media more than the rest of the population; they’re more likely to read a newspaper on a smartphone, regular cell phone, and even online than everyone else, while “regular” Internet users are more likely to read a print newspaper. Twitter users are more engaged in blogging and reading other people’s blogs as well.”

Research into Twitter users from mulitple sources is consolidated in a post here, where it’s noted that: “Twitter are notoriously guarded about user information and Twitter usage statistics,” placing the onus on social media pros to develop creative ways of understanding their fans.

One sign in every store pointing consumers to text their comments to a shortcode could act as a highly effective and efficient feedback collector – especially when paired with entry into a loyalty program.  Response rates for text message programs have commonly been reported as high as 30 percent.

According to the article Wendy’s staff will be able to:

“…analyze nearly half a million text-based customer comments per year collected from Wendy’s Web-based feedback form, call center notes, e-mail messages, receipt-based surveys, and social media sources. The chain’s customer satisfaction team currently uses the combination of spreadsheets and keyword searching to review comments in a slow, manual approach.”

Notably absent that list of collection points is text messaging.  Not only are barriers like 160 character limits broken with multi-question survey capabilities such as those offered by the Interactive Mediums Customer Engagement Platform, but data can be collected via web form and feed the same database as well.

Quick serve restaurants of all stripes should leverage once obscure analytic technologies like text mining, and would be wise to tap into the immediacy of text messaging as a key data source.

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.

Today on MarketingForecast.com a posting titled “Businesses and Brands Allocating More Funds to Mobile” cites recent research into mobile marketing budgets for different categories of business:

• Agencies – “…the average client allocated $143,000 in mobile ad spending in 2009 and expected it would increase that amount to $260,000 in 2010.”
• Brands (or more generally, businesses other than agencies or publishers) – “Companies that are already using mobile to promote their brands expect to more than double their spending. Average spending will increase from $269,000 in 2009 to $679,744 in 2010.”
• Publishers – “Mobile publishers receive nearly half (49%) of revenue from ad money. These publishers sell their mobile space as a separate property nearly 2 out of 3 times. However, up to 2/3’s of mobile publishers also bundle the space with ‘other media sales’.  This ad space is growing but, to date, “only 25 percent of mobile publishers sell out more than half their inventory.” Participating in ad networks is a popular way for publishers to bring in revenue. Nearly 6 in 10 (58.2%) are in a mobile ad network and  publishers count on 60% of ad revenue from this source.”

These number reflect businesses already engaged in mobile marketing.  Many clients we speak with are taking their initial steps and may identify more with others new to the medium.  The post contains useful data around budget for those getting started as well:

“Up to 20% of newcomers plan to allocate at least 10% of 2010 marketing spending to the mobile effort.  In addition, nearly 1 out of 3 businesses say the funding for the new mobile efforts will be incremental.”

As noted, mapping out a strategy is crucial to determining how best to allocate marketing dollars.  Moreover, when considering mobile marketing investments, be sure to understand the distinction  between advertising networks and customer engagement, as noted here.

The numbers are astonishing.

Currently, China has over 700 MM mobile subscribers, India has approximately 525 MM, Brazil has 174 MM, and Russia has just over 170MM. That’s over 1.5 Billion mobile handsets, which is roughly 5 times the amount in the United States.

On top of that The Mobile Outlook 2010‘s statistics indicate that 38.4 percent of mobile users in China are receptive to mobile advertising and marketing, while 37 percent of urban mobile users in India have already been solicited with marketing messages involving ringtone downloads, wallpapers and games!

It’s been said that Gen-Y Chinese will play a huge role, as they are more adventurous and impressionable than any other generation, and they have an increased interest in interacting with brands & being treated like Western consumer.

As fully-covered high-speed access, and improved processing-power phones hits these consumers, they will likely begin interacting with brands at a volume never seen before.

However this will take time.

The big factor here in how fast this explodes will be the rate at which consumers gain 3G power allowing easy mobile Internet access.

While the United States plentiful options have lead to 64% of mobile users to get a internet enabled phone, who knows what percentage will be achieved in BRIC countries over the next 10 years or so.

But for now, while America is moving on to more advanced functionality, mobile campaigns in these countries will primarily continue as SMS and MMS based messaging due to the low penetration of web-enabled phones.  China’s majority of mobile phone users are still using non-3G devices and networks, & India is still waiting on a 3G rollout, which is holding back more engaging marketing tactics.

What that means is an incredibly large demand for SMS and MMS opt-in marketing.

While these slower handsets, & poor coverage are setting some obstacles for users and marketers, many companies are investing in BRIC countries and preparing for an incredible new pool of could-be customers. Is the delayed advancement of web-enabled phones really a road bump or an opportunity, and where will you focus your efforts?

For tips checkout our Whitepaper: Mapping Mobile to Your Marketing Strategy

It’s becoming cliche to say couponing is a killer application of mobile marketing techniques, due to the ubiquity of text message enabled phones and the ease by which numeric or alphanumeric codes tied to discounts for various products can be generated.  Often overlooked, however, is the fact that by its nature, mobile is a very location centric medium that forces marketers to think about geographic considerations when developing programs.  After all LBS, or location based services, is becoming a term understood by nearly all those involved in the mobile ecosystem, and collecting zip code via text message interaction is becoming a standard procedure for many.  Email marketing, on the other hand, doesn’t really create the same impression.

In the case of Kmart, an email coupon offer designed for certain markets was instead presented as valid at any Kmart location.  The result was confusion and disappointment at the point of sale, with store staff placed in the awkward position of assuming fraud in some cases:

“Cashiers and managers in stores where the coupon was not valid refused to accept the coupons and, in some instances, went so far as to accuse customers of trying to cheat the retailer.”

Had these coupons been electronic rather than paper, store employees may have been less inclined to presume fraud, the accusation of which is more harmful to customer relationships than simply saying “sorry, but that coupon just isn’t valid in our store.”  Add in the speed by which unhappy customers can communicate this experience via Twitter and Facebook, and it’s a public relations disaster.

As described here in a recent MobileMarketer.com article, another leading retailer, Sears, has mitigated coupon risk by tying coupon offers to specific customers and particular stores:

“Sears has consistently used SMS to drive cross channel store traffic, with customer specific coupon offers delivered via SMS and redeemable at physical point of sale in stores.”

Social media integration is also on email marketers’ radar:

“Social connections are also becoming bidirectional: Marketers are not only encouraging users to follow or fan their brand within e-mail messages but they are also including e-mail marketing links within their social media presence. Close integration between the two channels means more opportunities for consumers to interact with brands they way they choose.”

There is little about email that is truly bidirectional, unlike SMS text message marketing programs such as sweepstakes, contests, polls and surveys where strong calls to action pull consumers into interactive and engaging dialogues.

Moreover, offerings such as Interactive Mediums’ Customer Engagement Platform already possess many advanced techniques which maximize the value of every interaction marketers have with their customers, including email, mobile web and social media integration – to say nothing of advanced segmentation, personalization and message triggering capabilities.

Email marketers seeking to employ advanced marketing techniques should broaden their horizons and recognize a new breed of provider is emerging – one that is not explicitly focused on email but rather customer engagement inclusive of all the ways businesses can interact with their customers while on the go.

Obfuscated Syndication URLs

We switched our syndication URLs to a format that is not easy to guess. To ease the transition, we are redirecting the old URLs to the new format until next Thursday. Please update any bookmarks or hardcoded links you may have to the new format.

Improved Timeline

We upgraded the format of the chat timeline to better display chat messages. Here’s a screenshot of the chat display. We will be rolling out a new feature that takes advantage of this display style within the next few weeks.

Admin Rights

Finally, we made some actions require an administrator. Administrators will now only be able to reset the timeline, ban/unban a user, and delete a single message. Administrators can adjust user roles in the My Account section of the application.

For retailers in particular, it’s important to separate engagement from advertising; the former is interactive by definition, the latter more static/one way communication, even when targeting a particular demographic.

With respect to mobile ad acceptance by consumers, the research found:

“…we saw consumers were most interested in receiving grocery coupons (36 percent), scanable barcodes (29 percent), offers to save and pursue at leisure (26 percent), movie theater offers (26 percent), and ads via SMS when going by a retailer with a promotion / coupon (21 percent).”

The means by which these “advertisements” are delivered to mobile consumers is typically via SMS text message interactions initiated as part of customer engagement strategies.  Engagement itself is the real opportunity presented by mobile channel marketing, which the research also highlights as shown in the chart included earlier in this post.  The research dovetails with a diagram we have been using (at right) to illustrate the personal nature of the mobile channel relative to other advertising and marketing methods that also present fewer opportunities for engagement.

