Gartner for Marketers Mobile Marketing Primer for 2016 Adam Sarner Research Vice President Mike McGuire Research Vice President Charles S. Golvin Research Director
G00293091 Mobile Marketing Primer for 2016 Published: 25 January 2016 Analyst(s): Adam Sarner, Mike McGuire, Charles S. Golvin Mobile marketing promises to engage audiences at any time and virtually any place. Marketers can use this primer to understand how Gartner research helps build a mobile marketing team, develop a connected strategy and invest in the right tools. Scope Effective mobile marketing balances targeting individuals/audiences on mobile devices with gathering data on how mobile device use informs mobile and the rest of a marketing organization. It covers: Turning mobile marketing into the great connector in a marketing department taking a customer's or prospect's mobile engagement information and triggering an action by other marketing channels Helping mobile marketers navigate a complex and varied vendor landscape of mobile marketing technology providers, mobile marketing analytics and audience measurement providers Developing effective mobile engagement strategies and tactics enabled by an expanding portfolio of tools Managing these dynamic forces for all marketing programs, where delivering measurable results is a fundamental requirement
Analysis Figure 1. Mobile Connects Online and Offline Experiences Source: Gartner (January 2016) View your mobile marketing strategy as a process of blending technologies and techniques that enable you to reach customers and prospects at any moment in the purchase or post-purchase cycle. Mobile devices, smartphones in particular, can serve as a sensor and conduit of contextual information (such as location) to you. They also provide input about preferences and interests gleaned from a customer's or prospect's social media, online and offline purchases. Also, devices offer insight into how customers and prospects use search and discovery tools, which helps marketers identify and respond to signals of purchase intent. Successful mobile engagements, whether occasional or episodic, begin with affirming how customers or prospects want to engage via their mobile device. You can take advantage of key data elements offered through mobile engagement location, time and community then layer them with insights that extend and are formed beyond the mobile channel. Elements such as purchase intent or purchase history allow you to personalize above and beyond knowing where someone is, or the conditions or stimuli around them. These elements may be the most important factors to a successful, noninvasive interaction. Page 2 of 7 Gartner, Inc. G00293091
However, without a clear and definitive mobile strategy based on a solid understanding of your customers' mobile preferences, which come from investments in mobile marketing analytics, the mobile device's unique capabilities can also create the risk of delivering a negative experience given the real-time and potentially intrusive nature of this medium. Top Challenges and How Gartner Can Help Creating effective mobile marketing strategies requires identifying internal and external resources people, process and technologies to build a connected mobile marketing strategy. Such strategies are characterized by the use of analytics to ensure that mobile marketing efforts can activate, or be activated by, other elements of the marketing organization. Our research helps marketers overcome the key challenges highlighted in the next section. How do I ground my organization and my mobile marketing strategies in mobile marketing analytics? Mobile marketing leaders some carrying a mobile-specific title, some as marketing engagement or marketing growth specialists are frequently challenged with justifying investments in mobile marketing. Many marketers undercut their own best intentions by not investing in mobile marketing analytics. Gartner surveys of mobile marketers have shown nearly half of those surveyed did not regularly use mobile marketing analytics. Marketers who don't invest in a solid analytics foundation feed the skepticism that mobile's value still exists. But there are examples of companies in the hospitality, ticketing, retail and transportation industries that are generating significant revenue by focusing on enabling specific functionality straightforward, frictionless transactions or discovery. Analytics often reveal where the best opportunities for engagement lie. Leading companies, such as LiveNation and Starbucks, place a heavy emphasis on the use of analytics to obtain customer insights that enable them to optimize mobile engagements and drive real business value. LiveNation, the live-events ticket company, in its 2014 annual report states that it generated 18% of its global revenue in 2014 via mobile, a 35% bump over 2013's mobile contribution. The company also reported better fan engagement and an overall better purchase flow via the mobile channel. Starbucks' CEO noted that 16% of all Starbucks transactions are generated by mobile payments via its app. The common link: focusing the app's functionality on convenient, reliable, timely transactions or content delivery. Planned Research Effective Engagement with the CIO The Foundation of a Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence Market Guide for Mobile Marketing Analytics Five Steps to Add Mobile to Your Digital Marketing Strategy Gartner, Inc. G00293091 Page 3 of 7
