Before reading about something like that I expected to see Acxiom instead enter the mobile marketing fray like its cousin in the marketing services market, Experian.  So it was not surprising to see this headline today: “Acxiom, Partnership Infuses Consumer Intelligence in Mobile Channel.”  What was surprising is that the company is partnering with a third party to provide mobile marketing capabilities to its clients as opposed to developing something itself.  Moreover, Acxiom is partnering with the exact same firm as Experian to provide the service.  Sadly for their clients, even the benefit is the same, down to the quote in the announcement: mobile as an enabler of effective “customer life cycle management (CLM).”

That bit of déjà vu was not in the announcement, no doubt because Experian and Acxiom often compete for business.  While the news highlights the importance of the mobile channel to large, established marketing services companies, it also shows they don’t exactly know what to do with mobile (other than tack it onto their services as a means of ensuring their clients don’t look elsewhere).

Marketers who use these companies for services need not be locked into using a commodity third party for mobile messaging.  The beauty of many offerings in the marketplace are their openness and ease of integration with third party data sources to help segment mobile customers and inform more relevant dialogues.  Firms like Interactive Mediums also offer services encompassing the entire mobile customer experience, which is fundamentally the focus of marketers looking to achieve real business results at the point of device.

I call out email specifically because of a few different things I’ve read over the past week which suggest certain marketing tactics make it too easy to be ineffective – or less relevant to consumer needs.

Although mobile email use is growing, email as an interactive channel by itself has hurdles to overcome in my view which hurts its ability to serve a marketer’s objectives.  Today, for example, on eMarketer.com an article titled, “Relevance Remains a Challenge for E-Mail Marketers” cites statistics which suggest email for many consumers is very much like traditional snail mail – for the bills:

“Promotional e-mails were the most common thing for respondents to find in their inbox, with 60% saying they received such e-mails most. E-newsletters were the next-most-common type of messages.

But it was the least common messages that were most likely to be opened—monthly bills and bank statements. Only about four in 10 recipients said they “always” opened promotional offers or newsletters.”

It’s the consequence of this mismatch between consumer preference and marketer practice that marketers need to be wary of:

“Web users also complained of receiving too many to manage and getting tired of all the clutter.  In many cases that clutter can have consequences for marketers: 22% of respondents have decided not to purchase from a company because of irrelevant promotions, either via e-mail or direct mail.  A further 41% said they would consider doing the same.”

Another article, a November 20, 2009 item titled, “Yesmail talks strategy behind mobile email, SMS features” quotes the email marketing firm’s leaders regarding their move to offer mobile marketing services to its clients:

“Yesmail is already starting to early stages of mobile marketing evolving from an acquisition channel to a retention channel.  We expect to see SMS campaigns being created with the same level of sophistication as many email marketing campaigns – both in terms of segmentation and in terms of staged triggering over the next two years.”

In fact, some mobile marketing providers are already offering the ability to create triggered campaigns based on customer segments – no need to wait two years.  It’s illustrative of an undercurrent of FUD (fear/uncertainty/doubt) from email marketing services companies scrambling to extend their offerings into mobile in order to hang on to their customers, many of whom increasingly view email as a commodity.  Wise marketers should recognize the difference and not get fixated on mobile as an add on to an email campaign.

When it comes time to creating a relevant message flow, offer or call to action, it’s logical to segment your customers into groupings which lend themselves to the task.  This was the topic of a great October 22 article on ChiefMarketer.com titled, “Lock and Load: The Basics of Triggered E-mail Campaigns.”  The article is all about email as a means of crafting an interactive dialogue with customers to achieve business goals – a task that email may be ill suited to given the recent statistics cited in this post.  It concludes with a quote that marketers should take to heart, but with a view toward mobile as the means – not email:

“The beauty of event-based triggered messaging is that you can make it extremely relevant to the person receiving the e-mail.”

Problem is, email may not be the right approach to delivering those messages.

In practice, SMS can power highly effective customer relationship and development strategies.  The key is working with firms which have developed technology around SMS that masks the complexity of initiating mobile interactions (or Dialogues).  Firms that address this properly will:

• Advise you that mobile marketing best practices, as prescribed by the Mobile Marketing Association, dictate your initial foray into mobile requires creation of a new class of customers – your mobile subscribers.  It is not sufficient to possess or buy customer or prospect mobile phone numbers without also having their expressed consent to communicate with them via text messaging.  Marketers are free to do so but at their own peril, as mobile device users have come to expect this opt in step and are likely to punish those who do not.

