01/18/11 by Cellit Staff | Blog, Industry Blog | No Comments »
Although I have used Apple computers since 1987 and have owned 9 different iPods and iPhones in my life, I do realize that not everyone on the planet uses an iPhone or other smartphone. In fact, as today’s Mobile Marketer shows, less than 20% of Americans own smartphones.
What does this mean for your marketing or donor relations department?
It means that focusing exclusively on smartphone apps for iOS, Microsoft, Android and Blackberry could leave many of your customers or fans behind. Mobile apps –and especially games–may be all the rage right now, but simpler technology like text messaging can reach all of your customers with the message you want to deliver, when you want to deliver it.
We love helping our clients integrate apps, SMS, and mobile web into their marketing plans; contact us if you’d like to know more.
11/09/10 by Cellit Staff | Industry News, News | No Comments »
With the holiday season quickly approaching, Sam’s Club revved up their marketing engines this summer to prepare for the launch of a mobile microsite, holiday microsite and an application for iPhones, Blackberry and Android phones.
With 40% of their customers using smart phones, Sam’s Club saw the mobile microsites and application as a way to interact with their customers in the way they wanted to be interacted with.
“We wanted to create a multichannel experience so our members can interact with Sam’s Club in the way they want to interact, and with eValues, they can access the coupons any way they want to get them, including from their mobile device,” said Jason Jackson, Senior Director of Member Program Development at Sam’s Club.
To read more about Sam’s Club’s holiday mobile marketing solutions, click here.
11/08/10 by Brian Bauer | Blog, Marketing Blog | No Comments »
I’ve written before on the process a business should go through in determining whether or not a mobile application, mobile website, or sms strategy is appropriate for the specific business needs. Despite the social pressure and media focus on applications, they are not for every business. There are many aspects to consider in making the application/no application decision, not the least of which is cost and overall benefit. But I recently realized that there’s another consideration that is a by-product of the huge success of applications that has been here-fore not been addressed. That consideration is discovery.
Let’s just assume that you’ve made the decision to go ahead and build an application. You’ve carefully considered your clients needs, usage habits and put in lots of wonderful features that take advantage of the unique gizmo’s and whizbangs that only the latest HTC blah-blah-blah offers. You’ve decided on the mix of platforms that make sense to develop on, weighing penetration and available features for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows7. Several months of development later, and tens of thousands of dollars, you’re ready to make it available to the world. With one click the application is uploaded to the application store of your choice and the world is a better place.
Now what?
Your wonderful addition to productivity, entertainment or user experience now competes with tens-of-thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of other applications to be found. Unless your company is very lucky to show up on the ‘most popular’ or newest pages for a significant period of time, users will only discover your application if you 1) tell them about it, and 2) help them find it.
There are some services out there that will help your business navigate customers to the application. One I recently read about was GetJar, which provides one link that a customer can click on. When a customer does so, the service automatically detects the platform and serves up the appropriate download page for your smart phone application. I’m sure there are others, and feel free to post a link below on any that you’ve seen that would be of use.
However, in my opinion, the bigger issue is informing customers about the application. Each business has limited marketing means – if not in actual dollars that can be spent, then in meaningful touch points through which they can engage the customer base (ie – email newsletters, in-store signage, homepage space, etc). With the many messages that need to get out (Sale today! See our new products! Sign up for our loyalty club! as examples), this is just one more message that will compete for attention.
To sum it up – it’s not just enough to commit the time, energy and resources to make an application, it’s also important that a company commit the time, energy and resources to inform consumers about the application.
07/30/10 by David Wachs | Blog, Marketing Blog | 2 Comments »
The end goal of a successful campaign should be attracting and retaining the most amount of users with an engaging mobile experience. Let’s quickly contrast the three types of “text vs barcode” options: texting a barcode to a phone number, downloading an app and standard texting.
1) “Texting a barcode to a phone number”. First of all, this only works on AT&T and Verizon according to Jagtag’s own website. Anyone not on AT&T or Verizon’s networks must take the picture and email it to an email address, such as “swimsuit@jagtag.com”. Some users will send the email via MMS, and others will use their Blackberry mail (or Gmail, etc) to send the photo. This means you’ll end up with a database of SOME phone numbers, SOME phone-emails (5555551212@att.com) and some pure emails (jsmith@blackberry.com). So, if you’re looking to enter into an engaging conversation with the user, is it possible to reply via text to the blackberry/other smart phone users that sent the message in via email? Yes, smartphones make up a big (and growing!) portion of the market, but how should we communicate with these users? An email campaign?? EMAIL! That is so, so sexy. We could send the picture (via email, or via mms), but the uploading process is slow. There goes that speed benefit. And what happens if the picture is blurry? Do they have to start all over again?
2) Let’s talk about downloading an app. I’ll start by sharing a story. I’m standing in a Target checking out vacuum cleaners. On the side of one of the boxes was a Scanlife barcode. (Question: who are we promoting?? The BRAND or Scanlife??? If I’m the brand, I’ll be damned if I’m paying to advertise some barcode company!) The Scanlife barcode says “to get info on this product, use the Scanlife app to view more information.” So I launched the app store…..(hang on… it’s loading….) finally got in… searched for barcode scanners…. Bee tag… no, that’s not it… Microsoft tag…nope… and finally, here it is… the Scanlife app. Time to download this new exciting app. I’ll just enter my password in iTunes…. ok, done! It’s downloading. Ok, and now it’s installed. Let me scan the code, hang on, I must get it to focus… hmmm…didn’t work…. let me try again…. THERE! DONE! Ok, now it’s loading a mobile website! (That’s it? Really?) But you’re right… it was fast! After I downloaded one of the MANY non-standard barcode apps (I’ll keep the 10 “most standard” on my phone…. something tells me the average Joe won’t go through this) and focused and re-focused the app 4 times! Worst of all, there’s no tracking back to the phone number. Opportunity lost for the brand!!
3) Now let’s talk about texting. It works on 98%+ of all phones. It’s fast (Cellit’s platform can turn around a message in 3 seconds), you don’t need an app, you don’t need a CAMERA, and you can keep the conversation going via text afterward (we provide 100% trackability). Best of all, EVERYBODY KNOWS HOW TO DO IT! I admit, texting isn’t very sexy, but neither are barcodes. Even if barcodes or text codes were sexy…the public quickly fatigues of gimmicks! It’s not about the barcode or text code. It’s about what can be done AFTER they receive the message. All things being equal, I want more people participating than less. Texting provides the ability to build robust, engaging conversations, while the best case for a barcode campaign is just a link to a mobile site.
At Cellit we refer barcodes as “marketing to marketers.” Marketers eat up the idea, the public not so much. It’s time to take off your “geek” or “marketer” hat and put on that hat you should always have on in the first place: your “consumer” hat!
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