Make Mobile Moments Matter

In the small town of Bozeman, Montana, you can often find me — a grateful Adobe remote employee — working from a local coffee shop. This gets me out of my home office and connected with the community where I live, but it’s also a great place to get some work done.

Recently, I looked around and observed — everyone was online…busily doing something.

I put on my marketing hat for a second to consider what they might be doing — checking their email, working, studying, or, like me, researching their next trip or a purchase of a new mountain bike.

The truth is, we can’t exactly know what they were preoccupied with because the options and connections are endless. And what that says to me, as a marketer, is that we have to be ready and relevant whenever, wherever, and however the consumers engage.

Mobile engagement is rampant

To put some context to that, consider:

• Mobile opens accounted for 46 percent of all email opens.
• About 3 in 5 consumers check their email on the go, and 75 percent say they use their smartphones most often to check email.
• Mobile now accounts for nearly 70 percent of digital media time (source: ComScore, 2017).

Today’s consumers are empowered. They can engage with a brand whenever, wherever, and however they want. Mobile is what enables that.

The challenge for marketers is to rise above the “noise” consumers are faced with on a daily basis, consider whether they’re providing a good mobile experience, and evaluate how their customers are engaging with mobile.

Additionally, even though marketers are aware of mobile’s prowess in the industry, it’s easy to feel stuck, resulting in some common problems:

• Different teams in my organization manage email, mobile, web, and social.
• Inability to incorporate mobile messages into the customer journey across channels.
• Difficulty to measure marketing effectiveness across all channels, including mobile.
• Incomplete view of the customer because channel data resides in silos.

Solution

We’re all hyperaware of the need to foster engagement across channels. Mobile. Email. Web. And more. Engagement is 166 percent higher in cross-channel strategies. Cross-channel shoppers spend 3x more than single-channel shoppers.

But we can’t just be engaging across channels — we have to do it exceptionally well.

One way is to consider what I call “mobile moments.” These are moments created by keeping a dynamic, yet balanced perspective. Here are the building blocks for your consideration:

Take a data-driven approach

This starts with creating a single, accessible view of the customer and deriving insights from that data. It begins with using analytics to not only understand customer behavior, but also anticipating what they are likely to do next. Also, learning about which campaigns are performing (and why). Taking such an approach improves decision-making and increases marketing effectiveness, which can result in more personalized and relevant customer experiences that drive engagement, conversions, loyalty, and revenue. It is about moving the needle and fine-tuning strategies that can yield huge results.

Place maximum energy into content and personalization

Consumers demand an amazing experience every time they engage with a brand, regardless of channel. This amplifies the need to provide relevant, personalized, and engaging experiences. Brands need to differentiate on the customer experience — using personalized, tailored, and relevant content is how consumers engage and stay engaged. To accomplish this, content needs to be accessible for the marketer and deployed across channels efficiently, consistently, and responsively for the device on which it will be consumed.

Maintain cross-channel focus

Consumers engage with brands in mind, not necessarily channels. The channel — whether it be mobile, email, web, or a call into the call center — is the means to make that engagement happen. The challenge for the marketer is that they might not know when, where, or how a consumer will engage. Nonetheless, they need to be ready, regardless of the channel. This is amplified by the prevalence of mobile and the empowerment a consumer has to engage — whenever and however they want.

When we emphasize these core practices, the moments we create will help connect the dots in a customer journey, accelerate sales cycles, drive engagement, and improve loyalty. The key is that we’re not just connecting with our customers in moments, we’re making the mobile moments matter. It is the difference between hearing and listening. Or the difference between an irrelevant conversation and one that matters.

Once these building blocks are in place, marketers can spend time on some pretty cool things in best practice to make those mobile moments even more meaningful:

• Cadence: optimal timing and frequency. Triggered. Sequenced. The timing of an email or message is just as important as the content. A well-timed message can be that pivotal mobile moment within a customer journey that drives customer satisfaction, increased engagement, or a purchase.
• Context: contextual content takes into account variables like date, time, and location, which are critically important in today’s mobile world. When or where a customer opens an email or engages in a mobile app can be the make or break point in providing a meaningful mobile moment.
• Connection: make a bond with your customers. Do so by using a single accessible view of them according to their data to provide the right mobile moment, with the right content, at the right time. And don’t forget designing responsive content for different sized screens and devices.

It’s not easy to be a marketer today. Mobile strategy must be integrated into a cross-channel strategy. If done well, however, you can reach your audience with power in key mobile moments — whether they’re in a big city like New York, tucked away in a remote corner of Montana, and everywhere in between.

Listen to this Adobe Summit webinar for more information on capitalizing on mobile moments.