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When SMS Marketing Campaigns Send You Running for Cover

When SMS marketing campaigns send you running for cover

When SMS marketing campaigns send you running for cover

Are you considering purchasing lists for your SMS Marketing campaigns? Ever wondered if the email or SMS list you purchased for a campaign was solid? Today, I’m sharing how to find out if you bought into a click farm.

Many times, and especially when you are breaking ground with a new market, your company needs a short term win. Pressed for time to reach the market and deliver results, you carefully evaluate list providers and purchase Email or SMS lists. You are aware that your conversion rates will be lower than if you had a house-grown list, but you did your homework, the odds are good, and the worst case scenario is that you break even. (I promise I will share with you later all that doing your homework entails.)

“Texting is the most widely-used and frequently used app on a smartphone, with 97% of Americans using it at least once a day.” (Pew Internet)

But, sometimes, the results are too low to even abide by the laws of logic and you know, deep in your gut, you were sold bogus email addresses or fake cell numbers. Or, at the very least, the list was not good. The problem is how to prove it.

A supposedly reputable Hispanic market list provider who charged a whopping $5 per record but delivered mostly bot-like visits to an SMS marketing campaign’s landing page prompted me to write this article.

As many people I spoke with about this experience didn’t know how I was able to prove this, I want to share how to do it. That way, marketers can use the information to protect themselves from scammers that profit from well-intentioned and hard-working marketers trying to reach their Hispanic audience where research indicates it is: on mobile.

The Benefits of SMS Marketing

Texting has the best engagement rate of any marketing medium. Emails can sit unread in their inboxes, phone calls can go unanswered, and flyers or printed presentations can be thrown out before being read, text messages are almost always read, and read quickly.

Improve results of your SMS marketing campaigns

Improve results of your SMS marketing campaigns

As James Citron, CEO of text messaging service Mogreet, said to Forbes, “95 out of 100 of your customers who have opted into your text messaging program OPEN and READ your mobile messages within 3 minutes.”

We all know the stats. The average Millennial exchanges an average of 67 text messages per day (Business Insider). It takes the average person 90 minutes to respond to email, but only 90 seconds to respond to a text message (CTIA). American women text 14% more than men (Nielsen). Text messaging has a read rate (or open rate) of 98%, while email has only a 20% open rate (Mobile Marketing Watch). And, according to Velocify, text messages have a response rate of 45%, while email only has a 6% response rate.

And, to top it all off, 63% of Hispanic adults own a smartphone, versus 60% of non-Hispanics (Experian Marketing Services).

With these numbers, not going for SMS marketing campaigns would be absolutely crazy. If you are B2B, don’t have an app yet, and want to send notifications and special offers to your customers, you should definitely consider keeping in touch with your Hispanic customers via SMS.

Anatomy of Successful SMS Marketing campaigns

Here’s a list of my own key insights to make sure your campaign performs as it should next time around. These elements will be crucial to prove that you have a trustworthy list.

  1. Segmentation. Segmentation. Segmentation. Ask yourself if the offer is relevant to your audience segment at this particular time.
  2. Make sure your message has all the key components needed for engagement: Benefits first. What’s in it for your audience? Leverage the incentives and then provide a clear call to action. Make sure the offer is relevant to your audience. For example, if you send an SMS marketing campaign to people: “FREE T-Shirt with your $5 donation 2 Save the Puppies Foundation. Act Now! http://bit.ly/23y4fh/” will definitely do the trick, provided your audience has been carefully selected.
  3. A must: Add Google Analytics tracking code to your landing pages and make sure you have demographics enabled.
  4. Test your message/landing page, for a couple of months at least, with a more affordable PPC campaign to increase conversion rates to a level you are comfortable with and to fine tune your message.
  5. Make sure the strongest part of your SMS message displays within the first 100 characters so that it shows on the preview of even the smallest smartphones’ screens.
  6. Think of when you want the audience to receive your text message. Is there a good day of the week? An ideal time? A time window when you shouldn’t be interrupting them with your message? Should you split the database by time zones? Consider all this before scheduling your SMS marketing campaigns.
  7. Use a clone of your highest converting landing page for the SMS marketing campaigns’ landing page.
  8. Use house-grown lists, if possible, and make sure you have obtained permission to text these mobile phones.
  9. With SMS Marketing campaigns you cannot text people who have not subscribed to that list. It’s illegal. You have to provide a way for people to opt themselves in and out of your list directly from their mobile phone. So, make sure you do.
  10. If you really have to, use a reputable list provider. Make sure the provider is a member of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) or the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and call them to ensure they are still a member. (The particular list provider I mentioned earlier had the logo on their website but, when I called to report them, the DMA explained they had been members. Not anymore.) Have the list provider sign an affidavit stating that the list adheres to and abides by all pertinent and applicable US Government regulations for SMS marketing campaigns, that they have verifiable documentation of their co-registration program’s* opt-in point, that the records are run against the Do Not Call list on a daily basis, that their audience can truly be segmented as they offer it, that they are not selling you any type of bot-like activity or a click-farm, and that they agree to punitive damages if you prove otherwise. Please consult with an attorney to draft this document. They may sell to Fortune 100s and, I can assure you, this means bubkes.
SMS Marketing Campaigns - Beware of Bots

