Mobile Marketing Strategies to Win Big This Holiday Season

The holiday is right around the corner, which means many companies are gearing up for what they hope will be a lucrative shopping season. While legions of consumers will be shopping online like they do every year, quite a few will be using a mobile device to aid in their purchasing decisions. Whether it’s someone using a tablet to drive showrooming initiatives or using a smartphone to make direct purchases, the gadget influence will once again play a huge role.

If you plan to cash in on what is shaping up to another big spending period, you need to make sure your strategy keeps the mobile component in mind. Here are some mobile marketing tips you can use to maximize your profit potential this holiday season.

Create Exclusive Mobile Experiences

According to data from comScore, mobile commerce hit $10 billion in the first half of 2013 and could top $25 billion by the end of the year. While these numbers are evidence of  a smoking hot trend on the rise, some consumers remain hesitant about making purchases from a mobile device. These consumers can be swayed with some encouragement. In fact, you may be able to change their minds by tempting them with exclusive mobile-only offers or promotions. With people often looking to save money during the holiday season, a deep discount on something they like could be a powerful incentive.

Deliver Cool Mobile Content

Content is one of the most important components of your mobile marketing strategy. It’s the key to garnering attention, capturing engagement, and generating conversions. Check out these ideas for cool ways to leverage mobile content during this holiday season:

Personalized text messages. SMS, better known as text messages, have the power to be the unsung heroes of mobile marketing. According to an infographic by TextSprout, smartphone users read 98% of the text messages they receive, compared to 29% of tweets and just 12% of Facebook status updates. Whether it’s season greetings or exclusive offers, sending personalized text messages to your mobile troop can be highly effective.

Timely emails. Recent statistics show that consumers are reading more email on mobile devices than they are desktop devices. People regularly check their mail on the go, and will surely be on the lookout for holiday promotions and offers during the holiday. Use this medium to engage your audience with timely, relevant content that makes you a priority in their inbox.

Device specific. While they are lumped in the same category, not all mobile devices are the same. The distinctions between gadgets is something you can take advantage of. For example, when using email, you can treat smartphone users to quick, easy consumable content that caters to the on-the-move element, and direct tablet users to longer form content they can kick back and enjoy more comfortably.

Encourage Sharing

The holiday season is all about giving. Put your audience members in a giving mood by encouraging them to share your content. Of course you need to treat them to quality material, but you also have to actually drive them to share. One way to do this by offering special incentives to people who share or retweet your content from their mobile device. Some people don’t need any incentive to share, but for those who do, an attractive offer like a free gift or hefty discount could be the trick that gets them moving.

Test and Measure Your Success

You never really know how customers will respond to your marketing efforts. You can, however, give yourself a good idea of what to expect by using a testing regimen. For example, if email campaigns are included in your mobile marketing strategy, you can use a method like A/B testing to access the effectiveness of various elements of your messages. By testing aspects such as subject lines, link placement, and calls to action on small groups of subscribers, you can get a feel for what your audiences wants and then deliver accordingly.

After your campaigns have been deployed, you need to measure them to see how you made out. How many subscribers opened your messages on mobile devices? What devices did they use? How many of them wound up on your landing page? What actions did they take when they got there? Metrics from your email marketing software, web analytics program, and other systems will help you know where you stand beyond sales. More importantly, they will give you the valuable insights needed to improve your performance before the holiday season wraps up.

Before you know it, the holiday season will be here and gone. How will you leverage mobile marketing to boost your profit potential?

Sources

http://mashable.com/2013/08/27/mobile-commerce-25-billion/

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/sms-marketing-infographic_b46372

http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics