Emerging Mobile Techniques for Global Digital Marketing

There are a number of new mobile marketing techniques that digital marketers can use to reach global customers. The increased usage of smartphones and mobile apps has encouraged global marketers to use mobile as a key branding platform and to personalize digital content and the user experience through the development of mobile technologies and push notifications. Mobile is on the rise as an important platform that influences sales conversions in all channels and is set to grow dramatically within the next 12 months.

Research conducted by eTail in the Digital Retail Study 2016,“Evaluating the Changing Landscape of Retail Marketing,” it showed that mobile investment is a top priority especially for building capabilities that enable mobile as a cross-channel marketing tool.

As more and more companies look to reach their customers not only on a social but personal level, the need to deliver relevant digital content directly to a user is more valuable than ever. Surprisingly only 29% of digital retailers deliver messages and offers to mobile devices via apps and push notifications.

To successfully influence conversions in a multi-channel digital environment, there is huge scope for emerging mobile technologies like geofencing, magnetic positioning, hyper-targeting and in-store beacons to increase in-store interactivity and purchases on other devices. Industry analysis suggest that geofencing and in-store beacons are the fastest growing mobile marketing technologies and so far, the most socially adopted methods to be considered by global digital marketers in 2016.

GEOFENCING

A geofence is a virtual barrier. Geofencing allows the administrator of an app or program to set up geographical boundaries, for example the area of a shopping mall. When a person enters the mall, who has this specific app on their mobile device, a trigger is set off which prompts an email or text alerting the user of an offer or voucher.

This opens up many avenues for mobile marketing. Depending upon the nature of the store, companies can look to use coupons, vouchers and discount codes to tempt customers into stores which they may not have originally planned to do.

By personalizing the vouchers based on a user’s previous shopping habits, you help build and establish the brand loyalty and trust of more customers whilst they’re on the go in a real-time situation. This form of mobile marketing engages local shoppers, deals can be hyper-local and it leverages your shop location. It also provides marketers with more in-depth analytics.

The localization challenge for global retailers and marketers is to ensure offers and mobile promotional content are represented in the correct language and culture. This is on-demand localization as retail offers are rapidly updated and developed based on real-time data and shopper activity.

IN-STORE BEACONS

In-store beacons act similarly to geofencing but they are focused purely on the in-store shopping experience. Beacons are devices that are programmed to communicate with a shopper’s mobile device with the hopes of improving the shoppers experience within the store. As you move around a store, you may receive a push notification, text or email with a voucher, coupon, or additional product information on a product in your immediate vicinity. This mobile marketing technology is a bid to mimic mobile and online behaviour in the physical retail store, as more and more companies try to connect online behaviour with offline sales.

Some companies across the United States have rolled out this technology in a few stores before launching it nationwide and internationally. This technology has benefits such as personalization based upon location. Marketing content is shown based on the chosen language for the app and mobile device and also based upon a user’s past purchases and shopping behaviour.

Beacons do operate on bluetooth to connect to a mobile device. If a user does not have this feature on they will not be able to receive the targeted messages and deals.

Both these technologies allow for greater personalization and relationship with customers. It is still important to ensure that each method and any content used in an mobile promotional offer is localized to the store’s geographic area and user preferences from the app.

It’s acceptable to set up a beacon to send out coupons to every mobile device that walks past, however sending out a coupon for baby food to a young teenager may not be applicable. The same principle applies for target language and content type — it has to be relevant and culturally appropriate to the target customer.

Both methods will harvest in-depth insights into customer habits and will directly measure the success of any digital mobile marketing campaign. It is important to know about your customers and their preferences before implementation. Research conducted by eTail showed that if customers receive notifications for products they do not want or buy, they are more likely to close and or remove the app from the mobile device than use it again.