The Mobile

CustomerExperience

Can’t Be Ignored

CUSTOMERS ARE DIALING UP THEIR USE OF

MOBILE; MARKETERS MUST RESPOND IN KIND.

An IBM® Company

SPONSORED BY:

IS MOBILE MORE THAN A SHINY

?MARKETERS YO-YO ON WHETHER THE CHANNEL WILL

WIND UP THEIR MARKETING STRATEGY AND MAKE IT GO.

Marketers who describe their mobile strategy as:

17% Fully integrated

24% Not fully integrated

20% Implementation in process

8% Not implemented

21% Some campaigns, no strategy

10% No strategy

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17%

24% 20%

8%

21%

10%

Source: CMO Council, SAS

Respondents already using mobile who

currently leverage:

75%Mobile-

optimized site66%

Mobile app56%

Mobile search16%

Geo-fencing

Respondents who measure mobile’s performance by:

Customer lifetime value:

36% Marketers who consider mobile a critical channel

23% All others

Customer loyalty and advocacy:

46% Marketers who consider mobile a critical channel

27% All others

Marketers who have a mobile-first mind-set:

45% Those with a fully integrated mobile strategy19% All others

Marketers who consider mobile the “latest shiny toy”:

0% Those with a fully integrated mobile strategy18% All others

Increasingly important because

customers use it and social to connect with brands

Growing in importance

Still an unproven channel

MARKETERS WHO SAY THAT MOBILE IS...

MARKETERS WHO CITE THE

FOLLOWING AS KEY ISSUES:

35% Keeping up with the flow

of content across mobile experiences

33% Aggregating the right data

and insights to deliver

valuable engagement

33% Keeping up with the pace of

technological advancements

48% Their mobile initiatives don’t

receive enough funding

Could Mobile Be Marketers’ Magic Bullet?

pg. 3

The Beauty of Marketing Is in the Eye of the Customer

pg. 8

Are Your Cross-Channel Strategies Missing Mobile?

pg. 9

Purina ONE Makes Out Like a Fat Cat With Live Streaming

pg. 11

A Seamless App Experience or Bust

pg. 12

4 Ways to Make Push Notifications Part of the Integrated Experience

pg. 13

Mobile Will Ring Up a Quarter of All E-Com Sales by 2016

pg. 15

ASICS Stays in Step With Its Consumers Mobile Email: The“New Normal” for Marketers and Consumers

pg. 16

Mobile Responsible for Rise in Email Open Rates

pg. 18

Infographic: Is Mobile More Than a Shiny New Toy?

pg. 19

pg. 3

pg. 8pg. 9

pg. 11

pg. 12

pg. 13pg. 15

pg. 18

pg. 16

pg. 19

10 Tips for Getting Started with Mobile App Push NotificationsAlthough mobile use is rising, many companiesare struggling to position their apps as go-to resources. Learn how you can use push notifications to increase app engagement, streamline the buying process, and drive more conversions.

Download the tip sheet today!

It’s time to transition. Marketers must think of mobile not as one optional element of their cross-channel strategy, but as a central component of digital success. Consider: Research from eMarketer predicts that, by the end of 2016, 25% of all Internet retail sales will take place on a mobile device. And 66% of all email is now opened on a mobile device, according to Movable Ink.

Mobile experiences—whether through apps, push notifications, responsive email, SMS, or Web—should be as smooth and connected as customer experience on other channels. Companies such as ASKS, Purina, and Urban Decay are working to make that a reality. Read their stories and more in this bevy of recent Direct Marketing News content on mastering mobile marketing.

It didn’t take long for mobile marketing to upend the marketing status quo. This year, barely a decade after there was even a definable mobile marketing discipline, more than 50 cents of every dollar spent on digital marketing will have been invested reaching customers on a mobile device. Roughly half of all email has been opened on mobile devices for years, and well over 1 billion smartphones are sold annually.

The shift is so big that the challenge for marketers isn’t a matter of missing out, but of misunderstanding just how pervasive mobile has become. Not just in the digital landscape, but also in the way people conduct their everyday lives. In fact, because mobile has so quickly and thoroughly transformed the way we communicate and transact, it can be tricky to draw a firm line that excludes mobile. “Everything we do from a customer acquisition standpoint touches mobile, whether that’s through inbound calls, lead generation, site traffic, or programmatic advertising,” says JT Benton, chief revenue officer at auto and home insurance marketplace Goji.

In fact, success in mobile marketing depends not on throwing ever-increasing resources into a siloed effort to reach every smartphone, tablet, and wearable device possible, but on understanding how all marketing has been permanently altered. Anywhere, anytime communication that reliably reaches the same individual is a powerful ally in building awareness and converting sales through any platform, not just earning taps on a scratch-resistant screen. And the basic premise of marketing remains

unchanged, no matter what technology is in play. The share of marketing spend on mobile is

substantially higher than the share of transactions completed on mobile devices, which industry data puts between 27 and 34%. That’s due in large part to the increasingly complex customer journey that spans not only multiple channels, but also multiple devices. Data from display advertising vendor Criteo shows that 40% of all e-commerce transactions now occur over multiple digital devices.

