Telecom Lead America: Mobile marketing is now leveraged by more than half of all businesses with a strong emphasis on mobile websites, mobile apps and mobile-optimized email, says a new report from StrongMail, a provider of email marketing and cross-channel marketing solutions.
Even with the prevalence of mobile devices, and smart phone adoption passing the halfway mark in the United States, mobile marketing adoption only reached 56 percent, a 22 percent increase over the past year. Despite tempered annual growth, more than 80 percent of those businesses not conducting mobile marketing plan to do so sometime in the future – half of those in the next 12 months.
The top three challenges impeding growth of mobile marketing continue to be lack of strategy, resources and budget. Businesses are struggling to implement sophisticated, cross-channel approaches that can fully leverage the strengths of this emerging channel, said Katrina Conn, vice president of marketing services, StrongMail.
According to the survey, two of the top three mobile marketing programs are directly related to improving the mobile experience of two more established channels – Web and email.
Further the survey found that 77 percent of businesses are optimizing their websites for mobile audiences another 49 percent are mobile-optimizing their email campaigns.
At 60 percent adoption, mobile apps remain the second most popular form of mobile marketing year over year, but mobile-optimized email secured the third spot, edging out QR codes (41 percent), which fell to fifth place behind mobile advertising (42 percent).
Important findings of the survey are given below:
-56 percent have adopted mobile marketing; 50 percent of those have been doing it for 12 months or less
-43 percent cite lack of strategy as biggest barrier to adoption, followed by lack of resources (21 percent)
-56 percent have not integrated mobile marketing into cross-channel, lifecycle marketing programs
-Mobile websites (77 percent), apps (60 percent) and mobile-optimized email (49 percent) are most popular forms
-57 percent reported increased mobile marketing budgets for past 12 months; only 3 percent saw a decrease
-67 percent expect their budget to increase in the next 12 months
The survey results show that marketers are largely adopting mobile marketing in a siloed fashion. While 55 percent have done some level of coordination between email marketing and mobile marketing programs, it is largely limited to mobile optimized landing pages (68 percent) and email templates (62 percent).
When it comes to the 44 percent of businesses that aren’t conducting mobile marketing, the inability to determine the right strategy dwarfs all other obstacles. At 43 percent, lack of strategy was reported more than two times that of any other reason. Lack of resources/staff (21 percent) and funding/budget (12 percent) round out the top three; 14 percent reported that it wasn’t a fit for their business.
