Why Apps Are Last Year’s Mobile Strategy

Those of us who spend most of our time watching the payments and commerce ecosystem can end up with a somewhat distorted perception of time. When the majority of what one looks at is what’s next, it can be easy to start getting a little impatient for it to get here.

And it can be even easier to overlook how very quickly things have moved already. Twenty years ago today Amazon wasn’t online yet, and 10 years ago today mobile phones were strictly the province of early adopters and no one had ever heard of an iPhone. Today, 80 percent of U.S. adults have a smartphone. According to recent research by Forrester, over two-thirds of those smartphone owners use their devices to compare and research goods, 60 percent used their devices to physically locate goods, and a quarter used their phones to find coupons or other discounts.

“We expect smartphone usage to dominate and to add the most value due to the unique ability of mobile to bridge offline and online worlds,” the report noted. “Mixing different technologies that are connecting smartphones to the physical world (e.g., [NFC], beacons, image recognition, QR codes, or sound wave), mobile will enable brands to add value — consumers are already using their smartphones in stores to compare prices; research product information and reviews; and access shopping lists and coupons, gift cards, and loyalty points.”

And while mobile presents consumers with a variety of opportunities for retailers, it also creates a pretty big challenge to live up to.

“The retailers we talk to feel like their customers are way out ahead of them with how they’re interacting with and using their mobile devices. This is new for a lot of marketing organizations and a lot of CMOs are faced with a need to catch up on mobile marketing very, very quickly.”

That’s Mark Tack, the VP of Marketing at Vibes — a company that pulls double duty as both a technology platform for mobile marketing and an educational force that instructs their clients on how to use this technology to get results.

“In our business there is such a great need to, first and foremost, help marketers understand what the opportunity is, how the tech works and how it is changing consumer behavior,” Tack explained. “For us, it really starts with providing that guidance to marketers and really helping them get up to speed with mobile so they can both catch up to their customers and exceed their expectations.”

Which is no easy feat, Tack notes, because of the relationship consumers have with their phones. They are an amazing access point that offer a wealth of options.

“There’s so many different tactics that a marketer or a CMO could pursue in mobile,” Tack told PYMNTS. “And that’s where education really comes in, because those tracks will vary greatly, even among similar seeming retailers.”

And Vibes knows from variety. The firm, which launched 16 years ago, has really grown up with mobile and evolved in real-time with it, said Tack. That, Tack says, means they have seen and adapted to a variety of waves. They also work with a wide range of merchants — including household names like Gap, Pep Boys, Kmart, Saks, HP and Verizon — just to name a quick and notable handful.

These merchants sell very different things to different customer bases that may overlap – but are homogeneous. The sweet spot that Vibes has to hit is to find the tailored strategy to help their plurality of retailers all hit the same target by finding the correct and effective way to approach the mobile consumers.

“For me, my smartphone is the most personal device I have ever owned in my life. I am using this device to run all aspects of my life,” Tack pointed out. “If a retailer or brand gets permission from consumers to talk to them on their mobile phone, it has to really feel like a natural communication.”

Which sounds great in theory – but in practice is not easy to achieve, especially, Tack notes, when many of their partners are looking at creating millions of potential digital marketing opportunities that have to be tailored to ensure that a mobile customer finds helpful and personal — not intrusive and crowded.

“Most consumers are looking to simplify the experience on the phone, and that is a big shift we are seeing. Two or three years ago when it came to mobile, there was kind of proliferation of apps and as consumers we all added 50-100 apps to our phone. In the last three to six months, we have collectively realized that we only interact with five or 10 of them.”

In fact, Tack noted, most consumers spend about 80 percent of their time with five apps. So, while retailers want to “own” the digital real estate on users’ smartphones, the smart move instead is shaping up to be strategically renting that real estate instead.

“If 80 percent of consumer time is spent with five apps, then the days of relying on apps as your mobile strategy are done,” Tack said. “It’s about how retailers can tap into platforms that are already on the phone. The biggest trend we have seen in 2+ years is the big push in mobile wallets. For us that really got a push when Apple introduced Passbook in 2012.”

Tacks says that mobile wallets — such as Apple Pay and Android Pay — fix a consumer pain point that has nothing to do with payments. Consumers have a lot of ability to collect offers, coupons and rewards points on mobile, but generally have to go hopping around a phone to find them, which is inconvenient.

“When you have that app that is offered by the operating system, it sits on your phone, it’s just there – that is a good example of borrowing mobile moments,” Tack said. “So, we help our partners do simple things, like making sure the email message they send out makes it easy to click a button and save the offer in Apple Wallet (aka Passbook) because those apps are giving consumers a place where they can interact with and also keep discovering the brand.”

Mobile is not the same thing as magic. Simply deciding to use mobile to market to consumers is not a guarantee for success, and can be a recipe for disaster if done wrong. But used correctly, said Tack, it can help brands make sure to keep growing with their customers, who are becoming more digitally enabled by the day.

“We’ve been around for 16 years and we are at 150 mobile experts and that is all we do,” Tack noted. “Our practitioners are running mobile marketing programs for some of the largest retailers and we are always asking ourselves how they can leverage our tech platform to really make mobile central to their marketing for both acquisition and retention. We have a unique set of guidance and best practices that we’ve put together over the last decade and a half.”

The challenge now, Tack says, is to figure out the best practices for the next decade and a half.