5 Mobile Marketing Takeaways From Email Marketing

4 minute read

Upland Admin

As we’ve noted here before, marketers can learn a lot about mobile marketing from email marketing best practices. A recent piece from Mediapost exemplifies this line of thinking, and in particular how to formulate a marketing strategy around mobile database marketing.

We’ll break down the article as follows:

  • Takeaway: what to learn
  • “Excerpt”: exact quotation from the article
  • Mobilized: application in the mobile world

Mobile CRM Returns Greater Response Rates Than Mobile Messaging:

“Around 1985, when database marketing was invented, we found that dynamic content based on a database was much more likely to generate a response than sending everyone the same thing.”

Mobilized: In mobile you are even less likely to see responses to non-dynamic communication since mobile is even more personal than email. Mobile marketing – without question – requires a database strategy in order to be effective.

CRM ROI > One-off ROI

“We can use the cost reductions [of email vs. direct mail] to create even better dynamic content, and to send more often. We soon found that sending an email once a week instead of once a month increased our revenue. Going from once a week to twice a week made revenue go up still more.”

Mobilized: One-off mobile campaigns will not return the same success as a mobile CRM strategy that engages an audience in an interactive conversation, as we have said before.

Use Data To Decide Between Sending Frequency Or Increased Personalization

“We can increase response [rate] either by personalizing, or by increasing frequency.  The lift we get from personalization is not as great as the lift we get from frequency. We can’t do both, so we go with the one that is most profitable.”

Mobilized: So true in the world of mobile – and we all know which tactic is easier. But “easier” usually means “worse”, which is why marketers should heed Frost’s advice and tackle the more difficult road. That’s why it’s so important to have software that allows you to personalize and target without too much hassle.

Mobile Marketing Goal #1: Aim to Increase Customer Lifetime Value

“By sending too many emails, we turn some people off. We analyzed the lifetime value of customers of a large retail chain with more than 400 stores. The company sent frequent emails to all those whom they could get to sign up. At its request, we analyzed customers who left through unsubscribing or delivery problems and compared them with those subscribers who did not leave. We found that those who left were more valuable than those who did not leave.”

Mobilized: Mobile is a long term play. Short term revenue gains are just that, and should never be earned at the expense of long term decreases in customer satisfaction (thanks to Professor Fornell for teaching me this).  Customer profitability comes from a dedicated focus on improving customer experience.

Effective Database Marketing (Mobile CRM) Begets Customer Satisfaction Begets Company Success

“Companies using database marketing can do the analysis it takes to determine that using database marketing instead of batch and blast will be profitable for them.  They will let their customers know that they will not receive more email than they want to receive, and they will personalize that email with content designed for the subscribers.  It will cost companies more to do this, but it will pay dividends.  They will lose fewer customers, and gain more friends and sales.”

Mobilized: Mobile nirvana comes from allowing customers to choose how often and in what format they want to receive correspondence. Siloed communication strategies will never achieve the profitability of a cohesive communication ecosystem.

 

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