SMS Marketing Campaigns – Beware of Bots

(*) “Co-registration programs are considered opt-in, but be aware that the performance of co-registration lists is typically much, much lower than your house list. Subscribers are generally not aware of what they are co-registering for, and even though you have (or should have) verifiable documentation of the point of opt-in, in the mind of the subscriber, they will likely not perceive that they’ve opted-in and will still flag you for spam.” (WhatCounts)

The SMS Marketing Campaigns: How to Make Sure You Got What You Paid For

You spent a lot of time and effort developing your email or your SMS campaign. You crafted and tested your copy and your landing pages. You had a great conversion rate. You made sure the list was double opt-in, co-registered, fresh, validated, and scrubbed against the Do Not Call database, and that the provider was a reputable one that sells to Fortune 100 companies and charges you a pretty penny for each mobile text.

If your results were close to or surpassed your original conversion rate, congratulations! This was a good list provider and a good list. You did an outstanding job of choosing your database selects and the time of send.

Maybe it’s not even close, but you are happy with your results. After all, the list was not grown in-house and the leads may be a bit cold.

And maybe your results were extremely poor or you got a zero conversion rate.

Even with all of the above-listed assurances in place, unscrupulous list providers may scam you by using click farms. Unless you use the following steps to find out if your rented list was full of bots.

How can you prove the list was a dud?

Reasons why your SMS marketing campaign could be a failure

Reasons why your SMS marketing campaign could be a failure

First, let’s check if the demographics you requested on the selects were the ones delivered.

As list providers do not provide any demographic or personal information on the mobile subscribers, including subscriber address, you can use this methodology to make sure the audience requested was the one delivered (thank you, Google).

The following Google Analytics reports will show you if your delivered audience was on track. As you used a unique landing page for the campaign, inside of the Google Analytics account, access your site. Then under Behavior/Site Content/All Pages, search for your landing page URL and select it. For educational purposes only, I am using one of the pages on this blog.

Select the landing page - Reasons why your SMS marketing campaign could be a failure

Select the landing page.

A quite common demographic requested is age. Let’s say we requested people living in the U.S. between ages 18-24. Select as a Secondary dimension Users/Age and here’s the report:

Check visitor's age - The SMS Marketing Campaign: How to Make Sure You Got What You Paid For

Check visitor’s age

From these results, I can gather that my message was not delivered to the audience requested. You do have to allow and account for some differences as figures are not always exact. In this case, though, the difference is too large to ignore.

You can check your visitor’s gender, location, device category (this better be mobile and/or tablet!), operating system, and service provider, among other things.

When looking at location, you may find that your list provider swears they only send text messages to, let’s say, U.S. numbers. Your report indicates otherwise. It is not uncommon for Carriers and IXCs to utilize U.S. numbers for overseas calls. You may have heard of a technology called VoIP, used by many Telecom carriers (what is now trending as Wi-Fi calling and previously Unlicensed Mobile Access, or UMA), the number is a U.S. number but the geo location, or IP address, is not.

Are your Analytics demographics extremely different from your database selects? Then, stay away from this list provider.

Next, let’s check if your visitors exhibited bot-like behavior.

Google Analytics demographics data is stored in a cookie and Google checks to see if the visitors have cookies stored from another site. This would tell us whether or not we were likely dealing with a human or a bot. If a visitor has one of these cookies, they are probably not a bot. As bots do not store cookies, they will display as “New Visitors”, or they would have a cookie from the previous session. For this same reason, you will not be able to identify their age or gender, as this data is also stored in cookies from other navigated sites. Their visit duration would be zero seconds, the number of pages visited would be one and, therefore, bounce rate would be 100%, and their source will be mostly direct.

The SMS Marketing Campaign: How to Make Sure You Got What You Paid For. Session duration bot-like behavior

Session duration bot-like behavior

As you can see from the example above, the average time on page was 0 seconds for over 1,700 Pageviews, the number of Uniques (new visitors) was much higher than the blast reported click rate, and the Bounce Rate for the visitors with session duration = 0 was 99.94%. These are all strong indicators of bot-like activity.

SMS marketing campaign: gender Google Analytics report

SMS marketing campaign: gender Google Analytics report

This Google Analytics report by Behavior, Page, and Gender shows us that only 253 pageviews out of the 1,842 total pageviews were able to be identified as performed by a male or female. This could definitely be qualified as bot-like behavior for the rest of the Pageviews.

If you notice this visitor behavior after purchasing an SMS database, not only should you stay away from this list provider, but you should report them to the MMA and the DMA, as well.

I hope you found this information useful and, if you don’t use it yet, you will on your next SMS marketing campaigns. Let us know what you find out!!!

Ralph Waldo Emerson quote

Ralph Waldo Emerson quote

Next Quote? funny inspirational quotes on every post!

Mobile App Advertising Trends

A new Mobile App Advertising trend may be in the making as smartphone owners turn to local TV news apps and breaking, local news and weather are top content categories, according to the latest research on the topic.

Smartphone Owners Turn to Local TV News Apps

Smartphone Owners Turn to Local TV News Apps

As local digital news becomes a more competitive space—with Google showing signs of venturing into the market, alongside longstanding local news outlets and Patch.com’s network of sites—mobile is becoming an increasingly important place where consumers look to get their local news fill.

According to StepLeader, a mobile technology company, more than one in four surveyed adult US smartphone owners said they had a news app from a local TV station installed on their phone in 2013. Local TV news broadcasts were still the No. 1 place for getting local news among those with the apps, cited by 47% of respondents. The local TV station’s app came in second, at 17%, ahead of the local TV website and the local newspaper website.

Primary Source for Local News - Smartphone Owners

Primary Source for Local News – Smartphone Owners

Among those who had a local TV news app, thus showing a strong interest in news from their community, the greatest percentage—36%—said they watched local news on TV seven or more times during the seven days prior to the survey. Slightly fewer, 32%, used their local TV news app as frequently. And 92% of those with a local TV news app used it at least once during that same one-week period.

Frequency U.S. Smartphone Owners watch Local News on TV vs Mobile App

Frequency U.S. Smartphone Owners watch Local News on TV vs Mobile App

Local TV news app users skewed well-educated and affluent as well as older—62% were between 30 and 60 years old. As to what users sought out from their app, the top content categories cited as most important were breaking news (40%), local news (26%) and weather (22%).

Could this be marking a new mobile app advertising trend?

Burger King enters mobile commerce full-throttle
African Americans, Hispanics Lead Mobile Internet Growth
they won't understand until you leave

they won’t understand until you leave

Next Quote? funny inspirational quotes on every post! | Pepsi Launches Bilingual Advertising Campaign with William Levy

When SMS Marketing Campaigns Send You Running for Cover

When SMS marketing campaigns send you running for cover

When SMS marketing campaigns send you running for cover

Are you considering purchasing lists for your SMS Marketing campaigns? Ever wondered if the email or SMS list you purchased for a campaign was solid? Today, I’m sharing how to find out if you bought into a click farm.

Many times, and especially when you are breaking ground with a new market, your company needs a short term win. Pressed for time to reach the market and deliver results, you carefully evaluate list providers and purchase Email or SMS lists. You are aware that your conversion rates will be lower than if you had a house-grown list, but you did your homework, the odds are good, and the worst case scenario is that you break even. (I promise I will share with you later all that doing your homework entails.)

