What are you most excited about in Mobile
Good video interviews from Rob Woodbridge and some of the more forward thinking marketers in mobile. Top themes that emerged form the interview:
- People still excited about SMS. Many retailers have realized that even though it’s been around for a while, it’s been underutilized.
- The lessening of fragmentation in the market will inevitably create more opportunities. This applies to everything form devices to carrier interoperability.
- Latin America (LATAM) is a key opportunity and also a key challenge, both from a technical and best practices perspective.
- MMS. People seem exited about it, but it’s still a cloudy topic in need of more clarity
Some themes we were surprised didn’t emerge:
- Voice and gesture as a means of communication across all devices.
- Mobile transactions, e.g., Square
- All-mobile social networks
- Mobile gaming. Which has overtaken the traditional gaming consoles and appeals to a broad range of demographics.
Marketers are looking to integrate email with Social and Mobile
Our two cents:
These stats from the Stongmail survey are really not that surprising. After all, channel integration is hardly a new topic. However, what’s perhaps more interesting is the delta between Social and Mobile and Mobile with everything else. There are a few contributing factors:
- The web is inherently social now, meaning that web and social are not different channels. So what we’re really seeing here is the idea that marketers know they need to connect their email efforts to the web.
- Mobile, as with SMS and MMS based activities, requires a separately managed database. But, many marketers don’t understand how to take an existing email database and link it to a new mobile database, a task we often help our clients with.
- As a follow up to the point above, the reason that search and display have much lower percentages is because they are not inherently data-base driven marketing channels like email, web, social and mobile. And the simple fact is, that all marketing (yes, all marketing) is progressing towards a data-driven approach.
Mobile marketing ready to take off
Mobile marketing is poised for dramatic growth in 2012, according to a survey of 501 marketing and advertising executives by AT&T, which predicts that much of the growth will be driven by smartphone applications and mobile bar codes.
Separately, a study from ReturnPath found big increases in email open rates on mobile devices, suggesting an emerging area of opportunity for email marketers.
The AT&T survey of marketing and advertising executives found that 88% of respondents expect their mobile marketing program to increase over the next year, with 43% saying they expect more mobile apps, 41% pointing to mobile barcodes, and 40% saying they anticipate more mobile banner ads. Mobile Web came next at 35%, followed by SMS messages, cited by 34% of respondents.
Overall, 66% of respondents said they expect mobile barcodes to be the main driver of mobile marketing innovation over the next year. However, security and cost remain important issues when mobile marketers consider using mobile barcodes.
The ReturnPath survey found that the volume of email accessed via mobile devices increased 34% in the six-month period from April-September 2011 compared to the preceding six-month period. Over this period, the volume of email opened via iPads surged 73%.
One of the most popular times for accessing email via mobile devices was over the weekend, when users are away from workplace laptops and PCs. Conversely, the volume of email accessed via mobile drops sharply on Mondays, when workers return to the workplace.
Why mobile is better than email
We get this question at Dark Matter constantly. And sometimes, depending on the situation, it can be hard to answer. But, here is an instance where the answer is actually quite straight forward. The reason mobile is better than email marketing is because people still have to think about it. Look at the attached email from Citi. See how impersonal this email is and how loaded with tracking gibberish. We are all being constantly bombarded with email marketing like this, which should not serve as the model for mobile marketing. The highly impersonal nature of email marketing, often sent based on the decision of a marketing bot, is seldom based on relevance, but instead on predetermined, i.e., old information. Mobile demands more of marketers. To run successful mobile campaigns, marketers must use their marketing instincts and not rely solely on the output of a pre-existing recommendation engine. This crucial ingredient, the involvement of the actual marketer, is the key to relevancy. And relevancy is the life blood of mobile.
Eight Steps To Good Mobile Email Design
Source: by Neil Berman,
1. Send in MIME Multipart Format. No design changes are needed for this step, but the benefits are immediate. MIME multipart format ensures that emails are sent as both HTML and plain text, so they are readable on mobile devices that can display only the text version of your email.
2. Keep subject lines to 15 or fewer characters. Mobile devices cut email subject lines off at about 15 characters. Keeping the subject line concise increases the impact of your email. If you cannot write a subject line in 15 characters, front-load it so your key message is in the first 15 characters.
3. Make the most of pre-header text. The pre-header text contains the message at the very top of your email. Many mobile devices will display this text along with the subject line in the email preview pane. Use this space to persuade recipients to read the email. iPhones allow about 140 characters in vertical view, so keep the text short and persuasive. This is the perfect place to link to a mobile-friendly version of your email.
4. Chose the right email dimensions. Many newer touchscreen phones automatically resize your email to fit the screen. While your standard 600-pixel-wide email may display correctly for these devices, the text and images may be too small to read. For the best display on both mobile devices and the desktop, code your emails between 480 and 600 pixels.
5. Keep the layout simple. Since the space for content on a mobile device is small, keep the layout simple and stack information in one column.
6. Take it easy on the images. Include important information in the text of your email, and never send emails consisting of one big image as the only content. Include ALT text on all of your images, and keep the text short and easy-to-read. When splitting up images, stack them vertically, on top of one another, instead of next to each other, so your content stays together.
7. Design for fat fingers. Since many mobile devices have touch screens, designing links and buttons with plenty of space makes them easier to click with fingers. Apple recommends coding all links and buttons with a target area of at least 44 x 44 pixels.
8. Test to ensure good results. Now that you’ve optimized your email design for mobile, test it on various devices to make sure your emails are rendering as you intended. Test frequently, since the mobile industry changes constantly.
