Mobile: The Primary Channel for Customer Engagement

Our recent data has shown that mobile is now the main start­ing point for con­sumer engage­ment with any brand. Con­sumers are demand­ing more sat­is­fac­tion in their mobile expe­ri­ences, and if they don’t find it, they are empow­ered to research and find a brand with a bet­ter expe­ri­ence with­in min­utes. Brands must be able to meet these mobile cus­tomers at that key moment with a rel­e­vant mes­sage, on their cho­sen chan­nel, or risk los­ing them completely.

This cho­sen chan­nel is now pre­dom­i­nate­ly the smart­phone. Nine­ty-two per­cent of respon­dents to our recent mobile con­sumer report say that their smart­phone is their pri­ma­ry device. Tablet usage is low­er, and the ways that con­sumers use tablets are more sim­i­lar to the way they use desk­tops and lap­tops than to how they use phones. By design­ing dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences that work well on the smart­phone, mar­keters will real­ize increased returns from their cam­paigns as cus­tomers stay engaged.

The lat­est Adobe and Econ­sul­tan­cy Intel­li­gence Brief­ing under­scores the impor­tance of devel­op­ing a mobile strat­e­gy. The report sum­ma­rizes respons­es to a sur­vey that was sent to busi­ness­es and agen­cies world­wide. Organ­i­sa­tions with defined mobile strate­gies report more suc­cess in sev­er­al key areas of mar­ket­ing per­for­mance than organ­i­sa­tions with­out a defined mobile strat­e­gy. These per­for­mance advan­tages include:

• Know­ing the pro­por­tion of traf­fic that comes from mobile devices.
• Under­stand­ing how mobile fits into the cus­tomer jour­ney across devices and channels.
• Track­ing cus­tomers across dif­fer­ent devices when they choose to authen­ti­cate and log in to the experience.
• Track­ing the effec­tive­ness of media in dri­ving user acqui­si­tion for mobile apps.

These ben­e­fits are com­pound­ed by the ris­ing pro­por­tion of dig­i­tal traf­fic from mobile devices. From 2014 to 2015, growth was flat with agen­cies report­ing a rise from 33 to 34 per­cent and com­pa­nies report­ing 31 per­cent for both years. But for 2016 these pro­por­tions rose to 39 and 37 per­cent respectively.

Although there are clear ben­e­fits to a defined mobile strat­e­gy, only 20 per­cent of the respond­ing busi­ness­es report­ed that their mobile strat­e­gy is well-defined, so in absolute terms only a small per­cent­age of com­pa­nies are reap­ing these ben­e­fits. Mar­keters report sev­er­al chal­lenges to con­tin­ued improve­ment. Lack of resources (bud­get and staff) is most often report­ed. These lim­i­ta­tions result in delays in updat­ing apps as well as hin­der­ing a detailed under­stand­ing of con­sumers’ needs. “Lack of knowl­edge or under­stand­ing” was the sec­ond high­est report­ed bar­ri­er. An exam­ple of this can be seen where 71 per­cent of com­pa­nies that use apps mea­sure their suc­cess by total down­loads rather than using nuanced mea­sures that prob­a­bly give a bet­ter pic­ture of real success.

The num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions that are focus­ing on mobile has risen sharply over the past 2 years, with 27 per­cent of com­pa­nies report­ing they are mobile first com­pared with 13 per­cent in 2014 . 62 per­cent of com­pa­ny respon­dents believe that mobile traf­fic will be more than half of their over­all dig­i­tal traf­fic in the next 12 months. The over­all num­bers of mobile-pro­fi­cient com­pa­nies is low now, but the trend indi­cates that these num­bers will increase quick­ly. There is still room for com­pa­nies to improve their prac­tices and impor­tant­ly, there is still room at the top for the busi­ness­es that can make this trans­for­ma­tion soon. The oppor­tu­ni­ty costs will mount for those that don’t. You can find more details and assess your own company’s posi­tion by down­load­ing the full report.