MOBILE MARKETING

Number of people use smart phones today and this phenomena is growing each year. As a result, company have understand well the capacity and the benefits to embrace the use of mobile marketing techniques and to see a continual rise in their company’s sales figures. This article will try to show some great mobile marketing campaign and the benefits from them.

1) REDBOX

Red box company launch a 10-day long marketing campaign who ask customers to send a text message with the word ‘DEALS’ to 727272. In return, the customers have a chance to obtain discounts of 10 cents and $1.50 when they order DVD rental with RedBox. This campaign was called “The 10 Days of Deals” and it resulted 1.5 million text messages from 400,000 customers.

2) FORD MOTOR COMPANY

Ford create an excellent mobile marketing strategy to promote the laucnh of their new Escape and Taurus models. Just, was required for people who wanted more information on the vehicles to send a text with ‘FORD’ to 63611. These customers were contacted and asked for which vehicle they wanted further information on and then, they were asked to provide their names and local zip codes as well. This info was sent to local Ford dealerships, where follow up calls were made to clients, resulting in an astounding 15.4% conversion rate.

3) LIFETOUCH PORTRAIT STUDIOS

This company was already running a retail-based marketing campaign, but also looking for ways to grow its mobile customer database a faster. They decided to offer a $5 discount promotion to customers who chose their mobile marketing campaign as well. For result, Lifetouch saw a 163% increase in their customer opt-in rates.

4) STARBUCKS MOBILE PAYMENTS

Starbucks decided to make paying for a daily dose of coffee easier by introducing its Starbucks Card Mobile App. All customers have to pay for their morning fix after downloading the app and load credit on this app. Then, they have their phone’s screen scanned at the checkout. This app is currently available for iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry and Android users.

5) NATIONAL WHOLESALE LIQUIDATORS

They offered between $5 and $25 or more if customers were open to opt for the company’s new mobile marketing campaign. They was enabled to build a database of more than 50,000 customers’s contacts numbers nd the result of the campaign also showed that the customers who had opted in to the campaign spent as much as 80% more than those who hadn’t.

As we can see, company understand well the benefits of a mobile marketing campaign and they have create team specialized in this area. The possibility of growth in this new type of ad is so important and so less expensive than the traditionnal way to create ads (TV, web, radio). The future of the marketing will pass for sure to conventionnal device than smart phone.

Sources : 

http://www.tatango.com/blog/lifetouch-portrait-studios-increases-sms-opt-in-rates-by-163/

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/how-redbox-drove-15-million

http://www.tatango.com/blog/retail-mobile-marketing-campaigns-generates-50000-opt-ins/

Edouard Pinon 

Yohann Gouttes

Maria Sayarh

The connected cars : Real moving computers!

Like many others stuffs cars become connected. This evolution is taken into account by many traditionnal car’s constructorv such as Mercedes or Citröen but also by some news entrants in the market like Tesla or high technology firms (Apple, Google). Tesla Motors for instance is one of the most innovative firms in this sector. They develop many functions around the connectivity of their cars.  The dashboard looks like a tab and allows to manage many actions in the car just by touching it.  The car is entirely connected to the internet with a 3G connexion and the software can be updated directley from the platform Tesla.  But one of the most interresting function is the homelink. Connected house and connected car can be linked together. So the consumer can arrive at home, the portal will open automatically. Then when the car is parked the charger of the house will load the car without human action. 

However one of the most ambitious project in the future is to have no drivers anymore. It means that roads will be an entire connected race with cars connected between it. The advantages will be awesome : less traffic jam, less accidents, control of the energy used by cars… The most advanced company with this type of vehicle is Google with its Google Car. They are created with a spectacular system of radar and camera that help the car to integrate and to analyze the environment.

If these cars make dream people, we cannot say that it is really common to see those types of cars in the streets. The Tesla cars are very expensive and the associated chargers are implemented in a few place. The Google car is a project in a long term vision. But behind these spectacular innovations, the tradionnal car industry is integrating many digital functions like connexion with smartphones. So most of the people will see really fasly the evolution of the cars !

