Former CMO and Principal of Augme Technologies, and now Founder of Growth Matters Media appeared in over 200 public releases and live speaking engagements highlighting good examples of early adaption to mobile marketing.

1.
March 4, 2011
Taking Another Look at Mobile Shoppers
by David Apple
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently declared that mobile will "revolutionize
electronic commerce and payments" -- and when Google speaks, everyone
listens. Sure, mobile marketing campaigns have been around for years
(think of all the QR codes and text-to-shortcode campaigns you've seen
lately), but emerging technologies such as smartphones embedded with
near-field communications (NFC) technology and pre-loaded barcode
scanners mean that 2011 is a watershed year for mobil. Now it's up to
manufacturers and retailers to seize this opportunity and to weave mobile
marketing into their overall marketing campaigns. Those worried about
doing so should know there's a treasure trove of data on customer behaviors to help them
shape those campaigns. A great resource for this kind of information is the white paper by
Augme Technologies and ARC Worldwide, published by In-Store Marketing Institute in its
February issue of Shopper Marketing. Here's some of what this white paper shares:
Almost half of consumers can be classified as "mobile shoppers." That's not to say all
of them shop exclusively via their mobile devices, but they do take part in shopping-related
activities such as receiving notifications about in-store promotions and offers, looking up
product information while in-store, reading up on product reviews, browsing online coupons,
and Tweeting or texting about products to get instant feedback from their circle of friends.
About one in five mobile shoppers' activities is considered "heavy." This group has two
defining characteristics: they do just about everything on their phones, from making calls, to
texting, to conducting searches and playing games, AND they are habitually heavy shoppers
who are more likely to use mobile devices to shop.
Heavy mobile shoppers are up to five times as likely to use mobile than "light"
ones. That includes visiting a retailer's website (91 percent heavy to 30 percent light);
reading customer ratings (86 percent to 21 percent), looking for deals (83 percent to 20
percent); and checking for in-store availability of a product (78 percent to 15 percent).
And, of course, there are tools to take advantage of -- some new, some not, but all very
important:
Smartphones that got smarter. About 65 million smartphones are expected to hit the
market this year with embedded barcode readers - saving consumers from the hassle of
having to download the software themselves. And RIM, the maker of blackberry, is expected
to include near-field communications technology (NFC) in the next generation of devices.
These two developments should facilitate greater expansion of the use of QR codes and
NFC payments -- something for manufacturers and retailers to keep in mind.

2.
SMS still rules the mobile roost. 68 percent of mobile subscribers still use old-school text
messages, and at least 90 percent of those users send at least one text per day. In one sure
measure of popularity, American Idol has made SMS a mainstay of their voting process, with
one study showing that an average AI viewer texts his or her vote 38 times. Every mobile
device can send and receive SMS, so it's already scalable. Remember this easy formula:
popular + scalable = don't ignore it.
Feature phones are not outdated or outclassed by any definition. Smartphones will
penetrate about 51 percent of the U.S. market by the end of 2011, thanks in part to Verizon
getting the iPhone 4 and the exploding reach of Android-based devices. That still leaves a
whopping 49 percent of consumers who won't get to interact with your campaign if it's just
app-based. Feature phones send texts and have relatively limited web access, which is more
than enough to exploit for a mobile campaign.
You can find more on these ideas in the white paper, aptly titled "Upward Mobility". There's
one thing to keep in mind, regardless of how you shape your campaign. There's only one
marketing tool that stays with your customer, step-by-step. It's not the mail-in rebate or the
banner, it's the phone.