Mobile marketing an effective tool for customer engagement

Last Updated: December 21, 2010By Tags: ,

Engaging with existing customer base can be costly, particularly in today’s world when advertising costs are continuing to increase and positive results from an advertising campaign are harder to achieve. In such challenging times, marketers should search for new ways in which they can assign specific segmented targets for campaigns, increase customer touch points, and analyse the information collected after every campaign in order to maximize ROI. If you are focusing on customer engagement, then, mobile marketing provides the ability to achieve all of these goals. I have outlined some key benefits of using mobile marketing as a customer engagement tool:

  • Easy and Instant – The message is delivered within seconds; this will result in positive touch-point. Most mobile marketing applications are very simple to operate. This means it’s very easy to manage the entire process, right from creation to execution.
  • Cheap and cost effective – Distributing your message by SMS is significantly cheaper than postage. Currently some SMS gateways charger about 7 cents per sms sent. In addition, there are no expenses for printing. This makes it very cost effective, the more messages you send the cheaper it gets.
  • Delivery – Remember, these are your customers and you should gain/have the consent to send messages over mobile. Delivery is usually guaranteed, as people do not change mobile numbers that often. This is also true if you compare it with email, direct mail, and other forms of advertising.
  • Response Rate – Recent research shows that consumers response rate to mobile marketing is around 15%. This is much higher than your typical 1%-3% for as direct mail.
  • Personalisation – Message can be targeted to individuals who have opted to receive them; this provides the opportunity to personalise and tailor the brand message to a diversified audience.
  • Customers within reach – The increasing use of mobiles phones ensure us that mobile phones are within the customers reach 80% of every day. This means that you are more likely to engage with the customer.
  • One-way or two-way interaction – Mobile marketing can provide both one-way (e.g. promotion offer, special deal, etc) or two-way (e.g. click on the link to get more information, like on FB, etc) interaction. It depends on the campaign objectives. Carefully crafted campaign can be a highly effective campaign.
  • Marketing Campaign Integration – Integration is the key to the success of mobile marketing. Mobile campaigns like any other campaigns should be well integrated with the overall brand strategy. Current tools certainly provide the facilities to integrate your CRM systems with mobile applications to enhance their effectiveness .
  • Measurable – Range of measurements can be used to track and analyse the effectiveness of the campaign and linking it back to ROI. Some of the measurements can be number of downloads, page visits, customer opt-ins, etc.

However, marketers must beware the pitfalls. Mobile phones are deeply personal objects, and now, more than ever, marketers must take care to profile their customers, get to know what they want, what they need – and deliver it. The evolution of mobile marketing will drive the growth of mobile customer engagement.

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To achieve better sales and profits, most companies could be doing more to cultivate business from their existing customers. However, enthusiasm for customer-retaining strategies must not endanger sound customer-getting efforts. How companies balance the two is the big question. To intensify reaching old customers while still seeking new ones, for many firms, will mean changes in market analysis, planning systems, management incentives, and marketing and/or operations organization. In the rush toward growth, consumer marketers have tended to regard success as stemming from obtaining new customers while unwittingly minimizing the importance of satisfying old ones. It is time for more companies to distinguish between their getting and retaining functions, to assess the balance between them, and to remedy any deficiencies in customer retention. This process requires management to value the potential of current customers and to treat them in special ways to get them to keep coming back. Several major elements should be part of the new marketing mix for customer retention: Product extras Keeping customers frequently requires giving them more than the basic product that initially attracted them. Product extras for individual customers over time can play a sales-expansive role. Reinforcing promotions Product promotion works better when aimed at existing customers. If a marketer knows who these customers are, benefits can be obtained by giving them reinforcing communications. Sales force connections The sales force can play a decisive role in the customer-retention function. At a retail or service counter the salesperson is the focal point of the company's strategy and is the firm to the customer. Post-purchase communication A company must anticipate that some customers will encounter either minor or serious problems after purchasing. If the firm is not ready to hear and correct these difficulties, the customer may not repurchase  or may cancel the the relationship. Whether company or customer is at fault, standby post-purchase activities can be instrumental in saving these customers.

4 Comments

  1. PowerOfMobile December 20, 2010 at 5:27 pm

    Mobile marketing an effective tool for customer engagement … http://bit.ly/fONrFq

  2. Scott Zimmerman December 22, 2010 at 6:04 am

    I certainly agree that marketers should leverage mobile technology as a new and more cost effective way to engage their customers. Similarly, marketers should not overlook other communications technology like e-mail, voice mail and social media to exchange information and create a personal human touch with customers. That’s a concept called Engagement Communications.

    These ongoing two-way dialogues with customers provide a constant feedback loop that gives marketers deeper insights into their customers’ motivations and needs, and offers the opportunity to react in real time.

    For example, retailers can send a series of text messages to their customers to promote post-holiday specials or when a new shipment of a “must-have” item has arrived at the store.

    Similarly, hotels and resorts are integrating their reservation systems with automated customer engagement communications. By providing customers, at point of check-in, the opportunity to receive SMS, voice or email messages to be notified about anything from happy hour discount notifications and show tickets to restaurant reservations, casinos are able to tailor the information and medium used to engage their customers.

    TeleVox recently implemented an Engagement Communications pilot program for a Las Vegas casino/hotel where 5,000 patrons were notified of a special offer to receive a free room and concert ticket. Patrons could choose to be transferred to a call center to take advantage of the offer. The calls were significantly cheaper than a direct mail campaign and offered immediate and measurable results – the hotel received eight additional reservations for an ROI of $9,600.

    Mobile marketing provides a platform to engage customers in new and intimate ways that today’s consumers have come to expect. However, it requires a well-planned strategy in order to lead to a better customer experience, greater loyalty and a positive impact on the bottom line.

    Thank you for the post.

    Scott Zimmerman, President of http://www.televox.com

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