Think Beyond Mobile-First and Consider Mobile Experiences Like These Brands

A few years ago, mobile was viewed by digital marketers as a side channel; a sort of “diet-digital” that was marginalized because of smaller screen sizes and a less mature marketing ecosystem. Fast forward to the present, and mobile is the alpha dog of the pack:

• Two-thirds of marketing emails are opened on mobile devices (eMarketer)


• 80% of social media engagement happens on mobile (comScore)


• Mobile is the only game in town for rich-push and SMS


• 60% of Google's ad revenue comes from the mobile web (eMarketer)

And yet, while mobile is undeniably the primary source of consumer attention, marketers are still challenged  to successfully engage their audience in the mobile space. The chief reason for this is simple: outdated thinking. Digital marketers are more comfortable recycling the tactics and practices they developed on the desktop to reach a mobile audience; using yesterday's weapons to fight today's war.

Let's discuss special considerations for delivering mobile experiences, and then look at three successful examples of how major brands have capitalized on the huge opportunity mobile experiences represent via email, rich-push, and SMS.

What's Different on Mobile?

“Experience is the new marketing.” - Steve Cannon, Mercedes Benz USA President & CEO

Mobile users have approximately the same attention span as a housefly. In this regard, your mobile audience is the opposite of your desktop audience, who are more prone to casual web browsing or research. Mobile users typically just won't stand for any text-heavy or time-consuming marketing content.

Marketers should instead focus on experiences that leverage instant gratification and interactivity.

Micro Moments

In 2014, Julie Ask wrote "Micro-Moments Are the Next Frontier for Mobile" and coined the phrase "Mobile Micro-Moments” in a Forrester report:

“Simple triggers spur consumers to take action, both on devices and in the real world. The triggers that create micro-moments must be timely, simple, and hyper-relevant... Make it easy for a customer to react in an instant.”

To successfully execute these micro-moments, marketers need to engage their audiences with lightning-fast bursts of activity that deliver instant gratification and value. There are three factors to consider when building out mobile-first marketing communications:

1. Audience: Who is this for?


2. Experience: What do I want them to do?


3. Incentive: What's in it for them?

Incentives can take many forms, depending on your vertical and/or the nature of the promotion:

• Deals/cash value


• Entertainment value


• Social value


• Information/Education value


• Content that is personally meaningful to the end user

The success of a mobile campaign depends on how well these factors coalesce; how relevant is your incentive to your audience, and is it enough to motivate engagement?

Here are 3 examples of how major brands have been wildly-successful with mobile micro-moments across email, rich push, and SMS:

Email Case Study: PepsiCo & Round Table Pizza

PepsiCo had great success earlier this year using mobile-first digital experiences for email. In partnership with Round Table Pizza, Pepsi built a huge library of fun & interactive experiences like games, quizzes, surveys, micro-sweepstakes, and even seasonal experiences like a branded card-maker for Father's Day - all of which resulted in digital coupons.

Emails with links to these different experiences were delivered to the retailers' database. By integrating the Digital Experience Platform into the brand's marketing cloud, Pepsi was able to track which individual users were engaging with which types of experiences, and then automatically personalize future messages for different audience segments based on their past behaviors.

This led to a dramatic increase in digital coupon redemption, driving 8x ROI for the campaign.

Rich Push Case Study: L'Oreal

L'Oreal used Digital Experiences to engage mobile app-users and increase eCommerce conversions for its Carol's Daughter brand by 4.5x.

Rich push messages included links that directed app users to a fun, interactive quiz (“What's Your 'Hairsonality?'”), which branched off to deliver personalized, highly-relevant product offers based on the individual's responses.

More importantly, this experience helped the beauty brand segment its audience, also increasing the conversion rate for all future rich push messaging by delivering product news and promotions that were relevant to each individual app user.

SMS Case Study: Ace Hardware

After growing a sizable SMS list with a variety of in-store acquisition tactics, Ace Hardware combined digital experiences with SMS blasts to drive a huge increase in average cart size.

Each SMS blast included links to interactive coupons and helpful content like how-to guides, videos, and store finders. The brand then tailored these experiences to fit the needs of specific markets (i.e. customers in California were sent digital experiences relating to drought preparedness).

By tracking coupon redemptions sent via these SMS blasts, Ace was able to determine that the shoppers receiving these SMS experiences drove 6x average cart size vs. what is typically seen in the hardware vertical.

If you want to deliver experiences like the ones mentioned it's time to abandon outdated tactics. One more essential tool to rise about the competition is The CMO's Guide to Mobile Marketing. You can learn how to optimize your marketing tactics by downloading it today.