Posts Tagged "iPhone Applications"

With mobile application investments set to escalate this year, along with an already huge diversity of apps available for the iPhone, promotion and marketing will take center stage in ensuring these investments pay off.  That’s the implication of this article today on eMarketer.com, titled “Mobile to fare better than social.”

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

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

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

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

Today I spoke with Donna Longino of UPS about her company’s recently announced Blackberry smartphone application.  A leading delivery service such as UPS is a logical fit for mobile technologies, especially for drivers needing to stay connected while “on the go.”

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

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

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

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

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

Developing a mobile marketing strategy almost always begins by asking some key questions about your business objectives and customers.  A recently released paper from a mobile app development firm titled, “Beyond the iPhone: Engaging Customers with Mobile Applications” is worth a look for anyone at the onset of considering mobile marketing investments.

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

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

The paper mentions the following:

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

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

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

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

With so much media attention paid to successful mobile applications, especially for the iPhone, it’s refreshing to read about less fortunate examples and how others might learn from their shortcomings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mass marketing is passé, right?  That has long been the trend, as more companies experienced greater success focusing instead on one to one marketing.  Isn’t mobile the most personal of communication channels and therefore the ultimate expression of customer centric marketing?

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

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

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

(Note, at the conclusion of this post is some additional context provided after this initially appeared)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In light of this news today on MobileMarketer.com, it was serendipitous that this morning I also received images from Reuters’ display in New York City’s Times Square of our recent announcement of creating an iPhone application for Newser.

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the past decade pundits and casual observers alike have been asked the question: “is this the year of mobile?”  Or stated more clearly, “will mobile as a business, commerce and marketing channel become a really big industry this year?”  Based on the rapid adoption of Google’s Android platform by device makers and carriers alike, 2010 may be the start of a significantly new phase of the mobile marketplace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Offering greater reach than any one Smartphone and providing more content than an SMS text message interaction can ever hope to, the mobile web is an appealing component of the mobile customer experience.  Success on the mobile web is a function of developing sites for its unique form factor as well as considering how targeted customers will consume the content – often in tandem with text messaging, as in linking from the message to a browser, or in similar fashion between an application and web-accessed data.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today MobileMarketer.com covered the news of our recent work building an iPhone version of Newser, an online news resource featuring a rich visual presentation.  The company had previously launched versions for the mobile web but these failed to replicate the desktop user experience so loved by their readers.

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

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

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

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