Monthly Archives: July 2012

Jul 25 2012

Mobile shoppers increasingly influenced by television

Summary: New survey shows that 87 per cent of consumers who own a mobile device and a TV have carried out a mobile transaction over the past 12 months

Mobile shoppers’ purchasing decisions are becoming increasingly influenced by television adverts and programmes, a new report has revealed.

Market research firm Interpret LLC analysed whether TV, currently the most popular medium among consumers, can be utilised by marketers to boost sales on mobile devices, reports Mobile Marketer.

The report showed that 87 per cent of consumers who own a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet computer, and a TV have carried out a mobile transaction over the past 12 months.

One of the most influential factors in mobile phone users’ purchasing decision was television, as 53 per cent of respondents cited TV as a key factor in their transaction choice.

It was not, however, the most influential factor, with word-of-mouth cited as a key driver, closely followed by online adverts.

Despite this, 62 per cent of consumers want advertisers to make it easier to purchase products seen on TV.

The report, called Utilizing Multiple Screens Effectively: Television’s Role in Mobile Purchasing, also showed that consumers are likely to purchase a product they saw on TV in the same week and are heavily susceptible to time-sensitive deals.

When looking at the type of products purchased, three-quarters of respondents downloaded music, while 70 per cent paid a bill.

Other popular purchases included mobile accessories, as well as downloaded TV shows and movies.

“We were surprised to learn that consumers are almost as likely to purchase a physical product on their mobile device as they are to simply download a song or other virtual item,” said Jason Lau, a lead analyst at Interpret LLC, told the news provider.

“Also, most purchases made on a mobile device are made in the home, opening up the opportunity for advertisers to utilise call-to-action TV campaigns that drive consumers to a smartphone or tablet.

“The most surprising finding was that 53 per cent of those that made a mobile purchase cited TV as an influence, though it is not the most important factor.”

Jul 24 2012

New and Improved Import Function for Message Manager

Some of our customers asked us to improve the import process, so we listened and we wanted to let you know it’s now live!

The first stage of importing your contacts has stayed the same, select contacts, then import, choose your file and select next. However when you arrive on the second stage of the process you will notice it looks quite different.

You now have a much clearer option to choose from when importing a CSV. You now have 4 different file delimiter options to choose from comma, tab, space, and semicolon. This has all been altered to make it much clearer and easy to use.

The number format will automatically default to the country in which the account is set up as.

We’ve had a lot of requests to make grouping your contacts easier so we have now created a very clear and easy to use tick box which allows you to select the destination of your contacts whether this just be adding to contact list, group or creating a new group there and then!

We also have intelligent mapping, to save you having to map all the custom fields Message Manager will now intelligently look for familiar fields and map them automatically. If you have left out any important fields, such as mobile number, message manager will produce an error message to warn that this custom field hasn’t been mapped.

Once you’re happy and select next Message Manager will run a mini clean on your contacts and will remove any duplicates or invalid numbers within the database. This will be showing in a clear message at the top of the screen giving you the volumes of any removed contacts. Underneath this message you will see any contacts that have been removed, Message Manager will produce a reason for it being removed, whether this is invalid or duplicate.

The next stage is the last and it is a notification screen that alerts you to a successful import.

We hope the changes we have made have improved the process and as ever we are always open to feedback so please any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

Jul 17 2012

O2 fixes network problems following 24-hour blackout

Summary: Millions of O2 customers could not make calls, send texts or access mobile internet services for 24 hours last week following a network fault

O2 has confirmed that it has managed to fix the network fault which left millions of its customers unable to access its services for around 24 hours last week.

In a statement, the mobile operator apologised for the network failure and revealed that all of its 2G and 3G services have been fully restored for affected customers. Any O2 customers who are still experiencing problems have been urged to turn their phone off and on again.

On Wednesday afternoon (11th July), a major fault struck the network which meant that an estimated eight million O2 customers could not make calls, send texts or access mobile internet services. Subscribers of GiffGaff and Tesco Mobile were also affected as the networks use O2′s mobile masts.

An investigation has been launched to establish the cause of the problem, with initial findings suggesting that the part of its system which handles the registering of telephone numbers was to blame.

“We can confirm that the problem with our mobile service is due to a fault with one of our network systems, which has meant some mobile phone numbers are not registering correctly on our network,” the firm said.

In an interview with the CBR website, a spokesperson for O2 denied the outage was due to any additional traffic caused by the build-up to the Olympics or from any upgrade works related to the summer showpiece event.

