Just how important are mobile subscribers to your business? A recent ebook by Experian Marketing Services, titled A Tale of Two Brands, shows they may have more impact on engagement and profitability than you might think.
Assessing Mobile Subscriber Value
The ebook looks at how two brands assess the value of their mobile subscribers. One brand found that people who subscribed to the company’s email marketing list and its mobile list (called dual subscribers) were 3.9 times more likely to complete a transaction. In other words, having a mobile list resulted in engaging with customers who were more valuable to the brand.
The Experian study also examines transaction rates, how mobile compares with email, and whether push messages (where messages are sent automatically to a subscriber), pull messages (where a subscriber has to perform an action to receive a message), or email messaging drives the most transactions.
The brand found that transaction rates were 10 times higher among mobile users than the industry average for email. Revenue per customer also tripled compared with the industry average for email. While 95% of the brand’s messages were push messages, these messages had a transaction rate of just 0.4%. In contrast, pull messages had a 34% transaction rate.
Why Mobile Subscribers Matter
In our latest ebook, titled The 90-Day Journey to Bigger Buzz, More Customers and Stronger Brand Loyalty, sheds more light on Experian’s data. In particular, it underscores the point that having a mobile subscriber list can add to a company’s bottom line.
Here’s why: there’s a growing number of mobile-only users.
Mobile subscribers are highly engaged. While email open rates continue to fall, mobile subscribers are reading and acting on text messages. These subscribers want you to share personalized, on-demand and relevant information with them, according to data from the IBM Institute for Business Value, and they are willing to share their mobile phone number in order to get it.
Tips on Connecting with Mobile Subscribers
So how do you build your mobile list to connect with this audience? Experian’s research shows that:
- 58% of brands acquire mobile subscribers via web forms
- 47% acquire subscribers via email
- 43% acquire them via mobile marketing
- Brands are 51% more likely to gain mobile subscribers via in-store promotions
This suggests that integrated marketing is the best approach to acquiring new mobile subscribers. Upland Mobile Messaging’s new ebook offers some strategies to achieve even more:
- Provide a compelling reason for mobile subscribers to opt-in (for example, reward/surprise subscribers).
- Promote your mobile call-to-action (CTA) wherever people are most likely to see it, including in stores and on social media.
- Mobile opt-ins can serve multiple purposes among those, getting consumers to opt-in to mobile messaging and getting them to opt-in to email campaigns are great examples (Upland Mobile Messaging does this by asking subscribers to text DEMO to 662266).
- Consumer responses to messages can also be used to collect additional information on subscribers.
Using Integrated Marketing to Increase Mobile Subscriber Numbers
Several companies, including Nickelodeon and The Human Rights Campaign, are using integrated marketing campaigns to increase mobile subscribers.
Nickelodeon wanted to kickstart its Nick Jr. mobile list with a text to enter a sweepstakes aimed at parents. Promoting the contest via its email list and social media channels resulted in 15,000 new text message subscribers in two weeks. Nickelodeon then used the platform to provide engaging, short-form content such as trivia, games and jokes that parents could share with their kids.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) analyzed its mobile subscriber list and found that dual subscribers were more engaged with its messaging. Most people on HRC’s mobile list also were on its email list and therefore counted as dual subscribers. HRC discovered that mobile subscribers were 250% more likely to donate than people who only got the organization’s updates by email.
As these case studies show, an integrated marketing campaign can drive meaningful results for companies. Using text messaging to forge a personal relationship with your subscribers — and delivering targeted messages that speak to their interests — leads to rewarding interactions that can grow your list and mobile transactions.