Mobile Customer Engagement - Part 1

As the topic mobile customer engagement is becoming more and more important and can no longer be neglected by businesses in the future, b.telligent has developed a three-part, monthly blog article. The expert Laurentius Malter, head of the Competence Center Customer Intelligence with b.telligent, explains the importance of this topic for every business and shows what needs to be taken into account specifically in the course of the implementation of mobile customer engagement and which solutions are the most suitable.

Look forward to three informative and exciting blog articles regarding the topic mobile customer engagement!

Why is mobile customer engagement becoming more and more important for businesses?

Whether on holidays, as fitness tracker, for receiving real time news or as shopping channel - smartphones and corresponding apps have become a fixed component of our modern everyday life. An ever-growing number of e-commerce purchases is made via mobile devices and an even larger number of sales processes includes the user's mobile customer engagement at one point or another. 

This new mobile world of experience has become an important channel and offers businesses the possibility to optimize the contents and results of their campaigns. Users are reached even if they are not on their PCs at home which enables direct consumer feedback.

Clicks from mobile devices will continue to grow. Retail, travel, automotive and classified ads accounted for more than 70% of the mobile clicks in the first quarter of 2014. North America, APAC and Western Europe together generate more than 90% of the mobile clicks.

The development and communication of the mobile experience world should be an important core element for a mobile customer engagement strategy of businesses in the coming years.

Today, no provider is able to offer all solutions at once; instead, several providers pursue individual objectives. Further problem: Many businesses do not align their mobile portfolio to the customers` requirements yet. While three quarters of the businesses interviewed in the course of a study recorded the downloads of their apps, parameters which are much more important for marketing success, namely the leads generated via mobile devices and conversion rates, are recorded by only a few businesses. Only 40 percent measure leads, only 38 percent measure conversion rates. Everything points to the fact that many mobile measures are implemented much too frequently without valid knowledge of the customers and their behavior.

The entire mobile engagement solutions sector has developed into a complex market in recent years. By now, there are 248 providers and/or solutions in a total of 27 mobile engagement categories - with rising tendency.

The complete life cycle of an app can by now be accompanied or illustrated via mobile engagement, from development to testing, deployment, bug tracking and the optimized locating of the app in the appropriate stores - there are mobile engagement tools for each sector in order to optimize an app and to constantly increase its monetary success. In case of these solutions, the focus is not on the customer and his/her behavior within the app, but rather on the app and its type of use.

Unlike mobile engagement solutions, mobile customer engagement solutions focus on the user, his/her behavior and interaction with the business. Thus, with the increasing popularity of apps, mobile customer engagement will become an important component of a business's CRM strategy. 

How can mobile customer engagement be fully understood?

In order to fully understand the topic mobile customer marketing and mobile  customer engagement, a holistic view, which exceeds the mere display of messages via app, is required. Displaying push notifications or in-app messages via app is a part of the (direct marketing) campaign management. The topic campaign management should not be regarded as pure tool-based solution, but rather as the core element of a CRM infrastructure.

In order to map a holistic CRM infrastructure, it is important to record and understand all components. For this purpose, b.telligent has developed a functional and cross-system reference architecture:  

The column 'Customer Intelligence' includes the areas 'analytics', 'data retention/data connection' and 'success measurement & reporting'. The area 'analytics' by which customer potentials can be detected is classified as preparatory stage for detection and selection of potentials. Regarding the data retention/data connection, it is important how the campaign management can be connected to an existing data warehouse; in this process, a customer-centered 360-degree view within the meaning of a data mart is required in any case. In order to measure a reaction, it must be possible to define and measure specific response and reaction events within a campaign.  A so-called campaign reporting data mart serves as basis for campaign reporting; this should include event, channel, response and contact as well as customer and campaign data.

The functions for marketing resource management, for selections and workflows and operative reporting are located in the area 'campaign management'. In order to have a fundamental data basis for operative reporting, a contact and reaction history of the contacted customer is required here.

In the third column, the 'channel interaction', the preparation and implementation of the personalization takes place. Within the channel interactions, all required personalization and campaign data for the transfer to the contact channel is collected. In this process, the linking of campaign master data and personalization parameters is essential.

In the 'contact channel' column, one differs between pure inbound, pure outbound and web channels. In case of the inbound channels, the service center may play an important role, as the objective is the direct interaction with the customer (chat, messenger, etc.). In case of the outbound channels we include, among others, email dispatch as channel for bulk emails, the classic letter shop for letter mailings and the dispatch of SMS/MMS messages. In case of the so-called web channels, campaigns are displayed via mobile apps, via the internet portal/web shop or via smart TV available for modern TVs.

The contents, the point in time, the target group and the offer should, however, not only be determined in isolation within the channel, but should be part of the direct marketing and multi-channel strategy which is defined in the column 'campaign management'.

An essential part of a functioning customer intelligence solution is the prompt re-integration of the contacts, clicks, chats and further responses of the mobile engagement solution into the contact and reaction history of the campaign management solution in order to use these contacts for further occasions and the interpretation of the contact strategy, in order to avoid an over-frequency of communication events.

Mobile customer engagement will increase in importance as interactive and, mostly real time, direct communication channel with the existing and potential customers.

Thus, mobile customer engagement solutions should not be implemented in full isolation and/or as stand-alone tool within the system landscape, but should be considered as important part of the customer intelligence landscape and be integrated into the data management process accordingly.

Do you have further questions regarding our reference architecture? Just send us an email to marketing@remove-this.btelligent.com.

The second part of the mobile customer engagement blog series is about the classification of different mobile engagement solutions. Learn which is the most suitable solution for your project!