Mobile Marketing Trends for Retailers

• Updated on: 2017-10-23
• Read original article here

Modern retailers are now looking to mobile trends when creating their future marketing strategies and plans. The reason: It’s where their customers are spending a large chunk of their time.

Look around the next time you’re out in public and you’ll understand it, too: We’re completely addicted to our smartphones and mobile devices.

But what are some of the specific ways our reliance on mobile devices has influenced the marketing landscape for retail, you may be wondering? In this post, we’ll explore some of the mobile trends that are impacting retailers in new and exciting ways.

Email with mobile-ready design is no longer a nice extra. It’s a must-have.

Don’t believe us? Let’s look at some quick facts on the ever-growing mobile email readership:

• 75% of Gmail’s 900M users access their accounts from mobile devices. –TechCrunch • The iPhone is the most common device subscribers use to open their email for the first time. – Campaign Monitor • Though the number of new Internet users is growing at less than 10% per year, the number of new smartphone subscribers is growing at a 20%+ rate. –TechCrunch

We know that people are more connected to their smartphones and mobile devices than ever before–and for retailers looking to drive sales, it only makes sense to cater to the customer’s preferred platform.

And the preferred platform it is. We found that mobile email opens grew by 30% from 2010 to 2015 and that mobile is now the leading channel for email opens. What’s more: We also found that 53% of emails were opened on mobile devices.

The bottom line: The modern marketer has to approach email marketing with a mobile-first mentality. The good news: With the help of mobile-ready templates and testing resources for a variety of inboxes and devices, marketers can be sure their emails look great on any device before sending it out to their subscribers.

Another mobile marketing trend for modern retailers falls within the realm of mobile advertising.

According to data from eMarketer, 2016 is projected to be the first ever year for $100B+ in mobile advertising spending worldwide. The projected $101.37B spent on mobile ads is a 430% increase from the year 2013–and that staggering number is projected to double by 2019.

What’s driving the enormous amount of spending within this realm of advertising? The enormous user base. Worldwide, there are more than 2B smartphone users, and retailers want to be where the eyeballs are. We know the masses are glued to their smartphones (and marketers have taken note.)

This trend is here to stay, too. According to the projected mobile marketing spends by country, you can see that across the board, these numbers will likely steadily increase over the coming years.

The bottom line: As people become more and more reliant on their smartphones, marketers will likely devote more of their marketing budgets to advertising in this context.

As people are spending more time on their smartphones is that time translating into sales for retailers? The short answer: Yes.

Data from Forrester forecasts that mobile commerce transactions will indeed be on the rise, increasing from $115B in 2015 to $142B in 2016.

Facebook’s IQ Source “Omni-channel Shoppers” study also found that mobile is extremely important within the shopping experience–even if it’s not the final checkout destination. 1 in 3 shoppers do research on mobile before making a purchase, 45% of all shopping journeys contain an action on mobile.

This means that a poor mobile experience can be disruptive to the customer experience as a whole–and it can hurt your bottom line, too.

So what can retailers do in hopes of accommodating more customers and driving sales? First and foremost: Focus on mobile customer experience improvements. If the existing mobile user interface is outdated, frustrating, and problematic for customers, it’s probably resulting in lost business.

• Ensuring all aspects of your website and marketing are mobile-friendly • Optimizing the checkout process • Adding customer reviews and photos for added social proof • Testing site speed to ensure pages load quickly

In addition, many retailers are implementing customer satisfaction surveys and Net Promoter Scores to keep a finger on the pulse of how their customers feel about the level of service they’re providing in a retail, mobile, and desktop environment to ensure brand consistency.

The bottom line: Mobile customer experience improvements are a must. If your mobile users are frustrated, they’ll seek out a better experience elsewhere.

Mobile marketing is here to stay–and it’s no passing trend. With the statistics and research we’ve reviewed here, it’s clear that we can expect to see more and more retailers putting a focus on their mobile efforts.

What will be interesting to see is how marketers differentiate themselves once the mobile landscape becomes more intensely competitive. In the future, when mobile advertising becomes a norm and even impeccable customer experience is no longer a landscape where retailers can gain a competitive edge, what will be the next frontier?

Only time will tell–but in the meantime, those who cater to the mobile-first mentality will surely be the ones who gain a competitive foothold.