So, how can marketers use mobile to help hit their marketing targets? Here are areas that will help dial-up mobile marketing performance.

Avoid the app blind alleyThe easiest way to keep your mobile strategy from blossoming into all channels is to avoid over-investing in an app that, statistically, no one will use. The average smartphone user interacts with about 26 apps per month according to Nielsen data. That level has been consistent for years, even as the galaxy of available apps continues to grow.

So, an app that simply repackages a mobile browser experience behind a branded icon is a pointless exercise. “If I bother to download your app, I’m a fan of your brand. I’m raising my hand and saying I like you,” says Maya Mikhailov, CMO of retail commerce developer GPShopper. “These are not your fair-weather fans, and you don’t want to just present them with a wrapper to a mobile catalog.”

A worthwhile app must deliver a valuable, useful experience to the best and most engaged customers. In the case of retailers, one place to start is with context-sensitive reskinning that emphasizes the features most relevant to the user’s location. “In-store, you can pull features like wayfinding, current events, and the weekly circular to the fore,” Mikhailov says. “At home, you can provide a glossy catalog view.”

One key reason brand-specific apps are losing their luster is the fact that the popular, core apps found on most devices are becoming so much more powerful. Learning to leverage their capabilities and audiences beyond the mobile experience is more important than building the next great app.

Recently, department store Kohl’s broadcast a New York Fashion Week show through Periscope, a

Could Mobile Be Marketers’ Magic Bullet? The days of FOMO as the reason for integrating mobile into the marketing mix are long gone. Today, it’s do or die. By James Compton

social video broadcast app that is officially mobile-only. The Periscope experience allowed viewers to tap the screen and start building a shopping cart, moving the customer from awareness to transaction in a single sitting. Michael Becker, cofounder and managing partner of mobile consultancy mCordis, points to this as a modern example of engaging an audience through powerful mobile technology already available on the open market. “The majority of companies don’t need an app,” he says.

Consumer electronics insurer Protect Your Bubble reached the same conclusion about its cross-selling needs. Since launching in the U.S. in 2013, mobile has climbed from 38 to 55% of all its site traffic. “We know consumers are on the move and traditional methods of advertising won’t deliver the same eyeballs and ROI we would have had 10 to 15 years ago,” says Stephen Ebbett, chief digital officer at Assurant Solutions, the Protect Your Bubble brand parent.

To identify other electronic devices eligible for protection plans, the brand asks current customers browsing the site for permission to run a local network scan, looking for similar devices that may be out of warranty or in need of additional protection. Quotes to protect the discovered devices are then presented to the customer.

By running in a mobile browser, Protect Your Bubble keeps the cross-sell campaign compact and easy to manage. Customers respond, too; the network scan has a response rate between two and three times higher than Assurant’s generic loyalty campaigns.

On mobile, experiences and attention spans are shorter than ever, and that thinking needs to be reflected in mobile strategy. Rather than focus on building a monolithic brand app, use mobile-centric social platforms to deliver the right message at the right time and move fans to brand-owned channels. “On social media, at best you are a tenant farmer. You build up your social media audience, you may get some produce, but at the end of the day it’s not your farm,” Becker says. “Bring the audience to your messaging channels so you can address them directly with individualized marketing.”

One simple rule for mobile commerceMore capable mobile devices with larger screens have created amazing new possibilities to engage, entertain, and delight customers at every stage of the conversation. There are more ways than ever to develop conversations and destinations, but when purchase intent is clear, stick to business. “When someone visits an e-commerce site on a phone, they’re there to shop, not to consume content,” says Daniel Neukomm, CEO of La Jolla Group, parent company of Metal Mulisha, an action sports brand with a focus on freestyle motocross. “With limited real estate on the phone, everything has to be focused on conversion.”

Metal Mulisha is one of La Jolla’s most aggressive brands in mobile channels. Despite being about one quarter the size of O’Neill, La Jolla’s biggest and best-known brand, Metal Mulisha has a higher consumer engagement rate and larger digital presence.

Like many brands, Metal Mulisha recognized that trying to replicate a desktop browsing and search environment in the mobile commerce site would

be a losing effort. Instead, the brand decided to focus on putting suitably large images of a few likely items in front of visitors at the earliest opportunity.

Using a real-time search and recommendation algorithm from Reflektion, Metal Mulisha’s mobile site automatically displays a compact visual grid of strong matches as a user types, making it easy to tap through to a matching product without having to finish typing the product name. “We’re assuming you don’t want to scroll through a bunch of different results on a phone. We want to get you to what you want, and that means being more aggressive about guessing,” Neukomm says.

The switch to visual, real-time search recommend-ations led to a 36% increase in site search-driven smartphone revenue. More important, the brand applied the real-time matching principles to the desktop experience, as well, where site search revenue has increased 37%.

Know your customers, and dig deeperMobile phones, being deeply personal devices that

We want to get you to what you want, and that means being more aggressive about guessing

are rarely out of reach, can be surprisingly difficult to tie to a specific identity. “Figuring out who the device belongs to is the Achilles’ heel in mobile, because you don’t have the universal standard of the cookie like you have on the desktop,” says Chuck Moxley, CMO of mobile advertising platform 4INFO.

