Tag: Mobile device

Not Responsive

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There’s a disconnect between how consumers are reading commercial emails and how marketers are conducting email marketing campaigns. On one hand, there’s the report earlier this week that says 41 percent of all commercial email is opened on mobile devices — a number that’s expected to surpass PC/desktop opens by the end of the year.

On the other hand, there’s the new 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report from Marketing Sherpa that says more than half of email marketers aren’t designing their emails with mobile devices in mind.

Almost 1,100 marketers took the survey and, of that group, 58 percent said they’re not creating emails to render differently on mobile devices.

Marketing Sherpa

Here’s another sign of the disconnect between email marketing and consumer activity: Only 21 percent of the marketers surveyed say they integrate the mobile channel with their email campaign.

Marketing Sherpa 1

Time to wake up Mr. Retailer.  Work with your teams now and Get Responsive.  You are losing sales to your competitors that are responsive.

This information sourced from recent Marketing Sherpa survey.  www.marketingsherpa.com

Webman

Mobile – Muy Importante!

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We often talk about what is happening in mobile.  Well, with the holiday shopping season now in full swing, we will cover some of the more recent trends in mobile shopping and the ever increasing impact of how these little hand held devices are changing everything we know about how people shop.

I found a great new web-site, Quartz, www.qz.com, that covers a variety of interesting topics including mobile.  The facts below were provided in an article by Christopher Mims.  He is the science and technology correspondent for Quartz. He believes that the most interesting things about the universe have yet to be discovered, and that technology is the primary driver of cultural change.

  • 55% of mobile users buy products on their devices, but 80% research purchases on them
  • Less than half of top retailers have a mobile site and app
  • 88% of mobile users engage in some kind of mobile commerce
  • 72% of consumers aged 20-40 in US and UK will use mobile devices to compare prices in-store
  • 48 million US shoppers will use their smartphone as an “on-demand aide-de-camp” in stores
  • $43.4 billion is what US holiday shoppers are expected to spend online this season, up 17% from last year
  • 14% of people with mobile phones have used them to make purchases while drunk
  • 23% of holiday shoppers in the US will spend more online than offline
  • 28% of US adults with a mobile device will use them to shop on Thanksgiving, vs. 16% last year
  • 32% of smartphone owners plan to download a shopping app for the holidays
  • 89% of all website traffic from tablets comes from iPads
  • 61% of all website traffic from smartphones comes from iPhones
  • 1 in 3 US consumers is thinking about buying a tablet computer this holiday season
  • 388 million Chinese access the web through their mobile phone, more than do so via PC
  • There are 260 million mobile connections in Brazil, higher than its population

So are these smart devices that we are using really that important?  You bet!

  • 90% of 18-29 year olds sleep with their smartphones
  • 1 in 3 people would rather give up sex than their phone
  • 95% of people use the phone for something just before going to bed
  • Half of people check their phones immediately if they wake up during the night

The game has changed.  What game are you playing?  If you are a retailer without a mobile strategy, time to make a change and get one.

Webman

Should mobile devices be allowed in meetings?

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No!

When you are in a meeting it is your responsibility to participate.  That is why you are there.

In order to effectively participate, you need to follow the conversation closely and consider every point being made so that you can comment and add value to the meeting.  If you are not prepared to add value, why did you go to the meeting?  If you are multi-tasking your ability to add value drops dramatically.

Always focus on value creation and making a difference.  If you are reading your tiny screen, you are not contributing and it is obvious to everyone else in the meeting that you are not contributing.

When you are juggling e-mails, calls and texts your IQ falls 10 points.  Don’t let your IQ fall 🙂

Webman

Price Check Please!

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Before all the awesome technology that we now have at our disposal, cashiers would yell out to someone in the store “Price Check Please” and someone would come up to the register, take a look at the product, go back to the aisle to find a similar product and then hurry (In some cases) back to the register to provide the correct price or to confirm.  Usually this was followed by “Spill in Aisle 5”. 🙂

Well, things have certainly changed.  As we know, products are scanned via a UPC (Universal Product Code), we present coupons that are also scanned using a bar code (either on our smartphones or by handing over a coupon) or using a QR (Quick Response) code to redeem our deal or special offer.  When on-line we use promotional codes that we have access to via our e-mail or through a quick search to find one that may be active.  Most on-line commerce sites provide an area for promotional codes at check-out.  These have become a standard for most on-line shoppers looking for a better deal; and aren’t we all.

When visiting a brick and mortar store, we have access to price check kiosks where we can scan an item for the price and other details, such as nutritional, before we get to the register to check-out.  We also have access to in-store hand held devices that enable us to scan all of our products while we shop and to access our frequent shopper history so that we know what we purchased in the past, what specials we can use, product and nutritional recommendations and many other “benefits” for the customer – as you know there is huge benefit for the retailer as they learn more and more about your behavior so they can improve the relevance of their communications with you.

