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Wikus Engelbrecht is a writer, journalist and digital poet at GraphicMail, an international email and mobile marketing service provider. His professional career in language and media has traveled the film, print advertising, magazine publishing, food theatre and online content industries since 2003.

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Mobile Shopping Offers Opportunities for Mobile Marketing

Written on
Feb 16, 2012 
Author
Wikus Engelbrecht  |
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Mobile Shopping Offers Opportunities for Mobile Marketing

GRAPHICMAIL – We already know consumers love their mobile devices, but we’re only just beginning to understand how they make their purchase decisions on the go, and how to market products or services to them.

To get greater insight into this, Google studied online shopping behavior for the U.S. in the 2011 holiday season, which revealed a number of interesting stats. One key observation was that consumers use their smartphones at many different points in the purchase path.

41 percent of those who used their mobile phones to help with shopping said they made a purchase directly on their smartphone. 46 percent said they researched an item on their smartphone, then went to a store to make their purchase. 37 percent said they researched an item on their smartphone then made their purchase online.

Another key insight that emerged for mobile marketing purposes is that consumers used all three devices (smartphones, tablets and desktop computers) throughout the research process, but some activities were more popular on specific ones.

Consumers who owned tablets read product reviews and looked for product information more from their tablet devices than from their desktop computer or smartphone. This is likely due to the combination of the large screen and portability of the device that enables consumers to use it more often and in more places.

Not surprisingly, more consumers used their smartphones to contact a retailer. With the many click-to-call phone numbers on websites and in ads, smartphones make it easy to contact retailers.

The powerful data they uncovered can drive best practices for bulk mobile advertising year round, and it’s obvious that smartphones and tablets are only going to become a bigger part of the consumer shopping experience worldwide.

Bulk SMS marketing is one way to encourage the use of mobile devices as a part of the shopping journey, especially in emerging markets where mobile commerce is still taking root.

SMS marketing is the one form of communication that many people are glued to 24/7, and is the closest thing in the digital marketing world to a guaranteed read. Some research has even shown that 97 percent of all SMS marketing messages are opened, 83 percent of which are opened within one hour of receipt.

Business that have mobile-friendly offerings need to take the initiative in introducing it to their audience to get them out of the desktop-only comfort zone.

To help with this, last year GraphicMail finished with the development of an innovative new mobile marketing platform that marries mobile websites and push marketing by way of a personalized web-link send within bulk SMSs. This tool enables messages to be delivered directly to subscribers’ phones with a simple click-through from an SMS, channeling viewers to an image-rich, personalized mobile site.

What’s clear is that advertisers who engage with their customers across all three devices will have an advantage in 2012.





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