IBM Software White Paper Executive Summary

The reason why mobile

marketing matters

Executive summary
The emergence of mobile as a marketing channel has been accompanied
by confusion and skepticism about its viability. As Forrester Research
observed about the mobile space, despite increasing activity and more
strategic spending, inconsistent data and analytics will plague mobile
marketers hoping to make a business case for testing emerging
opportunities.1

As smartphone usage grows, marketers need strategies and technologies

to measure and optimize the mobile channel. Mobile commerce is
expected to increase at a 39 percent compound annual growth rate
between 2011 and 2016, reaching $31 billion, according to Forrester
Research.2 Figure 1 provides a breakdown of the US market into feature
phones and smartphones and further divides the smartphones section
based on the most prevalent operating systems.
IBM Software White Paper Executive Summary

Smartphone Penetration and OS Share

Q3 2011, U.S.

Apple iPhone (iOS)

28%

Smartphones
Feature phones Android
Mobile: % of Sales
43% RIM Blackberry
57% Mobile: % of Site Traffic
43 % 18%

Windows Mobile 7%
Other 4%

Source: Nielsen

Figure 2: Mobile site traffic and sales rose during the 2010 holiday season,
Figure 1: The total US mobile and smartphone market as of October 2011. IBM Coremetrics Benchmark data shows.

Mobile measurement is essential to evaluate performance,
return on investment and investment allocation. Understanding
the volume of traffic and visitor behavior from your mobile
marketing efforts will uncover areas of improvement and
opportunity. Figure 2 provides a high-level view of site traffic
and sales from mobile devices over the 2010 holiday season for
the retail vertical.
Mobile matters despite spend, vertical
or platform
Spend: Whether you budget $10,000 or $10 million, a mobile
presence is necessary to ensure that you take every opportunity
to engage with customers. While apps for smartphones are the
latest craze, the deluge of apps into app-stores has made it a
crowded space. Unless an app is functional, practical and
engaging, it will get lost in the sea of others that have entered
the marketplace.

