I came across an interesting question in Quora: "Next things in mobile marketing," which warranted my response. I mentioned that the obvious issue with mobile marketing seems to be consumer resistance -- our need to weed out noise and privacy concerns.

As marketers, we have a multitude of available mobile channels to reach out to our current and potential customers: email, social media, ads, SMS, geo-fencing ads, push notifications. Many require opt-in, and thus we are facing a double challenge: how do we get the users to opt-in (considering they might already be turned off by a previous intrusive experience with this channel), and once they've opted in - how can we keep them opted in and engaged.

Information overload, and our need to weed out noise

1. SMS Marketing

Marketing stats brag that the vast majority of SMS messages will get opened and read within a few minutes. While this may be true, by casually "interviewing" my friends I've realized that no one in my circle stays subscribed to receive promotions via SMS. Not a single person I've talked to. And I can certainly relate: receiving a coupon offer in the midst of a lunch or a meeting is inconvenient for two reasons. One - I have to look at it at that exact moment (as text messaging is often perceived by adults as a personal or work emergency channel), and also simply because my phone will not stop buzzing until I look at that message. Two - once I've checked the offer, I have no easy way of filing it into a place where I can process it later. With email you can mark messages as unread, tag them with certain keywords, put them into folders, forward them to Evernote, or use whatever other method you have for organizing "incoming" informational traffic so that you can take the needed actions later. With SMS you cannot easily do that.

SMS is a perfect channel for news you absolutely must know now - flight status notifications, location or time change for an event you are about to go to, a dentist appointment reminder, or even as an option to pay your bill (AT&T sends me a text message when my phone bill is due with an option to text "1" to pay it with the credit card I have on file with AT&T - perfect!). SMS is also a great channel for administrative tasks like password resets, or the occasional identity validation. But for anything that we tend to want to process on our own schedule (and promotions typically fall into that category), SMS is probably not the right channel.

2. Apps and Push Notifications

I have over 200 apps on my iPhones and iPad, and I use about 5-10 of them on a regular basis. Almost all of them would like to send me push notifications. As we've mentioned in our recent infographic - for a typical app, only 16% of people will use the app more than once. Millions of apps are published on the app stores, but only about a thousand of them have succeeded in acquiring the engagement of 50,000+ users in the US. The competition for user attention is high, and with mobile app technology becoming more commoditized, our attention and time that much more precious.

3. Tracking and Personalization: Privacy Concerns

Nordstrom stopped their controversial consumer tracking effort, 8 months into the program. The program trial effort was to use the phone signals to track consumer visits and repeat customers, without tracking the actual names of the customers. Basically if you've walked into a Nordstrom with a Wi-Fi-enabled device, the surveillance technology automatically tracked your device's MAC address. To opt-out, you could turn off your device's Wi-Fi, or turn off your device, or go through the opt-out process on the provider's website (where you can remove your Mac address from future participation and delete data related to your device).
What I find interesting is that type of "surveillance" is being routinely done in face-to-face interactions with clerks (as pointed out in the same article, e.g. "Mrs. Smith. How nice to see you again. Did that turquoise sundress work out for that function you told me about in New Orleans?"). Yet, a similar function provided technologically from the "cloud" is perceived as creepy and undesirable by some consumers. Clearly, technology does not suffer from the capacity limitations of a "cerebral CRM". Furthermore, even the vendors have expressed concerns over potentially dangerous outcomes. The provider has the ability to combine the data across retailers, or expose a retailer's data to their competitor. The provider pledged not to do that. Yet, the ability to monetize a platform like that is directly tied to its ability to leverage that data.

4. Geo-Fencing

Geo-fencing brings about similar privacy concerns. Geo-fencing is a "feature in a software program that uses the global positioning system (GPS) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define geographical boundaries", and track devices (phones) as they enter these boundaries. Some use case examples for marketers include the ability to text a coupon to a customer as they enter the area (an intersection, a parking lot, a mall or a neighborhood), and even the ability to text a coupon to a customer as they enter your competitor's outlet. At this time we can't tell if the benefits of being able to receive relevant promotions at the right time outweigh our concerns for privacy and informational noise.

A paradigm shift in customer attitudes towards privacy may happen someday. We might become a lot more comfortable with being "tracked" and "touched" if all of the negative publicity we are reading lately about government surveillance quiets down!

5. Good Old Email

Yet, as of January of 2014, the most commonly accepted recipient-friendly mobile channel for promotions seems to be email. Mobile now accounts for the majority of email opens, with a 51% share (Litmus). Yet, in June of 2013 only 11.84% of newsletters optimized their layouts for mobile devices. (Yikes, it s time to replace those 2-3 column email template layouts with simpler text or responsive alternatives).

Most smartphone users are familiar with the process for managing and sorting email, and they are used to receiving regular email notifications from companies they do business with. Email technology was used in our schools and offices before smartphones existed. The cost is low, and the best business practices and regulations are well defined.

So this is the primary reason why we've selected email as the notification channel within our Loyalty Program module, offering businesses the ability to email personalized promotions or messages to their loyalty club members, based on selected criteria (transaction history, birthdays, available reward points, frequency of visits, etc). Yes, email is rather common compared to other channels, but it does strike the right "notification value to noise" balance without being too intrusive.  This fosters trust and keeps more customers opted in to receive communication from loyalty programs.

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