“Texting is the most widely-used and frequently used app on a smartphone, with 97% of Americans using it at least once a day.” (Pew Internet)

But, sometimes, the results are too low to even abide by the laws of logic and you know, deep in your gut, you were sold bogus email addresses or fake cell numbers. Or, at the very least, the list was not good. The problem is how to prove it.

A supposedly reputable Hispanic market list provider who charged a whopping $5 per record but delivered mostly bot-like visits to an SMS marketing campaign’s landing page prompted me to write this article.

As many people I spoke with about this experience didn’t know how I was able to prove this, I want to share how to do it. That way, marketers can use the information to protect themselves from scammers that profit from well-intentioned and hard-working marketers trying to reach their Hispanic audience where research indicates it is: on mobile.

The Benefits of SMS Marketing

Texting has the best engagement rate of any marketing medium. Emails can sit unread in their inboxes, phone calls can go unanswered, and flyers or printed presentations can be thrown out before being read, text messages are almost always read, and read quickly.

Improve results of your SMS marketing campaigns

Improve results of your SMS marketing campaigns

As James Citron, CEO of text messaging service Mogreet, said to Forbes, “95 out of 100 of your customers who have opted into your text messaging program OPEN and READ your mobile messages within 3 minutes.”

We all know the stats. The average Millennial exchanges an average of 67 text messages per day (Business Insider). It takes the average person 90 minutes to respond to email, but only 90 seconds to respond to a text message (CTIA). American women text 14% more than men (Nielsen). Text messaging has a read rate (or open rate) of 98%, while email has only a 20% open rate (Mobile Marketing Watch). And, according to Velocify, text messages have a response rate of 45%, while email only has a 6% response rate.

And, to top it all off, 63% of Hispanic adults own a smartphone, versus 60% of non-Hispanics (Experian Marketing Services).

With these numbers, not going for SMS marketing campaigns would be absolutely crazy. If you are B2B, don’t have an app yet, and want to send notifications and special offers to your customers, you should definitely consider keeping in touch with your Hispanic customers via SMS.

Anatomy of Successful SMS Marketing campaigns

Here’s a list of my own key insights to make sure your campaign performs as it should next time around. These elements will be crucial to prove that you have a trustworthy list.

  1. Segmentation. Segmentation. Segmentation. Ask yourself if the offer is relevant to your audience segment at this particular time.
  2. Make sure your message has all the key components needed for engagement: Benefits first. What’s in it for your audience? Leverage the incentives and then provide a clear call to action. Make sure the offer is relevant to your audience. For example, if you send an SMS marketing campaign to people: “FREE T-Shirt with your $5 donation 2 Save the Puppies Foundation. Act Now! http://bit.ly/23y4fh/” will definitely do the trick, provided your audience has been carefully selected.
  3. A must: Add Google Analytics tracking code to your landing pages and make sure you have demographics enabled.
  4. Test your message/landing page, for a couple of months at least, with a more affordable PPC campaign to increase conversion rates to a level you are comfortable with and to fine tune your message.
  5. Make sure the strongest part of your SMS message displays within the first 100 characters so that it shows on the preview of even the smallest smartphones’ screens.
  6. Think of when you want the audience to receive your text message. Is there a good day of the week? An ideal time? A time window when you shouldn’t be interrupting them with your message? Should you split the database by time zones? Consider all this before scheduling your SMS marketing campaigns.
  7. Use a clone of your highest converting landing page for the SMS marketing campaigns’ landing page.
  8. Use house-grown lists, if possible, and make sure you have obtained permission to text these mobile phones.
  9. With SMS Marketing campaigns you cannot text people who have not subscribed to that list. It’s illegal. You have to provide a way for people to opt themselves in and out of your list directly from their mobile phone. So, make sure you do.
  10. If you really have to, use a reputable list provider. Make sure the provider is a member of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) or the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and call them to ensure they are still a member. (The particular list provider I mentioned earlier had the logo on their website but, when I called to report them, the DMA explained they had been members. Not anymore.) Have the list provider sign an affidavit stating that the list adheres to and abides by all pertinent and applicable US Government regulations for SMS marketing campaigns, that they have verifiable documentation of their co-registration program’s* opt-in point, that the records are run against the Do Not Call list on a daily basis, that their audience can truly be segmented as they offer it, that they are not selling you any type of bot-like activity or a click-farm, and that they agree to punitive damages if you prove otherwise. Please consult with an attorney to draft this document. They may sell to Fortune 100s and, I can assure you, this means bubkes.
SMS Marketing Campaigns - Beware of Bots