2
IBM Software
The simplest way to achieve top of mind awareness with
customers on the go is through website compatibility on mobile
devices. On average, the bounce rate for site visits from a
mobile device is nearly 10 percent higher than online site visits.
A user interface designed for small screens and easy navigation
are necessary to attract visitors and keep their attention.
Tracking how mobile visitors interact with the site helps you
identify areas that need improvement. Figure 3 shows an
example of the traffic funnel for all sessions from mobile devices
for a womens retail site.
Figure 3: The traffic funnel from mobile devices for a womens retail site.
Search and display advertising on mobile are two other areas to
explore for investment opportunities. Many online marketers
put mobile in a bucket of its own, yet many existing online
campaigns can be tailored to a mobile audience.
3
White Paper Executive Summary
Vertical: Retail is a prominent vertical in which visitor engage-
ment comes from a number of channelsbarcode apps,
location-based advertising and product information resources
for both online and offline shopping. However, many other
verticals are venturing into the mobile realm and, in some cases,
mobile traffic is predicted to surpass online traffic. Financial
institutions that provide strong and easy-to-use mobile func-
tionality for banking and other nancial services stand to satisfy
customers and gain competitive advantage.
Travel is another area that has begun to embrace mobile. The
age of telecommuting has already dawned and customers are
accustomed to immediate gratication. The exibility to book,
change and check the availability for airline, train or hotel
reservations while on the go has become essential.
Regardless of the vertical, the mobile channel will play an
important role in the success of any company. It is critical to
know the volume of mobile traffic for your site and compare
it with that of your industry and peers to gauge the overall
performance of this ever-growing channel.
Platform: Adding even more complexity to the mobile space
with the multitude of different handset types is the slew of
operating platforms including Google Android, Apple iOS,
RIM BlackBerry and others. Each of these operating platforms
requires its own programming and functionality. While a shot-
gun approach may seem like the easiest method to making sure
you hit the right mobile audience, benchmarking what devices
and platforms are driving the most traffic for your industry will
IBM Software
help you focus your initial mobile investment. Figure 4 gives
an overview of performance by mobile device for a retailer over
the 2010 holiday season. iPhone (iOS operating system) led the
pack with Android not far behind.
Figure 4: Apple iPhone was the leading mobile device in retail site visits
during the 2010 holidays.
Mobile return on investment (mROI)
mROI has been an elusive objective among marketers. Many
organizations have sequestered mobile into its own department.
Though signicant funds ow into the mobile department,
there is not much insight into the performance of mobile mar-
keting efforts. In fact, mobile marketing data analysis should
not vary much from the same key performance indicators and
analytics used to track performance of online marketing efforts.
4
White Paper Executive Summary
Online marketers need to assess which web analytics providers
offer the most comprehensive view of online marketing efforts,
including mobile. You need to utilize your analytics platform to
get a snapshot of traffic from the mobile channel to your site
compared to that of your industry peers and competitors.
Figure 5 is an analytics report providing an overview of mobile
conversion rates for a website versus the overall retail industry.
Figure 5: Mobile conversion rates for a website versus the overall retail
industry.
Based on the evaluation of those metrics, dig deeper into
mobile and device-level data to pinpoint areas of opportunity.
Figure 6 illustrates mobile adoption for a website highlighting
that visitors from Apple iPhones are the most prevalent. With
this information, you can begin to understand those aspects of
IBM Software
your mobile marketing that cater to those visitors. The next
level of execution would be to start customizing your search,
display advertising and other marketing efforts to those
designated mobile devices and platforms while continuing to
measure and optimize those campaigns through your web
analytics platform.
Figure 6: Mobile usage data for one website shows Apple iPhone ahead by
a large margin.
Summary
Mobile is becoming more pervasive as a marketing channel to
reach and attract customers. Yet many marketers will remain
frustrated by mobile unless they can pinpoint strategic
opportunities, optimize features for mobile devices and measure
the effectiveness of mobile initiatives. Ensure that your mobile
efforts align with your online marketing campaigns, and that
your web analytics provider enables you to have a comprehen-
sive view of your performance across both mobile and online
channels.
5
White Paper Executive Summary
About IBM Enterprise Marketing
Management
The IBM Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) Suite is
an end-to-end, integrated set of capabilities designed exclusively
for the needs of marketing organizations. Integrating and
streamlining all aspects of online and offline marketing, IBMs
EMM Suite empowers organizations and individuals to turn
their passion for marketing into valuable customer relationships
and more protable, timely, and measurable business outcomes.
The IBM EMM Suite helps marketers to understand customer
wants and needs and leverage that understanding to engage
buyers in highly relevant, interactive dialogs across digital,
social, and traditional marketing channels. IBM EMM provides
robust web and customer analytics, event detection, campaign
management, real-time interaction management and
recommendations, lead management, digital marketing
optimization, email marketing, targeted advertising, search
engine marketing, and marketing resource management
capabilities. Over 2,500 organizations around the world
use IBM EMM solutions to help manage the pressures of
increasing marketing complexity while delivering improved
revenue and measurable results.
IBMs time-tested and comprehensive offerings are giving
companies such as E*TRADE, ING, Intercontinental Hotels
Group, Orvis, PETCO, United Airlines, Vivo and wehkamp.nl
the power and exibility required to provide their customers
and prospects with what they expect todaya more consistent
and relevant brand experience across all channels.
For more information
To learn more about IBM Coremetrics please contact your
IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit
the following website: ibm.com/software/marketing-solutions

Copyright IBM Corporation 2011

IBM Corporation
Software Group
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Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A.

Produced in the United States of America

November 2011
All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and Coremetrics are trademarks of

International Business Machines Corporation in the United States,
other countries or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are
marked on their rst occurrence in this information with a trademark
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Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service

marks of others.
1
Forrester Research, 2011 US Mobile Marketing Predictions,
January 4, 2011.
2
Forrester Research, Mobile Commerce Forecast: 2011 to 2016,
June 17, 2011.

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