Innovation in Mobile

Google Wallet Invades Your Physical One With A New Prepaid Debit Card

For a while there a physical Google Wallet card seemed like the stuff of rumors, and then it looked like another project lost to the ages when former Wallet chief Osama Bedier (who purportedly pushed the concept) officially resigned from his post earlier this year. Larry Page’s disapproval of the card after a buggy pre-launch demo certainly didn’t help the project’s chances either.

But here we are, months later, and Google has gone ahead with the project anyway. The folks at Droid-Life spotted the updated Google support entry first, which allows Google Wallet users to order their own physical Wallet cards – that first batch is expected to hit doorsteps in under two weeks.

Don’t expect Google to be getting into the lending and collections game (but hell, could you imagine?) – this card is a purely prepaid affair, affording its users access to the funds that are currently stored in their Google Wallets. At first glance it doesn’t seem like a game-changer considering most of the particulars will be familiar to anyone who already owns a debit card, but there are some neat Googlean touches here. According to a newly-posted article on Google’s Commerce blog, there’s a distinct lack of service fees tied to using the card, and users will get instant notifications on their phones when they’ve made a purchase (just like Simple).

So sure, if you have a Google Wallet account and it’s got a few dollars ferreted away in it, there’s really no reason not to get one. While it may be a low-risk action for you though, the card provides plenty of value to the folks in Mountain View – an earlier report from AllThingsD painted Google’s push into a more physical payment scheme as a way to gather more consumer purchasing data to help power its gigantic online advertising business.

Author: Chris Velazco (TechCrunch)

Innovation in Mobile

Windows Phone Now Sees 10M Transactions And 500 New Apps Daily, Has Served 3B Total Downloads

Last week Instagram and Waze came to the Windows Phone platform, bringing two applications to Microsoft’s smartphone venture that it has long lacked.

Microsoft also released a set of numbers that outline the platform’s growth, and yet modest size. Windows Phone has seen 3 billion applications downloads, a fine number for the platform, but something that pales in comparison to iOS’s more than 60 billion aggregate downloads.

The platform tallies 10 million app transactions each day, or 300 million per month. That’s up from 9 million per day in September, and 6.66 million per day in June. According to the company, 500 new Windows Phone applications are uploaded daily.

The release of Windows Phone 8 remains the crux moment for the platform, with “monthly paid app revenue” up 181% since its launch. Also in roughly the past year, app downloads have increased 290%. Windows Phone is small, but growing at healthy rates.

The above figures indicate that there is likely enough user activity for developers to warrant the platform enough attention to build for it. However, Windows Phone remains especially small in its home market, the United States, a key application revenue source for iOS and Android developers. Its lack of popularity in that country likely tempers developer enthusiasm.

Sales numbers for Windows Phone handsets are growing, often at triple digit paces on a year-over-year basis, but the platform was small enough a year ago that those figures don’t indicate rampaging growth that could rival iOS or Android on a unit volume basis anytime soon.

The company still has most of its work in front of it: Unit volume must rise in the United States, and other issues such as developer lassitude persist.

The above all sums to the simple fact that Microsoft, through expense and struggle, has managed to build a mobile platform that has achieved something close to exit velocity. It wasn’t long ago that that wasn’t true, and that Windows Phone was more the butt of jokes than something for developers to begin to get to know.

Author : Alex Wilhelm (TechCrunch)

Mobile Marketing

Using Mobile to Interact with your clients..

Interactive text messaging enables you to engage with an audience by encouraging them to text in a short-code to receive a variety of information. Imagine growing loyalty by asking customers to
take part in valuable feedback on their recent home purchase or rental, or enhancing your current advertising by prompting prospective buyers and renters to text in a keyword for a free property estimate or a month’s free rent. These are just a few of the ways that businesses are taking advantage of the shift in consumer behavior regarding the use of mobile phones as a way of life.
It’s also a great way to build your mobile database, and allows
consumers to opt-in to your mobile marketing campaigns.

Why should I have a mobile website?

