Celebrate!

This is a lovely example of well-designed HTML for email marketing. I receive too many emails that are completely blank and just show placeholders for images, especially on my mobile phone or tablet. This is what you can do with a bit more thought.

What I don’t know of course, is how it does or doesn’t work on mobile…

Hat tip to @ChrisMear for sharing.

SMS is dead. Long live messaging.

You may be forgiven for thinking mobile marketing is all about adverts on web pages seen on a mobile device or in-app advertising or sponsorship. For those of us who’ve been in the game for longer than we care to remember, SMS started the whole mobile marketing sector off back in 1999 yet it is often overlooked for newer ways to use mobile (i.e. mobile adverts) or for older formats (email, print, TV).

But it isn’t quite dead yet. I still use it – although not nearly as much as I used to. My sister is an avid texter and my nieces are still at it. However, for the first time, there has been a downturn in text messaging in the UK.

The main culprits for the downturn is the rise of messaging services like WhatsApp. It makes sense. As we find other, cheaper, more convenient ways to chat to each other, SMS services will get replaced. Why pay for SMS when you can have WhatsApp for free and you’re paying for mobile data anyway? I suspect Facebook messenger and email also have a part to play in this picture.

Let’s look at this growth with a bit of historical context… According to the Mobile Data Association (and they got their figures direct from the network operators), annual consumer usage 1999-2009 was as follows:

1999 - 1 billion; 2000 - 6.2 billion; 2001 - 12.2 billion; 2002 - 16.8 billion; 2003 - 20.5 billion; 2004 - 26 billion; 2005 - 32 billion; 2006 - 41 billion; 2007 - 56.9 billion; 2008 - 78.9 billion; 2009 96.8 billion

As you can see from the graph, SMS was still growing, year-on-year, at a healthy pace in 2010 and 2011. And even though there has been a drop-off, we’re still looking at about 120 billion SMS every year in the UK or thereabouts. That’s 4.5 times more than what we were using 10 years ago. That’s a lot of SMS.

So let’s not dismiss SMS quite yet. When you look at the annual figures, they’re still very healthy so I encourage you to think about SMS as part of your marcomms effort. After all, plenty of your customers are still using it and there may still be value in connecting with them via SMS – especially for customer service – another area often overlooked.

What is particularly exciting for us mobile marketers though, is how much activity is happening on mobile devices. Check out that email figure – 65% of us are accessing email on our smartphones. It really is huge. So if you haven’t ‘gone mobile’ yet, I really think it might be time for you to do so.

I was asked a few years ago what my advice would be to the first time mobile-marketer in terms of ‘going mobile’ and I said to make sure their email marketing was mobile friendly. I think the advice still stands. If you do nothing else in mobile, please make sure your email works on handsets – and test for lower end devices. Not everyone has the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy!

Heroes of the Mobile Fringe 2014 are Go!

I can hardly believe this is going to be the third year of organising the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival in Barcelona. And on top of that, it will be my eighth Swedish Beers party in Barcelona. It has been quite the journey and certainly one that isn’t over yet.

The success (or not) of the festival is really down to YOU. I’ll be organising Swedish Beers (the bar is booked for Wednesday 26 February and I’ll have more details coming soon but feel free to connect on Facebook and Twitter to get updates). I am also organising an event with the UKTI aimed at investors on Sunday 23 February. And maybe one or two more things. But everything else is up to you and for you to make of it as you will. My goal in this is to help the right people get together and to help you make the most of the week.

How to get involved?

Create an event. Whether it’s a small round-table, a panel discussion, a lunch, a dinner, a party or something else entirely, as long as it’s related to mobile, falls within the 23 to 28 February 2014 and is interesting*, then it’s in. It does not have to be held in Barcelona either – if you’d like to put something on in your town or city during those dates, then feel free. There were events in London and Helsinki last year – can we add any more this year?

Once you’ve created an event, please add it here so I can include it as a listing. There is no charge to list your event. I repeat, there is no charge to list your event!

If you need a venue, I may be able to help. I know some people locally who can help source, or I can recommend a few places. Barcelona is full of lovely bars and restaurants and many of them are very happy to welcome new guests.

If you have an event idea, but need some help fleshing it out, then feel free to run it past me – just add it to the list or drop me a line. I charge reasonable rates for organising events for clients. And if I’m not the right person to do it, then I probably know someone who is.

If you’re not up to organising your own event, but would like to sponsor something, then please get in touch. There are a couple of sponsorship slots available for Swedish Beers and there are a couple of other events I’d like to see happen subject to sponsorship.

If you have an event and would like to give it a bit extra marketing push, then get in touch. I can offer paid-for marketing services in this respect. Or I can make some recommendations.

Alternatively, you can offer your services as a volunteer or as a media partner.

And before you ask me about how to score an exhibition pass for Mobile World Congress, that’s the subject of another post. I don’t have a secret stash of them. In fact, I don’t even have one for myself.

See you in Barcelona!

 

*I have the final decision whether or not to include something in the festival or deem it interesting. Avoid the sales pitches and we should be good to go!

Networking on a plane

This just came up on my Facebook feed – KLM is offering a new service called Meet and Seat whereby you can connect with other passengers on your flight by adding your Facebook or your LinkedIn profile to your flight details. They say:

“KLM’s Meet & Seat lets you find out about interesting people who will be on board your KLM flight such as other passengers attending the same event as you at your destination.