SMS Marketing Campaigns – Beware of Bots

(*) “Co-registration programs are considered opt-in, but be aware that the performance of co-registration lists is typically much, much lower than your house list. Subscribers are generally not aware of what they are co-registering for, and even though you have (or should have) verifiable documentation of the point of opt-in, in the mind of the subscriber, they will likely not perceive that they’ve opted-in and will still flag you for spam.” (WhatCounts)

The SMS Marketing Campaigns: How to Make Sure You Got What You Paid For

You spent a lot of time and effort developing your email or your SMS campaign. You crafted and tested your copy and your landing pages. You had a great conversion rate. You made sure the list was double opt-in, co-registered, fresh, validated, and scrubbed against the Do Not Call database, and that the provider was a reputable one that sells to Fortune 100 companies and charges you a pretty penny for each mobile text.

If your results were close to or surpassed your original conversion rate, congratulations! This was a good list provider and a good list. You did an outstanding job of choosing your database selects and the time of send.

Maybe it’s not even close, but you are happy with your results. After all, the list was not grown in-house and the leads may be a bit cold.

And maybe your results were extremely poor or you got a zero conversion rate.

Even with all of the above-listed assurances in place, unscrupulous list providers may scam you by using click farms. Unless you use the following steps to find out if your rented list was full of bots.

How can you prove the list was a dud?

Reasons why your SMS marketing campaign could be a failure

Reasons why your SMS marketing campaign could be a failure

First, let’s check if the demographics you requested on the selects were the ones delivered.

As list providers do not provide any demographic or personal information on the mobile subscribers, including subscriber address, you can use this methodology to make sure the audience requested was the one delivered (thank you, Google).

The following Google Analytics reports will show you if your delivered audience was on track. As you used a unique landing page for the campaign, inside of the Google Analytics account, access your site. Then under Behavior/Site Content/All Pages, search for your landing page URL and select it. For educational purposes only, I am using one of the pages on this blog.

Select the landing page - Reasons why your SMS marketing campaign could be a failure

Select the landing page.

A quite common demographic requested is age. Let’s say we requested people living in the U.S. between ages 18-24. Select as a Secondary dimension Users/Age and here’s the report:

Check visitor's age - The SMS Marketing Campaign: How to Make Sure You Got What You Paid For

Check visitor’s age

From these results, I can gather that my message was not delivered to the audience requested. You do have to allow and account for some differences as figures are not always exact. In this case, though, the difference is too large to ignore.

You can check your visitor’s gender, location, device category (this better be mobile and/or tablet!), operating system, and service provider, among other things.

When looking at location, you may find that your list provider swears they only send text messages to, let’s say, U.S. numbers. Your report indicates otherwise. It is not uncommon for Carriers and IXCs to utilize U.S. numbers for overseas calls. You may have heard of a technology called VoIP, used by many Telecom carriers (what is now trending as Wi-Fi calling and previously Unlicensed Mobile Access, or UMA), the number is a U.S. number but the geo location, or IP address, is not.

Are your Analytics demographics extremely different from your database selects? Then, stay away from this list provider.

Next, let’s check if your visitors exhibited bot-like behavior.

Google Analytics demographics data is stored in a cookie and Google checks to see if the visitors have cookies stored from another site. This would tell us whether or not we were likely dealing with a human or a bot. If a visitor has one of these cookies, they are probably not a bot. As bots do not store cookies, they will display as “New Visitors”, or they would have a cookie from the previous session. For this same reason, you will not be able to identify their age or gender, as this data is also stored in cookies from other navigated sites. Their visit duration would be zero seconds, the number of pages visited would be one and, therefore, bounce rate would be 100%, and their source will be mostly direct.

The SMS Marketing Campaign: How to Make Sure You Got What You Paid For. Session duration bot-like behavior

Session duration bot-like behavior

As you can see from the example above, the average time on page was 0 seconds for over 1,700 Pageviews, the number of Uniques (new visitors) was much higher than the blast reported click rate, and the Bounce Rate for the visitors with session duration = 0 was 99.94%. These are all strong indicators of bot-like activity.

