In the near future, the bulk of all retail transactions will have some mobile component in the shopper experience. If retail is your business, you had better get on board with this one right away. It is moving at light-speed.
Here are 5 trends that will drive this:
1. Trust in mobile ecommerce. We are rapidly extending our trust of ecommerce overall to the mobile device in our pocket. A recent study by Data Innovation found that nearly 70% of smartphone owners used mobile banking and/or payments.
2. Willingness to opt-in. I guess you could put this in with #1, but I see it as another huge barrier that is rapidly falling. If you know who we are, you ask nicely and provide value, we will opt-in to email, snail mail and, even more importantly, to SMS text messages. A recent Popeye’s campaign got a 54% double opt-in.
3. Growth in location based networking. As indicated in my previous post, this is one of the hottest segments of both online and mobile technology development. Between AT&T, Google, Microsoft and a host of start-ups, the geo-targeting technology foundation is being laid for you to hook right into a retailer around the corner from where ever your are. Maybe even with one click.
4. Mobile drives social, social drives referrals. As with #1, we have transferred our willingness to talk about our experiences from the online social networks and communities to our mobile devices. This brings social commerce to the next level. Social commerce in general is the toast of the VC’s today, over 90million invested in the last 60 days. Take a look at Blippy.com. I’ll not only tell you about a product, I’ll show you my credit card receipt.
5. And last but certainly not least…Coupons, coupons, coupons. Our crappy economy has made it OK to pull out those coupons anytime and anyplace you can. This has driven the rapid growth in online coupons, increasing 44% in December. And even with the struggles of mobile coupons, retailers are beginning to embrace them. In Sept. JC Penney announced their plan to accept mobile coupons and McDonalds and a slew of others are testing ways to reward customers via mobile.
The move to mobile will be the hot topic for months and maybe even years to come. More later, ‘nuff said today.
Photo credit: naosuke ii
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
How does a small local retailer get his/her coupons onto the smartphone and in front of the local buyer of targeted vertical products? This is the age of proactive sales efforts. So, how does the retailer let people within 25 miles of, say, a petstore, know that the retailer is running a sale on cat food? Does the retailer ask every customer whether they use a smartphone and hand them a CD with an app on it? Geotargeting requires the consumer to go looking. A means is needed to connect retailer to the consumer as well as connecting the consumer to the retailer.
Thanks for the comment Mark. Obviously Google and others recognize the value of local search with real-time inventories. In 2006, Dan Ruginstein, who is now Product Management Director at Google, discussed his vision. This concept resurfaced and was demoed at Google’s Evolution Search event this past December.
And Milo.com has been up for two years and just got to a million users.
And the next step is the coupons, which are coming online also. For example: Valpak released an iPhone app in October.
It is coming together, literally, as we speak.
Mark and Ken – It is coming together and pretty soon businesses will be piggybacking on the data that’s being created by Foursquare/Twitter users. Unfortunately, data contained in blippy.com and twittervision.com is in its infancy. The real trick is to get the coupons to be situational. In other words you’re served up ads for coffee only in the morning, based on past behavior and when you’re close to the coffee shop. Serving up an ad simply based on behavior or location is dangerous since mobile devices are seen as an extension to consumers; much more than a laptop. The only way to get to this level of advertising is to partner with the consumer. Unfortunately as a small business person it would be impossible to do on an individual level. I’d look for an ad network that is focusing on local advertising and understands Foursquare/Twitter. Not sure if there is one yet, but soon enough.
Until this level of sophistication is possible; simply give them 5%-10% off. These sales need to be very soft. The hard sell does not work online and works even less on mobile. That’s why it is so important that “it” (mobile marketing & location based services) get smart very very fast.