• What this means is that you must create a mobile marketing strategy in line with your overall customer retention and acquisition plans.  Engagement with the mobile audience requires thoughtful, relevant and ongoing communications so that your business, product or brand remains top of mind.   Without such a programmatic approach, you risk wasting the effort.  Thoughtful providers may prescribe a trial to determine what works/does not, but as part of a longer term plan for leveraging mobile strategically.

• This step can take many forms, but some businesses will drive opt in email contacts to a web form where they are incented to opt into mobile communications.  Others may advertise a new loyalty program in traditional media like billboard, signage or print that encourages an opt in text message interaction.  And remember, you can embed pointers to mobile websites or even application downloads in text messages, so you need to think more holistically about what actions you hope to drive based on your objectives.

• To do so requires use of something called a short code, which is simply a short form (more easily entered without errors) phone number that people use to send and receive text message communications.  Good providers will mask the complexity of obtaining short codes, and successful firms already possess multiple “shared” codes which can be used by any business almost immediately.  These numbers are able to be shared by different businesses because text communications are segmented by keyword — the phrase that people send via short code to a text message marketing system.  This is cost and time effective, but many businesses are moving toward obtaining a “dedicated” short code which aligns with their brand, and is then placed everywhere customers engage the business.  Providers should be able to help you obtain these vanity numbers without exposing the details around acquiring them.  Today this process can take up to a couple of months (it is NOT instantaneous like domain name registration), so if mobile is even remotely on your radar for 2010 and branding your short code may be important, securing it now via a knowledgeable provider may make sense.

• With a baseline group of customers and prospects interested in receiving messages, now you have the opportunity to call them to action, based on your marketing objectives.  To do this most intelligently — like you would with any other marketing channel — you want to segment your audience based on what you know about them, but also what you would like to know about them and how you want them to act.

• Providers with flexible solutions allow you to append opt in subscriber data with internal and third party data to create groupings of customers and prospects for targeting with relevant messages – for example, unique offers tiered by expected lifetime value, geographic segments for regional promotions, and many others.

• Good providers will also advise you to take the opportunity to learn more about your prospects and customers within the mobile channel.  Stitching data capture requirements into marketing programs is an effective approach to gaining valuable insights into consumers who are willing to engage in mobile interactions.  It’s like adding a mobile attribute to your existing customer understanding, but it is a multidimensional view inclusive of demographic, attitudinal and transactional data all collected as part of mobile interactions.

• Providers should also alleviate any concerns over limited reach given the diverse carrier networks which provide access to mobile device users.   The good ones work with third parties, or aggregators, that in turn offer turnkey access to virtually all mobile phone users.  There is no need to work with these third parties yourselves; providers should have these integrations pre-built in their offerings.

• Speaking of “offerings,” text message interactions have become highly sophisticated thanks to the creation of “mobile campaign management” platforms.  Like similar technologies used to develop web, email, snail mail, call center, or point of sale marketing programs, these dedicated systems should provide a variety of methods for taking an interaction idea, and rolling it out to the mobile channel.  Better providers make this easy to do, and the majority are offered as a service (Software-as-a-Service) so there is no software or hardware to buy.

Time is winding down on 2009, and all signs point to mobile as a key channel to drive business across many industries in 2010.  Marketing leaders should seize on this new opportunity to help their businesses compete more effectively for scarce consumer dollars by partnering with the right provider.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact, the Mobile Customer Data Asset should improve upon these other data sources and itself be enriched with them to inform more relevant Mobile Dialogues.  Mobile interactions are unique among static or state based ones like email, point of sales transactions, or even the web.  Moreover, mobile is not just a channel, it provides a conduit for other channels to reach on the go consumers via its unique form factor and network access capabilities (such as mobile email or mobile web).  This duality represents an opportunity and challenge for marketers.

Marketing efforts targeting on the go consumers creates a store of insight into behavior within the mobile channel – just like similar approaches for capturing and analyzing interaction data in other channels.  Customer interactions spawn a variety of different types of data, either passively via the system or actively via data submitted by consumers as part of interactions.

The Marketing Sherpa article describes four types of data used to segment customers to develop more effective email communications, not dissimilar to this recent blog post about the questions a Mobile Customer Data Asset might answer.