80% of Smartphone owners regularly access the internet via their phone. Chances are, before long a potential buyer or renter will try and access a traditional website via their mobile to view listings and look at property pictures. If your website is not optimised for mobile, your customers will receive a clumsy, unformatted experience. Research shows when consumers are faced with this, they simply click away to one that is formatted for mobile. With So-Mo-Lo, we can create an m-site for your business in a matter of hours. It can include your branded logo, the location of your business, information on properties and contact information.
We’ll even reserve a mobile URL that will be recognised as an m-site on smartphones, which will give you a higher relevance listing on search engines!

How much is too much?

People these days expect to receive information on their mobile devices, but they may not be so pleased to hear from you if your messages start to become too regular. We recommend contacting
buyers and renters not more than once per month with information (unless there is an urgent matter that needs immediate attention). For the majority of property companies, one message per month is enough to keep tenants up to date with information. However, for property buyers, you may want to ask if they wish to receive alerts to homes that fit their requirements and budget.

Protecting your client data

The final thing to consider before you embark on an SMS campaign is: who should manage your mobile marketing? Who in your business should be given the responsibility of maintaining your client database and ensuring the right messages are sent to the right people? In truth, there is only really one answer to this question. Your client contact database, in particular the mobile numbers it contains should be highly protected. Only the company management and authorized personnel should be able to access this and they should have the final say on the content of messages and when and who will receive them.

Mobile Marketing

Using Mobile for New Customer Acquisition

The mobile phone is increasingly central to consumers lives with SMS in particular continuing to grow at an unprecedented rate. The mobile phone is the perfect mechanism with which to engage the consumer, particularly as it is location independent and the one device most of us carry with us 24/7. Capturing data from the consumer whether for research purposes or as a registration process enables offline advertising to have a call to action that can be responded to immiediately.

Invite your customers to text a word to a shortcode thenImage by return the customer can recieve some promotional content such as link to a mobile website or a data capture page to capture contact or demographic information including an email address so you can engage them online.

The mobile phone is an ideal medium through which to interact with consumers for market research purposes, SMS gives immiediacy and delivers the richness of an internet experience via rich media mobile web pages. In most instances this delivers a much higher response than email to internet based communications, data that is captured in this way can then be delivered real time messages.

For any form of consumer registration to a new service,mobile can achieve the same result as a live operator at a fraction of the cost. Mobile can be particularly effective when the information required is routine and requires no human interaction. Also where required mobile responses can be set dependent on the type of trigger sent in from the customer, leading to messages that are full of value, personalised and relevant to each of your customers which in turn will increase loyalty and encourage ongoing two way customer interaction for your brand.

Mobile Marketing

Direct Engagement via Mobile

Encouraging direct engagement from your customers allows them to respond to messages and provide an attractive return on investment. The best sectors for a direct engagement strategy for mobile is Entertainment, Retail and Finance using mobile in this way across these 3 sectors provides a high ROI in comparison to other channels.

If we take an average benchmark of 14% for communications across other channels for these 3 sectors then we see an uplift using mobile of at least 3% (Retail), 7% (Finance) and 10% (Entertainment). Using instructive content with a specific call to action allows you to drive behaviour to get the result you need.

The key part of a direct engagement strategy using mobile is that you can get an immiediate response to your message, usually within the first 3 minutes thereby confirming what we know about the mobile channel, that its easier to read with messaging than any other channel.

Operational content, customer service messages, renewal or impending call to action messages all increase responsiveness of a campaign where mobile is used with more marketing driven content like that used by retail, betting and the entertainment industry more offer based and therefore less in need of an immiediate response.

Where mobile messaging is used in the finance and travel sectors there is as much as a 15% extra response rate where the communications are part of a customer service or operational strategy. In fact the the more engaging the content; the more proactive behaviour users will display!

So the figures tell us that if your not using mobile messaging as part of your operational strategy for customer service messages and the like, then you aren’t getting anywhere near the engagement or responsiveness from your customers that your competitors are.

Make the decision to add mobile to your communications list and you wont look back!!

Call us today on 0161 874 4222

Thanks

themobileexpert

 

Mobile Supplements

Is M-Commerce the future of mobile interaction – Part Three

Growth of Mobile Commerce – Retailers

Also, many companies have yet to be convinced that they need a mobile strategy; a recent 2ergo survey found that over 70% of companies surveyed outside our customer base were yet to be convinced they needed a mobile strategy for their business.

This is of particular significance to well-established bricks and mortar stores, especially those who will be seeing a good number of smartphone-using shoppers coming through their doors over the next couple of months.

Now is the time to be embracing mobile and all the things it can do for the retailer, from appointment confirmation, check in, offers, footfall drivers etc…

Within the 30% or so that do have a mobile strategy, the retailers are benefiting from their use of mobile rendered websites, strong product or service placement within mobile sectors and strong offers available via mobile and they are increasing sales as a result.

More than one third of smartphone users made a purchase through their mobile device in the last 6 months and nearly two out of three shoppers use at least one device to research and purchase while shopping, and 28% use two devices at a time.

Within the 10% of mobile users who have made a mobile purchase in the last six months, 84% look for local retailer information, 82% find online retailers, 73% find a specific manufacturer or product website, 71% learn about a product or service after seeing an ad, 68% find the best price for a product or service, and 63% search before purchasing in a store or from a catalogue using their mobile device.

Combine these kinds of statistics from the mCommerce ready audience with 56% of consumers believing mobile can make the shopping experience more enjoyable and you can understand why many marketers believe that there is a consumer payments revolution on the way with retail at the forefront of it.

Both sources mentioned here look into the numbers of people who are still hesitant when it comes to mobile commerce. The Intersperience research highlights that 37% of UK adults are not keen to buy via mobile, compared to just 11% who remain hesitant to purchase via PC.

According to Google’s stats, 69% of smartphone users who do not buy via mobile simply prefer to use their PC or laptop for shopping. Other concerns included ‘doesn’t feel secure’ (34%) and complexity (9%).

It’s quite clear that paying over your PC didn’t take off immediately in the late 90’s but the advent of payment providers like Paypal and the emergence of the banking sector into online payments has made paying over your PC an everyday “chore” almost, with people more than happy to pay over the internet.

Whilst mobile is going through that indifference and security concerns phase now, it’s clear than in the future as more and more banks and financial players like PayPal come into the market with industry leading products and services and as more security concerns are addressed that the future of payments via mobile as a “chore” is very, very near.

In the final post in the M-Commerce series we will look at future predictions in this sector.

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Supplements

Is M-Commerce the future of Mobile Interaction? – Part Two

Growth of Mobile Commerce ….. the Consumer

As devices become smarter and the user experience becomes faster, easier and more secure, so UK shoppers are beginning to make more purchases via their mobile devices.

Data published in October 2012 from a new tracking initiative by IMRG highlights the growth of the mobile commerce sector in the UK.

During Q2 2011 visits to e-commerce sites from mobile devices accounted for 7% of overall traffic, up from an average of 1.4% in Q1 2010.

The research also shows that UK mobile shoppers are buying more and are now making 3.3% of e-commerce purchases from mobile devices. This is an increase from 0.4% at the beginning of 2010.

UK mobile owners are making more purchases from their devices and are also using them when visiting offline stores.

According to Intersperience, 8% of UK adults buy through their mobile phones, while 21% intend to in the future. Comparatively, a smaller percentage (7%) of under-18s currently make purchases via mobile but 33% plan to in the future.

Mobile is also clearly playing a big part on purchases made in shops. Our Mobile Planet data sees 24% of UK smartphone owners taking their phones shopping with them in order to compare prices and inform themselves about products.

Additionally, mobile devices are on the cusp of becoming more than an in-store information source, with the release of apps and features allowing users to make payments through their devices instead of using cash or card.

Despite 24% of UK adults being in agreement that mobile phones are more likely to be stolen than wallets, Intersperience data shows that 17% would be keen to use their devices for payments. Again, youngsters are more eager, with 25% of under-18s keen to replace their wallets with mobiles at the cash register.

From a marketing point of view however, there is still a significant amount of catch-up to be done for mobile commerce to become as trusted as PC-based mobile commerce.

Look out for part three of this 3 part post when we look at the role the retailer plays in the growth of m-commerce.