“We have been planning for two years for the London Olympics and have invested an additional £50m our in preparation for the summer,” they said.

The spokesperson added that customers who were affected by the blackout could be in line for compensation, although nothing has officially been announced.

A survey of those affected customers by YouGov revealed that just 20 per cent of respondents believe the mobile phone provider handled the situation well, while 57 per cent claimed there was a lack of communication during the incident.

Of course, it was not just consumers who would have been affected by the blackout, as firms looking to send marketing text messages to subscribers would have been frustrated in their endeavours.

However companies using Dynmark’s unique cloud messaging platform would still have been able to operate during the blackout. Due to alternate routes that Dynmark have access to, they were able to re-route messages to ensure minimum disruption to their customers.

If you would like to try out mobile marketing for your business why not register for a Dynmark Cloud Portal account today, it’s FREE and you get 10 FREE credits to try it out. Or you can sign up to our FREE to SME proposition meaning your get your messaging credits for FREE, from as little as £10 per month.

Jul 15 2012

Report: A third of firms have no m-commerce solutions in place

Summary: New CloudSense survey shows that a third of firms are missing out on revenue as they fail to adopt a multi channel approach to marketing

Nearly a third of businesses are missing out on revenue as they have no m-commerce or social solutions in place, a new study has revealed.

Cloud computing provider CloudSense has published a new report which shows that more than half (55 per cent) of firms have already implemented mobile and social commerce, leaving those companies which opt to deploy neither lagging behind in an era where multi-channel marketing campaigns are viewed as essential.

Of the third of companies who have yet to adopt either technology, 13 per cent currently have no plans to implement solutions for mobile or social commerce in the future.

The benefits of running a multi-channel marketing campaign have long been touted and Cloudsense sought to find out the main benefits of such an approach.

Two-fifths of businesses cited improved customer experience as a key benefit, while nearly a third claimed that multi-channel marketing led to an increase in sales.

Moreover, 29 per cent praised multi-channel marketing for its ability to offer a single view of the customer.

Richard Britton, managing director at CloudSense, claimed that firms who refuse to integrate mobile and social solutions into their marketing strategy risk seeing the gap between them and their competitors continue to grow.

He said: “There is a perception in some businesses that these technologies (social and mobile) are not yet mature, but the hard reality is that their competitors are already making profit from these channels.

“A multi-channel approach has already enabled forward-thinking brands to get ahead of the competition and grow revenue significantly through increased sales.

“But the barrier for many firms is that they still don’t have the right technology in place, so a multi-channel sales approach remains a challenge rather than an opportunity.”

Respondents were also quizzed about the greatest challenges in the sales process, with almost a third claiming that a lack of a single view of the customer was their greatest obstacle to boosting revenue.

Jul 14 2012

Word of mouth is one of the ‘most effective’ ways to promote mobile apps

Summary: Word of mouth and positive customer reviews can both promote awareness of an app, says marketing expert

Word of mouth is one of the ‘most effective’ ways to promote awareness of mobile applications, according to a marketing expert.

Rob Thurner, mobile consultant, trainer and speaker at burnermobile.com, outlined four main ways in which companies can raise the profile of their apps.

SMS texts can be sent to customers to alert them to the release of a new app, while traditional mass media formats such as TV, radio and newspapers are still widely used by many companies to advertise an app.

Other methods include displaying an app on a company website, as well as offering ‘click to download’ links.

However, Mr Thurner added that one of the best ways to promote a mobile application is to encourage word of mouth recommendations.

“If you can get people to use the oldest form of marketing first of all – referrals and recommendations, whether it is face to face or using social media channels – that is a very effective way of getting people to be aware of an app and also download it,” he said.

Mr Thurner underlined the importance of customer reviews in emphasising the popularity of an app. With consumers unlikely to scroll through a long list of apps in the store to find an app, they will instead look at how they are ranked when making their decision.

“If you see Apple, iTunes and Android are giving [the app] high rankings and are very easy to find – people are more likely to download that,” he said.

“Having a positive review from a customer or having a good rating based on download numbers is everything in app land.”

It is important to spend time testing an app before it goes live to ensure any flaws are ironed out or businesses run the risk of getting bad reviews and falling down the rankings.

Last year, analytics firm Localytics revealed that 26 per cent of apps only get used once, showing that a lot of funds are often wasted developing poor quality apps.