In today’s world, there are more than 1bn active smartphones, writes Joe Fuster, senior vice president of sales at SAP Cloud. Gartner projects that the global market for tablets will grow 67.9 per cent by the end of the year, reaching almost 202m units. With the average user spending more than two hours a day on mobile devices, it should come as no surprise that businesses must develop an effective mobile marketing plan to reach these constantly-connected users.

Mobile devices give companies the chance to be with their customers at all times. This is both a privilege and an opportunity for marketers to reach customers in an effective manner. Knowing the right time and with what content to push is critical for a business to create an exemplary customer experience. But it takes time and effort for companies to develop plans to reach customers through their mobile devices and, if this is done successfully, these programs will pay dividends that go far beyond just a brief period of interest.

Fine line
The line is incredibly fine between delivering a message that delights your customers because it hits their personal preferences perfectly, and delivering the wrong offer at the wrong time, which simply annoys and frustrates end users. For example, I have bought a few items from a hardware store over the past couple of months. I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to provide my email and receive offers on my mobile device in case I ever needed to make another purchase.

Unfortunately, the hardware store has now overrun my email with marketing offers for products that are of no interest or value to me. This is a perfect example of the issue with mobile spamming. An effective mobile strategy requires a company to have a target and a focus. Creating personalized and relevant offers on mobile devices requires a company to have a complete customer context – this includes frequency of interactions and purchase location.

When a company has customer information such as where, when and how frequently a consumer visits its shops, this data should be leveraged to create personalized offerings. With real-time information available, businesses can use the latest analytics, in-memory and cloud technologies to harness this data and ultimately develop better marketing and CRM strategies. This allows the business to create personalized one-to-one offers by combining shopper context and location with his/her profile and preferences.

One example of a company that successfully provides content to its users is the Societe de Transport de Montreal (STM) which is the 4th largest largest public transit corporation in North America, Canada. STM leverages SAP Precision Marketing to create targeted offers for its more than 1m passengers by offering personalized and contextually relevant content. Depending on where and when the users enter and exit the train, they can expect to receive content to understand what is nearby, what activities are taking place around them and where they can find those offerings. STM takes into consideration the customer’s profile and preferences, the location, the time – a 360-degree view of the context – and only delivers content to the user when it is appropriate. This results in a loyal customer base as each rider is treated as an individual.

Brand allegiance
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for companies that want to develop a mobile marketing plan. Customers are extraordinarily fickle and won’t hesitate before switching their brand allegiance. According to Bain & Company, a customer is four times more likely to change to a competitor if a problem is service-related versus price- or product-related. Mobile outreach falls under service-related activities and, as users spend more time on their mobile devices, it will become critical to keep customers happy in this space.

While much of a mobile marketing program consists of proactive outreach to a customer base, listening to what customers are saying on social channels is a critical strategy to collecting more information on their demographics, wants, concerns and frustrations. Cloud solutions enable marketers to find the most critical customer messages and use these social interactions to glean customer insight. By housing this essential data in the cloud, it allows for enhanced collaboration between departments as marketers, sales teams and executives all have access to customer information at their fingertips.

Mobile outreach programs have become essential to businesses as mobile devices continue to flood the market and users spend more time on them. They generate a wealth of data that can be used to make timely and location-relevant content. A successfully delivered mobile loyalty program can boost a company’s top line in a short period of time. But just because a user opts-in to receive information does not mean that they should be messaged every day. Companies must learn to respect customers’ time and privacy by creating personalized content only when it makes sense. Customers should feel elated when they receive an offer from a company rather than quickly searching for the Unsubscribe button.

Joe Fuster is senior vice president of sales at SAP Cloud