                                                                     Maxime Vaudin & Loïc Rencker

Source articles : http://siliconvalley.blog.lemonde.fr/2015/06/26/premiers-essais-sur-route-pour-la-voiture-sans-conducteur-100-google/

http://www.abavala.com/voiture-connectee-les-genes-tesla/

                                                         

The Internet of things and digital marketing

 First of all, what is Internet of things?

wordstream.com

The Internet of things is a network of networks that permit to collect and exchange data between physical and virtual objects. Thus, Internet is no more an invisible network but also objects.

Connected objects are emerging, and we love them. But to be optimum, this technology needs those objects to autonomously interact. Ultimately, what is required is the total autonomy of those objects. This phenomenon is permitted thanks to artificial intelligence, which allows connected objects to acquire competences equals to those of Humans.

The Internet of things is composed by six different systems: identification, captors, connection, integration, data processing and networks.

Why Internet of things is becoming a big thing for digital marketers?

According to eMarketers, by 2020, the trend that will have the biggest impact on marketers is Internet of Things. They will become a big part of digital marketing strategies. 

eMarketer.com

In fact, online marketing will be directly linked to smart devices. It presents a lot of opportunities but one of the most important is that the collect of consumer data will be faster and smoother. Marketers will have a better understanding of customer buying habit. This enables marketers to personalize their strategies.

This article is interesting because the person interviewed already done an interview in 2011 and we can see the evolution between what he has predicted and how it really goes now. He predicted the increase of Internet of things and that’s what happen.

But if companies “get the technology piece wrong”, there could be a negative impact on their relationship with customers.

Internet of thing also presents some privacy issues. As they are collecting a wide amount of data through devices, systems and networks connections but also different locations where data is stored, it’s difficult for consumers to be sure that Internet of thing only access, manage or share data that it’s allowed to.

The Internet of things is moving the marketing into its “third age”. The product itself plays an active part in the production, retail and end-consumer use. Connected objects send back to the brand real-time analytics so it knows who and where are its customers and other date about them which are relevant for the future of the brand’s marketing.

To conclude, Internet of thing is becoming the next BIG THING! We should stay tuned about it’s evolution.

Géraldine Caenen & Clara Terol

Sources: article : https://econsultancy.com/blog/66544-what-are-the-opportunities-for-digital-marketing-and-the-internet-of-things/

image 1: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/01/09/the-internet-of-things

eMarketers analysis + image 2: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Marketers-Taking-Internet-of-Things-Seriously/1012136

Why Siri is a Digital Marketing Game Changer

We all asked Siri stupid question: « Are you Human? », « Siri what is the best phone on the market?». Although we often giggle at Siri’s answer, we still often rely on him because often he delivers the information that we were looking for.

So what has Siri to do with digital marketing?! Well, Siri unlike other website does not rely on traditional website such as Google, Bing and Yahoo to find his answers. Rather the application gives more importance to business with update reviews. For example if you ask Siri to find you a « restaurant », the application will review data from your location and your review data in Yelp. If for example you usually give good reviews to Asian restaurants it is likely that nearby asian restaurants will be on top of your result. In other words if a dealership’s marketing is exclusively or mainly based on search engine keyword result, this particular dealership will be missing a large portion of a target market that use Siri.

We thought this subject is very interesting because we think that we will increasingly use digital assistant (Siri, Cortana…). The year 2015 is a big year for mobile marketing, indeed Google recently announced that mobile overtook desktop internet traffic on 10 countries including the US and Japan. The trend is that mobile will completely dominate desktop internet research in future years.

Today digital assistants function as intermediaries between users and the world wide web, early version of Siri were often unpredictable, mistaking spoken words for nonsense and Siri was enerating unreliable answer. Voice recognition technology is always improving and today most digital assistant function well in mostly any situation.

Early version of digital assistant were not overly used because it relies on an internet connection. Holders of previous smartphones were mainly using it at home while connected to Wifi because cellphone data was expensive and not available everywhere, therefore disabling the assistant’s functionality. Today cellphone data has become cheaper and is accessible nearly anywhere.

