Tag: ibm mobile marketing

Top execs are starting to increase the role of smartphones and tablets in their campaigns.

According to a survey that was conducted by IBM, which involved the participation of 600 senior managers, the majority of companies plan to boost their investments into mobile marketing over the next year to 18 months.

This research showed that chief marketing officers are becoming increasingly involved in the development of these strategies.

Leaders in mobile marketing strategy – which were defined as companies that have been able to create solid smartphone and tablet based strategies – have stated that mobility has “fundamentally changed how they do business.” Furthermore, the report from IBM went on to reveal that the majority of these leaders have been experiencing “measurable returns on mobile investments”.

Mobile marketing has changed the way in which execs are participating in company strategies.

For instance, according to the research director for the IBM Institute for Business Value, Eric Lesser, in many enterprises, CIOs are still taking on an important role in the creation of mobile marketing strategies. However, among the leaders in the industry, there are additional people who are also involved in this process, which includes the chief marketing officer.

Lesser explained that “We heard about the importance of getting that voice of the customer into the hands of the engineer because of the importance of the customer experience in the mobile world.” He also pointed out that they have also been discovering “parallels between the mobile environment today and the early days of e-commerce in the late 1990s”. It was explained that in this mobile marketing, there was a considerable amount of activity and that a great deal of it was oriented toward the consumer, but that there was also a notable amount of internal fragmentation in companies.

He stated that various groups are now coming up with different applications, but that there isn’t a large amount of cross-organization coordination in terms of coming up with a coherent and solid mobile marketing strategy which not only takes what people are doing with consumers into account, but also how the channel itself “can be leveraged more effectively internally.”

The company has made yet another purchase that has moved it further into the smartphone advertising sphere.

IBM has just announced that its purchasing spree has continued with its acquisition of Xtify, a mobile marketing company, which it has obtained for an undisclosed sum.

The company explained that the deal would give digital advertisers better interaction opportunities.

IBM explained that it would help mobile marketing companies to be able to increase their ability for interaction with consumers over mobile platforms through the use of in-app capabilities. This involves options such as running competitions, alerting customers regarding new promotions, and adding content to the apps themselves. The technology will be available within the Smarter Commerce offerings suite from IBM.

The acquisition of Xtify brings IBM mobile marketing for a number of sizeable customers.

Along with the purchase of mobile marketing opportunities with Xtify, IBM will also be receiving a number of that smaller company’s notable customers, which include 20th Century Fox and Disney Stores.

The vice president for digital marketing at IBM, Kevin Bishop, explained that the track record at Xtify for meeting agendas for mobile marketing is an ideal complement to the portfolio of offerings that are already available at IBM. He said that “With the increase of mobile devices, organisations across all industries are anxious to develop a mobile approach to engage their customers. The acquisition of Xtify provides new ways for our clients to foster a direct, one-to-one communication channel with their customers.”

The CEO of Xtify, Josh Rochlin, stated that he felt that bringing his company into IBM will provided them with the chance to meet a far wider range of customer needs than has ever been possible for that business. He said that the capability for mobile marketing and messaging at Xtify, in combination with the cloud infrastructure and analytics at IBM will give marketers a tremendous arsenal of rich content at with a global reach for informing and influencing a growing number of consumers who regularly use smartphones and tablets.

He went on to point out that the best time to provide mobile marketing content to customers is at exactly the time and place that they are seeking it. This acquisition greatly enhances ad relevancy.