Be it coupons or special offers, these calls to action should be viewed not as advertisements, but rather part of engagement strategies targeting consumers receptive and available to receive them in ways not possible in other media.

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.

As you can see in the accompanying chart, others in the list – from ROI to customer satisfaction – are attributes of marketing’s charter.  This supports what we have written about many times before – that mobile marketing applied strategically can underpin, power and drive results for a variety of initiatives.  With ROI the topmost concern, the measurability of mobile marketing programs surely contributes to its prominence in the list, even above social media.

Since every business is unique we find it helpful to perform a simple exercise designed to highlight the most immediate way mobile can create the highest value, as quickly as possible.  You can read about it here.

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.

From SMS text messaging, to mobile application to a mobile website, Wet Seal has implemented a program which stitches these mobile marketing tactics together in such a way to engage their customer base and drive sales.  SMS has outperformed email in direct marketing tests by the retailer, who uses text primarily to engage customers with in store contests and promotions geared toward learning more about them and drive other mobile interactions.  A mobile website simplified relative to the full online version and optimized to facilitate purchases as well as an “outfit” configurator smartphone application round out the current approach.  Planned projects include mobile purchases paired with in-store pickup scheduling, mobile gift cards and social media integration.

Key lessons others can learn from cited include:

“First, get started early to benefit from early interactions and then fine-tune strategy and tactics.

Second, customers like to choose the way they want to shop. So offer them as many options as possible.

Third, extend the mobile experiences across channels – online and in-store – and optimize. Mobile is often the bridge between other channels.

Fourth, focus on core competency and technology to create excitement within the target customer base.

Finally, integrate customer feedback.”

Wet Seal is among the most progressive users of mobile marketing and their aggressive approach may intimidate those less experienced.  Paired with the urgency to begin competing for consumer mobile mindshare, and you have a recipe for stress.  Interactive Mediums’ platform and professional services are geared around helping customers move rapidly into mobile in a “right sized” fashion and grow over time.  Mapping your business and marketing strategy to the mobile channel is a good first step.

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.

Please note that the Mobile Marketing Association requires you to first obtain your customer’s permission before marketing them via SMS. There are several ways this can be accomplished. Please contact us for more information.

To get started, you first need to tell TextMe about the data you wish to store about your customers. You can check out this blog post to see how this can be accomplished.

Once your user data has been defined, you can start uploading your existing customer data into TextMe. There are two ways to do this.

The first is by selecting the Upload Contacts option under the Contacts tab. Upload contacts will upload your customer data into TextMe without associating your customers with any subscription list. Hence, it can be done without first obtaining permission from your customers to contact them via SMS.

After uploading your data file, which can be a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, an Open Office spreadsheet, or a comma separated values (CSV) file, you will be brought to a screen where you can map the data in your data file to the attributes that you have defined in TextMe. If there is a column in the data file containing data you do not wish to upload, simply click the Ignore this column check box for that attribute.

After verifying the data mapping, TextMe will begin processing your data file in the background. An email will be sent to you when the upload is complete.

The second way to upload existing customer data into TextMe is by selecting an existing subscription campaign, clicking Subscribers, and choosing Upload Subscribers from the list of options. Upload subscribers will upload your customer data into TextMe as well as add them to the list of subscribers for this particular subscription campaign. If you have not already obtained their permission, TextMe will send an opt-in message to your customers asking if they would like to opt-in to your subscription list. If you have already obtained their permission, let us know, and we can help you get setup without sending the opt-in message.

The best part about uploading subscribers with the information that you have already collected about them is that you can immediately start segmenting your customers into groups and targeting groups of subscribers with custom messages.

We hope you find this capability useful. As always, let us know what else we can do to help!

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.

In her new role as Account Executive, Amanda Gilmore will be responsible for our inside sales operation where she will identify sales opportunities, conduct proactive outreach and handle in bound demand requests, and ultimately work with prospective customers to help them understand how mobile marketing solves business problems.  Amanda brings an extensive background in business development for high tech organizations as well as a wealth of experience working with direct clients and channels such as agencies.
 
Before joining the Interactive Mediums team, Amanda was a Business Development Manager for The SAVO Group.  Prior to that, she served as Media Sales Associate for VisualCast Media where she presented and sold outdoor advertising outlets in Chicago to national advertisers.  Amanda graduated from Loras College in Dubuque, IA with a Bachelors of Arts in Communications.

