How Mobile Analytics Can Help Marketers

As we gear up for the release of the “Moneyball” movie next week, let’s start this mobile analytics post with a professional sports reference. Although the Pittsburgh Penguins lost in round one of the Stanley Cup hockey playoffs, the Penguins are winning a different type of campaign off the ice—the campaign to improve their marketing program. And the National Hockey League franchise is using mobile analytics to do it, according to this article in Direct Marketing News.

Increasingly marketers are finding that they need to use analytics to measure mobile activity and improve their campaigns, according to this article in FashionablyMarketing.Me. It’s crucial for marketers to understand the behaviors of mobile users so they can position and target messaging campaigns appropriately, according to the article. By using mobile analytics businesses can significantly increase the ROI of their mobile initiatives.

The Penguins’ marketers realized that understanding the effectiveness of mobile transactions was a critical part of determining what type of data it should send to customers, Jeremy Zimmer, director of new media for the team, told Direct Marketing News.

Based on the analytics the Penguins’ marketing collected from SMS campaigns, they learned that customers were more likely to respond to offers and promotions from the team’s corporate partners, if they were somehow tied to the franchise, according to Direct Marketing News.

For example, customers who took advantage of a Verizon promotion received a free Penguins Winter Classic game poster, if they visited a Verizon store. However, after analyzing the data from a mobile campaign that wasn’t directly tied to the team, the Penguins’ marketers saw less-than-favorable results, according to the article.

The Penguins’ marketers also use analytics to scrutinize their mobile website and applications. And they’re measuring mobile activity because the franchise has to let sponsors know about the effectiveness of their mobile experience, including how often fans are downloading videos, how many page views their website receives, and how many people use the mobile Twitter section, according to the article.

Banks that analyzed consumer behavior on their mobile devices learned that customers paid bills more efficiently and quickly with mobile marketing, according to this piece in FashionablyMarketing.Me. A bank’s marketers can use information such as how long a customer spent on a web page, on the site and in the application to make better business decisions. They can also determine consumer behavior patterns based on their interactions within the application they’re using, according to the article.

Analytics is especially important for brands using SMS campaigns. Not only do they need to worry about promoting their brand in a constructive way, but they also need to make sure that they don’t run into problems with the CAN-SPAM Act. Brands that do anything that could be perceived as spam could face an investigation, even if they are technically acting within the realms of the law. They must monitor customer responses to their SMS messages to ensure they are not alienated from their messages.

Then armed with that information, bank marketers could offer a new marketing channel for products and services that its customers might be interested in based on what they do with mobile services.

However, before you invest in mobile marketing, take the author’s advice and be sure the strategy fits with your business and the efforts align with your overall marketing goals.

Next Steps:

To learn how users can explore data beyond the desktop—via the iPad and other mobile devices—and instantly share their insights using conventional social media tools, register for Tibco’s Tucon 2011 conference in Las Vegas, Sept. 27-29.

You can also check out this whitepaper for guidance on mobile analytics and sign up for more info in the months to come on mobile analytics.