The Five Worst Mobile Marketing Mistakes that Brands Make

Mobile commerce accounted for one-third of 2015 U.S. e-commerce sales, according to Internet Retailer, with shoppers racking up $905 million in sales via mobile on Black Friday alone.

As your company refines its marketing strategy to include mobile as a shopping channel, here’s how to solve the five biggest mobile mistakes that retailers can make.

Mistake #1: Missing the Chance to Collect Mobile Data

Brands are behind the times in data collection. A 2016 Experian Data Quality study showed only 27% use mobile as a channel for collecting data. Retailers ignore mobile at their own peril—a 2015 survey from Dynmark found that the read rate for SMS is 98%, with 90% read within the first three seconds of receipt.

The Fix: Add a mobile collection element to your site. Already collect email data? Add a double opt-in strategy to collect mobile numbers and link them to existing customer data.

Mistake #2: Forgetting to Optimize

Creating one-size-fits-all mobile campaigns and testing them on an iPhone 6 can result in a bad experience for Android users. Brands need to make sure that the customer experience is seamless and user-friendly across channels—so optimize every piece of content, from subscription forms to animated gifs to coupons.

The Fix: Preview your content across devices and carriers. And optimize content like video or gifs for mobile—using interactive content can drive SMS open rates up by as much as 25%.

Mistake #3: Ignoring the Online to Offline Journey

While mobile and e-commerce are growing, brick-and-mortar stores still account for more than 90% of U.S. retail sales. Limiting opt-in to messaging to just one channel ignores critical venues for talking to your most loyal customers.

The Fix: Make it easy for customers to opt in to mobile messaging wherever they interact with your brand:

• add mobile opt in signage throughout brick and mortar stores
• include a sign-up box on your homepage for email and text
• highlight sign ups on your social media or content marketing
• add a checkbox to checkout to allow opt-ins for email and text

Mistake #4: Making an Underwhelming Offer

You’ve added mobile data capture to all your retail touchpoints, but your opt-in rate is stagnant. Customers won’t share their personal information for no reason—you’ve got to give something to get something. And whatever you’re giving needs to be seen as a fair trade.

The Fix: Use your mobile opt-in as a promotion engine. 93% of customers are willing to share personal information in return for a discount, according to a study from Infosys late last year.

Mistake #5: Failing to Personalize Your Content

You’ve collected numbers from your customers, offering them discounts for data. Your customer experience reflects your brand and looks beautiful across all platforms and devices. Why aren’t your customers redeeming and responding to your offers?

A recent Forrester study found nearly half (44%) of consumers complain they get too many offers, and 40% declared promotions and offers as irrelevant.

The Fix: Two-thirds of consumers subscribed to mobile marketing from brands told Responsys that they were more likely to purchase after receiving a “highly relevant mobile message”—and consumers are 43% more likely to convert on an offer when they receive mobile messages as part of a multichannel strategy.  Drop a cookie onto your customers’ mobile browsers and encourage them to download your app or add them to Wallet apps—and leverage customer behavior in your marketing.

The Upshot

Mobile is not just the fastest-growing segment of e-commerce. It’s how American consumers interact with the world. Creating a mobile strategy isn’t just smart—it’s required for success.