Also joining us today is Julian Rockwood, who as Account Manager assumes responsibility for the day to day tasks associated with ensuring our clients are satisfied and realizing the value of mobile marketing.  He came to Chicago this past July from the rust belt city of Toledo, Ohio, where he served as an account manager with a marketing strategy firm specializing in package design and building materials channel strategy.

Julian brings competencies in account management, marketing strategy, social media, analytics, and B-to-C thought process, and is very excited to bring his experience and enthusiasm to helping customers make the most of their mobile marketing efforts.  His hobbies include soccer, sound design, and running along Lake Michigan.

An internet radio network has supposedly created an advertising product allowing marketers to target listeners with audio commercials in line with station content, according to geography, demographics and device.  Radio advertising tends to be a mass market medium, so this appears to offer marketers the chance to target different audio messages to various listener segments.

Keep in mind, however, that the opportunity for marketers is limited to whatever content the network provides.  The use of mobile devices for audio in general is on the decline and audio messages lack the direct response element of a text message that incorporates a live link to a mobile website or application.

Radio stations have the opportunity to offer a platform for one to one marketing on a completely different scale via text messaging, as outlined in this recent Interactive Mediums paper titled, “Transforming Listeners into Dollars.”  Radio stations can use text message interactions as a means of building out profiles of their audience to offer highly segmented ad units which can drive more revenue.

With respect to the mobile channel, radio stations and their advertisers alike need to separate the notions of offering the usual audio commercial on a device from targeting relevant offers and calls to action via text messaging.  No matter how targeted audio ads become, they cannot facilitate the capture of audience demographics and lack the direct response component of text messaging.

• Identity a project that aligns especially well with mobile marketing techniques such as SMS text message promotions.
• Help define success metrics to gauge the program’s success.
• Show just how easy our Customer Engagement Platform makes it to configure and execute effective mobile interactions.

To learn more before the official launch of Zero to Engagement, contact us at info@interactivemediums.com.

These expectations include richer, more interactive ad formats necessary for when the “novelty” factor contributing to high response rates for simple text links wears off.

“…mobile will only convince marketers to make serious commitments if it moves beyond the focus on scale with standardized, run-of-the-mill units.  The risk is mobile will follow the same path as the PC Internet and become dominated by direct marketers rather than advertisers used to creating demand via TV ads.”

That statement stands out among all in the article as pointing to a reality advertising professionals should adjust to sooner than later to ensure a seat at the mobile marketing table.  And that is mobile already is an extension of the PC internet, especially on smartphones, and is perhaps the ultimate direct response platform ever conceived given immediate, “on the go” integration with location based services and the mobile web.

Even if, and when, ad units become more standardized, traditional views of interactive advertising will struggle in the face of strategies geared toward calling consumers to action in-line with their behavior.  Today and for the foreseeable future, that has less to do slickly produced, screen hogging visuals and more with relevant messaging integrated wisely with other mobile channels.

Each of these options today represents a compromise over traditional printed coupons that most point of sale systems recognize.  Coupon codes requiring manual entry lengthen checkout time and can be error prone while mobile device displays cannot always render codes compatible with POS scanners.

Despite these limitations, retailers are pressing forward to take advantage of the value presented by location-based marketing.  Yet to really unleash the value of mobile couponing, it must be ubiquitous and require a minimal change to retailer operational processes in order to be cost effective.  That’s the thought which came to mind when I read a February 19, 2010 item at DMNews.com, titled “Provision Interactive Technologies teams with Ping Mobile for in-store mobile campaigns.”

The article describes a new offering as follows:

“Marketers can create an out-of-home/mobile campaign in a mall, airport, stadium or other public venue, and consumers can respond to the call to action on the signage by texting in. Coupons, tickets, vouchers and other printed items then become available from Provision’s 3D Media Centers, which consumers can print the coupons at the kiosks and redeem.”

Rather than focus redemption around legacy POS systems, this approach represents a value added intermediary that could be positioned in retail environments in a standalone fashion – the quantity of stations limited only by space and budget.  The solution is described as optimal for “malls, airports and other public locations,” but should have equal or greater value when resident in a single retail environment — especially for large retailers with hundreds or thousands of locations unable to upgrade all POS systems en masse.

This solution also alleviates the need to worry about technology and compatibility issues, and focus instead on creative ways of engaging customers with the most relevant offers.  Interactive Mediums’ Customer Engagement Platform features a variety of pre-packaged engagement actions designed just for this purpose.

