Yesterday at our Mobile Retail Summit in London, we brought together a variety of retail brands with thought leaders from across the mobile marketing world to discuss future of mobile, and how the latest technology can be used to in the retail space to engage consumers.

With more than half of retail traffic now taking place on mobile and opportunities constantly evolving, the importance of having an effective mobile strategy in place and maintaining it cannot be overlooked. Our summit gives brands the opportunity to the pick the brains of their peers and a range of technology experts, while looking the latest trends, ideas, and practical examples in the space.

If you weren’t able to attend the conference, here is a selection of the best gems of wisdom shared during the event.

“We take the idea that ‘your employees are people’, and I know that sounds really crass to say. But they are not resources, they are not a robot that comes in and presses buttons on a till. They are people who care about selling the goods that you want them to sell and they care about the service they give their customers.”

“It’s to work the way that we live. It’s time to use that fantastic mobile technology to deliver an experience at work using mobile technology to actually deliver experiences for employees, not just for consumers, that really make them enjoy their work.”

The day kicked off with Ilicco Elia, head of mobile at Deloitte  speaking about how mobile technology can be used to create apps that help employees to do their jobs more easily and efficiently.

“Mobile should be your friend, and I feel like we’re getting to a point where it could well be, especially as you release a branded retail app.”

“Branded retail apps are potentially a massive untapped goldmine. If not anything, it’s because you’re reaching consumers who may well have demonstrated brand affinity by organically installing your app. They may well have installed your app at the point of purchase, demonstrating that they’ve actually bought your product before.”

William Melzler, VP of business development at YouAppi discussed the how retailers can develop brand affinity and loyalty via branded retail apps.

“Do you know where your data comes from? When you’re planning campaigns, and you’re executing and measuring those campaigns, do you truly know where you’re getting that data from? When you’re working with partners are they being really clear and transparent with you?”

Valid questions that retailers need to be asking themselves with GDPR on the horizon from Warren Mills, client partner at Weve.

“A lot of people talk about location being a core signal, and it is, but we believe when it’s combined with other signals as well – things like bank-verified data – that’s where the power really comes with the data. Building that holistic audience together is really important”

Mills continued by looking at how location data can be used in combination with other forms of mobile data in the planning process for retail campaigns.

“Session times are coming down because we’re becoming better at mobile. It’s starting to become part of recognising what apps are about and it should be more frequent, lower timed session. There’s a really important point about KPIs with this and tracking the right things. It’s much better and more successful to have a higher frequency of lower timed sessions in retail than it is to have less frequent, longer sessions.”

“Apps aren’t just another digital channel, they’re the glue that brings together digital and store.”

Paul Barnes, Northern Europe territory director at App Annie looked at the power of the app market and challenges facing retailers within the space.

“Why are we still thinking that consumers move according to the media we buy? You can’t afford to be top-down planning anymore because that power has shifted. It has to be from the ground up, it has to be consumer-led.”

Retailers have to shift the way they look at consumer behaviours in order to target people, according to Alex Wright, head of insight at Blis.

“We’re launching a fitness boutique, and we’re calling it Sw3at. If you’re in Malaysia, Mumbai, North London, or Manchester, you can come and watch the close live or delayed. And we’ve developed a bit of kit where we can then track your fitness, so we can send you push notifications… It’s beginning to understand how we can use these modern developments to support our core product.”

As part of his presentation, Daniel Herman, CEO of Bio-Synergy, gave the audience an insight into how his sports nutrition brand is targeting audiences and keeping them motivated to exercise through mobile and social.