Yesterday was our Mobile Marketing Retail Summit, where we brought together a wide variety of retail brands with key thought leaders from the mobile marketing world to explore and discuss the future of mobile marketing, and how the latest technology can be used to engage consumers.
With more than half of all online retail revenues coming from mobile devices, its never been more important to ensure the mobile is well integrated into your marketing strategy. Marketers can no longer rely on an app or a mobile website; today's consumers are demanding a seamless omnichannel experience that treats them as individuals. Our Summit gave brands an opportunity to connect with ad tech providers, industry experts and their peers to ask questions, challenge assumptions and hear about some of the latest developments and cutting-edge insights.
If you weren't able to make it to the Summit, you missed out on some fantastic guidance from leading industry figures, but you can still access some of the gems of wisdom here, with our top 10 quotes from the day.
“The battlefield is going to be in how we treat our customers. There's going to be technology, and there's going to be service, but there'll always be customers.”
Jat Sahi, digital lead, retail and hospitality for EMEA, Fujitsu
"We're competing with online, and customers don't differentiate between that. It's a seamless journey to purchase for them, but for us, it's more important they're making that purchase in a physical place."
Deborah Owen-Ellis Clark, head of retail marketing, British Land
"Games found business models that weren't there before – in-app advertising, in-app purchases. They pioneered the way mobile could generate revenues."
Ilja Goossens, sales director for EMEA, Tune
"If you've done your homework, and you have the right reasons why the company should go in a direction, and you have the technology, I've never heard anyone say 'No' to an idea just because mobile is involved. There are still siloes, but I think we've got better at breaking them down. If you look at the things we're using mobile for now, we've already com a long way, but consumer expectations keep rising."
Jen Brown, director of marketing for EMEA, Tealium
"One of the biggest issues for customers doing an online grocery shop for the first time is speed, and that's a major pain point for us and them. Without any existing customer data to work from, the process can take a lot longer, and some customers can be put off by that, so making that journey smoother and faster is a priority for us."
Alastair Preacher, customer director for new venture and head of digital customer, Tesco
"The web provides us with loads of publicly available data that can inform marketing decisions. We went out and sourced information from 8m posts from BabyCentre to find out what mums are thinking about at every different step of their pregnancy and beyond."
Ashley Kenerson, head of data analysis, strategy and insight, DigitasLBi
"We talk about mobile as the key to retail but it's not just about the device. The real truth is that whatever you're using, whether it's your desktop or actually walking into a store, mobile is what is stitching it all together."
Iain Murphy, director of operations & customer success, Tealium
"Big companies don't tend to build the expertise in-house. You need experts in-house who understand mobile strategy before you reach out to external companies. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, so if someone's telling you something is a good idea, you need to know whether or not they're accurate."
Ilja Goossens, sales director for EMEA, Tune
"People often won't download an app to make their first purchase, and that becomes an extra friction point for getting people to try the service, so we ensure our mobile web site is capable of delivering the experience they want. Then we can use the mobile site and our CRM database to get people to transition to the app at a later date."
Aron Gelbard, co-founder and CEO, Bloom & Wild
"If you've got a two star rating for your app in the app store, 15 per cent of people who visit that page will end up downloading it. Increase that to a five star rating, and that figure becomes 95 per cent.
Mick Rigby, CEO, Yodel Mobile