If you invited a group of digital marketers out for coffee, the topic of personalization would bubble up well before anybody’s latté cooled off. Everybody’s talking about it, debating best practices, and getting dreamy-eyed about data.
In fact, according to a recent global survey,
- Nearly four out of five companies (78 percent) claim they are personalizing their email
- 69 percent are personalizing their website
- But only 36 percent are now personalizing the mobile experience
Mobile is clearly a blind spot for these marketers—and they’re missing a tremendous opportunity. People are more attached to their smartphones and tablets than ever. They’re also more likely to download mobile apps from their favorite brands, businesses, and community organizations like hospitals, airports and residential properties.
Here’s why mobile is so important in personalization:
- In May of 2014, mobile platforms—smartphones and tablets—combined to account for 60 percent of total digital media time spent. That’s a 10 percent rise over 2013. And perhaps more impressively, mobile apps accounted for more than half of all digital media time spent.
- Mobile devices are inherently personal. People don’t like to be separated from them—whether at home or at work. Nearly one-third of employees would rather lose their wallet than lose their personal mobile devices.
- The average app downloader has roughly 42 apps on his or her smartphone.
- Consumers use apps during their downtime, which gives marketers a chance to reach them when they’re otherwise unoccupied.
- Consumers increasingly demand personalized experiences. “Consumers want more than just an experience—we want a personal connection that identifies with who we are, our interests, expectations and abilities.” (CMSWire)
A personalization framework should embrace all relevant customer touchpoints and devices, and not one or two channels in isolation.” —Mark Phibbs, Vice President, EMEA Marketing, Adobe
Mobile delivers marketers more personalized data.
Web cookies can only contain the data that the website has access to, such as usernames or anything the user enters. With a mobile app, marketers can gain far deeper real-world insights—which can be used to personalize both online and mobile experiences.
Mobile marketers can leverage built-in smartphone technologies to identify user locations and track user behavior within a store, business or anywhere at all. They can also gather information about user identity, app usage, and real-life behavior (shopping patterns, etc.). Combined with data collected via other channels and contained in back-end CRM systems, mobile insights give marketers the power to personalize at unprecedented levels.
Personalized apps deliver a better experience to your most valuable customers.
Within the mobile experience, marketers can use personalization to engage more meaningfully with their most loyal customers, while working to influence shopping and purchasing behaviors.
As this infographic illustrates, personalized mobile engagement through an app can:
Click above to download the full infographic.
- Drive traffic into retail stores using geo-targeted push notifications—for example, sending a special offer when a user is near your store or a competitor’s (this is known as “geo-conquesting”).
- Serve as a personal guide to any location, with turn-by-turn navigation both indoors and out. This has applicability across a wide range of industries—including travel, real estate, healthcare, sports / entertainment and more.
- Finely segment alerts and notifications according to geographic location, user action and much more.
- Enhance conversion by offering the right content at the right moment in the purchasing decision.
If outcomes like these are possible, why aren’t more companies taking advantage of the opportunity? Why aren’t you?
The post The Personalization Blind Spot: What Most Digital Marketers Are Missing appeared first on Phunware.