• Endemic Data – Data about a particular record, or person, obtained at the opt-in step, via web pages/forms following opt-in, from ongoing online interactions, and from third party data.
• Transactional Data – The metadata about an interaction, such as the time or location of opt in.
• Behavioral Data – Data describing the actions taken during an interaction, such as products purchased or pages viewed.
• Computed Data – Exactly as it sounds; data generated based on the prior three, for example ratios, predictive models, and other metrics.

The article describes these types of data being used to segment customers to target them with more relevant email communications.  Customer attributes from a Mobile Data Asset could be appended to inform more targeted emails, and more generally marketing across a variety of channels.  Conversely, a customer database might help inform better decision making around mobile marketing efforts.

The key to making this happen is a literal “key” among databases which uniquely identifies the concept of a customer across different sources.  Because this concept tends to vary by business, it’s important that marketers consider this factor upfront as they begin implementing a mobile marketing strategy.  It’s an oversight many are making today which may cause difficulties later as mobile becomes a more prevalent – and preferred – interaction channel.  For the same reasons a person is not an email address, neither are they a mobile telephone number, as underscored by this quote from the article (by an email marketer):

“We would not bring into our datamart an email address by itself without a birth year or zip code.  Our datamart is based on the individual customer.  Without certain pieces, you’re not person — you’re just an email address.”

That’s a value proposition shared by many software applications offered as a service.  The knock against the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model has been that in the long run, companies are better off buying and implementing software internally – particularly anything which over time may have a greater dependency on or value when connected to internal systems (financial, CRM, etc.).  A recent Forrester report goes a long way toward debunking this viewpoint, which was the subject of this September 30, 2009 article on desinationCRM.com.

When selecting a mobile marketing partner like Interactive Mediums and its TextMe solution, marketers and their peers in IT simply need to balance the business needs driving mobile adoption with the desire to bring a new technology “in house.”  The time to market benefits associated with a SaaS solution balanced with views like those in this research suggest marketers and technology professionals not worry much about the “buy versus outsource decision.”

Some clients prefer to have a dedicated code potentially reflecting their name or a brand attribute when translated from numbers to a word, but obtaining one requires additional time be built into a mobile program.  Power users of these codes have embedded mobile into the very foundation of their brands.

We recently came across a simple and effective example of how one of our clients uses a short code to engage their target customers and learn more about them.  The Lake Forest Graduate School of Management is a Chicago area MBA program designed for working and/or experienced professionals.  They use text message marketing as a call to action in their recruitment efforts, as seen in this photograph of signage located in a commuter elevated train station waiting area.  Some of the lessons to be learned by this program include:

• Targeting: Mobile is a key ingredient in this program but it is not the focal point; rather, the emphasis is on communicating with a target audience by reaching them most effectively.  In this case, locatoins where busy commuters congregate is a great spot to promote an education program intended to help elevate careers.
• Multi-Channel: Signs like this are not high tech but the call to action is, and everyone with a mobile phone is a potential responder.  Texting MBA to this shortcode begins a Mobile Dialogue designed to inform and persuade; responders are greeted with a brief message requesting an email address for learning more about their program.  A mobile device is not often the right medium for reviewing information and this approach recognizes that.  Those opting in again receive a real time email response with more information, including pointers to areas of the school’s website with even greater details.
• Knowledge: Mobile is the perfect medium for reaching the type of customer the school seeks given its emphasis on busy professionals who are always near a potential call to action (billboard, signs on objects like buses or commuter stations, taxi cabs and others).  Mobile also provides the means by which the school can learn more about its target customer to sharpen its recruiting efforts.  Data captured during the course of Mobile Dialogues combined with information about which mediums drive the most qualified interest informs the creation of more relevant messages and a higher return on marketing investments.

Interactive Mediums will of course be among the leaders, as it is today, but these thoughts came to mind when I saw a September 24, 2009 article on the Advertising Age website titled “How Kleiner Perkins’ iFund Can Help Marketers Navigate Mobile Apps.”

The article is about a Silicon Valley investment firm with a $100M fund focused on companies entering the mobile technology market.  So selective are they that among thousands of business ideas, they have only pursued seven to date.

“That’s because while there are a lot of fun, one-off ideas out there, very few have the combination of ingredients to become a long-term platform success, namely multiple revenue streams, the ability to go viral and wide appeal.”

