Polly Alluf says, “Mobile engagement features, such as surveys, messages to dormant users, video tutorials, among others, can’t be sprayed all over an existing mobile app. Suggest something to a user at the wrong time or, worse, to the wrong user, and you’re out. That’s why writing about using mobile engagement features sounds like a mantra: “the right engagement feature, at the right time, to the right audience”. But how do you choose “the right feature?” Over time, I realized that choosing the right engagement features is simpler when we look at where users are in their... [...]

Duncan Jones says, “I’ve recently been studying what a customer-obsessed operating model means for Purchasing functions and the software they use. I’ve concluded that Purchasing needs to transform its approach to visibility and control, due to the tradical impact that Mobility has on procure-to-pay (P2P) processes. I’ve been warning ePurchasing software companies for years about the potential impact of Mobility, but while a few visionaries have heard and acted on the message, most are lagging behind. That may be OK while their customers – mostly Finance and Procurement professionals... [...]

Josh Todd says, “A couple of weeks back, I sounded the alarm on what my colleagues and I are calling the “Mobile Engagement Crisis.” It’s an industrywide call to arms for marketers to reassess the way they think and act on their mobile strategies in the face of declining retention rates and fickle mobile users. I believe the need for action has come because we are fundamentally flawed in the way we are engaging with our mobile users, leading them to abandon apps after only a handful of uses. We’ve become stuck — comforted by the eponymous statement that “mobile is skyrocketing”... [...]

Amy Bishop says, “Whenever people talk about mobile search, one of the first things that always comes to mind is location, location, location. Since mobile phones are… well, mobile, these devices open up opportunities to target consumers who may otherwise have been hard to reach. Proximity According to a Consumer Barometer Survey, 82 percent of smartphone users utilize search engines to look for a local business. This is evidenced by the growing number of searches containing “near me,” as shown in the graph below. According to Google’s internal data, 88 percent of “near me” searches... [...]

Satish Gaire has just launched PandaText. When you send a message to anyone, you want assurance that it arrived and, preferably, that they took the appropriate action. Like most marketers, you would feel the same way about messages you send to your mailing list. And, for legitimate marketers like you, it is just as important to realize that the people on your list feel the same way whenever they try to get a response from you. Now, you can help your site visitors feel a sense of confidence when they text you from their screen, and you text them back, directly to their cell phone. That is part... [...]

Laura Ramos says, “I have a confession to make. I love talking with B2B marketers and clients, but there is one question I get occasionally that really makes me crazy. (And you will hear an earful if you are unfortunate enough to ask it.) “Laura, what’s working well in B2B marketing tactics?” And I’m thinking, “Do I look like the Lone Ranger?” (Silver bullets? Get it?) To be fair, when marketers ask me “What works best?” I don’t really think they are looking for a simple and seemingly magical solution to a complicated problem. Most just want to validate their current... [...]

Thomas Husson says, “My colleague Jenny Wise and I just updated the business case report of Forrester’s mobile marketing playbook with new data, examples and primary research. B2C Marketers know mobile is a strategic imperative but the vast majority don’t strategically integrate it in their marketing-mix with only 13% saying they do so systematically. Only 27% of marketers we surveyed told us the ROI of their mobile marketing campaigns was profitable and a stunning 67% told us they simply cannot measure it! Why? Because marketers: Don’t align objectives and KPIs. There is a misalignment... [...]

Thomas Husson says, “I quite like this provocative sausage dog picture because it forces marketers to think differently about responsive web design (RWD). More often than not, marketers scale content down to fit a smaller screen; because they then claim that they use RWD and have some mobile apps, they think they have checked the mobile box. In fact, RWD was by far the most common tactic that marketers were using or planning to use in 2015: Only 9% of marketers we surveyed are not planning to use it. When fully implemented, RWD can improve the user experience, but more often than not, it’s... [...]

Entrepreneur team says, “More than half of consumers now rely on mobile devices to stay connected to friends, work, email, social media and the Internet, for an average of three hours a day. By contrast, fewer than half of consumers still rely on their desktop computers to perform the same functions, according to data reported by media expert Mary Meeker and Smart Insights. Not surprisingly, Smart Insights also reports that marketers invested nearly $30 billion into mobile marketing during 2015. Though small businesses should leverage mobile as part of their marketing campaigns, they can... [...]

Unfortunately for marketers, email is a “tool with leaks”. A lot of people you send email to never see your mail: • They have changed email address without telling you • Your email goes into their spam folder. • They get so much email that yours isn’t noticed. • etc. There ought to be a way around these problems. Fortunately, now there is. Andrew Darius has a new software tool, Push Response that allows people to sign up for (and allows you to build) a list of people who visited your website Then it allows you to broadcast promotions to them without email. With... [...]