Log-in services have a distinct advantage, in that they can build a profile out of the same account being used on multiple classes of device. “If I’ve logged into the same Facebook account on a tablet, smartphone, and computer, it’s almost guaranteed that those devices are in the same household,” says Ian Dailey, senior product marketing manager at Rocket Fuel.

Whether learned from an aggregator or a set of log-ins, once brands establish a mobile user’s identity, they must be ready to follow through and create innovative experiences for that customer. If a brand is fortunate enough to be among the few trusted enough by customers that they will open the app on a regular basis—such as during store visits—and provide location and intent data through a check-in, that brand must do more than just track engagement. One approach is to study patterns of exactly how and when customers shop or browse, and what actions they take leading up to departure. These problems were once too complicated and expensive to solve at scale. But through mobile monitoring tools like beacons and check-ins, brands can start to understand the exact sequence of events that led to a departure without purchase, and reconfigure the experience accordingly.

There are other ways to glean important information about mobile device users, even if they don’t directly provide a name and there’s no brick-and-mortar presence for the product or service. Protect Your Bubble’s research shows that consumers are most likely to insure a mobile device within 90 days of purchase. Device purchase information isn’t immediately available to marketers, but there are other solutions. In this case, Protect Your Bubble designed a campaign to ferret out new devices, targeted at audiences of several highly popular apps.

Ad networks know if an app has been recently installed. But because the top apps are so prevalent and rarely removed from phones, the most likely reason a top-50 app has been installed is that it is being placed on a new phone. So, the brand uses customized creative to target viewers with the characteristic of having recently installed a hugely popular app, offering to insure the exact model of phone being used.

Learn lessons from emailMobile push notifications are quickly growing in prominence and importance. Because they deliver

immediate, easily accessible, and increasingly actionable information, and require little navigation and no app loading time, a phone’s home or lock screen is increasingly the stage for all manner of incoming messages. They have the same immediacy and personalization as the best SMS campaign. “The power of push messaging is the one-to-one customer interaction,” says Michael Rodriguez, a mobile product director with The Weather Company.

Unlike SMS, which is tied to a specific phone number and therefore a specific device, push can be delivered to many or all of a customer’s known devices. Push notifications are also not subject to the strict privacy controls SMS is. That creates the temptation to forget the spam email lessons of the early 2000s and abuse the privilege of appearing on such prized personal

and digital real estate. Resist that urge, or there will be consequences. “The threshold for unsubscribes on push is low. People will very quickly turn off push capabilities in an app if they don’t feel the message is fundamentally useful,” Rodriguez says.

Mobile marketing isn’t a new channel to deliver old concepts. It’s a set of networked, audiovisual, interactive tools that deliver on the decades-old promise of having data-driven conversations with customers that transcend barriers of time and proximity to be seamless and convenient for all. “With mobile, that science fiction of one-to-one marketing we were promised back in 1996 is now a reality,” Becker says. “We can finally do it.”

Shopping in a store can be a fun experience.So often customers are immersed in beautiful

lighting, surrounded by colorful displays, and assisted by knowledgeable employees—all physical characteristics that are difficult to replicate online. And for marketers in mobile commerce, it’s especially hard to imitate the sense of discovery and inspiration that comes while perusing the aisles of a store.

“Physical elements and imagery are particularly important for us because our customers are highly, highly visual,” says Katherine LaFranchise, assistant vice president of digital at Urban Decay, a L’Oréal cosmetics company that focuses on cutting-edge, vivid color palettes. “They gravitate heavily toward experiences that are visual, like on Instagram and Pinterest. Having those visual components gives them the ability to engage and enriches the [digital] shopping experience.”

Urban Decay’s colorful products are sold primarily online and in retail stores such as Macy’s, Sephora, and Ulta. So, creating a stimulating digital shopping experience—particularly the mobile experience—is vital to the beauty brand’s success.

Marketers at Urban Decay, however, say there are inherent challenges that come with mobile commerce, such as limited screen size and zero interaction with other shoppers and employees who might suggest appealing products. “One of the major challenges was enabling customers to

find the makeup products that they were looking for or perhaps don’t even yet know that they want,” LaFranchise says. “Just like in a store, we wanted a more engaging and fun way to discover.”

In essence, Urban Decay wanted to give shoppers something much more human and visual.

LaFranchise says the marketing team also wanted more social shares and product views per session—both of which are fueled by strong visuals. So, Urban Decay set out to retool its mobile shopping experience by presenting products that are more relevant and visually appealing.

But there was one major question: How could marketers determine which products are the most appealing and relevant?

“The secret was in Urban Decay’s customer reviews,” says Lisa Roberts, VP of marketing at Edgecase, a platform that uses machine learning and human content curation to determine the best products for each customer. “We mined the data in Urban Decay’s reviews, looked closely at highly rated products, and determined real words that people used to describe those products. So, ultimately, we used humans to figure out other humans.”

Roberts says that customer-generated information added a new breadth of data to Urban Decay’s mobile commerce strategy. She says that data coupled with colorful, large images is a winning formula for the makeup brand. “[Marketers at Urban Decay] empowered people to shop with their eyes, and the end result is a shopping experience that’s more like in-store,” Roberts says.

The results, LaFranchise says, have been stellar. Shoppers on Urban Decay’s mobile site view 5X more products each session—or about nine products each session—and nearly 10% share products through social or email, plus marketers are seeing 150% higher click-to-buy conversion rate.

“It’s evident; visual is becoming the new norm on mobile,” LaFranchise says. “[Customers] expect to swipe and tap their way through products that make sense. Now, with data and gorgeous images, we’re giving them that intelligent layer that they’re looking for.”

The Beauty of Marketing Is In the Eye of the Customer Colorful makeup brand Urban Decay brings the gorgeous in-store experience to mobile. By Natasha D. Smith

In the animal kingdom, there is the Big Five: the lion, the African elephant, the leopard, the Cape buffalo, and the rhinoceros. But in the marketing kingdom, there is the big three: Web, email, and social.

These three channels occupy most of marketers’ time. According to Econsultancy and Oracle Responsys’ “Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2015,” 54% of the 425 in-house and client-side marketers surveyed say websites are the most time-consuming channels for their teams—followed by 50% who list email and 41% who cite social. Eighty percent of respondents also say they’re most directly involved with the website; plus, 73% and 66% say the same for email and social, respectively.

Given the return, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that marketers choose to invest most of their time in these channels. In fact, 30% of marketers say

email provides the best value when it comes to time spent, and 22% say the same about websites; however, only 11% say social provides the best value, falling behind natural (12%) and paid search (12%).

“The report shows that, in terms of time spent, the email and Web channels provide the best value,” says Amy Rodgers, senior research analyst for Econsultancy. “These channels are well established in the arsenal of the majority of marketers, with the technology, skills, and budgets in place to support tried and tested strategies. As a result, it makes sense for marketers to place an emphasis on these channels, which is no bad thing.”

And it doesn’t look like marketers plan on shifting their focus anytime soon. According to the report, websites (57%), email (48%), and social (42%) are all among respondents’ top-three channel

Are Your Cross-Channel Strategies Missing Mobile? A new study suggests that marketers are focusing their integrated efforts on websites, email, and social. By Elyse Dupré

priorities for next year. Plus, marketers say social (46%), websites (37%), and email (37%) present the greatest opportunities.

But with so much focus on the big three, it can be easy for marketers to lose sight of other important channels—like mobile. Although 54% of respondents leverage mobile Web, only a third use mobile apps (34%). Just 23% use mobile and Web push notifications, and only 21% send SMS or MMS—all significant drops compared to those who leverage websites (95%), email (91%), and social (86%). Plus, when asked which forms of mobile advertising they use (e.g. mobile search, mobile display, location-based targeting, etcetera), most marketers (40%) responded with “none.”

“For many consumers, mobile is becoming the default access to their digital lives, enabling them to be continually connected to the Web,” Rodgers says. “The number of global users on mobile has now surpassed that on desktop, as has time spent on mobile versus desktop. Spend on mobile advertising is following this trend, but not to match consumer adoption of the channel, indicating that marketers are missing the mobile opportunity. Once the obstacles inherent to marketing to consumers via mobile are fully solved, I think we will see a much larger focus on mobile Web as part of the marketing mix.”

Rather than view the digital and mobile channels as separate experiences, marketers need to take an integrated, cross-channel approach. Respondents know that this approach is important. In fact, 68% of marketers say getting all of their activities to be integrated across channels is a priority.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Less than half of respondents (49%) say their organizations deliver cross-channel marketing activities “to a certain extent”, and only 5% say they are “very much so” set up to do so. Indeed, challenges like lack of defined strategy (21%), inadequate resources (20%), and technology limitations (11%) can

prevent marketers from delivering the orchestrated experiences customers crave.

However, that’s not to say that all brands are out of the cross-channel loop. Some marketers have managed to integrate their channels. But again, they tend to focus on the big three. For instance, 58% of marketers say their websites are very integrated into their overall marketing activities, and 47% say the same about email. Thirty-six percent of respondents say their social media marketing is very integrated with the rest of their marketing activities, falling behind paid (43%) and natural search (38%).

As for mobile, only 29% of respondents say their mobile Web activities are very integrated and less than one quarter say the same about mobile apps (22%), push notifications (18%) , and mobile messaging (18%). What’s more, only 13% say they “very much so” have a strategy for integrating mobile into their broader marketing campaigns. And while 58% say they have a very basic plan, 28% admit that they don’t have one at all.

So, what can marketers do to provide a more seamless customer experience? Having a clearly defined strategy is the

most important thing for 29% of respondents, followed by understanding the customer journey (21%), and linking up technology systems (11%). Rodgers also emphasizes the importance of integration—across data, departments, and technology—and encourages marketers to just give cross-channel marketing an honest try.

“Marketers need to be bold,” she says. “The case for using new channels cannot be evaluated without testing a campaign first, and too few are attempting to make emerging channels a focus in campaigns. With consumer journeys involving multiple different touchpoints, and expecting relevant, consistent experiences across all channels and devices, those that stand out from the crowd will be those who are willing to experiment with emerging channels and stay ahead of the curve.”