The dawn of wearable device and connected object will in the future reinforce digital assistant search. Indeed as explained earlier, Siri for example use data to give result to enquiries. If we project in the future we might be surrounded by sensors, if you are for example following a diet with your activity tracker, your smartphone will know it. Looking for a restaurant, Siri will therefore give you the best place for restaurants with healthy meals.

Apple, Samsung and other companies are currently working on active digital assistant. Indeed right now, our digital assistants are « passive », we need to ask them questions to get the answer. But a good assistant in the real world would seem to know what you need even before you asked it. Siri for example use notification push depending on your localization, if Siri understand that you are abroad it might send you the address of the best currency kiosk so you could successfully change your money.

If Digital assistants aren’t the most used form of search today, they are growing fast and could soon replace our typical browser-based researches. It is therefore more and more valuable for companies and dealership to invest in online presence in reviews based application such as Yelp and Tripadvisor for example and not only in mainstream search engine optimization. Developing strategies to turn digital assistant users into customers will in the future make you gain market shares.

Alban Couturier, Margaux Peuvergne

Article source:
http://forcemktg.com/news/index.php/why-siri-is-a-digital-marketing-game-changer/ 

Other sources used:
http://adwords.blogspot.fr/2015/05/building-for-next-moment.html 
http://www.audiencebloom.com/2015/06/why-digital-assistants-may-soon-replace-searchengines/ 

Big data + Context = Future marketing

Marketers were cheering of happiness when they realised that with help of the Internet revolution they could excess data to create their target personas. They could know now where the customers lived, their age, gender, income level etc. Don’t get me wrong, this is great! And it has been a great success for marketers the previous years. But it’s not great enough anymore.

Image 1

New customers are intelligent and have embraced the digital transformation and see this type of marketing as nothing else than spam. The “pay, spray and pray” era is over. Statistics are showing that this half-hearted type of personalised marketing can even hurt your business. 

•       40% are less likely to buy from that company moving forward
•       50% are less likely to open the next offer that comes from that company
•       59% said they would unsubscribe from that company’s content

Image 2

It’s time for you to go and knock on the door at the other side at your office and ask for the guy called Big Data. With use of more data, you can create more complex target personas and this is the key to create real personalized marketing and aim for one-to-one marketing as much as possible. When Big Data is coming over to help you, he’ll hopefully bringing information about customers’ interests, customer journey, buying behavior  devices and when, where, how the customer is linked with your business and much more. Using this information and combining it with all the data you already have will give you tools to create more personalized marketing. Moreover, the most important is to put it in a context. Because if you’re not using the data in a context, you’re back at the “spray and pray” but with just a tiny bit of better aim.

Image 3

The meaning of using the data in a context is about presenting your content, so that it’s received in a natural way and that the content is useful for your prospect and customer. Receiving ads of a product you’ve already bought the week before or products you have looked at for a school project on your computer without any interest in this product, is just a waste of money and resources. This is a struggle and an amazing opportunity today marketers have to deal with. The information/data you can know about your customer will improve the quality and KPI’s of your marketing.

Statistics about what influences people to buy or act on an offer shows that 70% are more willing to, when the offer adds value to something they are already or planning to do. 60% prefer offers that target where they are and what they are doing. This means that you need to know your customer and deliver the right content at the right time on the right channel.

To push this concept of marketing to its edge is to know what your customers want before they even know it. Based on all data to understand and know your customer you can propose products and services to them with a probability they’ll like them. Amazon is a company that have been working with this for a long time and they’re quite good at it. They know what you’re reading and a lot more about you, based on all that data they can make pretty good suggestions about your next purchase and products you might be interested in.

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It’s not a walk in a park to gather all this information but a lot of upcoming software that makes this a lot easier. But the biggest challenge is probably that there is a very fine line about when you’re getting too personalized in your marketing, so it’s not getting creepy. This line is of course personal and differs from person to person and we think that this will be a big challenge for the marketers to consider. We think that the important thing will be to do the marketing in the right context and in a way, so that customers feel that they really gain something out of it.

Written by Pontus Tjernberg and Elena Arkhangelskaya

Main article: http://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2015/oct/20/how-context-key-unlocking-true-personalisation/