by anton | Feb 13, 2017 |
In this blog, we’ve often written about what could be called the ‘core’ of mobile marketing: personalisation. Mobile marketing both enables greater personalisation of consumer-focused messages, and it is also key to a successful mobile campaign. It is interesting to note, then, an article this week in business bible, Forbes. It says that after analysing millions of mobile interactions, one marketing firm found that “personalised content inside push notifications boosts engagement four times.” This alludes to something mobile marketers are discovering to their great excitement and that is the modern app is smarter than its ancestors. After several years of evolving and fine-tuning, it is now able to effectively personalise content down to the individual user rather than the broad segments that used to form the foundation of marketing theory. With all of the above in mind, here are the top three predictions from Forbes for why 2017 will be the year of the smart app – they make for interesting reading: 1. Smart Apps Will Showcase Predictive Analytics: Predictive analytics will enable apps to anticipate and react to a user’s desires before they’re even expressed. 2. Smart Apps Will Make Chatbots Ubiquitous: In 2017, more brands will be able to serve consumers using conversational interfaces across the app. 3. Smart Apps Will Usher In Mass Adoption Of Automation: Mass blasting your users with generic content is a tired tactic. Instead, forward-thinking marketers are beginning to look at automation in a new light. The final word today belongs to Forbes: “With (personalised) intelligence, mobile-savvy brands can communicate more effectively with...
by anton | Jan 25, 2017 |
The fact that we are clearly, and very deeply, in the mobile era can seen from a casual observation of the people around us – and ourselves! It’s not just that so many people have their mobile phones right in their hands and the rest have them within arm’s length, it’s that it is acceptable. In decades past, one was frowned upon for not paying adequate attention to the person directly in front of your eyes. Now, that person has become secondary. We seem to respond faster and interact more with people behind our cellphone screens. While the overall societal implications of all of this may be up for debate, what’s not debatable is the wonderfully positive contribution mobile technology has made to marketing. Mobile might be bad for conversation but for conversion, it’s a fantastically strong tool! We’ve said before in this blog that mobile marketers should not be afraid to directly ask mobile consumers for their business. While television might be renowned for ‘brand building’ where there’s no clear call to action but the viewer is left with a warm and fuzzy positive impression of the advertised brand, in mobile things are a little more competitive. Mobile marketers simply do need to get down to business and prioritise converting eyes on screens to rands and cents transactions. Let’s look at three mobile marketing tips for acquiring outstanding leads that are very likely to result in cash conversions. Firstly, don’t treat all mobile users as if they are at the same point in their purchasing lifecycle. As always, mobile marketing is about personalisation and you need to take...
by anton | Jan 20, 2017 |
Many blog readers will be familiar with the fact that InTarget is entrusted with the achievement of the mobile marketing objectives of some of Africa’s most valuable brands. Whether venerable finance houses, large footprint retailers, critical fuel companies or state-of-the-art start ups, InTarget regularly gets the call to design bespoke mobile campaigns that deliver on overarching strategic objectives. Some readers, however, might not be entirely clear on why exactly InTarget is most often selected as the preferred mobile marketing partner of leading organisations across two continents. We’re one of the Top 25 African & Middle Eastern Mobile Ad Networks because we have the unique ability to offer short codes in over 41 African markets and commercial SMS delivery capability to over 200 countries globally. In essence, InTarget can take your great mobile campaign idea and turn it into a commercial reality faster than anyone else. In addition to providing ever-popular SMS short code plug-and-play solutions, InTarget is also the preferred partner for multinationals looking for fast, reliable and affordable VAS aggregation services across Africa. For example, we can offer brands a single USSD integration that taps into the awesome potential of tens of millions of potential customers across nine leading African mobile territories. Our solid relationships with dozens of mobile operators have been cemented over 15 years and this radically reduces the amount of time it takes to get your message to consumers. InTarget is today a trusted provider of mobile marketing and advertising solutions with a 33-country African and Middle East footprint and we look forward to providing your brand with unparalleled mobile flexibility and speed of...
by anton | Dec 27, 2016 |
Sometimes, Intarget and our clients are so eager to hear about what’s likely to be new on the mobile marketing stage for the next 12 months, we forget to analyse what went down during the current year. So many mobile marketing predictions are made annually, it’s difficult to determine which ones came true and which ones remained proverbial “pie in the sky”. For me, one mobile marketing prediction for 2016 that kept coming up was related to the ability, as Mark Zuckerberg says, “to be able to message a business in the same way you message a friend”. That’s quite an interesting concept and “conversational commerce” as it is increasingly being called is a brand new opportunity for mobile marketers and one that they grasped with both hands in 2016. Chatbot technology has already been integrated into Facebook Messenger and it is InTarget’s belief that it will spell big news for mobile marketers and their brand clients over this coming year. If you didn’t already know, chatbots are designed to replicate human interaction using algorithms and are very similar to digital assistants like Apple’s Siri. The idea is that the consumer is able to interact with a chatbot just as they would a contact centre. Artificial Intelligence (AI) allows the chatbot to change the subject, suggest related topics, and even demonstrate humour and emotion to the customer. The relevance for mobile marketers, of course, comes in because the numbers tell us that this interaction is more than likely to be taking place on a mobile handset. Leading South African insurance firms, financial institutions, airlines and others realised the potential...
by anton | Nov 21, 2016 |
Mobile marketing is most often defined as marketing to or on a mobile device. Therefore, one could say that the decidedly low-tech telesales call to mobile users was the original example of mobile marketing in action. Most of us, however, tend to think of the humble SMS as the original mobile marketing bearer. The old reliable text message continues to deliver outstanding ROI to mobile marketers who remain impressed with its universal acceptance amongst mobile users. Practically all GSM handsets can receive text messages, and on a continent where the feature phone still commands quite a following, that’s a definite plus. Far from being a mobile bearer set to be replaced by over-the-top messaging applications like WhatsApp, MobileMarketingWatch.com this very week predicts that “SMS Will Reign King in 2017”. The respected mobile marketing platform takes us back to 2011 when it says influencers were first predicting the end of SMS text messaging, due to the app’s growth in the mobile marketplace. Today, SMS’s convenience, simplicity, universal acceptance and ease-of-use ensures that it remains the preferred channel for business-to-consumer communications year after year. Many of us have no doubt noticed that while mobile users might prefer IM communication on a personal level, tens of millions of us are very happy to receive commercial text messages from companies we know. Reinforcing this conventional wisdom is the fact that in 2016, texting became the number one preferred channel for notifications from businesses for millennial audiences. Email came in a close second. Voice, apparently, lagged behind in a distant third. We just don’t like receiving many phone calls anymore, but we like SMS so much...
