Optism™

In a fantastic post Mobile Marketing 2015: Rethink Customer Acquisition, Intent Targeting about how brands can either delight or disappoint their customers, Avinash Kaushik outlines his mobile experiences with a few of his favorite brands. Mr. Kaushik outlines 4 mobile success factors that determine whether a brand will continue to grab the “attention of the consumer” in this increasingly on the move world.

Customer Acquisition
With mobile web traffic providing about 20% of all the web traffic, it is criminal that many brands lack a mobile-optimized website. Mr. Kaushik shows how hard it is to book a flight on his mobile using an un-optimized mobile website from Travelocity, Kayak and Hotwire. Meanwhile, he shows how an elegant, mobile-friendly site from Cheap Tickets makes it easy to read the flight information and simple to book his travel. Additionally, once consumers get comfortable with competitor’s mobile-optimized site, a brand could lose their non-mobile traffic too.

Providing Value
As a surfer, Mr. Kaushik was looking for a mobile app that would provide him with surf reports and he came across the SkullCandy surf report app. He downloaded the app and was pleasantly delighted that the app did two things very well; delivered incredible amount of value to the audience and did so with a beautiful design experience. The result was that “SkullCandy gets the greatest gift any company can get from me: Attention.” The SkullCandy app didn’t push its products; it pushed value — what Mr. Kaushik dubs utility marketing. Eventually, he did purchase 6 pairs of SkullCandy headphones, so the utility of the app resulted in sales for SkullCandy.

Customer Data
By providing a rich, mobile experience – brands can learn valuable information about their customers. Where they are and what they like to do? By analyzing their behavior, company can continue to make their apps smarter and provide even more value. More value will drive more attention and ultimately more revenue.

Behavior Targeting
In an example of company that has combined customer acquisition, value provisioning and customer data analysis, Mr. Kaushik recounts how he imported his trip itinerary to New York into his TripIt mobile app. He hadn’t booked his hotel yet, so TripIt sent him an email the next day with a hotel recommendation near his New York office. Just one. Not a list of 30 or 40 hotels. TripIt knew from past itineraries that he typical stayed in the Hilton and they knew his Reward number. So when Mr. Kaushik clicked the link it took him right to the booking site with his reward number already typed in. As he exclaims, OMG! By reducing the friction to make a purchase, TripIt had made Mr. Kaushik’s life easier.

Brands are becoming aware of the power of mobile, but the execution leaves much to be desired. Mobile implementations can just as easily turn away an existing customer as it can bring in a new one. Brands need to be on mobile, since people are using their phones and tablets everywhere with increasing frequency. Whether it’s an app or a mobile-optimized site, companies should be focused on providing value, gaining more insights and then providing consumers even more value.

Just call it a mobile cycle.

Africa is home to one of the world’s richest men Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, the King of Cement who is worth $10B (US) and ranks #76 in Forbes billionaires list.

According to Standard Bank, by 2015, 100m households will have incomes of over $3,000 and the IMF expects sub-Saharan African growth to be nearly 6% next year. This is reflected in foreign investments across Africa growing at a compound rate of nearly 20% since 2007.

The infrastructure (whilst strained in certain countries) is certainly throwing out world-class solutions. For example, mPesa the mobile payment system in Kenya is now seen as the main mechanic for easing the flow of money between individuals and their families and corporations. For example, nearly 30% of salaries are paid direct into mobile wallets.

Already home to a population of 1 billion, this figure is set to double in the next forty years. It is the size of the potential market which attracts major brands as they seek to win over “the next billion consumers”… indeed. One of Coke’s current campaigns in Africa is “A billion reasons to believe”.

Mobile penetration is growing rapidly and is typically used for the majority of web access across the continent, due to the availability of cheap, internet-enabled handsets.

Sponge, the UK’s leading full-service mobile agency, was approached in 2009 to put together a major mobile campaign for the carrier Etisalat in Nigeria. To our shame, we immediately suffered from the preconceptions which sadly surround the country, notably thanks to the infamous “419” email scams, which some suggest represents the fifth largest industry in Nigeria.

Casting our worries to one side, this became the start of our first successful venture into the African market.

Etisalat was a recent entrant into the Nigeria mobile telecoms market, launching in 2008 with a market share of less than 2%. It needed a larger than life promotion designed to reward current subscribers, encourage new subscribers and increase awareness, customer acquisition and weight of purchase as quickly as possible. Sponge developed a multi-level mobile campaign that included a promotion, viral marketing and a loyalty program.

• TV Game Shows – A top prize of $1m to be won live at a grand final on national TV with a series of qualifying regional events also staged on live TV with cash prizes.

• Main Promotion – Users could win tickets to the regional events as well as a new handset by entering a simple competition, but they could only enter within one hour of registering a new Etisalat SIM or topping up.

• Second Chance to Win – Users who entered multiple times were rewarded with “second chance to win” tickets to the regional events. To win they need to get three friends to register new Etisalat SIMs.

• mTicketing – All tickets were delivered direct to handsets and we used portable scanners for both regional events and the grand final.

The results were stunning, with over 7M entries to the main promotion and over 1,000 contestants at each of the regional game shows. More importantly, the campaigns delivered 800,000 new SIM registrations during the period and saw participant ARPU increase by 400%.

What the above has taught us is that good marketing ideas work across borders, religions, and cultures. Key learnings include:

• Ensure the mobile offer is compelling and easy to understand
• Recognise that mobile handsets (and the way they are used) differ from more mature markets
• Adapt to the more sociable, “viral” nature of the countries
• Use local staff to ensure that the main message is effective
• Recognise that country infrastructures vary (there is a very real reason why all companies in Nigeria have a well-used electricity generator!)

Sponge continues to grow in Africa, (we have recently opened a second office in Nairobi, Kenya), and whilst we would never pretend that it is easy to do business, we have very much enjoyed our “African Adventure” so far.

About Alex Meisl, Chairman – Sponge Ltd.

In 2002, Alex co-founded Sponge, the UK’s most successful and longest established mobile agency working across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Sponge delivers mobile strategy and insight, mCRM, mobile sites and applications for clients including Adidas, Autotrader, Barclays, Coca Cola, Dyson, McDonalds, Orange and Unilever. Sponge has been voted Mobile Agency of the Year for the last two years by members of the Institute of Promotional Marketing. Alex has amassed a wealth of experience in digital services for agencies/brands, media groups and mobile operators. Alex was recently re-elected as UK Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association for the third year. In his spare time, Alex is a potter and jam maker.

 

Welcome to Optism’s second blog post acting as curator for the Carnival of the Mobilists. In our dynamic mobile industry, we’ve found that keeping abreast of what ecosystem members are saying is critical to staying on top of new and exciting trends. We are happy and honored to again be a Carnival of the Mobilists host.

In our pick of the week, Mobile Gratification — Now Please!, Matina Macintyre at the Speed Blog asks why marketers are being unresponsive to the needs of consumers who want to use mobile – easily and immediately. She tells a tale of frustration in which she fruitlessly searches for a QR Code on a theater poster in London, dashing her hopes of buying tickets to the show – on the spot – and in the end, at all.  She provides examples of companies, like Brita, which are evolving their product line to meet the needs of consumers with products like the portable water filter bottle. Ms. Macintyre cautions retailers who don’t make it easy to connect via mobile are losing not only sales but more importantly – the attention of the consumers upon whom they depend for sales.

In a post entitled, Project Oscar – It's Not About Advertising, Mobile Marketing Magazine’s David Murphy analyzes the recent announcement of the EU-approved Project Oscar a mcommerce joint venture of Everything Everywhere (Orange and T-Mobile), Vodafone and Telefonica. Mr. Murphy gets reactions from several mobile industry leaders about this potentially game changing development.

Over on the CodeNgo blog, The beauty of alternative app stores post by JT  discusses the fact that most people are only familiar with the Android and Apple app stores. They aren’t aware that many other mobile apps stores exist, including many non-English language stores. CodeNgo recommends that app publishers should offer the widest distribution possible by tapping into these alternative app stores. CodeNgo offers tips and resources to broaden your app distribution, plus a pledge to do more promotion of alternative app stores in the future.

On the CreateAppHere Blog, a post entitled The app journey to the top cautions app makers that there are sound strategies to promote apps and yelling the loudest doesn’t necessarily mean you are the best.

If you are fan of MAM (Mobile Application Management) or MIM (Mobile Information Management), then we have a post for you. Brian Katz wrote Identify yourself for MIM in which he discusses the placement of “Identity” in a Venn diagram created by Gunnar Peterson outlining Mobile Security, API Security and Enterprise Security. Mr. Katz says that “the advantage of MIM is that data can now be passed from any one app on a device to another app on the device that can read the policy and follows the policy.”

In a highly entertaining post about his trip to the Retail Solution Providers Association Convention in Las Vegas, otherwise known as RetailNOW, Bruce Burke says that it’s all about the data in Generation-M. Surprisingly, the Point-Of-Sale industry still sells cash registers with tape ribbons, but soon the data generated by all these purchases will be worth more, by orders of magnitude, than the transaction fees themselves. Mr. Burke isn’t sure that everyone in Vegas was hip to that knowledge.

Thanks for reading the latest installment of the Carnival of Mobilists. For more details about the carnival, to catch up with some of the best mobile blogs of the past please visit The Carnival of Mobilists Website. And now we turn over our hosting duties to Antoine RJ Wright for next week’s carnival #282 so please remember to submit your posts.