SMS marketing campaign: gender Google Analytics report

SMS marketing campaign: gender Google Analytics report

This Google Analytics report by Behavior, Page, and Gender shows us that only 253 pageviews out of the 1,842 total pageviews were able to be identified as performed by a male or female. This could definitely be qualified as bot-like behavior for the rest of the Pageviews.

If you notice this visitor behavior after purchasing an SMS database, not only should you stay away from this list provider, but you should report them to the MMA and the DMA, as well.

I hope you found this information useful and, if you don’t use it yet, you will on your next SMS marketing campaigns. Let us know what you find out!!!

Ralph Waldo Emerson quote

Ralph Waldo Emerson quote

Next Quote? funny inspirational quotes on every post!

Mobile App Advertising Trends

A new Mobile App Advertising trend may be in the making as smartphone owners turn to local TV news apps and breaking, local news and weather are top content categories, according to the latest research on the topic.

Smartphone Owners Turn to Local TV News Apps

Smartphone Owners Turn to Local TV News Apps

As local digital news becomes a more competitive space—with Google showing signs of venturing into the market, alongside longstanding local news outlets and Patch.com’s network of sites—mobile is becoming an increasingly important place where consumers look to get their local news fill.

According to StepLeader, a mobile technology company, more than one in four surveyed adult US smartphone owners said they had a news app from a local TV station installed on their phone in 2013. Local TV news broadcasts were still the No. 1 place for getting local news among those with the apps, cited by 47% of respondents. The local TV station’s app came in second, at 17%, ahead of the local TV website and the local newspaper website.

Primary Source for Local News - Smartphone Owners

Primary Source for Local News – Smartphone Owners

Among those who had a local TV news app, thus showing a strong interest in news from their community, the greatest percentage—36%—said they watched local news on TV seven or more times during the seven days prior to the survey. Slightly fewer, 32%, used their local TV news app as frequently. And 92% of those with a local TV news app used it at least once during that same one-week period.

Frequency U.S. Smartphone Owners watch Local News on TV vs Mobile App

Frequency U.S. Smartphone Owners watch Local News on TV vs Mobile App

Local TV news app users skewed well-educated and affluent as well as older—62% were between 30 and 60 years old. As to what users sought out from their app, the top content categories cited as most important were breaking news (40%), local news (26%) and weather (22%).

Could this be marking a new mobile app advertising trend?

Burger King enters mobile commerce full-throttle
African Americans, Hispanics Lead Mobile Internet Growth
they won't understand until you leave

they won’t understand until you leave

Next Quote? funny inspirational quotes on every post! | Pepsi Launches Bilingual Advertising Campaign with William Levy

Mobile Marketing Campaign against Drunk Driving

Budweiser launched this mobile marketing campaign in Argentina in a wonderful effort to generate awareness about the dangers of drunk driving. The campaign, called “Termina bien la noche, escanea este codigo” (“End the night well, scan this code”), had simple but quite effective mechanics. Budweiser handed out coasters with a QR code at the bars, clubs and restaurants where their line of beers was sold to be given to their patrons when they ordered a Bud.

Mobile Marketing Campaign Budweiser | Photo

Mobile Marketing Campaign Budweiser Argentina

 

Once the code was scanned with the smartphone, the application enabled access to a radio taxi service located near to the Budweiser consumer. One of the pillars of this mobile marketing campaign was where it took place: the exact moment where people have to become aware of the dangers of drunk driving.

mobile marketing campaign against drunk driving

mobile marketing campaign against drunk driving

Quotes of the Day

Low Self Esteem Quotes

Low Self Esteem Quotes

 

Choose to become Carl Jung #quote

Choose to become Carl Jung quote

Next Quote? On the Latinos Online Study

Digital Marketing Strategies: What’s Next in Consumer Marketing

If the consumer won’t come to the supermarket, then the supermarket must go to the consumer

Digital marketing strategies in consumer marketing

Tesco Home plus is South Korea’s number 2 supermarket chain but it has recently become number one in online sales thanks to a very original and clever virtual marketing strategy. Tesco Home plus is very close to surpassing his largest competitor, E-Mart, and without having to open new stores. Tesco’s sales grew 130% thanks to the increase of 76% of registered users in the online supermarket.

