The battle for the hearts and minds of today’s consumers can be a minefield for businesses. Right at the forefront is the mobile phone and marketers are just beginning to realise the key role it can play in engaging with their customer base. Already a proven technology, mobile is a powerful tool: 4.8 billion of the 6 billion people on the planet have one with 90% saying their phone is at arm's reach for 14 hours of the day.

It therefore makes sense that businesses are seeking ways to utilise this small handheld device in communicating with their customers. Yet, some are not effectively using this technology and risk alienating their customer base and pushing them to their more savvy competitors.

So what practical measures can be taken to dramatically improve response rate? With a host of technology at their fingertips, it is possible for marketers to easily and seamlessly deliver carefully customised messages, across multiple channels, designed to arrive at the optimal time, place, and format to stimulate a positive response from customers.

Stop Spam

No one wants to receive irrelevant marketing messages - whether through online marketing campaigns, emails or via SMS messages. One of the biggest mistakes they are making today includes spending billions on untargeted bulk mobile marketing communications that are perceived as spam. The key to more effective marketing campaigns and promotions is through better targeting and personalisation. A poorly judged message is likely not only to fall on deaf ears, but also engender a negative impression of the brand and may actually cause opt outs. Database attrition is the last thing any marketer wants to happen.

Right place, Right Time = Right Response

Yet targeting mobile users with relevant, timely, contextual communications, gives marketers a new way to engage with customers by sending offers and providing information at the right time, in the right place and in the right format. Not only are such interactions likely to result in more sales, but also in greater customer satisfaction and increased loyalty. Mobile marketing campaigns that target individuals based on their interests, demographics, device type, location, behaviour and channels of communication have delivered response rates up to 75% higher than similar non-personalised campaigns.

Multi-channel

To boost mobile engagement, it is important not only to take a multi-channel approach but also to utilise the appropriate channel depending on the communication being sent. For example, it may be more fitting for a retailer to send an online offer via email, on-the-day in-store information through SMS and in-app push notifications to inform customers of availability of stock during sale times. These elements can be achieved successfully when forming part of an end-to-end communications strategy with a single supplier that can execute messages across multi-channel options.

Personalisation

You also need to understand your customers’ likes, dislikes and preferences. Some of this can be gleaned using information held on record from when they opted in to receive notifications. To get additional personal insight, it’s possible to integrate your omnichannel messages with data from CRM systems to offer tailored incentives based on previous purchasing habits. The extent to which you can create and use this big data is endless but the key is ensuring you are working with a provider that can seamlessly integrate the systems, crunching the data so the resulting message is simple, relevant and effective.

Context

The next way to bringing this to life is through contextualisation. Context can mean different things to different people with varying options available e.g. weather or location. One example of a successful campaign that demonstrates the benefit of using triggers to launch timely campaigns is from a high street pharmacy chain. The campaign entailed using situational and behavioural data to provide hay fever sufferers with relevant, timely offers when they were within the vicinity of the stores. The campaign targeted customers that had previously purchased anti-histamine products with a personalised SMS message offering a discount voucher on days when the pollen count was high.

It's perfectly possible for marketers and brand owners to increase revenue, reach, and operational efficiency by thinking differently about how they engage with customers via mobile. With the ability to engage customers on their own terms, harnessing the power and ubiquity of the phones in our pockets gives marketers the perfect opportunity to communicate with their customers to generate a positive response at a time, and in a manner, when they are most likely to be influenced.

 

By Donald Stuart, CEO of Brainstorm. 

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