The article outlines how Visa used 2D bar code technology as part of a sweepstakes promotion conducted at the recent Mobile World Congress in Spain.  You can read the specifics but as we mentioned recently here and here, 2D bar codes tend to find the greatest success in highly localized and controlled environments where there is some certainty around consumer handsets capable of reading the codes.

What Neustar wishes to do is offer a “clearinghouse” service so marketers can employ 2D codes without restricting their potential audience.  They plan to do this by standardizing previously incompatible codes across devices and operating systems.  It sounds like a lot of work to enable consumers a “short cut” to redeem information on their mobile devices.

2D bar codes appeal to our visual nature and longtime experience with traditional bar codes such as those scanned at the grocery store.  These codes imply ease of use, as well as data — lots of data about who purchased what product and when.

Marketers considering building sweepstakes or other promotions around 2D bar codes like Visa should consider the ease by which consumers today text a keyword to a shortcode to redeem information or be pointed to a mobile website – the exact same use case as with a 2D bar code.  Not only are you assured universal reach but even more data about the consumer can be obtained since a text interaction is bi-directional and can include a question and answer component in real time.

Marketers should focus less on the technology employed to engage their customers, and more on creating a compelling message or incentive which calls their customers to action — and then evaluate options for packaging and delivering the offer.  Right now marketers appear blinded by the “sexiness” of 2D bar codes, and Neustar is betting a new line of business on it.

Those benefits include ease of interaction; simply point your camera-equipped device at a code to have information immediately presented and/or be pointed to a website.  In localized programs outside the U.S. 2D bar codes have proven successful.  However, as pointed out in this very good post, standardization among devices and software (or more accurately, a lack of it) is a gating factor to widespread accessibility by consumers in the U.S.

“…2D barcodes…are pretty cool solutions for specific applications, such as mobile airline boarding passes or advanced inventory management, but not exactly the best of what’s out there for mobile consumer marketing in today’s rapidly changing world of mobile media and brand interaction.  The name of the game is to get as many high-quality customer interactions and conversation engagements as possible with your targeted demographic.  Severely limiting the potential response pool by applying restrictions will simply decrease the success of the campaign.”

Articles like this on ChiefMarketer.com present a different picture that marketers would be wise to balance against the facts on the ground.

The universal nature of SMS text messaging has created an impression that mobile marketing can access anyone, anytime and anywhere but until technologies like 2D bar codes and augmented reality are as “standardized” as SMS, text messaging will remain the defacto method of reaching as many of your target demographic as possible.

In the meantime, hybrid services requiring a consumer to snap a photo and send it via MMS are emerging that ultimately lack the instant gratification of real 2D codes and the universal nature of SMS.  Marketers be warned.

With competition for mobile consumer mindshare reaching a fever pitch, marketers will increasingly face an engagement barrier, even around SMS text message programs.  To break through and achieve their objectives, marketers should evaluate offerings such as Interactive Mediums’ multi-channel mobile customer engagement platform.

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.

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

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

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

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

“…a pilot SMS reminder solution…ended with unprecedented results – saving Kaiser nearly $150 per appointment and over $275,000 at a single clinic.”

Efficiencies and costs savings were at the heart of the value in this example, which is apparently driving consumer acceptance of text message alerts – the post’s title is after all, “Survey: Consumers Want SMS Alerts.”  The study was conducted in the U.K., but you can expect similar attitudes prevail in the U.S.

While these numbers are impressive, I would argue that marketers need to keep their eyes on the top line/revenue growth “yin” to the cost savings/efficiencies “yang” offered by text messaging.  That’s the theme behind the diagram included in line with this post.

As marketers in any segment – healthcare or otherwise – approach the mobile channel, they have a variety of options for getting started, as we have previously discussed around mapping strategy to the mobile channel.

Many organizations will approach text messaging from a non-marketing perspective, which can yield impressive cost savings and efficiencies among an entire customer base – which tends to be dominated by customers served at a loss or break-even.  Thus the utility of text messaging as a cost saver.

Those companies that leverage mobile marketing techniques in a parallel fashion to target the revenue side of business should experience even greater results by increasing the pool of highest value customers – the 20 or so percent which generate the greatest value, be it profits or revenue.  The key to unlocking that added value is employing mobile engagement techniques such as promotions and others that call consumers to action.