3 steps to a seamless customer experience29% have a clearly defined strategy21% understand the customer journey11% link technology systems*percentage of respondants who cite each

There’s a new frontier of mobile marketing: live streaming. Most social media users have at least heard of Meerkat or Periscope—two live-streaming apps that some brands are using to fuel real-time engagement with current and potential customers. “It’s incredibly important to connect with a consumer on a meaningful level,” says Niky Roberts, spokesperson for Purina ONE, a Nestlé brand. “Especially when you’re talking about pet owners, because it’s such a great bond—an emotional bond. So, I think that connecting with them over their pets is priceless.”

That connection through live streaming is priceless, as well as powerful and potentially profitable, for brands like Purina ONE. Nearly two thirds of Americans own a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center, and 19% of Americans rely to some degree on a smartphone for accessing online services and information, and for staying connected to the world around them. So, brands need to be at the fore of mobile trends to stay relevant.

Live streaming on social media is one of those trends. It’s captivating target audiences and as a result is grabbing the attention of brand marketers. Meerkat became a media darling earlier this year after its SXSW reveal. Persicope burst on the general public scene with its acquisition by Twitter in January—which, by the way, cost Twitter a reported $100 million.

“It allows you to cast your nets wide so that everyone can get involved,” Roberts says. “Having streaming video is really helpful [to viewers], especially since not everyone is in the immediate vicinity of your physical

events, but they still want to interact with a brand.”Purina ONE Cat is following in the footsteps of other

Nestlé brands, such as ice cream brand Drumstick—which claims to be the first to run a sponsored Periscope stream. Roberts says that marketers from Purina ONE Cat wanted to tap into that passion for pets, include fans across the globe, and push the brand’s ethos centered on a cat’s whole body health.

“The incentive of streaming video is that you can experience something from far away,” Roberts says. “To really be able to see it and get an idea of what’s happening and what’s going on at the site. That’s the allure in general. It connects us.”

So on July 31 and August 1 in New York, Purina ONE Cat tried its hand at Periscope with “ONE Cat Camp,” 16 hours of purr-fection. The marketing team live-streamed lessons on pet wellness and pet care, physical activities—like cats playing with digital fish and wall climbing—pet adoptions, and other cat activities. Some 1,350 visitors came to the Mulberry Street pop-up shop over two days, and five cats were adopted. But for the brand, Periscope enabled Purina ONE Cat to make a bigger impression on social media fans who watched the stream from across the world. The Periscope event generated nearly 10,000 live views and more than 60,000 likes.

“People were lined up outside the door before we even opened; so we know there was a demand to interact with the brand. And we extended that through Periscope,” Roberts says. “People asked questions through Periscope, and we were able to answer those for them. They were asking about their own pets and questions about the event. We would address those on camera. We had viewers around the world; Denmark, Mexico, Brazil are just a few of the ones that we saw.”

Roberts says with the success of this event, marketers at Purina ONE will always consider live streaming as an effective branding and engagement tool. “To have people engage with you in a meaningful way, it’s a really helpful tool to cast your nets a bit wider,” Roberts says. “It’s a great way to make sure people can engage with you, no matter where they are. A lot of marketers are realizing how important engaging is. If you can’t do that in person, do it virtually.”

Purina ONE Makes Out Like a Fat Cat With Live Streaming Live streaming is the cat’s meow among fans of the pet food brand. By Natasha D. Smith

Customer loyalty isn’t something that can be bought; it has to be earned. Marketers can win this devotion by meeting shoppers’ expectations across channels.

For instance, there’s no denying that modern shoppers rely heavily on mobile and digital. In fact, data from AppDynamics’s “An App Is Not Enough” report shows that 20% of respondents make purchases on their phones while at work in front of a computer, and 70% make more than a quarter of their purchases online.

Therefore, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the performance of retail websites and mobile apps can significantly impact customer satisfaction, loyalty, and spend. Actually, 70% of respondents say that the performance of a mobile app influences their perception of the retailer.

“As the lines between work and personal, digital and physical continue to blur, retailers must ensure their apps function at all times across multiple platforms to retain and nurture always-on consumers,” says Jyoti Bansal, founder and CEO of AppDynamics. “Technology has transformed the retail landscape significantly over the past decade, and now more than ever, software defines business

success–with revenue and reputation often hinging on customer interactions with apps.”

Sometimes these perception impacts are positive. For instance, a third of respondents say they use apps for convenience, like when they’re visiting a store or looking to make a swift, on-the-go purchase. Likewise, 40% say they’d try a new app if it promised to deliver a more convenient shopping experience. Other times these impacts are negative. For example, 67% of respondents say they’d ixnay shopping with a retailer if that retailer’s app offered a negative experience.

The study—which polled 4,000 German, French, U.K, and U.S. smartphone and tablet users—also found the following:

• Forty-three percent of consumers say they want mobile apps that allow them to purchase products while in-store, instead of queuing for a sales assistant.

• Fifty-seven percent say they’d like retail apps to inform store assistants of past purchases to create a more tailored omnichannel experience.

