Adopting mobile marketing to increase consumer engagement in 2023-24
By Kumar Saurav
Mobile marketing has reshaped consumer-brand interaction, making it imperative for brands to prioritize mobile customer engagement. Global mobile advertising spending is expected to reach $339 billion in 2023 and exceed $413 billion by 2024. Adopting a mobile-first approach is essential to consumer engagement. Higher customer engagement is directly proportional to a boost in sales, more referrals and increased brand loyalty. To achieve this, it is inevitable to formulate strategies to connect with the customer at every point during their buying journey.
What is Mobile Marketing?
A mobile marketing strategy uses mobile channels such as SMS text messaging, MMA multimedia messaging, in-app messaging, push notifications, mobile responsive email, in-game marketing or scanning QR codes with mobile to acquire customers and to retain
Location-based services and proximity systems aim to reach the right user at the right time. One of the central tenets of mobile marketing is that it is primarily driven by consumer behavior rather than consumer demographics. Another factor to consider is snacking. Snacking refers to the short periods when mobile users check in on media or messages. Mobile marketing involves creating seamlessly consumable content that leads to instant gratification for the users and points for the marketers.
Mobile usage has increased exponentially, and mobile users are expected to surpass the 7B mark by 2025. Research by GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications Association) indicates that almost 75% of mobile phone users will be using smartphones by 2025. December 2022, the market share for mobile phones was at a staggering 60.29% compared to 37.71% for computers. This ubiquity of mobile devices and booming internet penetration will accelerate the mobile marketing industry.
Mobile optimization for websites and apps is essential to scale your digital presence. Data from Think With Google suggests that 63% of smartphone users prefer to buy from companies that have mobile-friendly websites or apps. Mobile-optimized sites improve user experience and increase the likelihood of customer acquisition. Thus, an effective mobile marketing strategy can help skyrocket brand awareness by reaching your target audience on the go and maximizing reach cost-effectively.
Here’s how implementing a mobile marketing strategy can boost customer engagement:
Personalization is key
Use of first-party data such as geographic location, target audience affinities and past purchase history for creating personalized communications, improving the customer’s future experiences and providing relevant recommendations.
For example, a movie streaming application can analyze customer behavior to understand his/her preferred genre along with gauging their emotional state at a particular time. The company can then guess the user’s state of mind, create a customer profile and encourage consumers with the right messages at each buyer journey stage.
Salesforce reports that 79% of customers are open to disclosing personal information in exchange for contextualized engagement that can increase lead generation and customer retention.
SMS Marketing
This mobile marketing channel allows a brand to send text messages to users who have opted in. It has the highest open rate at 98%, with 90% of text messages being read within the first 3 minutes of receiving the message. SMS messages can be sent when a user abandons a shopping cart or interacts with your website.
SMS marketing can act as a component of a more extensive cross-channel marketing campaign where the SMS message is just one of several that the customer receives, giving them access to the brand regardless of the channel they choose.
Push notifications and in-app messages
Would you like to promote a limited time offer or a flash sale? Push notifications and in-app messages may be your best bet. Medium-performing apps showed an average engagement rate of 26% for these two channels, and high-performing apps reflected an engagement rate of 44%, as opposed to the average open rate of generic email marketing, which stands at a mere 17%.
Embedding rich push notifications with images or video links and linking them back to an email marketing message already rolled out to the user can be extremely helpful in encouraging them to engage with the brand’s content on the web and application.
About 20% of app opens are triggered by push notifications (MoEngage Data). Integrating push notifications with basic personalization can increase open rates by up to 9%.
Location-based marketing
Companies can set up geofences using GPS location tracking to send personalized offers to their customers when they visit a store or are within a radius of it. Giving customers a discount on an item in front of them on the shelf using beacon-tach for proximity helps increase the benefits of mobile-based marketing. This form of marketing can be implemented when a customer is physically present in a specific region to deliver a service/offer and initiate the cross-channel marketing sequence.
Collaborate with influencers and solidify your social media presence
Partnering with influencers on popular social media platforms increases mobile customer engagement. Associating products and services with influencers (mega, micro, mid-level, macro, nano) helps with brand awareness and customer acquisition. Narrowing down your target audience is essential before deciding which category of influencers you want to work with. A MediaKix research indicates that 56% of women follow fashion and beauty influencers, entertainers and celebrities. On the other hand, 54% of men turn to gaming and tech influencers on social media. Additionally, choosing the right influencer platform is key to a successful mobile marketing campaign. The Omnicore Agency research suggests that for a company whose target audience is adult males, Twitter may be the best influencer marketing platform, as 68.5% of global Twitter users are male.
On the other hand, MediaKix suggests that 70% of women choose Instagram as their preferred platform for following influencers.
Mobile loyalty programs
It works like magic when it comes to customer retention. Businesses can increase sales by offering attractive lifetime packages for mobile products and services to current users and potential buyers. The iOS App Store is a good example, allowing consumers to integrate payments from their main Apple account across many channels. Apple offers a range of loyalty programs in India with special offers, rewards and customized apps for mobile customers to boost mobile engagement.
The author is Global Mobile Business Head, AdCounty Media.
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