• by Jack Philbin , April 10, 2012

Mobile is the future of marketing because it provides brands opportunities to engage audiences wherever they are. As 91 percent of Americans keep their mobile phones within reach 24/7, the opportunities to create conversations and develop personal relationships with consumers are significant. Marketers are quickly discovering mobile’s unique personal power and reach compared to other media. By turning messages pushed out through traditional channels into engaging dialogues on the communication device consumers prefer most, marketers are integrating mobile as a horizontal conduit across their marketing mixes to establish and strengthen customer relationships.

To accomplish this, marketers must employ savvy strategies to capture consumers’ attention and entice them to communicate with their brand. By leveraging the process of mobile relationship management, or MRM, and integrating mobile touchpoints, they can lead consumers through the customer journey toward loyalty.  

MRM allows marketers to connect brands with customers at just the right time and at just the right place. It does not cast a wide net; instead it focuses on an intimate group of consumers hungry to learn more. While only 11 percent of marketers have made some strides toward mobile loyalty, mobile is the best channel for improving customer satisfaction and profitability.

So how do you successfully execute MRM and achieve your marketing goal of creating personal, engaging conversations with consumers? Following are four steps along the customer journey that are essential to completing the cycle. Like stepping stones, these levels build on each other by using mobile with customers who have raised their hands to say they are willing to opt in to your databases and hear more from you.

1. Awareness. Before starting conversations via mobile, you must first develop awareness. To begin, you will need to activate mobile at the heart of the marketing mix. Most marketers are learning that mobile devices are consumers’ most personal devices and the preferred method of communications. A great way to create awareness is by adding a simple mobile call to action across multiple advertising channels. For example, this can be as easy as printing on receipts “Text SAVE to 67890” to allow consumers to sign up to receive discounts directly on their mobile devices. Important to keep in mind are the many ways through which marketers can use mobile to reach consumers—text, QR codes and mobile applications are a few examples. None of these channels can be successful in a silo, and therefore, must be deployed as a part of the overall marketing strategy.

2. Engagement. Now that you have established awareness, you must next transition it to engagement. You always want to engage and never interrupt. Mobile campaigns must be unique and make recipients feel special. If they do not engage, they run the risk of interrupting and alienating consumers. Do not send the same offer you just sent by email via text. It is not special. People have an insatiable demand for engagement and want that personal, engaging experience.

3. Transaction. Building off engagement, marketers must give their customers something—after all, conversations flow both ways and should start with some sort of incentive such as discounts or information. You need to provide something that prompts a response, and if they like what you send them, they will take action. Specifically, this step is driving consumers to the store to redeem a coupon and/or make a purchase and is about getting them to buy more once they are inside.  

4. Loyalty. When awareness, engagement and transaction come together, the end result is loyalty. To make relationships successful, you need to establish trust and loyalty. Those two qualities ignite powerful connections. For example, text message open rates are more than 90 percent and are typically read within four minutes. This is a stark comparison to typical response rates from email and banner ads, which may have a wider reach. Just as important as the channels through which you reach consumers (e.g., text or apps) is the experience they have when interacting with those channels. Richer experiences such as using HTML5 apps or gamification techniques to enhance a consumer’s interaction lead to more loyal users.

Completing the customer journey ultimately improves customer service and better leverages marketing budgets toward goals that drive the business. If you achieve all levels of the customer journey, you can tap into the personal power of mobile and forge long-lasting and immediate relationships with your customers. As marketers, who wouldn’t want that?  

Jack Philbin is co-founder and president of Vibes, a Chicago-based mobile marketing and technology company.