Simply share your Facebook or LinkedIn profile details to check other participating passengers’ details and where they'll be sitting. Of course you can also choose your seat.”

So it’s essentially networking on a plane or is it dating? Either’s possible, of course. And it doesn’t sound like my idea of fun on the face of it.

I like the serendipity of seeing who you end up sitting next to and whether or not you talk to them - chance is sometimes rather wonderful. And I also like it when I have a row to myself or a seat free next to me so I can have some down time and either prepare myself for the upcoming trip or contemplate on the trip that I’ve just been on.
On a practical note, as a woman, I think I'd feel vulnerable about someone specifically choosing to sit next to me on a flight... there are all kinds of stalker-y issues plus there'd be no escape for the duration of the flight if the person you end up with is a bore. Maybe it would be different if it were a flight to a big trade show where I'm already likely to know people on the plane. I’m also not one for getting up and around much on a flight – at least, not on a short-haul flight. But I guess you could arrange to meet up in the lounge beforehand or on the other side.
I can see its uses on flights to large trade shows like the upcoming Mobile World Congress where almost everyone on the flight is in the industry. But even then, it’s quite nice to hide in the corner and just observe what’s going on.
Wonder if it will work or not? What do you think?
Anyway, I don't fly through Amsterdam much so I guess I won't be trying it anytime soon but I'll be keeping an eye on it to see how it pans out.

Forget setting goals, focus on this instead

Post by Helen Keegan.

End of term reports from Adobe and BDO

It’s December 2013 already. Christmas is in the air and the TV is awash with Christmas TV adverts. So it’s only to be expected that there are some end of term reports from some of the big guns. And I’m afraid I’m reading them with mixed feelings which I’ll share with you.

Let’s start with BDO’s Retail Compass 2013. The survey “examined the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers at leading retailers located throughout the USA. The retailers in the study were among the largest in the country, including 11 retailers in the top 100 based on annual sales revenue. The telephone survey was conducted in September and October of 2013”.

The survey covers all aspects of retail but there is a section about mobile marketing.

In the press release, the focus for retailers is on traditional channels rather than mobile:

• 38 per cent of retailers are including mobile in their marketing strategy this year—down from 50 per cent in 2012—those who are embracing it are ramping up their efforts.
• Last year, mobile comprised an average of 5.9 per cent of retailers’ overall marketing budget; this year, that number has jumped to 15 per cent.
• With eMarketer predicting a 15 per cent rise in mobile shopping volume this year, the mixed survey results suggest that retailers remain divided as to the platform’s growth potential and its ability to convert sales.
• One strategy on which retailers are not divided, however, is print advertising: a plurality of CMOs (41 per cent) are investing most of their holiday budgets in traditional print ads, which have been a consistently popular medium over the last 4 years.
• And CMOs still believe in the power of TV to reach a wide audience: 29 per cent say they will spend the majority of their holiday advertising budget on broadcast.
• Retailers are looking towards social media, but don’t know the right mix (and probably don’t realise how much of it is on mobile and how that impacts on conversions if their offering isn’t mobile-friendly).

So good news for broadcast and print in the US, and for those who are working on mobile campaigns for retailers, it’s good news as the budgets are bigger – just fewer of them by some measure compared with 2012. I have to question what the decision making process is behind this when the growth in mobile and mobile commerce is rising at a very fast pace. Of course, I don’t know how the question was asked and it may be that the retailers are ahead of the curve and have a great mobile site and/or a range of mobile apps and that the assumption is that mobile marketing in this context means mobile advertising which maybe they feel they don’t need as their mobile offering is so strong. I live in hope of that anyway! I fear that retailers may have their heads in the sand and have not yet woken up to what’s happening under their noses and are missing out on opportunities today.

Download the full report here http://www.bdo.com/download/2972

Now let’s look at the UK. Adobe and The Guardian have just published a survey looking at the mobile marketing attitudes of 1427 executives in the UK. The free report makes for quite depressing reading about the UK state of play.

• More than 50% said their organisation had a fragmented approach or no strategy at all when it comes to mobile
• Most respondents are unconfident about their organisation’s ability to measure the success of their mobile channels (which I’m guessing is a hindrance to offering them at all)

YET

• Most respondents felt their businesses would benefit from mobile marketing

AND

• Respondents expect to see a significant shift in the number of customer interactions supported or driven by mobile

So why aren’t they taking the plunge?

Well, rather worryingly, a lot of respondents felt that mobile wasn’t going to overtake the desktop at all or within the next two years. Many don’t have the funds to support mobile initiatives or don’t believe their business would benefit at all.

That last point worried me so I took at look back at the kinds of organisations the respondents came from. As this was run by The Guardian, there were a disproportionate amount of responses from the public sector, the arts, charities/not for profit and education. I’m not entirely surprised that those organisations aren’t as clued up and/or don’t have the funds or willingness to go mobile, at least not yet. I would hope that the results would be more positive if there were more brands, agencies and retailers who had responded.

You can read more here.

I guess the good news for us working in mobile marketing is that there’s still plenty work for us to do. Need to get your senior teams up to speed with what’s going on in mobile marketing and media? Get in touch. I’ve done workshops with a variety of media owners and agencies in the UK and the Nordic region. Maybe I can do one for you?