Putting Interactive Mobile Marketing in Context

Do you outsource your mobile marketing campaigns to an agency? Most have platforms (or use platforms) that can send broadcast emails or text messages (SMS) to your target list. Okay – so that’s just one side of the equation. Typically, there is some sort of call to action with a link back to your Website to do something. That something could be a coupon, free sample request, Webinar registration, playing a promotional game, or requesting a product brochure. If that something requires filling out a form or entering more than a 4-digit PIN, will a mobile user abandon the effort?

How a customer interacts with your website or “campaign site” is your responsibility - regardless of who writes the code or manages the distribution process. Make sure your agency understands mobile use behavior beyond text messaging or mini-site development. Mobile campaigns should be integrated into your sales and customer retention strategy. To do so requires you have some context about your customer, which makes the interaction personal, local and optimized for their mobile device. If your agency is not thinking about context, ask them to. If they don't respond, get a new agency.

Already building mobile apps? Instead of creating a one-time use promotional mobile app, consider building a re-usable context app and simply change your Web content to reflect your current goals – just as you do for customers arriving via a desktop computer. Think of your app as an interactive “loyalty” or “affinity” card that lives on the device and let’s the user update their “profile” or “preferences, even when they are disconnected from your website. With access to contextual data, you can quickly and easily customize and optimize your Web campaigns for mobile users.

Never built a mobile app? Worried about the download? Millions of mobile users download novelty apps every month. If you offer customers something of value, they’ll download a small app to access that recurring value. Your only barrier to success is determining how your customers define value. And since mobile is the most personal of all the interactive channels, use the flexibility of the Web and personalization to your advantage ...and always remember to respect customer choice about what data to share and when to share it. It's a great way to build trust.

A build once, use many times, contextual app approach can engage and entangle your mobile customers to a whole new level. It can be both effective and cost-effective. What you offer your customers each time they visit your site or respond to a mobile campaign, can be as personal or generic as best suits your needs and strategy. Budgets are tight. Mobile is hot. Make the most of it!

Marketers Take Charge of the Mobile Channel

Mobile can be a challenge. But it can also be an incredibly powerful interactive channel. That means real-time; give and take; a true conversation with your customers, employees or partners. It’s every marketer’s dream. So what’s the key to interactive mobile marketing?

DATA.

I know, you thought I was going to say something sexy or profound.

Okay, I’m not going all geeky on you, but today’s enterprise and consumer marketers know that data is the key to creating relevance, managing policies, and delivering an amazing user experience. It’s the key to knowing your audience and building trust and loyalty. It is the foundation of good marketing. You can’t create a compelling dialog, message, promotion or product if you don’t know your audience.

The Web is interactive. It can remember my name, the books I’ve purchased or the background picture I like best - but for the most part, it’s not personal. It doesn’t follow me everywhere I go. Now a smartphone – that’s personal AND it gives me the ability to marry content with contact. It’s a phone. It’s a Web browser. It’s two mints in one!

The point is, that it’s capable of combining both voice and data on the same device. They can interact with each other, so you can interact more personally with your customers.

A mobile app has it’s place, but you can’t customize it for each user. With a Web-based approach, you can. You can take charge of your mobile channel by sticking to the basics.

1. Know your customers. Ask them their preferences. Deliver relevant content.
2. Know what their device is capable of and deliver content that looks good on their device, not someone else’s.
3. If location matters to your service or campaign know their location. Deliver local results or content, without asking them to type in info every time they change location.
4. Always give your customers the opportunity to say, “NO” to sharing personal information. You’ll earn their trust by respecting their privacy.

Mobile doesn’t have to be some miniaturized or watered down version of your website. It can be more than a text campaign. Apps are cool, but they can’t drive the level of interaction and personalization that the Web can when you really know your customers. Talk to IT. Let them know what you need. Access to enabling technology is no longer the issue. The only thing keeping your mobile channel from being truly interactive is the absence of mobile user data and marketing making its voice heard.

It’s time for marketers to flex their creative muscles by using data, the Web and the smartphone explosion to marry content and contact. It’s time to make your mobile channel truly interactive.

App Stores - Are they worth the Price of Admission?

