Although mobile marketing is quickly becoming an essential part of integrated marketing strategies, some of the technology available is not as straightforward as other recent marketing developments, for example social media.
Don’t let this put you off! Mobile technology is a quickly developing area with huge growth potential. And as more and more people go about their day-to-day online activity on their mobile devices, there are more opportunities for marketers to take advantage of this.
Here are 5 things to consider when making the move into mobile marketing:
Create for the user
• Consumers should have a clear understanding of the purpose of the mobile offering and why it will be beneficial to them.
• You are marketing to people who are likely to be ‘on-the-go’ – give them what they want, when they want it. The content should be compelling with a clear call to action.
• Mobile users have different needs to people who access information on a PC or laptop. For example, they may be looking for information and are likely to need to access it quickly.
Choose what information you want to ‘mobilise’.
Determining what content is best to mobilise is easier if you can identify information that has one or more of the following characteristics, (although these categories are by no means exhaustive):
• Information that is time-sensitive: This is usually new information that is essential to be communicated in a short time frame so your customers can conduct their business or your employees can execute their jobs.
• Information that is timing-dependent: This differs from time-sensitive information in that it may not be new but it is needed at a specific place and time.
E-mail
There has been a 33% growth in people accessing emails from mobile devices between March 2011 and March 2012. Therefore, when sending out e-mails and e-marketing it’s important to take into account the people who are reading it from their smartphone or tablet.
• Design: The orientation of the screens is likely to be portrait rather than landscape, particularly on smartphones. Obviously, the screens will be a lot smaller as well so text needs to be fairly large.
• Touchscreen: Pressing a button with your finger rather than a mouse is a lot less accurate and it can be very frustrating to click something and be taken to a page you didn’t mean to go to. Therefore – click-through links need to be a decent size!
• Subject line: There is even less space to read a subject line on smartphones and tablets, so subject lines need to be short and still grab the attention of a potential reader.
Data and content size
Although most mobile devices have the ability to connect to wi-fi, the reality is that most of the time people will be using their mobile devices using data connections. In the UK, 3G data transfer is constantly improving, but it is still much slower than using the internet and reliant on signal available.
Therefore, the size of the content is a vital consideration with mobile marketing. When sending attachments, it is not as easy to send or receive multiple and large files to and from mobiles. Images, for example, need to be compressed enough to ease load times on slower mobile connections.
On the other hand, not all devices that have the capability to connect to the internet will be able to upload images. Messages need to be clear and make sense without the corresponding image. Also, all mobile devices have different screen resolutions – therefore images need to be high quality enough to not appear distorted on higher resolution screens.
Security and Privacy
Security and privacy challenges on mobile devices are an area which is still being explored. However, mobile devices pose new security challenges such as how is data stored? What if the device is lost or stolen?
Research has demonstrated that people are already cautious about using their phone for secure transactions, such as online shopping, with a survey showing that 21% of respondents said they would be comfortable to buy, but in reality, only 8% did.
The best way to approach security with mobile technology is to err on the side of caution. Web applications running on mobile devices have the same security issues as any other web application, with the added issue that the devices are far easier to steal or lose.
There has been a 33% growth in people accessing emails from mobile devices between