Designing a Successful Mobile Strategy

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1 Designing a Successful Mobile Strategy A FunMobility White Paper While many companies today are anxious about how the mobile explosion will impact their business, the reality is that mobile holds the key to company success on multiple levels. Properly executed, an effective mobile strategy can amplify existing marketing investments, drive door swings, enhance engagement, and create new customer insights. In fact, mobile is a low cost, effective, and intimate customer relationship management (CRM) channel that can empower marketers to engage their customers like never before. Mobile Relationship Management for Your Company Sound too good to be true? It s not, and this white paper will explain why. The Mobile Marketing Fog To be sure, there s a fog of war surrounding most business mobile strategies. Any company that sells directly to consumers can benefit from a mobile engagement strategy. In a recent survey, the Chief Marketing Officer Council found that 96% of their members thought mobile was important to their business and customers but only 17% had a formal mobile strategy in place. 1 Many CMOs have simply thrown up their hands and outsourced mobile marketing to traditional advertising agencies, which have added mobile expertise to their long list of digital offerings. Mobile marketing is not the same as other digital channels. Mobile is highly personal and intimate. Mobile devices are always on, location-aware, and always available. According to Mark Addicks of General Mills, 84% of shoppers bring a smartphone into retail when they shop, to perform comparison research, scan barcodes, and then alert their friends about their new purchase via social media. 2 This number is only going to grow as this channel matures. According to Mark Addicks of General Mills, 84% of shoppers bring a smartphone into retail when they shop, to perform comparison research, scan barcodes, and then alert their friends about their new purchase via social media. Mobile Strategy? What s that? Retailers need to keep three core elements in mind when designing a mobile strategy: Discovery, Engagement, and Retention. These are the core pillars of successful mobile relationship management (MRM), on which all the other bells and whistles should be based. Let s explore what each of those terms mean when defining a mobile strategy. Discovery Amplify effectiveness of existing media with Mobile CTA Place Mobile CTA in Existing Media Engagement Enhance in-store experience with Mobile Activities and Rewards Offer Mobile Rewards for visiting retail locations Retention Build repeat visits and long-term relationships with Mobile CRM Build smart, effective Mobile Push Campaigns Discovery = Invitation Discovery is all about consumers finding your app. Experiment with Mobile Media Spend Create engaging in-store Mobile Activities Personalize your Mobile CRM based on individual Consumer Behaviors To answer your immediate question, yes. You want an app. App is short for application, and that s just what an app is a little application that runs on a mobile device. A mobile Include Mobile Web Landing Pages, QR Codes, SMS, App Store Icons Enable both Functional and Emotional Consumer Benefits Integrate with your existing Loyalty Programs 1

2 website, which refers to a standard website that is optimized for display on a mobile device, is an important tactic, but mobile apps are key. Consumers will spend four minutes in an app for every one minute they spend on a mobile website, as noted in Mobile Metrix 2.0, a recent comscore report. 3 Apps run faster, are easier to find, and are location-aware. In addition, they have the potential to be more fun and to enable push alerts, which you definitely want as a retailer and which we will explain further below. There are now hundreds of thousands of apps available to smartphone users. So how does a user discover your app amongst the multitudes? Aiding your desired users with Discovery is a mobile strategy in itself. The key is to have some simple, mobile, calls-to-action (CTA) that drive discovery: For example, add a QR code to every store receipt printed in a given week, or to your print media advertising. Savvy consumers and digital omnivores will recognize the QR code, whip out their smartphones, and scan it. To them, it s like buried treasure! The QR code can be used to download your app and introduce your mobile experience to your new customer. a mobile web landing page that proclaims Get the App! a Quick Response (QR) code for instant smartphone scanning a simple Available on the App Store callout on any advertisement or publication, print or online an SMS keyword campaign Here s the important thing: if you have any kind of mobile CTA, it will immediately force-multiply all your existing online and offline media buys. A mobile CTA is easy to drop into virtually any form of advertising and won t cost you an extra dime. What it will do is help customers discover your app, learn more about your offerings, and engage with your brand on a whole new level. The Mighty Mobile Landing Page While having an app is paramount, the importance of a mobile landing page cannot be overstated. First, it creates an opportunity for you to connect with the customer immediately and drive them toward downloading your app. Second, a mobile landing page is an important touchpoint for measuring conversion across a variety of channels. With a properly executed mobile landing page, you can tell what media source best converts to app downloads: outdoor, catalog, QR code, SMS, in-store, , etc. Finally, even an invisible landing page that simply 2

