Posts Tagged ‘mobile’

Optism Blog Recaps The First Half of 2012 in Mobile

By , Aug 10, 2012

August is a good time to reflect so we thought it would be a good time to look back at all the mobile content we have created here on the Optism Blog.

 Mobile Marketing

Tap In to the Power of Digital Moms

Trust: A Competitive Advantage for Companies

Let’s Keep Mobile Marketing Simple, To Make It Big (!)

What’s hot in mobile marketing today? Read the IJMM to find out!

What Marketers Need To Know About Mobile Apps

Insightful Book Reveals How To Work, Create & Sell With Digital Natives

 

Mobile Payments and Mobile Wallets

LevelUp Upends the Mobile Payments Paradigm

Why Mobile Carriers Will (Not) Partner with Google Wallet

What Will Be the Compelling Reason That People Start Using Mobile Payments?

How Come Everyone Is Asking the Wrong Questions About Mobile Wallets?

 

Mobile Commerce and Mobile Shopping

Key Findings from the JWT 2011 Mobile Holiday Shopping Experience

Mobile Enabling Rewards for Consumer Behavior

There Is No Such Thing As Mobile Or Electronic Commerce Anymore

The future is bright for mobile commerce as Optism marks its second anniversary

 

Permission Marketing

Starbucks is the Grande Caffe Mocha of Permission Marketing

Mobile Marketers Should Not Violate Privacy, Location and Permission

Giving Up Privacy for Convenience

Optism Blog Series: A Book Review of Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing PDF

Thinking Human: Six Steps for Building a Successful Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy

20 Months of Permission Marketing Blog Posts

 

Mobile Events

Optism Wrap-Up of the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in New York

Optism Goes to the MMA Forum in NYC

MMA Forum Singapore Recap: The Shift from “Why Mobile to How Mobile?”

Carnival of the Mobilists #268

MMA Forum Singapore – Looking towards a smarter tomorrow

Marketing, Commerce, Wallet and Broadband – the Perfect Storm at Mobile World Congress

Optism Goes to Mobile World Congress

Enjoy.

Mobile Marketers Should Not Violate Privacy, Location and Permission

By , Jul 27, 2012

For almost 60 years, there was a symbiotic relationship between consumers and marketers over the amount of advertising flashed on TV screens, radio and newspapers. Consumers got free or subsidized content and marketers got huge market shares in order to push their wares. The slow decline of these traditional media outlets, caused by the advent of the Internet, DVRs, satellite radio and mobile phones, has marketers scrambling for new ways to target audiences on these new platforms.

No where are the stakes bigger than mobile and mobile location. Mobile already has the highest penetration of consumers and most people have them with them 24/7. We know that consumers are highly protective of their phones and feel that mobile ads are an invasion of their personal space.

Marketers are seeking the mobile Holy Grail; the oft-repeated scenario of a consumer walking by a Starbucks while their phone beeps to alert them to a Starbucks coupon.

Meanwhile, an opposing force is gaining power. Consumers are busy declining mobile app tracking when they download new apps and turning off their existing apps which have their location.

Consumers are now more aware of how marketers are tracking them and their location.

Over at Mobilegroove, mobile rock star Joy Liuzzo tackles the concept of location awareness in her article entitled, Location Data Use & Misuse; How Marketers Must Approach Mobile Sentient Consumers. Ms. Liuzzo defines “mobile sentient” as consumers who are “aware of precisely how public their private device and behavior has become and the extent to which third-parties have visibility into it.”

There is strong evidence that marketers have become more daring in their exploitation of a mobile user’s rights and that consumers have become increasingly fed up with the practice. Ms. Liuzzo mentions a number of mobile privacy lawsuits; including a class action lawsuit against Path, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla, LinkedIn, Rovio (Angry Birds), Chillingo and Electronic Arts filed in March in a court in Texas. It was found that these companies were routinely accessing a user’s mobile address book and transferring it to their servers – without the user’s knowledge or permission. Not disclosing this practice to the user was a violation of their rights. Meanwhile in New Jersey, the Attorney General filed a lawsuit last month against an educational game maker who was collecting information from children and transferring it to a 3rd party company. In a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by TRUSTe, 42% of US smartphone users identify “mobile privacy” and “security” as top concerns, while 94% identify online privacy as an important issue.

The danger for marketers is that making repeated privacy violations will result in consumers turning off location access for all apps. This would be unfortunate, denying the marketer the opportunity to deliver relevant, opted-in offers in real-time (something only mobile can do) and reducing the potential value to the consumers.

Conclusion

Marketers should be honest with your audience about the data they collect and only track the data they really need. Companies should clearly state their privacy policy in language that is easy for users to understand. Obviously, these two opposing forces need more education on the topic, so there can be work towards defining generally acceptable levels of privacy for consumers while providing marketers data so they can deliver true value. The Mobile Marketing Association has published a set of privacy policy guidelines for mobile apps to addresses the core privacy issues and data processes of many mobile applications. It’s worth a read if you want to maintain long term engagement with your customers and especially earn their trust.

Why Mobile Carriers Will (Not) Partner with Google Wallet

By , Jul 9, 2012

Note: This blog post was originally posted on MobilePayments Today.

Mobile service providers have a strong impact on device distribution.  Remember you bought your latest smartphone at the Verizon or O2 store around the corner? Especially in markets where sales bundles – subscription plans combined with subsidized handsets – are a well-adopted commercial practice, service providers have a strong impact on which devices get distributed.

Of course, wallet providers such as Google or PayPal – who often have no large  ‘off line’ sales network – seek to leverage this retail asset, either by having their wallets pre-deployed on mobile phones, or by service providers’ retail agents recommending the service to buyers of handsets and subscription plans.

The question is: what is the incentive for a mobile service provider to partner with companies such as Google? 

It is all about leveraging the strength of both parties. The wallet provider brings in an ecosystem of advertisers injecting offers and coupons, while the mobile operator distributes the wallet to its domestic consumers. In exchange, the mobile service provider can ask for a fee per Google Wallet activation, or even better, propose a revenue share model.

But could this be a sustainable win-win?

A key priority for mobile service providers is customer churn reduction, or in other words, 'keeping the money.'

And here is the conflict: the stickiness of mobile wallets, used for highly personal services such as payments or saving loyalty points, might be much higher than the appeal of traditional voice or data plans that a mobile service provider can offer. This is especially true as we have not yet reached the stage of ‘wallet portability’ (i.e easily porting your stuff from a Google Wallet to an O2 Wallet, for instance)..

And that is a major concern to mobile service providers, who have already been subject to a shift in loyalty from operator brands towards device brands. Apple is a leading example in this regard; instead of consumers buying a mobile data plan and selecting a device, they go buy an iPhone and take the plan that goes with it. So promoting a Google Wallet inherently strengthens the loyalty to the Google brand and the related Android devices, and not per se to the mobile service provider.

Another concern for the mobile operator is that it might be completely phasing out its own understanding of consumers and retail customers. After all, Google Wallet is great at capturing info on what the consumer is effectively using his wallet for (which promotions were flipped, which virtual cards where requested to be provisioned in the wallet, etc).

Not to mention the fact that it is hard to believe that Google Wallet can exclusively bind itself to one carrier in a domestic market. There goes the differentiation aspect…

And last, but not least, operators will always have a consumer base with a variety of devices. So, if Google Wallet would be limited to Android (today, it only works with a limited number of Android devices), what about mobile customers who purchase non-Android devices? Can a mobile service provider afford not to commercialize value added services across its multi-device consumer base?

While partnering with Google Wallet could indeed accelerate mobile service providers’ advertising and payment ecosystem in the short term, they will have to manage the risk of becoming ‘dumb’ retail and distribution pipes.

It is crucial for mobile service providers to understand their customers. And mobile wallets are a perfect instrument to collect, but also leverage, customer profile knowledge. Instead of giving this valuable information away to Google, a better approach seems to be carriers launching their own wallets – strengthening their own brand and working across multiple devices.

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