Using Mobile to Effectively Reach Your Customers

Today, there is no doubt that mobile has become the pri­ma­ry dig­i­tal touch­point for many con­sumer-fac­ing com­pa­nies. Mobile phones are indis­putably the most wide­ly used device: We keep them on our bed­side table when we sleep, and in our pock­et or purse when we’re awake. We check our mobiles con­stant­ly for a vari­ety of rea­son, and they can be seen as an exten­sion of our hands, our brains.

Let’s start with a few inter­est­ing sta­tis­tics. In 2015,

- 80% of adults in the Unit­ed States had smartphones,
— 75% used their smart­phones to access mobile Inter­net services,
— 46% said they “couldn’t live with­out it,” and
— 57% said they used their phones to do online banking.

Mobile thus rep­re­sents a mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty for mar­keters, as this chan­nel gives brands almost 24/7 access to their cus­tomers. It is an extreme­ly effec­tive tool in dri­ving con­sumer engage­ment and finan­cial results. But the val­ue of mobile is also its great­est chal­lenge. Mobile phones are per­son­al devices, for which broad mes­sag­ing isn’t good enough. Cus­tomers expect brands to deliv­er mes­sages and expe­ri­ences that are as inti­mate and per­son­al as their device. To suc­ceed, a brand must also ini­ti­ate its mobile moments at exact­ly the right time and place.

Here, I’ll share with you a few tips on how to make the most of mobile devices, and how mar­keters can con­sis­tent­ly meet con­sumers at the right time—with con­tex­tu­al content—on their mobile devices.

Con­nect­ing per­son­al­ly with customers

Deliv­er­ing per­son­alised expe­ri­ences that con­vince cus­tomers to build a rela­tion­ship with your brand should be your ulti­mate aim. To achieve this goal, it is nec­es­sary to con­sid­er the “three Cs” of mobile: con­text (improve engage­ment using loca­tion, activ­i­ty, and device), con­nec­tion (use con­text to make each inter­ac­tion per­son­al), and cadence (deliv­er per­son­alised mes­sages when they mat­ter most).

To illus­trate why con­text is so valu­able in mobile, let’s look at email: today, more than two out of three emails—67.8%—are first opened on a mobile device. More­over, more than 42% of peo­ple instant­ly delete emails that look bad on a mobile device. This shows that cre­at­ing respon­sive emails, with con­cise, on-tar­get copy and images, is absolute­ly essential.

Mobile gives mar­keters the chance to inter­act on a per­son­al lev­el with indi­vid­ual con­sumers. For instance, an air­line can send reminders to clients to check in for flights, or pro­vide live updates if the flight is delayed, which is effi­cient because of the time-sen­si­tive nature of the infor­ma­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, a mobile wal­let that allows cus­tomers to store their board­ing pass­es and elim­i­nates the need for a print­ed copy, is anoth­er illus­tra­tion of how mobile mar­ket­ing needs to be con­nect­ed to cus­tomers’ needs, moti­va­tions, and per­son­al situations.

Mobile wal­lets also allow cus­tomers to car­ry loy­al­ty cards, which are a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands. Loy­al­ty cards can be stored along­side the customer’s cred­it cards. There has also been talk about using near-field com­mu­ni­ca­tion (NFC) tech­nol­o­gy to link coupons and loy­al­ty cards with trans­ac­tions at the point of sale to ensure that every loy­al­ty card–carrying cus­tomer receives the max­i­mum dis­count, cre­at­ing a faster, indi­vid­u­al­ly opti­mised experience.

Cre­at­ing the right mobile moments

Mobile moments are the new com­pet­i­tive bat­tle­ground. Mobile mes­sag­ing is one of the most effec­tive tools for ini­ti­at­ing mobile moments to dri­ve con­sumer engage­ment and finan­cial results. Mobile mes­sag­ing improves rev­enue, cus­tomer engage­ment, and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion with prod­ucts and ser­vices while often low­er­ing oper­a­tional costs. It can also be used to ini­ti­ate engage­ment with con­sumers at every stage of the cus­tomer journey.

How­ev­er, too few dig­i­tal busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als are lever­ag­ing mobile mes­sag­ing. In Forrester’s Q2 2014 Glob­al Mobile Exec­u­tive Online Sur­vey, only 49% report­ed using SMS and 33% report­ed using push noti­fi­ca­tions. Sev­er­al fac­tors can explain this, such as the fact that best prac­tices are still under devel­op­ment in many com­pa­nies, or that mes­sag­ing return on invest­ment (ROI) is dif­fi­cult to prove.

The idea behind these tac­tics is to engage your cus­tomers with mobile mes­sages that inspire imme­di­ate action.

What do you think about these two reports? Do not hes­i­tate to share your views and strate­gies for mobile mar­ket­ing in the com­ments! And if you want to go fur­ther, our report Up Close and Per­son­al is avail­able to down­load for free!