Tag: holiday season

Even if you aren’t in the fast food industry, there is still a great deal that can be learned from its largest brands in terms of mobile marketing, as these companies have been some of the first to embrace this channel.

Both the advances and mistakes made by these brands offer important lessons.

Many of the largest companies in fast food have now introduced mobile marketing websites and mcommerce apps to help them to encourage customers to buy more, and shop more often. Examining their past strategies can be very helpful in assisting you with the creation of your company’s strategy or campaigns in the upcoming months.

Mobile marketing will be especially important throughout this holiday shopping season. With Thanksgiving right ahead, it is important to eliminate all of the quirks in your campaigns.

The official start to the holiday shopping season to begin at the end of this week, if you are hoping to use mobile commerce to help in your successes this year, then the time is now to avoid some of the most common mistakes.

Your presence for smartphone and tablet shoppers must be established to take part in this huge marketplace.

Last year, according to comScore, consumers spent 15 percent more on holiday shopping than they did the year before, bringing it to $37 billion. According to figures from the U.S. Census department, almost 51 percent of the American population widely used mobile commerce and the internet over their smartphones and tablets in 2011. It is expected that mobile commerce use and holiday shopping will come together significantly this year.

Therefore, it will be very important for you to have your mobile commerce campaign in order in time for the holiday shopping season to take off. That said, it isn’t just a matter a presence, anymore, but you need to get it right and avoid common mistakes, as well. Small errors have a way of rapidly snowballing so that they cause notable harm to potential sales. It is important to eliminate them as quickly as possible and not simply wait until Christmas Eve.

The following are some of the top mobile commerce mistakes that can be the most destructive to your campaign.

• Failing to draw attention to holiday discounts, deals, sales, and promotions. Almost every holiday shopper, particularly those using mobile commerce, are seeking for the best prices and savings opportunities on the gifts they are buying. If they don’t realize that you have something special to offer, it won’t take them long to move on to the competition.

• Failing to provide stock status and shipping information – the closer the date comes to December 25, the more vital this becomes. As things become more last minute, shoppers start to concentrate less on price and more on making sure that the gift will arrive on time.

• POS error messages – if a smartphone or tablet user is using a mobile commerce checkout, and he or she submits the wrong information or accidentally leaves a required field blank, make sure that the error message clearly states what was not correctly submitted. If the customer can’t tell, he or she may become frustrated and give up, abandoning the shopping cart and buying somewhere else, instead.

 

Survey highlights importance of mobile commerce during holiday season

Sybase 365, a mobile services and mobile commerce solutions provider, and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) have released the results on a new survey concerning the role mobile devices will play in the U.S. holiday season. Mobile technology has become rampantly popular in the U.S., and many consumers have smart phones and tablets that allow them to participate in mobile commerce. Consumers have been showing a great deal of interest in using their mobile devices to shop, bank, and pay for goods over the past few years, and this may come to a head during the 2012 holiday season.

87% of consumers to use their mobile devices to research products

According to the survey, which focused on 1,000 adult consumers throughout the U.S., approximately 87% of all consumers will be using their mobile devices to make purchase decisions during the holiday season. Many consumers will be relying on their mobile device to find out information on products that they are interested in, with other using their devices to find deals and net themselves significant savings that may only be available online.

50% of consumers to purchase products through their mobile device

The survey also shows that 50% of consumers will be using their mobile devices to make purchases, while another 61% claimed they would be willing to participate in mobile commerce if improvements to security and infrastructure were made. Currently, using a smart phone to make purchases at a physical store is a practice limited to consumers with NFC-enabled devices. These devices are rare, as are the point of sale terminals that are capable of facilitating mobile payments. Security has also been an issue that has put off many consumers.

Mobile commerce could gain momentum through the holiday season

Despite consumer concerns, mobile commerce is growing in the U.S. The holiday season is expected to provide the burgeoning industry with significant momentum, especially as retailers get a better understanding of how mobile commerce can impact their business during the busiest and most important time of year for the retail industry as a whole.