Driving Miss Daisy

Knowing how to drive an automobile wasn’t required to participate in modern life during the first half of the 20th century.

Many men and women in particular were unlikely to know how to drive until mid-century.  Women’s increasing participation in the workforce during World War II, the growth of suburbs, and the new American Interstate drove near-100% participation very quickly.

Mobile today resembles the saturation turning point for automobiles after World War II in North America.  

CTIA recently reported that 91% of Americans (over 285 million) carry at least one cellphone.  Subtracting pre-schoolers, we’re close to 100% market saturation.

As described in Experian Simmons’ “American Mobile Consumer Report” this week, American mobile subscribers can be grouped by mobile usage habits:

- Social Connectors (22%) These mobile users are responsible for 600% growth in Facebook use via mobiles in 2009.  Communications with friends is crucial for this population and both social sites and text messaging are as (if not more) critical for them than voice.

- Mobirati (19%) This population grew up with cellphones and cannot conceive of life without one (or two!) mobile devices.  They use their mobile for voice, texting, alarm clock, web browsing, social media and entertainment.  Other researchers including the Pew Internet and American Life Project have noted that this segment and Social Connectors increasingly use their mobiles as their primary internet access device (vs desktop or laptop).

- Pragmatic Adopters (22%) This segment did not grow up with mobile phones, but they are learning that they are handy for more than just voice communications.  The “gateway drug” into texting for this segment is staying in touch with teenage or adult children.  Once there, these users are primed to discover mobile web browsing for sports, weather and news.

- Mobile Professionals (17%) Originally pioneered by brick-phone lugging sales professionals, this segment is now quite broad.  Frequently Mobile Professionals’ mobile device is a smartphone (typically Blackberry) provided by their employer for work use.   

- Basic Planners (20%) Behind the Pragmatic Adoptors in the learning curve, subscribers in this group only use their mobile phone for voice communications.  Note that this group numbers only 1 in 5.

With 91% penetration and only 20% using their mobile only for voice communications, mobile is truly at its turning point.  

Photo credits: “Driving Miss Daisy,” Sony Ericsson Daisy edition

*As fans of the film know, the “Miss Daisy” character does know how to drive.  She is forced to accept a chauffeur after an accident renders her “uninsurable.” 

It’s for you: Reality on Line One

Mobile March this past Saturday in Minneapolis was a big success.  The speaker lineup was outstanding, and attendees Lisa Grimm, Aaron Weiche, and Vanessa Bright have each blogged recaps worth reading.  Slides from presentations are posted here.

What stood out most for me about the day were:

• Diversity of attendees  I chatted with a striking number of marketers who said they were attending simply to understand more about mobile - something they said they knew they had to do.  There were also many attendees I see regularly at Social Media and Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA).  It was good to see those worlds intersecting and cross-pollinating more.

• Level of interest  The event sold out and I expect this could easily be a semi-annual conference in future.  

• Reality in the presentations  I was delighted to listen to Michael Becker at a recent MIMA event on mobile.  He brought a level of reality to a topic that has been the sad victim of too much hype over the past two years.  I was even more delighted Saturday to hear speaker after speaker help the audience understand what consumers want, and how different most consumers’ mobile habits are from the mobile habits of enthusiasts (like us!)  Mark Mosiniak of Best Buy and Doug Rosen of Carlson (pictured here) made this point very effectively, as did others.

Ironically, I had coffee the day Mobile March with a marketer who believes social media is in adolescence, while mobile is in its infancy.  I disagree, and the presentations Saturday prove the point.  Consumers are ready - for what they want, not for all the bells and whistles too many of us want to force on them.  Mobile is here, it’s real, and those who are adapting best will be far ahead of the pack by the end of the year.

Finally, major kudos to Justin Grammens, Phil Wilson and Linda Cummings who probably need six months to recover from the amount of work it takes to put on a quality event.  Thanks also to sponsors Recursive Awesome, RemainComm, Focus, Verizon Wireless, Fusion Room, Best Buy, and The Nerdery.

Mobile Web 2.0: Evaluate your route

Juniper Research forecasts that Voice over Internet Protocol (VOiP) and social web activities will increase sector revenue to $18.9 billion in 2014.

I was pleased to see that, In addition to the usual dazzling growth projections, Juniper acknowledges that there are many paths to market and “fragmentation at every level.”  

Mobile marketing in this tumultuous moment reminds me of mountain climbing. Rarely is there only one way to reach the summit.  And each route will give the climber distinct blessings and challenges.