Digital Market Strategies and the Future of Consumer Marketing - How Tesco became number 1 in online sales and is quickly reaching number one in sales in the country both online and off-line.

Digital Market Strategies and the Future of Consumer Marketing – How Tesco became number 1 in online sales and is quickly reaching number one in sales in the country both online and off-line.

How did they do it? First, they did their due diligence as good marketers: they studied their consumers. This is how they reached the conclusion that South Koreans dislike having to go to the supermarkets to do their shopping. They knew that this is a technologically advanced and savvy consumer. This is a country where children do not carry books to school but PCs, tablets and smartphones. Thus, the campaign had to leverage off the daily use of these mobile devices and it had to make weekly supermarket shopping, a pleasurable experience.

Therefore, they placed ads on the main subway and metro stations resembling supermarket shelves. Each product with its QR code, thus tying it to the physical product. All consumers had to do was to scan the QR codes they wanted, review their shopping basket and pay for them all with their smartphone or mobile device. The products are delivered to their home right away.

Were they able to turn the weekly supermarket shopping into a fun and enjoyable experience? Let’s watch the video:

Digital Marketing Strategies in Consumer Marketing: Can we do this in the U.S.?

On one hand, 21% of Americans ages 13 and older use smartphones and they are accustomed to shopping online. Nielsen reported that slightly more males than females are getting smartphones (53% versus 47%) which is what we would expect for technical early adopter products. In terms of demographics, Hispanic Americans and Asians are slightly more likely to have a smartphone than what their share of population would indicate, which is a trend we see in the adoption of other mobile data services. While smartphones started out in the business segment, two-third of today’s buyers of smartphones are personal users.

On the other hand, not that many cities in the U.S. have a transportation system with high traffic of smartphone users.

Maybe this strategy could be implemented New York city’s subway and see how it fares. Or better yet, move it to the airports, where travelers returning from a trip could easily “pick something up” on their way home.

by Claudia “Havi” Goffan

success quotes

success quotes

Hispanic mobile consumers study

As Hollywood looks to drive waning movie ticket sales, their focus should be on the growing Hispanic population and their use of mobile devices throughout the movie-planning process. This insight comes from research within The Mobile Consumer: Hispanics, Movies & Mobile, a new report by multicultural marketing agency Briabe Mobile and MocoSpace, the largest entertainment destination on the mobile Internet.

Hispanics attend movies more frequently than other racial demographics, and they're using their mobile devices to find theaters, movie times and reviews.

Hispanics attend movies more frequently than other racial demographics, and they’re using their mobile devices to find theaters, movie times and reviews.

Based on the results from a June 2011 survey of MocoSpace users, the study revealed Hispanics attend movies more frequently than other racial demographics, and they’re using their mobile devices to find theaters, movie times and reviews.

Hispanics are known to be a driving force for tickets sales. A recent Nielsen study found Hispanics make up approximately 15 percent of the U.S. population, but they represent 28 percent of today’s frequent moviegoers. This study echoed those findings, but also had key findings about Hispanics’ movie-attending habits.

Key findings for Hispanic mobile consumers include the following:

  • 75 percent of Hispanics go to the movie theater once a month, 25 percent see movies three times a month. This is more often than all other polled ethnic demographics.
  • Hispanic Americans use their phones for almost every part of the film-discovery process. 72 percent use their mobile devices for overall movie planning. Of those:
    • 65 percent use their mobile devices to find showtimes and locations
    • 39 percent use it to view trailers
    • 35 percent use it to discover movies
    • 28 percent use it to get reviews
    • 14 percent use it to buy tickets
  • 55 percent use their phones to access movie information within the four hours just prior to seeing a movie.

Not only are Hispanics using their phones to seek out movie information, the report found they’re influenced by mobile advertisements, too. One out of four interviewed said they look to search and mobile banner ads when deciding what film to see. After viewing a film, 55 percent of Hispanics said they discuss their opinion of the movie on social networks.

72 percent of Hispanics use their mobile devices for overall movie planning | Hispanic mobile Consumers Study

Hispanic mobile Consumers Study | 72 percent of Hispanics use their mobile devices for overall movie planning

Photo credit: VentureBeat

you are entitled to your informed opinion

you are entitled to your informed opinion