MarketingSherpa Blog

For the recently released MarketingSherpa Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report, we asked marketers about their understanding of customer mobile device adoption …

Q: How well does your organization know the level of mobile device adoption of its customers?

Damir Saracevic, Director of Digital Marketing, Catalyst, shared his thoughts on the data …

When, not if

There is no surprise here that 75% of marketers don’t understand mobile device adoption of their customers. My question is do you even need to? In today’s day and age, I don’t think it’s a matter of if, I believe it’s a matter of when your customers are going to jump on mobile.

We’ve finally passed the thresholds of more smartphones than feature phones in the U.S. The customers are becoming more and more connected, you see tablets in the boardrooms, but what’s even more interesting is that you see tablets in the bedroom. Tablets are going to replace PCs as a primary vehicle to access Internet in the not-so-distant future, so the use cases of mobile usage are going to evolve with it.

If you don’t believe your customers are mobile, just think about how many people access email on their mobile device today. I think we get hung up on the notion that mobile is about Web access, that mobile is iPhone and iPad, that mobile is apps. There is so much more to it.

Reasons for low understanding of mobile device adoption

I guess I should try to answer the question of why such a low understanding of mobile device adoption. There are so many priorities that marketers need to tend to on a daily basis that I believe there is no time for it. Mobile budgets are still small — they are projected to grow the fastest of all digital channels in the next three to five years, but in terms of pure dollars available, it’s minuscule compared to search or email.

Mobile ROI is hard to define as mobile touches all other channels. As I mentioned before, should you rethink your email strategy due to mobile? The answer is yes, but which channel gets the credit? Should the channels even compete that way? My take is no, but I’m probably in the minority.

Help inform the industry’s understanding of email marketing by taking the 2013 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey and receive a free MarketingSherpa Special Report for your time – CMO Perspectives on Email Deliverability.

Related Resources:

2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Survey — Complimentary $97 special report for sharing your email insights

Email Summit: Integrating mobile, social and email marketing channels

Mobile Marketing 101: 5 ideas to help you begin a conversation with your team

Mobile Email Marketing: 50% more app downloads from device-targeted ads

About Daniel Burstein

Daniel Burstein, Senior Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS. Daniel oversees all content and marketing coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands while helping to shape the editorial direction for MECLABS – digging for actionable information while serving as an advocate for the audience. Daniel is also a speaker and moderator at live events and on webinars. Previously, he was the main writer powering MarketingExperiments publishing engine – from Web clinics to Research Journals to the blog. Prior to joining the team, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications – a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware, and BEA Systems. Daniel has 18 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement and field marketing communications.

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Categories: Mobile Tags: channel integration, digital marketing, Mobile, mobile marketing