Mobile + The New Direct White paper

Nov 10

JonathanDirect, Mobile , , , , No Comments

At Digital Cement, we’re focused on digital direct marketing. As part of articulating our POV on how specific digital channels can be used in effect customer acquisition efforts, I wrote a white paper on mobile as a direct marketing channel.

Here’s the intro to give you a flavour for the paper’s scope and focus:

Your customers are moving targets. You work hard to get their attention – at home, at work, shopping, going to the movies and out at other public place and events.  The challenge is that it’s hard to know where they are at any given time and whether they’re receptive to what you have to offer.

So imagine if these elusive customers would not only share their locations with you, but also grant you permission to deliver what they need or want when it’s most useful and relevant to them.

Solving customer problems and inspiring customer action anywhere and anytime, but especially at times when your customers need it most, is the promise of mobile marketing. It is also the power of mobile as a direct marketing channel.

Outlined below is a foundation for successfully using mobile in your direct marketing mix. It begins by appreciating three mobile attributes that have shaped customer expectations. Then, it outlines how you can use what you know about your customers to give them a reason and a way to take your brand with them.

This is not a paper for marketers waiting to be convinced that mobile has arrived.

This is a paper for marketers who know that customers would rather lose their wallet than their phone.

I go on to cover:

  1. Mobile’s Triple Play – Connectivity, Context and Relevance
  2. Understanding Customer Habits and Preferences
  3. Building Mobile Destinations
  4. Giving Customers a Reason to Visit
  5. Driving Customers to your Destinations
  6. Understanding Customer Activity

The paper is a survey of these subjects rather than an exhaustive treatise.  It’s meant to provide thought starters for deploying mobile marketing programs in a way that sets the foundation for sustainable growth and verifiable success framed by a customer-centric approach.

You can find the paper here.

Hope you find it interesting and useful. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

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Recent @JCDunn Work Blog Posts

Apr 29

JonathanDirect, Mobile, Mobile Marketing, crm , , , , , No Comments

In the past month or so, I’ve been contributing content to the newly launched Digital Cement blog – The DC Round Table.

The blog is the work of our demand generation team and the subject matter focus is SEO/SEM, social media and mobile. I’m contributing the latter…surprise!

I’ve four posts up there that you might find interesting:

1. Ready, Set, Go! A DC Mobile Kickoff

In this post, I outline the Digital Cement mobile practice, our philosophy, a bit on the service offering and some questions we use to frame all mobile marketing discussion.

2.  Does Your SEM Strategy Include Mobile?

This post talks about a stat Google released about the connection between mobile search queries and location. I’ve added some content and outline two important distinctions between web and mobile search. Nothing ground-breaking, but some hopefully useful ‘get -started’ stuff.

3.  Mobile Marketing: Toronto Public Health and SMS Success

Here I look at a recently launched program aimed at helping youth discuss sexual health issues and providing discreet ways to access sexual health resources.  I share some the program experience and discuss the reasons why I feel this is, strategically and tactically, a very solid program. Hint: It’s got something to do with how much teens text.

4. Canadians, SMS and Sore Thumbs

The CWTA has released numbers for the volume of text messages sent by Canadians. They show impressive growth in both peer to peer and short code messaging and I offer some brief comments on considerations for SMS as a customer acquisition and CRM tool.

Hopefully something catches your eye.

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Have Brain. Will Travel – Mobile As Essential Artifact

Mar 18

JonathanUncategorized , , , , No Comments

NewDirect_SensesMobile is, in a very real way, an extension of the owner into the world. It’s a conduit to their social graph and a way to process, document and engage their environment.

This is why their mobile is the first thing many people check in the morning, the last thing they check at night and the one thing they keep with them at all times.

Device features and functionality serve as both a tool and accessory and this is a key mark of  social artifact.

There are only a couple of other things that are ‘fetishized’ like this: cars, certain other consumer electronics, fashion. The form is for many just as important as the function.

This is why providing genuinely valuable and useful (whether entertaining, informing or rewarding) experiences that are wrapped in some degree of personal relevance are the only way brands can expect to earn a significant ’share of mobile’.

Use this lens when thinking about how to acquire and engage your mobile customer and you will be on the right track.

You will still need to test, learn and revise.

You will still need to start by understanding your customer’s mobile profile and habits.

But now you will have a framework for talking to customers when and where they want to talk to you and be able to do it over and over again.

Note: This is the first in a series of short posts – fragments really – generated from slides I use in various professional presentations.  They are pieces of my approach to mobile marketing.

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Building New Bridges at Digital Cement

Sep 20

JonathanMobile, Personal , , No Comments

As announced on Twitter and picked up by Profectio, I recently joined Toronto-based agency Digital Cement as their Manager, Mobile Marketing Solutions.

It’s a new position for the company, but a natural one given their mandate to “help leading organizations start, grow, deepen and measure relationships with their most valuable customers.”  They’ve got a lot of experience in the life sciences and CPG/retail verticals, which is a great fit for mobile when you think about how personalization & contextual relevance can make such a huge difference for customers in those settings. The client mix goes beyond those industries and, let’s be honest, what organization wouldn’t benefit from strengthening the bond between its brand/services and its customers?

My first two weeks have really been about onboarding as much information as I can about the organization and fleshing out how mobile will fit into the overall service mix.

A couple things have really jumped out as tremendous assets for the growth of the mobile practice:

  • There’s a real emphasis on making sound strategic decisions backed up with well-researched qualitative and quantitative analysis.  Programs are always based on solving real business problems and with clear, measureable ROI (whether ‘return on investment’ or ‘return on innovation’) in mind;
  • The in-house marketing design & technology is really strong, especially on the user experience and database management side;
  • There’s a lot of very smart people who really care and work hard.

Broadly, my mandate is to be the go-to-guy for mobile subject matter expertise and business development. I’ll be hands-on with both program strategy and campaign tactics, working with mobile media partners and managing any outside vendor relations.

A big bonus for me is the platform offered by the emphasis on strategic analysis and measurement. Mobile, especially in Canada, lacks solid benchmarks for program spending and results.  There’s the firepower here to change that and move mobile from a ‘nice to have’ to an essential digital channel.

While you can contact me though this site or on Twitter, if you’d like to connect when I’ve got my work hat on, reach me at jdunn[at]digitalcement[dot]com.

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