Everybodyâs Talkinâ â¦key takeways from our recent event

Earlier this week was our ‘Everybody’s Talkin: What consumers are saying about your mobile CRM and customer loyalty programmes’ event and it was a hit! The event was held at the very cool offices of Karmarama and was well attended. The morning was packed with informative stats, some useful hands on examples and an interactive learning workshop.

Here are some key points from the event…

Mark Brill, of Brand Emotivity and Chair of Mobile and Connected Council, started us off with some interesting stats and case studies:

• 80% of UK smartphone owners use their device in conjunction with other media
• 10% of media time is spent in mobile devices whereas 7% is spent in print, BUT
• 63% of top 100 brands are not optimized for mobile

So… how can we understand our users if we’re not communicating with them through the channel they utilize?

Next Jo Garcia, of ICLP and co-Chair of the Mobile and Connected Council, shared insights around some recent customer research. The first was a DMA Mobile Customer Service survey. There are four key themes to the results:

1. Convenience: 35% want brands to schedule callbacks to avoid waiting times
2. Flexibility: 62% prefer brands to contact them via mobile email (versus only 47% are actually contacted that way)
3. Personalization: 33% want customer services to know who they are
4. Priority: 45% rate being able to use customer services wherever and whenever they want as their top priority AND 28% want brands to offer a priority service for mobile callers.

Key takeaway: prioritize customer service because a happy customer is a loyal one.

The second piece of research was a DMA Customer Loyalty survey.

• With regards to mobile delivery of loyalty offers, nearly 60% either already receive loyalty offers on their mobile or would like to
• There is an increasing acceptance of loyalty offers with ⅔ of consumers happy to do away with physical loyalty cards
• 64% prefer mobile email for receiving offers
• 45% wish to be contacted on a weekly basis.

Key takeaway: loyalty offers on mobile work because you can take advantage of time, context and location but make sure you let customers control the communication: how, when & what.

Finally, Jo covered results from ICLP global loyalty research in association with Forrester 2012.

• Price sensitivity supersedes brand loyalty
• Customers want instant gratification, flexibility and control from loyalty awards
• Emerging markets are heralding the change and have a great opportunity
• Brands are falling short in choice, customization, personalization and digital engagement
• There is a positive impact on brand loyalty from joining loyalty programmes
• Mobile and social are important for emerging markets and younger demographics

Key takeaway: brands need to do more to bridge the gap between what a customer wants and what brands are delivering for loyalty offers.

The next speaker was Jason Palgrave-Jones, BD and Client Services Director at Textlocal, who highlighted the importance of SMS as a mobile loyalty delivery mechanism. He noted that:

• By 2015 nearly 60% of the UK market will be smartphone… but don’t ignore the 26M feature phone consumers
• 99.9% of SMS are read with 95% in the first 3 minutes post-receipt.

The final speakers were Michael Bristow, VP of Marketing and Head of Customer CRM and Martin Miller, Head of Product and Innovation (Mobile) at Barclaycard, who talked about some of the successes and learnings from their loyalty programmes.

The session concluded with a hands-on workshop where participants evaluated various brands’ activities on mobile and brainstormed about how the experience could be improved and optimized for mobile. Very engaging and a good learning experience!

All in all, one of the best events I’ve attended in terms of leaving with some key information. Get in touch with us if you want to see more detail and make sure you don’t miss the next one!