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Supplements

Is M-Commerce the Future of Mobile interaction?

This is a three part post. In it, we will try and show why m-commerce is the future of mobile interaction from a consumer perspective and a retailer engagement one.

Mobile Interaction – Introduction – Part One

“By 2014 more people will use a Mobile Device to get online than PC’s..  (Gartner Research 2012)”

In terms of the technological age, mobile has been quickly adopted in comparison to other great inventions of equal or more significant importance. It took Alexander Graham Bell nearly 30 years to see his telephone invention of 1875 becoming widely adopted in America when AT & T created the first transcontinental telephone service in 1915.  John Logie Baird’s TV invention first built in 1925 took over a quarter of a century to be even 70% part of consumers general home life, due to costs, early development issues, the 2nd world war etc..

Mobile has become the fastest adopted technology ever seen, in less than 15 years since the first heavily commercialised mobile phones were released for public consumption many countries have mobile penetration levels well over 100%, meaning in most cases people have at least 2 devices.

The types of consumer facing mobile programs you can run has advanced to a level where you can register for a program as a new mum and receive texts each week for the duration of your babies infant years detailing how your baby should be developing and how to deal with certain issues as they occur, like nappy rash for instance.

You can use your mobile device as a communication method, to blog your friends, to access the internet, to switch on your heating at home, to talk to your Sky box and record your favourite programs, as a TV of sorts, play games, as a payment device for small purchases and in ever increasing regularity as a redemption device against larger purchases.

It will only be a matter of time before you can carry your phone and pay for everyday purchases almost as you would with a debit card.

It would seem the only thing you can’t do yet with your phone is open your front door and even that won’t be the case for much longer!

Look out for our next post on this subject when we look at the role the Consumer (thats me and you!) plays in the growth of m-commerce.

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Supplements

Near Field Communications – Whats it all about?

NFC is a wireless communication technology a bit like WIFI or Bluetooth, it allows the transfer of data between two devices like a mobile phone and an NFC Tag. You might use NFC to pass data from an NFC enabled mobile phone to another NFC enabled mobile phone, from a mobile phone to a payment terminal or from an NFC tag to a mobile phone.

NFC  is  used for things like contactless payments, loyalty and rewards offers and coupons, security controls, marketing, events and even product identification are all able to use this technology. And the great part is that all of these applications require just an NFC enabled mobile phone to get started.

The beauty of NFC is in its simplicity. Once the tag has been encoded with the desired information or action, the tag is ready to use. The user simply touches the back of the phone against the tag, this will launch the URL or service encoded. No lining up cameras with barcodes or anything to download.
NFC technology works only at close distances – typically about 3 centimeters away. This close range makes NFC perfect for interaction and means that tags can’t ‘accidently’ be read or used for unwanted tracking. The ‘tap’ action is quite specific and part of the appeal of NFC as opposed to other longer range RFID technologies.
Almost all new smartphones now have NFC built in. In fact, nine out of ten of the top mobile manufacturers have now adopted NFC. Apple’s iPhone is the only major smartphone without NFC support. However, there still remains a question mark over how long NFC will take to become mainstream given the amount of phones that are still out there that where made prior to 2012.

Data Capture by NFC devices

In particular, the GSMA is focused on driving the standardised deployment of mobile NFC using the SIM as the secure element to provide authentication, security and portability across many different handsets. Adopting SIM-based NFC as a global standard will also ensure economies of scale and interoperability, which will be critical to the widespread adoption of NFC, enabling people around the world to benefit from NFC services, regardless of their operator network or device type.

Capturing data by NFC is very simple and in general you don’t have to ask permission for the data as it is freely given at the point of contact with the sale, the big concern here is what you do with the packet data received from the mobile device. Where is it stored? Are you ISO 27001 certified? Is your solution provider? Are you in the UK or abroad? What are you doing with the data once you get it? Are you marketing to it? If so normal marketing rules for SMS will apply regardless of them giving their consent at point of NFC adopted sale.

Potentially a data minefield if you don’t get this right and in the short term without wireless capability you will lose many potential customers who don’t have NFC enabled on their older phones but nevertheless NFC can provide a fantastic user experience and generate much needed stickiness for any brand.

