Category: Mobile Marketing

Applications are now being used to help enhance the rate of customer engagement while shopping.

Marketers are continuing with their rapid adoption of techniques to reach consumers via smartphone and the popularity of mobile commerce apps is a new reflection of that attitude. A new report suggests that these marketers are using mobile applications as a new way of reaching their target audience.

The report was titled “Quantifying the Rise of Mobile Apps & The Value of Deep Linking.”

That report was published by The Relevancy Group in conjunction with Branch. The research data indicated that almost 45 percent of marketers are now developing and launching mobile commerce apps to enhance customer engagement. Furthermore, over 40 percent of marketers are looking to mobile apps to boost brand loyalty. About that same percentage of marketers are also using applications for the purpose of driving sales.

Marketers recognize the increasing value of mobile commerce apps to drive revenue.

When asked their opinion about the effectiveness of m-commerce apps in driving revenue, marketers ranked them as fourth on the list of most effective channels. Above applications in terms of their effectiveness were: display advertising, social media marketing and email marketing.

According to Branch’s Todd Patton, “Email marketing remains an important part of your marketing efforts.” Furthermore, “Email is the best channel to directly reach potential customers and loyal supporters, “ he said.

At the same time, marketers acknowledge that email marketing can be very effective while at the same time being easy to use. It remains a central marketing tactic for brands due to the simplicity of the tools required in order to reach customers. It is quick, cost effective and it reaches people on virtually any connected device.

A previous Adestra and Ascend2 report called “State of Digital Marketing – Benchmarks for Success,” showed that 61 percent of marketers feel email is the most effective marketing technique. Only 23 percent felt that it was the most challenging tactic to effectively execute.

That said, 38 percent of marketers felt mobile marketing was the most challenging to execute. Still, its effectiveness appears to have made the challenge worthwhile considering the rising number of mobile commerce apps being produced.

Video has become a central part of our mobile device use.

After all, smartphones and tablets make it very convenient to watch any of the millions of videos that are readily available online. In fact, the consumption of video over smartphones is growing faster than that over PC and tablets.

In the United States alone, there are about 41 million people who are watching video specifically on their smartphones.  Though we might assume that the smartphone screen would be too small to be able to enjoy video, it certainly hasn’t stopped us.  The fact is that these devices are simply too handy to ignore.  We have them on us all the time so when we want to see a video, they’re the obvious choice.

After all, most video views aren’t exactly planned.  They’re spontaneous and occur as a result of having stumbled across them during other smartphone uses. This helps to explain why a mobile charger gadget has become such an important gadget as video is notorious for draining battery power. This is especially true when a specific brand or celebrity is involved in a video.

That said, viewers don’t just idly watch and then shut off their devices.  They often use video to learn about different brands and products.  Moreover, they will frequently make shopping decisions based on what they’ve seen.  In fact, according to some studies, 73 percent of consumers have an increased likelihood of making a purchase after having watched a video.

A recent survey showed that 58 percent of consumers find brands more trustworthy when they produce video.  Consumers also find videos to be very helpful.  Ninety six percent feel that videos make it easier to make decisions about what they want to buy.  Another 71 percent of consumers felt that they felt more positively about a company, service or brand after having seen a corporate video from them.

For marketers, brands and companies, this is a very important piece of knowledge, but at the same time, it’s important for us to acknowledge as consumers, too.  After all, videos have become quite an important part of our overall shopping experience.