Route charts reflect the investment in time and route degree of difficulty.  The benefits of each climb are expressed as scenery and traffic (lower is better of course).

If you’re attracted to the growth and revenue of mobile 2.0 marketing, consider the investment and the benefits similarly.

1) Time

Consider time in two dimensions.  One dimension is the amount of time from concept to execution.  This time “tax” is the highest for custom development (especially for a smartphone application) and lowest for a ready-to-use platform

The second time dimension is how long it takes you to interact with customers on a given campaign or promotion.  Can you deploy a social-mobile promotion in less than one week?  In one day? How about in real time?  

For both development and deployment, faster is better.

2) Information

There are many benefits to mobile marketing, but one of the most subtle and difficult to find is real-time reporting.  How quickly can you understand who is engaged with your mobile web 2.0 content?  How quickly can you act on it?  This data benefit must be acquired in any approach, but speed of information acquisition can be the Achille’s Heel of mobile marketing.

Like a climber in training, consider your route into mobile marketing carefully.  Some routes on the fragmented path are easier and faster, while others will be more difficult but more rewarding.   

Photo credits: Wikimedia.org, Casey Marshall

Time to Make YOUR Donuts!

As we know, the most common challenge to social media marketing innovation has been return on investment.

Happily, we appear to be getting well past the “You just should” engagement arguments and into quantitative territory.  (Disclaimer: While it’s possible that companies should “just” do it, having worked in the Fortune 500, I’m here to tell you it ain’t enough of an argument.)

I’m delighted that companies like Dunkin’ Donuts are being showcased not just as using social media, but as actively tracking responses and returns.

And while Dunkin’ Donuts is appropriately praised for being able to quantify engagment and clickthroughs in this recent Portfolio article, I find the following quote from David Puner even more exciting:

Twitter “a great place to get that real-time feedback and to find out what consumers want from you as a brand.” (Emphasis mine.)

Read More

Start Here! Mobile Marketing for Small Business

I had the pleasure of appearing on Pamela Muldoon’s Next Stage Business radio show this past Saturday.  Pamela is a small business expert and always produces compelling content for her listeners.

You can listen to the interview here.

Interestingly, the most important steps in understanding mobile marketing is the least technical: understanding your customers’ mobile device ownership and the ways they use those mobiles.

The easiest way to understand the importance of this first step is illustrated by two companies:

• Surfer Girl is a surfing apparel company appealing to young women.  They have a significant Facebook following.  Surfer Girl’s demographic own fewer smartphones than average (significantly less than 20%), favor text messaging over other mobile uses, and frequently access their favorite brands using their mobiles and social media.
• New Reflections is a three-location AVEDA spa and salon chain.  New Reflections clients own more smartphones than the 20% average, with Blackberries being the most commonly owned device.  Clients’ favorite mobile use is acessing email.

Surfer Girl should consider extending mobile offers that are fun, fresh and relevant via social media, participating in social media conversations of interest to tween and teen female customers.

New Reflections may want to focus on mobile marketing through compelling mobile-friendly offers delivered through their popular, existing email marketing campaigns.  Customers can bring offers into the salon on their mobile, increasing redemption rates.

Understand how your customer wants to interact with you via her smartphone or feature phone and you are half-way home with mobile marketing!

[Image courtesy of Cafe Press]

New Look!

The informational side of MixMobi got a new look last night thanks to some great work by the folks at Livefront.  Over the next few weeks we will also be incorporating that design into the application itself along with some usability enhancements and other new features.  We’re very excited about all the new customers who found us via Mashable and other venues the last few days.  If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions please let us know!

—Kelly

MixMobi Featured: Mashable’s Spark of Genius

Thanks to the Spark of Genius program at Mashable for our outstanding coverage today. The entire team is very gratified to get this recognition and to spread the word about MixMobi’s easy, fast, effective mobile promotions.

In addition to the Spark of Genius writeup, we’re talking to many people about our Enterprise and White Label programs, designed expressly for larger companies and resellers.  Please contact us for more information (info(at)mixmobi.com) and we’ll be happy to explore the advantages MixMobi can bring to your marketing platform, PR agency or advertising endeavor.

I want to particularly recognize partner Kelly Heikkila, MixMobi’s outstanding primary developer.  Kelly is not only brilliant technically, but is also an experienced, insightful business person who has brought the platform to life in every dimension.

Finally: We’re just getting started!  From internationalization to smoother SMS integration, our development roadmap is full of excellent additional functionality suggested by you, our customers.  Thank you for your ideas and for your support.