Mobile Marketing

SMS Marketing for Legal Practices

SMS/text messaging is one of the most effective ways of communicating with busy people. A short and ‘to the point’ message takes seconds to read and can generate a response just as quickly, whereas traditional means of marketing communications; emails and newspaper advertising, even a telephone campaign, take a great deal of time to organise and can prove to be very costly for a solicitors.

From around 4p per message, texting is a cost effective channel of communicating with claimants, which means a much greater proportion of the money you’ll make from an SMS campaign comes back into your business. And it could be easily be integrated into any traditional forms of advertising you currently run on TV, radio and print.

As well as alerting more people to your firm you can also use the Crowd Connect mobile solutions to interact with your clients via text messaging and even create a mobile presence on the web. The benefits of this are that you can educate consumers on their rights regarding personal injury, and you can help them through the legal process with regular updates of how their case is progressing.
SMS marketing can help you to:

  • SMS your existing client database to see if they have any referral cases for you.iStock personal injury middle
  • Send occasional text messages with safety tips to help people avoid common injuries.
  • Advertise your business on local radio stations where listeners can text in an injury claim to a shortcode number.

Improve your customer service

  • SMS reminders to claimants of upcoming dates in their case.
  • Generate feedback and measure service – give your client the opportunity to fill out a feedback card and leave their mobile number once the case has been decided. This will help you measure the service your solicitors provided and you could then offer some form of retail vouchers to those who may have experienced poor service. This creates positive word of mouth about your firm.

Knowing what to write
Text messages can only be 160 characters long (including spaces), so there’s no room for waffling. It’s important that you get to the point quickly and that claimants understand exactly what you’re offering them. As a rule, you should make sure that once you have created your message, it answers these three key questions;

1.   Why you are contacting them e.g. what message are you making to the potential   claimant?
2.   When should they act? e.g. is there a free consultation or no win/no fee incentive?
3.   What do they need to do next? e.g. Should they call or visit your firms website?

It’s important to keep the style of your messages friendly and chatty but at the same time, your message is clear and concise.

How do I use mobile to interact with my claimants?

Interactive text messaging enables you to engage with potential clients by encouraging them to text in a short-code to receive a variety of information. Imagine enhancing your current advertising by prompting customers to text in a keyword for example text ‘INJURY’ to 81059 and receive a call back from a solicitor within your firm. This is just one of the ways that businesses are taking advantage of the shift in consumer behaviour regarding the use of mobile phones as a way of life. It’s also a great way to build your mobile database and allows clients to opt-in to your mobile marketing campaigns.

Why should I have a mobile website?
80% of Smartphone owners regularly access the internet via their phone. Chances are, before long your customers may try and access your website via their mobile. If your website is not optimised for mobile, clients will receive a clumsy, unformatted experience. Research shows when claimants are faced with this, they simply click away to one that is formatted for mobile. With Crowd Connect, we can create an m-site for you in a matter of hours. It can include your branded logo, locations, details on your injury services and contact information. We’ll even reserve a mobile URL that will be recognised as an m-site on smartphones, which will give you a higher relevance listing on search engines!

If you do not have a web presence yet, we will guide you through the process to develop an m-site from start to finish. Solicitors today need to adapt to how claimants are using the web to make decisions of all kinds, so now is the time to get your firm found by people who have experienced a recent personal injury.

How much is too much?
People these days expect to receive information on their mobile devices, but they may not be so pleased to hear from you if your messages start to become too regular. We recommend contacting clients not more than once per month. For the majority of claimants, one per month is enough to remind them of your personal injury services.

Protecting your client data
The final thing to consider before you embark on an SMS campaign is: Who should manage your mobile marketing? Who in your firm should be given the responsibility of maintaining your client database and ensuring the right messages are sent to the right people? In truth, there is only really one answer to this question. Your client contact database, in particular the mobile numbers it contains should be highly protected. Only the firm’s manager should be able to access this and they should have the final say on the content of messages and when and who will receive them.

For a free consultation and trial of how mobile marketing can help your business, please go to http://www.crowd-connect.co.uk and get in touch.