Google Plans Store For Web Apps -- InformationWeek

Hmmm. It appears that Google is looking to directly monetize search outside of advertising and corporate search. This makes sense from a business perspective, but does it signal a fundamental shift in repositioning search to "Discovery"? It almost feels like a product line extension - same technology, repackaged. Is discovery worth 30% to a software developer. Couldn't I just search the general Web using the same tags or keywords on any any search engine. Sure as a developer, I'll need to pay for keywords to rise to the top, but it doesn't cost me 30% of my gross product revenue.

An app store is not marketing, recommending or supporting any given product - all the things a retailer or value-add reseller does for about the same margin. So, is discovery really worth 30%? Is distribution being artificially controlled via the app store model? When there are hundreds of thousands of titles in app store, what is your 30% really getting you?

Physical distribution margins are not even close to 30% - never have been for software, not even in the 80's. So unless my app store is actually proactively marketing my app, this seems like a high price to pay when I could have delivered it over-the air or via a standard PC download from my website.

Since my company develops software, I have to look at this positioning shift with a wary eye. Has Web 2.0 figured out that free is not a business model and ad revenue has its limits? If so, this is a good thing and sanity is returning to Web. It is up to the software developers channel to determine whether or not they are getting value for their money. Ask the hard questions. Is the app store just another form of a walled garden disguised as a better user experience or is there real value for your business? Is it a requirement of using the OS, or just an option? And what if you are buying for a business, can I buy a master copy and provision it all employees from one server?

Multi-channel strategies exist because people like to buy (or download) where they want to buy (or download). A "great" user shopping experience is more than just the buying/download process. It is also about how you learn about a product or service and where you can purchase it. Making it easy regardless of the "storefront" is key. Today, while I can find iPhone apps on "open" stores, such as Handango, as soon as I want to buy something I am redirected to Apple, so I cannot consolidate with my Android or Blackberry purchases.

The best platform vendors will build this level of flexibility into their software and business models. Making it easy regardless of the "storefront" or payment method is key. Forcing users into a single behavioral model - which is different for every platform - will simply drive developers and users to seek new, simple and more uniform Web-based approaches to software distribution and discovery.

Cross-Platform Mobile Web - No Artificial Channel Boundaries

I normally write about interactive channels - and The Mobile Web" is certainly the newest and hottest of all the interactive media channels. But I will argue that there is only one Web and it should (and can) support mobile and desktop Web services regardless of device (smartphone, "superphone", netbook, game device, laptop, desktop, e-reader & every other new device we haven't yet imagined). And by Web services, I mean any Web interaction/transaction beyond static brochure ware. If you have to sign in, login, type in a form or a search box, download something or in any other way have a two-way communication with a Web application/Web site, then by my definition, it is a Web service.

The history of the Mobile Web should really be the Mobile Anti-Web. The Web is OPEN and the Mobile Web has been CLOSED. Carrier Walled Gardens. Handset/OS maker controlled App Stores. Even browser companies with cross platform support - if you use their browser (what about the other 75% of the population). So is this the mobile Web or the Verizon Web, or the Apple Web? Maybe the Google, Blackberry, Ovi or Mozilla Web. What ever happened to just "The Web"?!

Well mobile Web services or Mobile SaaS is designed to open the Web to all mobile users, regardless of their device, OS or brand of browser. The only requirement for delivering a Web service is an HTTP connection and browser (not one that only connects back to the carrier's Web portal). The browser lets you connect to any Web site. It may or may not be formatted properly for mobile (or your browser), but you can access it (permissions permitting, of course).

Okay marketing, sales, service and biz dev folks - what if your Web service knew that a mobile device was knocking on the door? What if it new who was actually visiting, and where they were? What if the Web service knew the user's security permissions, their advertising preferences or whether or not their battery charge was strong enough to complete a download? What if the Web could know who, what and where about every mobile user? And what if it could know all of this without asking the user to type in or fill in the majority of this information (a real pain on those little keyboards). And what if the user (or business) could define with whom they were willing to share their information? Well, then you can personalize, localize and appropriately mobilize (or not) your Web services.

Well, that is what my company has been working on, delivering this contextual Who, What & Where data via the Web browser to the Web server for use in any Web service/Web application. We've been shipping Windows Mobile and Blackberry versions of our software for the past year, and now we have achieved true cross-platform support, successfully delivering this data from Symbian, Android and iPhone devices up to a Web server. You can check out these Web pages that "echo-back" the data being sent from the device to our little application that shows the arriving data. Take a look and think about how you could grow your business, increase productivity or gain a competitive advantage through the personalization, localization and mobilization of your Web services.

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