And then of course we have these incredible smartphones that not only give us information and pricing about that product in that store, but also the price for that same product in competitive local retailers and for on-line retailers as well.  The power to find the best price sits in the palm of your hand.  Retailers are certainly responding to this “threat” in different ways.

Last holiday season for example, Amazon offered shoppers $5 to scan items in retail stores and to send that information back to Amazon so that they could understand the local competitive market pricing and make sure they had the best price.  Amazon’s Price Check app, which is available for iPhone and Android, allows shoppers to scan a bar code, take a picture of an item or conduct a text search to find the lowest prices. Amazon is also asking consumers to submit the prices of items with the app, so Amazon knows if it is still offering the best prices.  Now that is proactive “crowdsourcing” at its best.

Some retailers, like Target, are encouraging that behavior, giving shoppers gift cards and other rewards for checking in and scanning merchandise. Others, like Best Buy, are doing their best prevent it, even going so far as to strip the standard bar codes on products to discourage shoppers from running price comparisons with other retailers.

Empathica, recently issued a survey among 6,500 U.S. Internet users — a little more than half (52%) of whom identified as smartphone owners — to take a closer look at how they’re using mobile in stores. Impressively, 55% of smartphone owners said they’ve used a mobile device to compare prices between retailers. Thirty-four percent said they’ve scanned a QR code, and 27% have read online reviews from their devices before making purchase decisions.  Empathica provides Customer Experience Management programs to more than 200 of the world’s leading brands.

According to Empathica’s survey, here is how consumers are using their smartphones in store:

What your customer and prospect can now do while in your store is revolutionary.  You want to win?  Make sure you give your shoppers with what they need to engage.  It is no longer just about the product, but about the entire experience and how the shopper expresses themselves about you.

Let me know what you think about this post by commenting below.

Webman

Mobile – Changing the World

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What impact is mobile having on our behavior?  What changes have happened because we have these cool, powerful smart devices with touchscreens and more information that we could ever imagine right at our fingertips?  How quickly do we respond?  How quickly do we search for more information?  Well if you are like me, we are very quick on the trigger finger.  Do you see what I did there?  🙂

A few stand out stats:

  • There are currently 6 Billion mobile subscribers worldwide
  • This equals 87% of the world’s population
  • China and India account for 30% of this growth
  • There are over 1.2 Billion people accessing the web from their mobiles
  • Over 300,000 apps have been developed in the past 3 years
  • Google earns 2.5 Billion in mobile ad revenue annually

These are just some of the compelling reasons why you can’t afford to ignore mobile as a platform now. Thanks to the guys at Trinity!

86%?  Must be some men in that statistic.  Hmm, thought we could not multi-task?  Actually we can’t as we can only pay real attention to one screen at a time. 🙂

In the US 25% of internet users are mobile only.  So it is the only way they access their mail, web, photos etc.  As most of us are still using both the PC and our mobile devices, this is an amazing statistic.

There are significant cross-cultural differences in how we use our mobile devices.  Check it out.

Capturing our attention these days is also quite difficult.  However when you do, stuff happens:

Amazing statistics for an amazing, transforming technology.  Check out the full infographic at:

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-2012-mobile-growth-statistics/

Enjoy the day.

Webman

Mobile E-Mail (#2)

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So we learned a bit yesterday about some of the concerns around the rapid shift to mobile e-mail. Challenges across devices and operating systems make deployment more complex for sure. Grabbing the audience by the neck and getting them to respond, reply, engage, like you on Facebook, visit you on Twitter, buy something from you on Pinterest or pass along your offer to a friend that they know is in the market for your product, now this is where it gets really interesting. How do you incent this behavior? How do you drive ‘customer engagement” so that their “expressions” about your company and products are positive and they convey messages that will prompt others to consider your products over another?

So how do you breakthrough and distinguish your business in this rapidly changing technology and consumer engagement battle? Here are some very helpful tips that will provide you with a foundational approach to mobile e-mail.

Hope you learn a few tips and tricks on how you can be more successful with your mobile e-mail efforts. Thanks again to our friends at www.litmus.com.

Have an awesome weekend.

Webman

Mobile E-Mail

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As mentioned yesterday, mobile access to e-mail is exploding, now accounting for nearly 33% of initial e-mail access points. Folks are on-the-go and reading their e-mails within a much different context than reading on their laptop/desktops. Walk around your office and notice how many people are heading to or in meetings with just their mobile device. If they are like me, the amount of time spent looking at an e-mail is getting shorter and shorter, while the volume of e-mails continues to escalate on a daily basis, making the right offer, at the right time to the right person a rapidly changing target.