• Fifty-six percent say they’d be encouraged to visit brick-and-mortar stores if apps provided them with personalized offers when they’re in close proximity.

• If unable to complete a purchase, three quarters of consumers say that a prompt and personal apology would persuade them to revisit the retailer.

“Today’s consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across online and offline channels, with minimal friction points,” says Sam Barton, head of user experience. “This puts increased pressure on retailers to innovate, using the latest technologies to improve and augment the online e-commerce journey so it delivers the thrill of visiting the high street in a more convenient way.... At the same time, mobile continues to play an integral role in increasing online sales—allowing consumers to shop when they want, how they want, and on any device. With retailers using a combination of technologies to deliver a competitive and flawless experience to shoppers, ensuring the performance of these applications is mission-critical.”

A Seamless App Experience or Bust 70% of respondents say the performance of a mobile app impacts their perception of the retailer. By Andrew Corselli

Digital marketing isn’t what it used to be. Mobile has broadened the spectrum and has given marketers new ways to communicate with their customers in a timely and relevant manner.

Take push notifications, for instance. According to “The State of Mobile Adoption” report by Message Systems, at least 80% of the more than 200 messaging decision-makers surveyed last year had adopted or planned to adopt push notifications this year—trailing behind IM chat (83%), mobile apps (86%), responsive design emails (89%), and SMS text (89%). And it’s not hard to see why. The “2014 Mobile Behavior Report” by Salesforce Marketing Cloud declares that 64% of the 470 consumers surveyed opt in to receive push notifications, and

80% of this group find them useful. Troy Morris, director of strategic services for

mobile marketing automation platform provider OtherLevels, says that push notifications offer many benefits that other forms of messaging—like email—can’t provide. Consumers’ inboxes are “overflowing” with messages, he says, and push notifications can be a more interruptive and immediate way to grab consumers’ attention in a contextually relevant way.

However, the mobile messaging mechanism still has its fair share of challenges. Based on client data, Morris says that about 50% of mobile users who initially download a brand’s app will opt out of mobile messaging in the first 72 hours.

That’s why Ramsey Masri, CEO of OtherLevels, says that marketers can’t solely rely on push to communicate with their customers.

“I think the misconceptions out there are that you can rely on push alone, and that’s not the case,” Masri says. “Many people turn push off. What happens then? You’re done.”

Ultimately, Masri says marketers need to have multiple messaging mechanisms—such as SMS, email, or pop-ups—so that they can reach customers through the channels that they prefer. In fact, Morris says marketers should use push notifications to connect to other channels and create a more holistic experience, such as by sending a push notification linked to an interstitial message.

“Anytime that you can use push notifications to link to a deeper message type that allows for a more meaningful connection with your consumer, you’re going to see a boost out of that,” he notes.

Here are four tidbits of advice to help marketers to this even better:

1. Tell an end-to-end story.When linking push notifications to other messaging mechanisms, Morris advises marketers to keep the native experience in mind. For instance, he says that if a mobile gaming company has created a

4 Ways to Make Push Notifications Part of the Integrated Experience Because relying on push alone is not enough. By Elyse Dupré

new feature, it can send a targeted message to people who may be interested in this addition and link to an interstitial ad to show off some bonus features. The important thing to keep in mind, he notes, is the connection between the content or the message, the target segment, and business’s desired outcome.

“Really you’re telling a story to your player or to your end user,” he explains. “So you need to make sure that you’re able to articulate that in a way that’s clear for them.”

To best determine this flow of information, Masri suggests focusing on three things: providing enough touchpoints, having the right platform in place to automate the process, and identifying the exact customer journey marketers want users to take. He also recommends conducting A/B testing to ensure that the journey customers are taking through these channels is actually effective, rather than annoying. For instance, are deployed push notifications driving revenue, or are people simply turning them off?

2. Focus on engaged consumers.Pressures to produce more sales leads and revenue can cause marketers to “fish in the ocean,” Morris says—i.e. cast the widest net to capture as many potential new customers as possible. However, this tactic can be pretty costly, he notes, and usually falls on deaf ears. That’s why Morris recommends focusing attention and resources on consumers who have already opted in and are engaged. Once those consumers are satisfied, then marketers can move on to the opt-out crowd.

“Targeting a smaller but higher engaged group of consumers with data-driven integrated marketing strategies will support a more frequent and more meaningful customer engagement,” he says.

Take a look at the following chart released in July from OtherLevel’s. Referred to as the “Pyramid of Opportunity,” the graph advises marketers to focus

their efforts on the top 20 to 25% of its customer base—a.k.a. it’s most active segment.

“The diagram from the infographic suggests that these customers are far more valuable as a potential revenue generators than three quarters of the rest of the consumers who are not yet engaged or opted in,” Morris says. “So essentially the Pyramid of Opportunity is a strategy for targeting those active users, but still coming back and focusing on first- and second-time visitors after you fully embrace those already-engaged customers.”

The best part? Morris says that this graph applies to all channels—promoting a more integrated thought process.

3. Give consumers choice. The secret to getting customers to opt in to additional channels is to ensure that each channel provides value. And giving customer choices—say how frequently they receive communications or what kind of messages they receive (i.e.

promotional versus brand news)—can strengthen this worth to shoppers.

“Those levels of granular control can go a long way in terms of giving a user who’s on the fence all of the reason in the world to say, “Yes, I trust you,” Morris says.

So while a customer may not be interested in receiving SMS promotions, he may be interested in an email newsletter. Let him choose.

4. Don’t be afraid of opt outs.Of course, marketers can’t please everybody. People are going to opt out. But instead of dwelling on the inattentive customers you’ve lost, marketers should focus on the engaged customers that they have.

“You’re going to lose some people on the opt out no matter what you do,” Morris says. “Marketers need to be OK with that as long as they don’t run the risk of swimming upstream from those folks who are willing up front to engage.”

You’re going to lose some people on the opt out no matter what you do

The upcoming holiday season promises to be the strongest in five years, with e-commerce—and especially mobile—playing a bigger role than ever.

A forecast from eMarketer predicts a 5.7% increase in retail sales in December to some $886 billion. If that comes to fruition, it will be the biggest jump since 2011, which saw a 6.3% rise. Growth

in Web sales will actually dip slightly from last year’s 14.4% lift, but e-commerce transactions will account for a larger chunk of the overall increase, an estimated 9%.

Mobile made its first big showing as a transactional medium during the 2014 holidays, and that momentum will build this year in a big way. M-commerce sales will grow at a 32% clip, compared to 14% last year, and the research company estimates that 25% of all Internet retail sales will take place on mobile devices by the end of 2016.

The wave of buy buttons and “shop now” options that have arisen on social networks including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter will help fuel mobile’s rise as a transactional medium, eMarketer notes.

“Consumers are opting to complete their transaction with the same device they began the shopping journey with, and that is increasingly with a smartphone,” says eMarketer analyst Monica Peart.

Mobile Will Ring Up aQuarter of All E-Com Sales by 2016 Internet transactions to play a larger role in the best holiday season in five years, a new study predicts. By Al Urbanski

25% of all Internet retail sales will take place on mobile devices by the end of 2016

The best marketing isn’t marketing at all. It’s brand experiences that fit seamlessly into customers’ lives and offer genuine value. Footwear and athletic wear company ASICS America proved that it could keep pace with its running community’s needs by delivering experiences that exemplify what it means to be a marathoner.

Set the paceAs the official apparel sponsor of the 2014 New York City Marathon, ASICS America wanted to find a way to celebrate runners through its “We Are Marathoners” messaging. Doing so would help the brand boost its association with the New York City Marathon (and therefore increase its legitimacy as a running authority), drive conversations both online and at the race, and generate consumer preference for ASICS.

“It’s letting the running community know that we understand what it means to be a marathoner and what it means to be a runner,” says Peter Malecha, senior digital marketing manager at ASICS America.

But if ASICS wanted to appeal to marathoners then it would have to think like a marathoner. So, the company worked with marketing agency Red Door Interactive to create digital, social, and content experiences that showed what it means to be a runner and how the brand could cater to runners’ needs.

Build momentumOne way ASICS America provided this value was through its Pace Your Race program. ASICS has an app called MY ASICS that allows users to set up their own

training schedules. For example, a beginner runner may be hoping to run a marathon that’s six months away in under five hours. The app will tell her how often she should train and what types of workouts she should do to meet her goal. Pace Your Race is the race-day extension of this program. Participants can visit a designated microsite before the race; select the race they’ll be running; fill out a profile that includes their name, gender, and email; calculate their split time; and order a free customized pace band that they can pick up at the ASICS booth the day of the event. Runners can even print out a personalized map that provides estimates of where they should be and when to help supporters wanting to cheer them on locate them during the race.

“Because nobody is going to want to start a new training program at an expo, the [Pace Your Race] platform was created to be that next step for the athlete who either takes part in the MY ASICS training program or [they] don’t necessarily have to,” Malecha says.

Not only does the Pace Your Race program offer marathoners a useful running tool, but it also provides ASICS with an important data point—their email address. Once the race is over, ASICS emails the runners and asks them how the race went, Malecha says. The company also sends the participants a survey that asks what other fitness activities they’re interested in. ASICS uses this data to segment its audience for future marketing emails. Finally, the company sends the Pace Your Race program participants an invitation to join its MY ASICS program.

Race to the topAnother prime example of how ASICS offers consumers value is its Mini Marathoner program. Runners could visit the program’s designated site and submit a photo of themselves. Based on the image, ASICS then created a 3-D sculpture of each runner that symbolized the little motivational voice inside of their head. Marathoners could then take these figurines home as a keepsake. (The company spotlighted champion long-distance runner Ryan Hall in the promotional video for the program.)

Runners could even sign in through Facebook and opt to have a picture of their “Mini Marathoner” pop up on their page whenever they crossed a major milestone. Plus, the company created an opportunity for people who

ASICS Stays in Step With Its Consumers The athletic wear brand provides interactive experiences that show it understands what it means to be a marathoner. By Elyse Dupré

didn’t sign up for Mini Marathoner to get in on the fun. ASICS produced a live Twitter board where runners could nominate friends or other runners to win additional statues after the race.

Not only did ASICS encourage marathoners to engage with the brand, but the company also provided ways for runners to engage with each other. For instance, in addition to the Pace Your Race and Mini Marathoner programs, ASICS launched a Run It Forward initiative to benefit Back On My Feet—an organization that helps homeless individuals better their lives through running. ASICS asked a few of its athletic partners—including Hall—to run alongside various runners during the marathon and ask if they’d like to acquire a free pair of running shoes in exchange for helping the organization. If a runner said yes, then the athletic partner would hand him a baton. The runner would then have to relay the message and pass the baton on to another marathoner. Not only did every participant win a free pair of shoes, but ASICS donated $50 to Back On My Feet for each baton pass. To extend the donation opportunity—although not the free shoes—to race fans outside of New York, ASICS invited people to share examples of how others have helped them get back on their feet via social media along with the #RunItForward hashtag. The company shared images of people participating in the program via social.

In addition to driving conversations through “Run it Forward,” ASICS hosted a Twitter chat days before the race. The brand also hired photo crews to take pictures of marathoners during the race and upload them to social media in real-time. “It was important to us to find these little nuggets of stories about people who are participating in the race [and] share that to bring the emotion and heartbeat to life,” says Anne Buehner, Red Door Interactive’s social media manager.

In the run-up to race dayAnother major area of interaction with its running community was during their training for the big event. ASICS primarily used content to encourage these pre-race interactions. For instance, as part of the campaign,

the company’s marketers recruited five bloggers who wanted to run the marathon and asked them to take part in the #teamASICS Bloggers/Editors Challenge. The participants were given ASICS running gear, as well as access to running coach Andrew Kastor. The writers then shared their training experiences on their blogs and through social media. Buehner says that ASICS even put the bloggers up in hotels during marathon week and provided them with “share-worthy experiences,” like the opportunity to go on a “fun run” and have breakfast with Hall.

“User-generated content for us is more genuine,” Malecha says, “and in a lot of ways it helps us understand the conversations we should be having

online.”The brand also produced

a “We Are Marathoners” infographic, which it shared on ASICS’s website and social media channels.

Although the journey was a long one for the marathoners and ASICS—the brand started promoting the campaign about three months before the November race—both parties came out victorious. According to Red Door Interactive, ASICS generated about 11.6 million digital campaign impressions.

What’s more, its infographic produced more than one million social impressions and nearly 17,000 page views with an average time on page of four minutes and 53 seconds. Plus, the “Mini Marathoner” video shown above generated approximately one million views.

Of course, a real champion never stops training, and ASICS acquired a few key learnings from its New York City Marathon campaign and applied those learnings to the LA Marathon, which occurred this past March. For example, ASICS wanted to increase the amount of real-time content it produced during the race. So, for the LA Marathon the company’s marketers outlined the video shots they wanted to get ahead of time and set up a race-day media editing desk to produce content quickly. The company produced eight videos throughout the race and saw a five-time increase in the number of Twitter impressions it received compared to New York’s race.

This just goes to show that marketing isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon.

User-generated content for us is more genuine… and helps us understand the conversations we should be having online.

Mobile devices not only hinder human interaction and leave users susceptible to data/privacy breaches, but they’re also the culprit behind declining click rates and rising open rates, according to a recent report.

The “Q3 2014 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks” report from Epsilon shows that open rates are up 6.5% over Q3 2013 while click rates took a modest 0.5% hit, both of which are likely due to the increase in mobile usage.

“As consumers rely more heavily on mobile devices and engage frequently with email in this format, we are continuing to see open rates increase coupled with a decline in click rates,” says Judy Loschen, VP of digital analytics at Epsilon. “Mobile devices make it easy for consumers to read their messages on-the-go, yet they’re less likely to click and purchase due to the mobile experience. This requires marketers to get smarter and more targeted with their communications and their digital strategy.”

The report also analyzes performance trends by industry and message type—in this case, business as usual trends (BAU)—compiled from 8.7 billion emails across approximately 140 clients. Some

highlights include:• Open rates increased slightly from 30.8% in

Q2 2014 to 31.5% in Q3; they’re now up 6.5% over Q3 2013.

• Click rates declined modestly from 4.5% in Q3 2013 to 4% Q3 2014.

• Non-bounce rates remained steady at 96%.Findings from Epsilon’s triggered email metrics—

compiled from approximately 340 million triggered emails across multiple industries—include:

• Triggered messages accounted for 3.9% of total email volume.

• Non-bounce rates were only 2.8% lower than BAU.• Triggered open rates were 76.7% higher than

BAU in Q3 2014, an uptick over the Q3 mark of 68.6% over BAU.

• Triggered click rates were 151.9% higher than BAU, which is slightly lower than the 156.1% higher in Q3 2013.

“With triggered messages outperforming business-as-usual messages across a variety of key metrics,” says Loschen, “it’s important for marketers to leverage insights to deliver relevant messaging to the individual and drive brand and business results.”

Mobile Responsible for Rise in Email Open Rates But a new study says that an increased use in mobile devices has also led to a slight decline in click rates. By Andrew Corselli