Mobile Marketing 2.0 – Branded vs. Syndicated Applications, what do you think will stick?
· Convenience to Digital Shopper: For example, in case of digital offers and coupons that can be clipped into a digital wallet and electronically redeemed at the POS through a loyalty card, syndicated services provide a greater convenience vs. consumers having to work with 10 different applications from 10 different retailers. One stop applications that consolidate mobile services across brands and retailers have the advantage of providing more convenience to digital shoppers.
· Market Reach: Syndicated applications also have the advantage over branded applications in terms of reaching out to larger consumer markets. This is simply due to utilization of more distribution channels including all participating retailers’ and brands’ marketing channels as well as their own channels.
· 1:1 Marketing: Most generic mobile marketing applications today do not have capabilities to target consumers based on demographics, shopping history or geography. For example, Cellfire, which is a mobile coupon service offers same coupons to all shoppers located anywhere in the US. Several large retailers on the other hand are developing their own branded applications for enabling more targeted 1:1 marketing.
· Total Cost of Ownership & Time to Market: Every marketer has a “cool” idea to take into the digital world but time-to-market and cost of entry can be overwhelming. Generic applications have a significant advantage over branded applications in terms of lower cost and faster time-to-market; however, out of the box functionality of generic applications may not fit the requirements in many cases.
· Custom Widget and Functionality Development: Ability to create unique functionality based on each retailers go-to-market strategy and business model is crucial but most generic mobile applications do not support this capability.
· Intellectual Property (IP) & Customer Data Privacy: The way retailers cluster their consumers and unique marketing strategies targeted to these segments or “personas” are important pieces of a retailers’ intellectual property and therefore it is extremely confidential. While internally developed (branded) applications ensure the protection of strategic assets, generic application providers need to find out creative ways of addressing this issue.
· Large Integration Capability: Mobile marketing strategy should be in sync with overall digital and traditional marketing strategies and events and the efficient management of this process requires mobile applications to be integrated in larger CRM systems. However, most application providers lack large integration capabilities.
· Shopper Loyalty: Several factors mentioned above such as convenience, 1:1 marketing and custom functionalities (widgets) are key drivers to create shopper loyalty and no branded or generic application provide the best approach across these areas for creating shopper loyalty. Branded applications can drive more loyalty however lack the larger market reach as mentioned above.
Both Sinan and I would like to hear what you think?
Sources:
1: Media Brands, Magna, Mobile Advertising Forecast, May 2009
2: eMarketer, Geoff Ramsey, CEO, 7 Predictions for 2009, January 2009
3: Mobile Digital Marketing – Ride the Wave, Avoid the Wipeout , Sinan Gurman & Joydeep Haldar, In press
· Market Reach: Syndicated applications also have the advantage over branded applications in terms of reaching out to larger consumer markets. This is simply due to utilization of more distribution channels including all participating retailers’ and brands’ marketing channels as well as their own channels.
· 1:1 Marketing: Most generic mobile marketing applications today do not have capabilities to target consumers based on demographics, shopping history or geography. For example, Cellfire, which is a mobile coupon service offers same coupons to all shoppers located anywhere in the US. Several large retailers on the other hand are developing their own branded applications for enabling more targeted 1:1 marketing.
· Total Cost of Ownership & Time to Market: Every marketer has a “cool” idea to take into the digital world but time-to-market and cost of entry can be overwhelming. Generic applications have a significant advantage over branded applications in terms of lower cost and faster time-to-market; however, out of the box functionality of generic applications may not fit the requirements in many cases.
· Custom Widget and Functionality Development: Ability to create unique functionality based on each retailers go-to-market strategy and business model is crucial but most generic mobile applications do not support this capability.
· Intellectual Property (IP) & Customer Data Privacy: The way retailers cluster their consumers and unique marketing strategies targeted to these segments or “personas” are important pieces of a retailers’ intellectual property and therefore it is extremely confidential. While internally developed (branded) applications ensure the protection of strategic assets, generic application providers need to find out creative ways of addressing this issue.
· Large Integration Capability: Mobile marketing strategy should be in sync with overall digital and traditional marketing strategies and events and the efficient management of this process requires mobile applications to be integrated in larger CRM systems. However, most application providers lack large integration capabilities.
· Shopper Loyalty: Several factors mentioned above such as convenience, 1:1 marketing and custom functionalities (widgets) are key drivers to create shopper loyalty and no branded or generic application provide the best approach across these areas for creating shopper loyalty. Branded applications can drive more loyalty however lack the larger market reach as mentioned above.
Both Sinan and I would like to hear what you think?
Sources:
1: Media Brands, Magna, Mobile Advertising Forecast, May 2009
2: eMarketer, Geoff Ramsey, CEO, 7 Predictions for 2009, January 2009
3: Mobile Digital Marketing – Ride the Wave, Avoid the Wipeout , Sinan Gurman & Joydeep Haldar, In press