3 redirects to the hardware-appropriate app store tells you the conversion and drop-off rate between your discovery source and the store, letting you tune and tailor the message to optimize downloads. So, what s the difference between a mobile landing page and a page on your standard website? A smartphone screen is significantly smaller than a computer monitor or laptop screen. Getting a standard website ( pixels wide) to display nicely on a smartphone screen ( pixels wide) requires a bit of work. Your business should have a separate version of your standard website for display on mobile devices, which is programmed to detect a mobile or standard platform and therefore display the correct version. A properly designed mobile landing page loads quickly, is easy to interact with, and displays the most important links up front, such as the CTA Get our App! By adding some analytics, your mobile page will tell you what media best converts to app download, what your dropoff rate is, as well as a wealth of other user data. By comparison, a standard web page displayed on a mobile device is effectively a dead end when it comes to opportunities for data-driven optimization. Engagement = Door Swings The next core mobile engagement strategy to keep in mind is Engagement. After consumers download your app, how can you use the app to keep engaging them, and ultimately entice them to physically walk through your door? For more advanced deployments, rewards can and should integrate with existing loyalty programs, but even simple, low cost or no cost mobile rewards can be effective consumer motivators. Offering location-based rewards and incentives is a great way to encourage consumers to visit your store. For example, you might send a message via your mobile app that offers a free incentive if the consumer comes to the nearest store. A mobile reward can be a ringtone, wallpaper, a simple game, an ecard, or a coupon. For more advanced deployments, rewards can and should integrate with existing loyalty programs, but even simple, low cost or no cost mobile rewards can be effective consumer motivators. If customers know they are getting something fun or useful for free, that engagement factor will likely compel them to visit your store. In a recent promotion, Chiquita Foods drove 28% of their registered app users to visit a retail location, simply for the chance to enter a sweepstakes. Consumers love free stuff and will find simply visiting your store to be a very easy way to get it. Once your customers have walked in the door, you can use the same app in their pocket to further engage them and provide real utility value, saving them both time and money. Remember the General Mills statistic that says 40% of shoppers carry a smartphone into retail locations? With location information, your app can offer discounts to users while they are still in the store. Mobile technology enables you to push an alert to the customer s smartphone, consisting of a tone to get their attention and a text message that describes the discount. Or you may want to push a simple trivia quiz about store items on sale. These activities help to pre-empt the practice known as showrooming, where users merely browse in-store, then go online to search for lower prices elsewhere. These small, frequent interactions serve to build a long-term relationship based on relevant, engaging interactions with the customer just as he or she is ready to consider and purchase your product. The only limits to mobile engagement lie within the imagination of your marketing team. 3

4 Retention = Satisfaction Your customer has discovered your app, downloaded it and subsequently visited your store or website. They ve been rewarded with free stuff or coupons. So how do you keep that customer coming back for more? The key lies in building lasting, relevant relationships. We ve discussed several ways to manage the mobile relationship through the Discovery and Engagement phases of the growing relationship; now we turn to the most important concept of all: Retention. Push Messaging Studies have found that there is an 80% higher retention rate for mobile consumers who receive push messages, and that over half of app usage is driven by push messaging. Push technology is a relatively new marketing phenomenon, having been released as Apple Push Notification Service in 2009, followed by Android with similar technology soon thereafter. Push technology uses a persistent, always available IP connection to forward notifications such as icons, sounds, or text alerts to mobile devices. The beauty of push is that it is a twoway communication: when a user taps a push notice, you can capture that data with your analytics tools. Studies have found that there is an 80% higher retention rate for mobile consumers who receive push messages, and that over half of app usage is driven by push messaging. Push helps you to create and maintain an intimate, personalized marketing relationship with the consumer, one that offers both utility as well as emotional benefits. It acts as a quick and convenient connection, like a virtual Hi there! while saving users time and money. Users must opt-in to receive push messages, and in doing so agree to this relationship from the outset. This is a huge advantage to retailers. Segmenting users by age, gender, location, and mobile behavior helps you personalize push messaging and avoid bad push or annoying messages. Push notifications should always be dynamic, engaging, and interactive all of which strengthen the bond between your customers and your brand. Rewards and Incentives Mobile users are mobile consumers. They crave fresh and engaging mobile content. A smartphone is a kind of toy to a large segment of users, and you can provide a fun and easy way for them to play with that toy, all the while rewarding them for it. Mobile games, music downloads, and simple text or notifications will keep your brand in front of the customer. Companies like FunMobility are pioneering a new-generation of interactive AppWidgets, such as games, trivia quizzes, coupons, etc., which can be added to mobile apps and enabled via push alerts. Imagine that your ideal customer, Anne, visited a local coffee shop a week ago. While there, she logged onto the free wi-fi and saw a notification about the shop s mobile app on the wi-fi landing page. She downloaded the app and immediately received an in-store push that offered a coupon for $1 off a Soy Latte which she happily redeemed. A week later, while getting ready for work, she receives another push through the mobile app offering 10% off an extra large, iced mocha, which is just what she will need in this 100 degree weather. On the way to work, she pulls into the coffee shop, whips out her smartphone, and redeems the 10% coupon. Over the next month, Anne will continue to receive similar incentives, some of which she will redeem, others of which may not appeal to her. Using analytics, the retailer can learn more about Anne s coffee buying preferences and continue to customize push alerts just for her. 4

