News from CTIA: Mobile Marketing Ranks As Top Choice By Today’s Brands Thanks to High ROI

This year at CTIA, Mogreet’s VP of Business Development and Strategy, Patrick Mahoney, joined a fantastic panel of speakers to tackle the question of how companies and Brands are adapting to the consumer-driven move to mobile.

Panelists included

• Alex Hall, President, TigerSpike
• Chris Hayes, Managing Partners Y&R
• Scott Kveton, CEO of Urban Airship
• Patrick Mahoney, VP of Mogreet
• Alexander Muse, CEO, Co-founder, ShopSavvy
• Melissa Patterson, Mobile Manager, Cox Media Group

The panel kicked off with four key pieces of advice for brands or companies looking to drive large-scale success in mobile:

• Mobile brand engagement should start simple: consumers are already comfortable with SMS/MMS mobile messaging, mobile web and Apps.  Now is the prefect time to use the most widely available medium (messaging) to open an engagement dialogue with consumers.
• For consumers, mobile is both personal and disruptive.  If Brands are going to interrupt a customer, it better be for a good reason.  Well-executed mobile campaigns are most powerful tools that Brands can use to develop long-term customer relationships.
• The mobile content must be relevant but also personalized.  If brand marketers accept that content drives experience then Brands must provide the best experience to drive marketing and sales success rates.
• The growing sales and market penetration of smartphones and tablets provide an ample opportunity to deliver rich media content specifically designed for each type of device and consumer consumption habits.

What do consumers want and expect from mobile brand interactions?

Given that the most frequently accessed Apps on the tablet are either games or weather related, it is easy to see that consumers are looking for mobile interactions that solve a need, tap into a passion or provide ongoing and interesting engagement.

Apps vs. SMS/MMS Mobile Messaging:

There are a couple of common ways for Brands to interact with fans outside of the mobile web: branded Apps and mobile message marketing (SMS/MMS). It‘s key to note that consumers interact with both mediums completely differently.  While mobile Apps may work for some audiences, it may not appeal or work for others.  Utilizing a mix of mediums allows Brands to meet the needs of the consumer, while driving stronger overall ROI.

It is key to note that the two mediums can be intertwined – many of Mogreet’s clients create smart linking strategies, leveraging targeting tools to generate operating system (iOS, Android) specific message filters to drive app downloads, awareness and usage.

In addition, companies such as Cox Media Group (CMG), embrace both forms of consumer interaction because they recognized early on that they needed to create a wide range of interaction points with consumers. CMG developed Apps for smartphone users interested in a more robust interaction with their local news station.  However, since 50% of Americans are still on feature phones and as consumer behavior shifts to the premise of “if the news is important enough, it will find me,” CMG also uses SMS/MMS messaging to meet the needs of consumers looking for faster real-time and relevant information.

What about branding Apps?

While many of the panelists advocated and/or have developed branded Apps to ensure an experience for their diehard fan, everyone agreed that Apps come with inherent limitations including:

• Limited audience opportunity (smartphone owners only; operating system limitations)
• High consumer education
• Ongoing and ever increasing oversaturation of app marketplace
• Short consumer attention span
• Declining usage over time
• Low awareness about specific Apps

In order to make Apps successful, to cut through the clutter and App exhaustion, panelist Scott Kventon noted that Brands must leverage push notification technologies and geo-location opportunities to create long term engagement with customers.

What about branded MMS?

The panel agreed that MMS marketing is one of the stronger, albeit unsexy, mobile marketing tools available.  MMS marketing provides Brands the chance to share fully branded experiences with program subscribers by including multimedia assets, such as video and images, along with the Brand’s call-to-action to purchase or desired action.  Like Apps, MMS is permission-based marketing providing the consumer complete control of the engagement process.  New tools like Mogreet’s exclusive “share to social” continues to widen the impact of each message by providing users the opportunity to share the content received across their social platforms.

So should brands choose mobile messaging or Apps?

In making the decision to choose one or both mobile marketing platforms, brands must take into who their audience is, their consumption habits, and the type of mobile devices that are most prevalent.

At the end of the day, the greatest ROI comes a mix of several mobile strategies. Brands are encouraged to provide consumers a choice of communication tools so they can select the one they prefer. This is the key to creating long-term consumer interaction, engagement and ultimately sales and loyalty.

Mobile Marketer also crafted a summary of the panel – read it here!  What do you think of mobile marketing – Apps or MMS?

Mogreet partners with Betterworks!

We are happy to announce that we are bringing the amazing perks and offerings Betterworks to the Mogreet family!

Being a startup, we live in the typical Silicon Beach startup environment – our employees work hard and play hard.  We have meetings when others are enjoying their morning coffee and are launching customer programs during the average lunch hour.  We are building a business, after all, and that takes time. Read more of this post