How do I extend our brand-value proposition with our mobile marketing efforts? A company's mobile value proposition should extend beyond treating mobile as just a "channel." Understanding how a mobile engagement or experience translates into a brand's value proposition is crucial to success, particularly in the development of a complete customer experience. A B2B marketer typically deals with longer sales cycles, a smaller customer base and products with complex manufacturing or distribution requirements, compared with a B2C marketer of consumer packaged goods or a media company. Use of analytics to understand how online and mobile users are interacting with their brands is a common requirement for B2B and B2C marketers. Planned Research Where Mobile Marketing Fits in Your Digital Marketing Strategy Mobile Marketing Maturity Model Mobile Marketers Must Focus on Mobility, Not Mobile How do I avoid creating a "mobile marketing island" within the marketing team? Mobile's long-term value to a marketing team comes down to orchestrating technologies and techniques that take advantage of customer and prospect use of mobile devices. A major contribution that mobile makes to the larger marketing operation is as the conduit or complement to other channels, such as email, search marketing, social marketing and digital commerce. Marketing activities that are adjacent to a transaction, such as coupons, promotion, loyalty and resell/upsell, previously stood independently. Now, with these elements potentially integrated into the transaction via the mobile device, marketing too must tie seamlessly into the payment activity. Cross-device identification tools to identify customers on the different devices they use, as well as location- and proximity marketing approaches require a flexible and varied set of analytics to fully exploit the mobile marketing opportunity to contribute to all stages of a purchase process. Marketers must rise to the challenge of exploiting mobile's ability to link to and activate the engagement points controlled by peers in multichannel, social, email and Web marketing teams. Planned Research Mobile's Growing Role in Multichannel Marketing Effective Engagement With the CIO The Foundation of a Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence How Marketers Should Tap the Mobile Payment Opportunity What are the best metrics to use in designing programs, developing real-time engagements and measuring the effectiveness of my mobile marketing program? The best mobile marketing, not to mention digital marketing, strategies are measured using robust and continuously tested and refined metrics, and key performance indicators that communicate the specific business results mobile marketing efforts have delivered. As noted earlier, marketers who Page 4 of 7 Gartner, Inc. G00293091
don't invest in mobile marketing analytics make their lives difficult because analytics are necessary to measure the effectiveness of their mobile marketing strategies and tactics. This is particularly disconcerting given the widespread availability of mobile marketing analytics solutions and digital marketing hubs (see "Market Guide for Mobile Marketing Analytics, 2015" for more details). Whether looking for mobile Web analytics or app analytics, these solutions are critical to understanding how to meet the customer or prospect on their terms. Why send a discount when relevant, value-added content will do? Mobile analytics help inform the timing and targeting of mobile offers and experiences. Predictive and location analytics are perhaps two of the most alluring and important capabilities for mobile marketers. Effectively anticipating customer or prospect needs/wants and being able to leverage location information to deliver the most relevant and compelling offers can make the difference between also-ran mobile marketing campaigns and the kinds of campaigns and engagements that can move the needle on marketing's effectiveness and business results. Planned Research Mobile, Search and the Future of Mobile Marketing Market Guide: Mobile Marketing Analytics Related Priorities Table 1. Related Priorities Priority Multichannel Marketing Emerging Tech and Trends Customer Experience Digital Commerce Focus Multichannel marketing represents orchestrated interaction across digital and traditional customer touch points. Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of relationships among people, companies and products, unleashing trends that are vital for brands to address. Today, 89% of marketers compete primarily on the basis of customer experience discrete moments that, together, strengthen or weaken a customer's preference, loyalty and advocacy. Marketing leaders are on the hook to deliver measurable business impact. Digital commerce drives directly attributable revenue and also collects valuable customer insight. Source: Gartner (January 2016) Suggested First Steps "Where Mobile Fits on the Strategic Road Map" Gartner, Inc. G00293091 Page 5 of 7
"Maturity Model for Mobile Marketing" "Mapping the Mobile Customer Decision Journey" "Mobile Marketing Strategic Insight: Stop the Debate About Native App or Mobile Web" Essential Reading "Market Guide for Mobile Marketing Analytics" "Mobile Marketing Strategic Insight: Stop the Debate About Native App or Mobile Web" "Survey Analysis: Mobile Marketing's Growing Role in MCCM" "Take Five Steps to Build Mobile Into Your Digital Commerce" Analyst Profiles Mike McGuire More on This Topic This is part of an in-depth collection of research. See the collection: Gartner for Marketing Leaders' Research Overview for 2016 Page 6 of 7 Gartner, Inc. G00293091
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