5 Using push and other mobile technologies, you can design entire campaigns using several mobile strategies that extend over a period of time. Analytics and Campaigns Know Thy Customer Using push and other mobile technologies, you can design entire campaigns using several mobile strategies that extend over a period of time. Real-time reporting and analytics enable you to tweak campaigns for best results. User segmentation and targeting factor greatly into this process and predictive algorithms will go far in identifying which user segments are most ripe/actionable for specific types of mobile content. Mobile technology gives us many ways to gather analytics, some of which we have already discussed: Mobile landing page conversion rates Users who download the app from the Mobile landing page Open rate, tap rate Users who respond to push messaging Return rate Users who return to the app or mobile page and how often they return Check-in analytics Sending users a push alert that asks them to check in when they are in your store These metrics can tell you which store they visit, how long they were there, and what mobile behavior they engage in while in the store. This data yields valuable business intelligence on primary, secondary, and undiscovered user segments that actually visit your retail locations. Gathering, analyzing, and understanding this information is part of the new, data-driven mobile marketing landscape. With the right software and guidance, these metrics can provide a wealth of knowledge that will boost your customer relationships like never before. 5

6 Mobile Relationship Management For Your Company Consumers and companies approach the frontiers of mobile marketing very differently. Consumers are eager and excited; companies are anxious and cautious. But mobile is the new reality, and those who do not adapt will be left behind. Brick-and-mortar businesses especially must learn to use mobile marketing strategies to their advantage to engage and retain digital-age customers. Used properly, mobile devices become partners in customer engagement, not sales competition. Brands are entering a new age of customer relationship building. Next-generation mobile technology can drive new sources of revenue and insights. As mobile becomes an increasing imperative within marketing strategy and budgeting, it is important for companies to have partners that understand the trends shaping the mobile arena. FunMobility is an industry leader in the art and science of mobile engagement. Our mission is to help businesses use mobile strategies and tactics to boost door swings and customer engagement. We do this by developing groundbreaking, easily deployed, and technically elegant mobile products that optimize the mobile engagement loop of discover > engage > retain > transact. If you are a company who wants to take advantage of next-generation MRM, ask yourself these questions: 1) What s my mobile strategy? 2) What feature tactics support my strategy? 3) What reward can I offer my consumers for visiting my store or engaging with my brand? 4) How can I leverage mobile CRM to build an ongoing relationship with my customer? About FunMobility FunMobility delivers simple, powerful mobile solutions that put the creative control in your hands for infinitely - and instantly - adaptable agile mobile apps. We help customers build meaningful relationships with their audiences by creating engaging mobile experiences. A pioneer and an innovator in the mobile industry, we have over 10 years of experience building successful agile mobile apps in a fraction of the time it would take a traditional development team. Our Mobile Relationship Management Suite empowers businesses to deploy interactive and immersive mobile experiences. Our platform boosts user engagement and enables brands to engage consumers on a deeper more meaningful level. To learn more about FunMobility please view our brief product tour: www. funmobility.com/products/ Need help? For a free consultation by experts, contact FunMobility today at: