Is SMS is included in your marketing strategy?
It has been predicted that by the end of 2017 a massive 4.77 billion people globally will own a mobile phone! Now that is a staggering statistic. It has also been reported that 63% of smartphone owners keep their devices with them for all but one hour of their waking day (MarketingTech, 2016). Our phones are always glued to our hands and what better way to target mobile users than by texting them? So why is SMS so rarely utilised by so many marketers?
It’s underuse by businesses is quite staggering, with 64% of customers believing that companies should utilise text messaging more (SAP, 2015) and, provided permission has been sought, 83% don’t find SMS intrusive provided the message is relevant to them (SAP, 2015). Let’s be honest, SMS has had a difficult past which has tarnished its reputation. It wasn’t too long ago…
Chart of the Day: Conversion rates of online shoppers by device and platform
Data based on more than 1.9 billion shopping sessions collected by Monetate, clearly shows 'traditional' (desktop) web users still have conversion rates more than triple that of those browsing on Smartphones.
It is interesting though that tablet e-commerce conversions are only very slightly behind desktop conversion rates. It seems screen size does have an impact on conversions, since people don't want to fill out fiddly payment details on Smartphone screens. This may mean new tools, like chatbots, can change the mobile user experience and make conversion much simpler. By removing the need to complete complex forms they could lead to a big leap in mobile conversion rates in the coming year.
It's also interesting to look at conversion rates by device, where Mac leads with Windows close…
10 reasons you can’t afford to ignore SMS marketing.
As marketers, we’re constantly thinking up creative ways to get our message out to existing and potential customers; whilst also ensuring we get good results from our efforts. One of the basic practical rules in marketing is to think like your audience, to keep up-to-date with their buying habits and where they are looking.
Whatever your product or service is, it’s important to ensure its visible wherever your customers go, with a ratio now of four mobile devices to every computer, it’s clear where our customers are. Mobile marketing is no longer something you can afford to put on the to-do-list for the future; you need to make sure you’re on a mobile device, now.
With smartphone users increasing daily, forward-thinking businesses are looking for ways to make their business mobile-friendly. SMS is a tried,…
Massive mobile tech trends that will impact marketing this year
You want your small business to make it in 2017; you better be aware of the mobile technology trends that are redefining how companies sell and market their products, advertise, or directly operate on a day to day basis. Change and new technology can be intimidating, but the reality of the situation is that for every business that resists change, there are two of its competitors who are embracing it. If your company doesn't embrace the change brought on by mobile technology, your business will become a flip-phone in a smartphone world.
It’s a new year, so it’s the perfect time to try something new with your business, and a mobile app should be one of those things. Chances are, you are already reading up about the industry-specific trends that will affect you. Mobile apps are no different, except they are changing…
Consumers are spending most of their time on mobile, but the majority of ad spend still goes to desktop.
It’s 2017, but most marketers still pour their efforts into desktop campaigns first and mobile second. But with up to 65 percent of time online spent on a mobile device, marketers can no longer afford to treat mobile like an advertising afterthought.
Mobile is driving growth in programmatic advertising — which allows marketers to buy ad space based on demographics and location — but desktop spending will exceed mobile for at least all of this year, and possibly into 2018. So while customers have already made the mobile switch, advertisers have yet to catch up.
Once upon a time, it made sense to prioritize desktop campaigns. Until mid-2015, the majority of us accessed the web primarily through our desktop computers. For marketers, fewer formatting options made mobile campaigns less attractive, and because mobile devices don’t support cookies,…
A case Study showing how to use App Store listing testing to boost downloads
On my first day at work my CEO at CallApp gave me a compelling challenge when he turned to me and said, “We need to increase the numbers of users downloading our app on day seven (an acceptable measuring metric), as quickly as we can." The first thing I did was analyze the numbers in order to figure out where I should put my efforts in order to maximize the results and show improvement.
After crunching the numbers, I decided that the best place to start was in trying to improve our conversion rate in Google Play Store. I will try to give you an idea of why I chose this route and what store conversion is all about.
There are several options for downloading the app but the most common is through Google Play Store (for android users).…
Chart of the day: customers delete smartphone applications mostly because the app is not useful
A study of over 2,000 app users found that users delete the app because it's either taking up too much space on their device or the app uses lots of data.
Bugs and dislike of the ads in the app were also issues for users, as well as too many promotional issues.
Key takeaways:
It's important to make app content relevant, as encouraging customers to download your app is the hard bit, keeping them in important. It's best not to just create an app, it needs to be relevant and useful, just having an app is not good marketing.
Source: MarketingSherpa Customer Satisfaction Research Survey
Sample: 2,400 consumers
Recommended resource: Read more about marketing your app or building your first app
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How to set up a good mobile friendly website
Having a mobile-friendly website extends beyond good practice, it’s a requirement if you want your business to succeed. Mobile now exceeds desktop Internet usage and this means mobile users expect businesses to provide an excellent experience optimized for their device. In fact, nearly half of consumers won’t return to a website if a website doesn’t load properly.
If you aren’t sure if your site is mobile-friendly, you need to make sure it is as soon as possible. It’s crucial to find ways to convert leads into sales and not turn people away because your website fails to load correctly. Customers on the go have their mobile devices in hand and want to be able to look up your business no matter where they are located – and possibly even contact you. There is a lot of competition in the small business arena,…
Chart of the Day: New Survey reveals that the vast majority of B2B buyers across all generations consider mobile devices essential
If you work in B2B marketing you may have been thinking that all this 'mobile-first' lark only need apply to your B2C friends. After all, serious B2B buyers use desktops, right?
Wrong. Okay, so that's an overstatement. Of course, they use desktops, but they also use mobile. And not just the hip young millennial buyers - new research shows in even the 50+ group (baby boomers) say that a mobile device is essential to their job.
The results come from a salesforce report which asked over 7,000 business buyers about their device usage in October 2016. Because terms like 'millennial' are often poorly defined, I thought it would be worth delineating the age ranges counted as in each generation for this report. In the graph below, millennials were regarded as being 18-35, gen-Xers as…
Examples showing how Chatbots will become an increasingly important marketing app in the future
Artificial intelligence and machine learning is one of the top trends in digital marketing for 2017. At the same time, we are seeing a reduction in demand for apps, particularly as the largest platforms are reaching saturation.
You could say that chatbots are the new apps; the new customer service reps, not to mention the new support system for marketers. In future, more people will turn to chatbots to manage their daily chores, be it ordering a ride or a pizza. Often these are built within Messenger apps themselves.
In fact, the rise of bots could be plainly attributed to increasing usage of messenger apps. According to Forester, people spend a staggering 85% of their time using the top messenger apps including Facebook Messenger, Kik, Slack and…