The same point of view should be shared by marketers entering the mobile space.  The article contains a lot of ideas which marketers should consider:

• With regard to mobile applications, few companies sponsor or own applications that are relatable to their brand.  The article speaks to observations in the iPhone App Store.  I blogged recently about Starbucks not sponsoring an Android store finder application or being out in front of the application trend, a situation they recently remedied.  Brands need to look closely at applications which may have a logical connection to their identity as the percentage of Smartphones increases.
• The article also raises an interesting reason for the above situation.  Strong brands may hesitate to enter the fray due to the fact they immediately enter a crowded and hard to navigate arena.  They are unaccustomed to this level of competition for mindshare, which should not prevent brands from dipping their toes into the mobile waters.  There is greater risk associated with standing on the sidelines.

The following quote concludes the article and really drives home points brand and marketers generally need to recognize.  I would add as well that applications are one slice of the Mobile Customer Experience that marketers need to be aware of, with mobile web and text messaging also effective methods used to drive high value Mobile Dialogues with customers.

“It’s a mistake for brands or other companies to not think of mobile totally differently from the web … the apps need to take advantage of the inherent properties of the phone. It needs to not just have content, but take advantage of the mobile context. There needs to be instant utility and ideally something that creates high-frequency use. Virality is also important, building in features where you’re so invested in an app you e-mail it to other people and there are network effects, where the more people are on it the better it gets. It has to be a large market opportunity. Ideally it has the opportunity to have multiple revenue streams — maybe it’s virtual goods, mobile commerce, ad-supported models.”

• “Don’t even think about doing it the illegal way” – Mobile marketers need permission to communicate with their customers via text and so that consideration needs to be built into any strategy.
• “You basically have three (legitimate) options” – This is about cost and capabilities.  Many low cost services are available that allow a marketer to “dip their toes” into the mobile waters which makes it an attractive option especially for budget constrained small businesses.  I would just add that balancing a focus on cost with the potential lifetime value of the interaction is important.  Taking a long term view that considers the potential impact of each mobile interaction on the customer relationship is a rapidly emerging best practice.
• “Text marketing can be supported by traditional marketing” – Absolutely!  Text interactions are most effective when used as calls to action in other media like television, print, store signage and billboards.
• “It is better to give than receive” – Creating a compelling call to action to engage in a Mobile Dialogue is key and that often means developing a unique mobile experience for customers, such as a sweepstakes or contest.  At Interactive Mediums, we call these Marketing Actions.
• “Don’t waste time with one-offs” – Just like long established marketing methods, the real payoff with mobile comes from developing customer relationships over time.
• “Show restraint (and don’t get too cute)” – Don’t let the current novelty factor surrounding mobile cloud your judgement when creating a mobile marketing program.  Focus on a business strategy and build mobile into it, not the other way around.

The title of the article implies a focus on small business, probably due to a low cost barrier to entry for text messaging.  I would add that this low entry point makes mobile marketing a “playing field leveler” for businesses of any size.  That means the most effective marketers will be those who approach the medium strategically, with a mulit-channel mindset focused on customer knowledge, and with an eye on measuring and improving effectiveness.  Small and large businesses alike can identify with that approach.

Ideas in the adage.com article include: mobile reservations, ordering and payments for restaurants, augmented reality, and interesting applications using product photo recognition linked to fulfillment. While there were no conflicting messages in the interviews, I think marketers need to remember that these ideas come largely from the agency/creative side of the mobile marketing value chain.

Tactical considerations are important, but more so are the plans marketers make around the use of mobile in their broader marketing efforts, which is the subject of Aberdeen’s August 2009 Research Study, “Mobile Marketing: Why it Pays to Reach Consumers on the Go.”  Some of the highlights include:

“When the right strategic and creative approach combines with the right analytic capabilities, the mobile channel can be a highly effective way to cut through the clutter and elicit positive consumer responses to a company’s call to action.”

“The ability to more effectively manage the three stages of the customer lifecycle – customer acquisition, customer retention and customer profitability – speak not only to some of the most compelling benefits that can be realized through mobile marketing activities but also to the core value drivers of practically any company competing in today’s business environment.”

“For Best-in-Class companies, the incessant need to increase customer acquisition ranks as the most important factor for deploying a mobile marketing solution.”

“Underlying the vision of a unified view of the customer relationship across all channels and touch points are a number of requisite components. First and foremost is a centralized data repository. Ideally, the repository should enable a company to continuously enhance individual customer profiles, based not only on geo-demographic data but also behavioral and attitudinal data, and also marry the mobile marketing data with transaction, CRM and other data.”

