Embrace Mobile to Drive Holiday Marketing

It seems that each year the holiday season inches up, day by day. Black Friday used to be on early Friday mornings. Then, stores started opening at midnight Friday. Now, it’s 6pm on Thursday.

In fact, almost half of brands are working on their holiday campaigns before Halloween.

In order to compete with the holiday shopping madness, marketers and brands have to get smart. In a tech driven world, those who understand how the market shops are going to win. That’s where mobile marketing comes into play.

You all know the stats by now, the growth of mobile marketing is huge. More and more people are using their mobile devices for everything from responding to text messages, to reading emails, to shopping.

Yup, shopping.

MarketingSherpa recently highlighted a study by Moveable Ink that involved over five billion sent emails. Their findings?

The data show that mobile opens (50.12%) have surpassed desktop opens (32.97%). What’s more shocking is that, while 36.6% of people make purchases on a desktop, a whopping 49.3% of people make purchases on smartphones.

Almost 50% of people are making purchases on smartphones. That’s a pretty amazing number.

Now the real question is, what is your brand doing about it?

Even if you’re not quite all in on mobile marketing yet, there are still some concepts you can incorporate into your traditional marketing campaigns that will allow you to jump in on the benefits from the start. Everyone should take advantage of mobile to drive holiday marketing.

Here are a few:

Driving Open Rates

What gets people opening their emails and SMS (text messages) on their mobile devices most often are special offers, promotions and vouchers, according to a study from e-Dialogue (now Zeta Interactive).

This handy pie chart gives you a nice overview of the numbers.

Photo: emailmonday.com

It shouldn’t be that surprising that sales and coupons get more people clicking. But, the brands and marketers that are honing in on that are adding a few special touches when it comes to mobile.

First, they ensure any email sent out is responsive. If you’re not doing this, you have a really good chance of being sunk before you even begin.

Second, they make emails easy to read, to the point, and with a clear call to action. Think of your own experiences. Do you really want to be scrolling forever on your phone to get to the point?

Didn’t think so. This is where you keep things short and sweet. Give the customers a strong choice that leads them towards the purchase.

Finally, they realize mobile customers are on the move. So, they include an option in their emails that allows readers to click and find the store nearest to them right from their browser or map application.

By removing a potential resistance along the way, they can drive more sales not only digitally, but in the traditional brick and mortar shops.

Smart Alerts

Do you know what emails have the highest open rates?

Transactional emails, by a lot.

Transactional emails are things like shipping alerts, receipts, and order confirmations, just to name a few. But, not very many brands are really capitalizing on just how much potential these emails have.

Check out the image below from the Silverpop Email Marketing Benchmarks Study:

Those numbers might get your attention, right?

And here’s where you can use mobile marketing to expand on this.

One way is with SMS. Brands are starting to use text messaging because of its ability to get personal, and its huge open rates. So, a common new approach is to use texts to alert potential customers when something they were interested in that was out of stock is back in, complete with a link to buy.

You can take a similar approach with email. When you send over a receipt for a purchase, include related items that can be upsold and added to the order.

With the huge open rates these transactional emails get, your brand can use all those extra eyeballs to highlight a promotion (or coupon) that is ongoing in order to convert a few more purchases.

Even if you haven’t considered mobile marketing before, you can start employing a few strategies and tactics that will allow you to grab consumers through a new channel. Test a few campaigns and see what works so you’re prepared for the holiday season.