If you are like me, your e-mail evaluation process has changed from scan, read, delete to scan, delete, read so the need to capture my attention in the headline or in the first line of the e-mail has become even more important as this is all that is visible on the screen. so not only has it become difficult for companies that I have opted into for offers, but for companies that are trying to acquire me as a customer for the first time, they must really capture my attention immediately. If not, delete for them.

One of the challenges for enterprise or company e-mail providers are the variety of capabilities that are available through each of the mobile service/technology providers. This is extremely important to understand as the ability to reach consumers B2C (mostly via the Apple IOS or Google Android platforms) is significantly different that a company that is trying to reach business customers B2B (Many businesses still use Blackberry but not sure for how long). Take a look at the following infographic for the differences across each of these platforms.

So make sure you are taking these platform differences into consideration when planning your campaigns. Thanks again to the folks at Litmus for the cool infographics. www.litmus.com

Have an awesome day.

Webman

Mobile Has Changed Everything for E-Mail

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So you are working on your e-mail marketing campaigns and have noticed a seismic shift in where folks are now accessing your incredible content and compelling offers.  People once opened their e-mails primarily on their desktop or laptop computers.  But now new devices such as your smartphone and tablet, primarily the iPad, have become primary access points for e-mail.  Take a look at the following chart:

OK, so now 1/3 of e-mail is opened on a mobile device.  Take a look at the leading e-mail client market share:

So if you are running a small business, what do you need to do:

Thank you to our friends at Milo – www.milo.com and Litmus – www.litmus.com for the awesome infographics.

Webman

Goin’ Mobile – Part 2

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As we all know, the spike in smartphone adoption is changing the way users interact with their mobile devices. We use the phone but that has become secondary to all of the other capabilities these amazing little devices have.  With penetration rates continuing to climb, more and more people interact with their smartphones as the first access point to information, e-mail etc. because it happens in real-time and provides both valuable utility, such as directions, prices, and reviews as well as breaking news and information.

How many times do you look at your smartphone everyday?  Most people look at their phone about 150 times a day, (that’s roughly once every 6.5 minutes), according to Qualcomm CEO, Paul Jacobs. Those glances are to check incoming e-mail and text messages, but also to browse the mobile web.

So what is really going on here.  We are at the forefront of a social behavior change phenomenon.  How we communicate with friends and family, how we shop, how much time we spend, how many devices are being replaced by one, shop, how marketers communicate with us, how a marketer measures their advertising spending, how breaking news is distributed and so on.  We have all been empowered by these amazing devices.

Check out these fun facts:

The end of the desktop?

Looks like we are now multi-tasking all the time:

With just an iPhone we can replace many devices and save big bucks:

We don’t need all these stinking devices!

Enjoy the weekend.

Webman

Are you kidding me?

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So much is changing so fast. Are you keeping up?  Speed, change, innovation.  Moving faster all the time.  The research firm Gartner believes the personal cloud will replace the PC as the center of our digital lives in 2014.  So in less than 2 years the PC as we know it is dead.  Hey PC, we hardly knew ya!  Just as Steve Jobs predicted.  We are now definitely in the post PC world.

That cloud thing is becoming really important really quickly.  For consumers and businesses.  We have covered a number of emerging business opportunities recently but we are really at the tip of the iceberg.

Cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access their daily life in the cloud. The new iPad may be the most impressive piece of computing hardware ever seen. Yet its true power is held back by large enterprise software corporations that cannot keep pace with the new devices designed with cloud computing in mind…. It’s as if they’ve completely ignored one of the most successful computing platforms ever built, outselling the total number of PCs its closest competitor sold last quarter.

With the new iPad sold out, it seems only a matter of time that those not on board with the cloud — and with their wares available on any device — will face an existential question.

Here are the headlines for you:

  • Users are more technologically-savvy and have very different expectations of technology.
  • The internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users.
  • The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users.
  • Users are innovators.
  • All users have similar technology available to them.
  • People are visual – Sounds like an iPad to me
  • Apps rock – they are great, they are pervasive and they are awesome
  • Why have a lot of stuff on your hard drive when you can access your stuff in the cloud when you need it
  • Mobile rocks and will be the primary way we interact with the web – desktop dead – being tethered dead, Niedermeyer dead

OK, I digress.  But the headline is, no more big hard drives, you will just put it in the cloud, so wherever you are you can access it.  Only portability you need now is your access device.  Take a look at what is coming soon.

Hey it is now in the cloud and easy to find. As my friend Johnny says, “Are you kidding me?”

Webman