“…for many companies, mobile marketing data still resides in a separate silo or even worse, is not being captured and stored at all.”

“The value of programs that entail SMS discount codes or bar code coupons redeemed at the point of sale can be easily calculated based on incremental sales lift.” Or if scanning isn’t possible, the concept of the Integrated Customer can facilitate this tracking to close the loop on coupon or discount-driven marketing activities.

“…when hiring an outside agency or partner, ensure that the vendor’s overall strategic and tactical approach to mobile marketing, as well as the specific performance metrics it uses to track and measure success, are well aligned with those of the business.”

Marketers who focus on the tactical side of mobile risk making mistakes outlined in this September 11, 2009 eMarketer.com article titled “Mobile Marketing Done Right.” Mobile can be an advertising vehicle or platform for unique applications, but smart marketers will leverage mobile for the interaction channel it is, and develop strategies for engaging customers in dialogues as part of their broader marketing and customer relationship management plans.

At the center of a Mobile Data Asset is the unique identity of someone who has opted into mobile dialogues, around which different types of data are collected over time.  This data includes:

• Demographics: Data which describes customer characteristics; name, age, zip code, marital status, and any other similar attributes.  Customers will volunteer this data about themselves over time and in many cases marketers have access to data already stored in internal databases and/or be able to purchase it from third parties.
• Campaign History and Business Rules: Data established by the marketer and associated with one or many customers to engage them in mobile dialogues.  A subscription campaign targeting some selected group of customers, and featuring a triggered message series, would be one example. This could even include mobile web, email and other elements.
• Interaction History: Data generated by the mobile marketing campaign management system in the course of executing a campaign.  Successful receipt of a message or message series, responses aligned to different media sources like billboards or magazines, or the rapidity of viewing/responding to a message are potential data points collected in the course of executing a mobile dialogue. Click throughs to and interactions at a mobile website might also be captured.
• Psychographics: Data provided by customers which helps shape a greater appreciation for their preferences.  Examples would include product affinity, opt in communications preferences from email to phone to text, and in general customer attitudes toward a marketer’s products or services.

The sum of these data types provides a level of insight into mobile consumer behavior not possible if considering them in isolation.  This view also underscores the value of engaging with the on the go consumer over time, for growing the Mobile Data Asset via ongoing dialogues builds actionable insights marketers can leverage to maximize their budget dollars.  Answers that a marketer seek from their Mobile Customer Data Asset include:

• For a product launch, isolate a segment of highly engaged mobile customers by finding rapid responders in the target geographic market and who have identified themselves as interested in this type of product.  See what kinds of dialogues/campaigns drove these types of interactions and develop similar ones for the launch.
• As a key input into designing a loyalty program with relevant rewards, see what types of customers have shown interest in a specific product or service in past mobile dialogues/campaigns.  Use this insight to create an effective multi-channel loyalty program, and for developing the mobile component see what types of campaigns were most effective in driving results with these customers historically.
• To research ways in which customers are called to action to engage in mobile dialogues, investigate the most common media identified by customers in their interactions.  Use this data, in combination with trends in the demographics, psychographics and campaign history to create more relevant multi channel marketing messages.

These are just three simple examples of the potential decision support offered by a Mobile Customer Data Asset.  In practice and when applied to a marketer’s specific business problem or industry, this rich source of on the go consumer insights should power high value interactions that drive real results.

To me it’s a question of relevance to the many lesser known brands that may be interested in exploring how mobile can help maintain and grow their businesses. Firstly, Coke adopted mobile after experiencing quite a bit of success with its loyalty program via web, email and other media, and so had a ready-base of registered participants to rather easily obtain mobile opt-in status. Secondly, as arguably the world’s strongest brand, you would expect Coke to achieve this level of mobile success with a product geared toward youthful consumers.

I think the lesson for brands competing for mindshare with large established players is that mobile is a tactic – albeit an important one – that should be considered part of a broader program to engage with consumers on the go. In other words, let the goal (customer loyalty) dictate the tactics (mobile), not the other way around.

There is an element of “guerilla marketing” involved with mobile today, given the low cost of entry and ease by which marketers can get started. I would suggest lesser-known brands avoid this low value approach and consider how best to develop an interaction strategy around customers, and use knowledge capture as the foundation for evolving such a strategy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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