DRIVING MOBILE MARKETING FORWARD

Customers want integrated mobile experiences, zippy load times, and responsive design. Are you delivering?

3: Introduction

4: 70 Percent of Consumers Buy CPG Products After Seeing Mobile Ads

5: Mobile Responsible for Rise in Email Open Rates

6: Telemarketing Is Going Mobile—But Customers Aren’t Along for the Ride

7: Consumers Give Marketers a C-Minus in Mobile

8: WWE Studios Smacks Down Traditional Mobile App Games

10: Philips Sparks Deep Engagement With Playful Mobile Videos

12: Moving at the Speed of Mobile

13: Chico’s Updates Its Survey Style Through Mobile

15: Is the Next Mobile Trend Already at Hand?

16: The Gift of Mobile: Consumers Will Buy From Just About Anywhere

17: Is Mobile More Than a Shiny New Toy? [Infographic]

There’s no ignoring mobile and the marketing opportunities it’s creating. With 58% of all adult consumers owning a smartphone as of last January (according to Pew Research), it’s not such a stretch to assume that those users are open to brand interactions in that channel. In fact, according to a study by Online Publishers Association/Frank N. Magid Associates, 63% of consumers who responded access the Internet via their smartphones, 62% check email, 42% download and use apps, and 15% make purchases.

Mobile now has a proven track record for increasing ROI and engagement in several areas, including CPG sales and email opens. However, there’s still room for growth.

Consumers aren’t interested in mobile telemarketing. They’re interested in integrated mobile experiences, zippy load times, and responsive design. We discuss all of this and more—as well as highlight several especially mobile-savvy companies—in this eBook dedicated to addressing the shifting landscape of mobile marketing. -Perry SImpson

Classic mass marketers at consumer packaged goods companies who have heretofore

dabbled in digital targeting methods are discovering there’s mass in mobile. A study released today by mobile analytics company NinthDecimal reports that 70% of consumers in 2014’s third quarter bought new packaged goods products after being served mobile ads.

“Mobile has finally become a sophisticated platform for CPG companies,” says NinthDecimal President David Staas. “They now have sufficient richness of data in the mobile platform. They can create audiences based on so many signals, including purchase behavior.”

NinthDecimal’s study, which called upon audience data from a billion mobile devices reached through its platform, as well as a survey of 1,202 mobile users, found that mobile ads had a profound effect on building store traffic in grocery, drug, and mass channels. Consumers exposed to mobile ads for CPG products showed

a 75% increase in store visits over a control group of similar segments, and a 96% lift over the general population. That mobile ad effect truly took wing over the past year. A similar comparison done by NinthDecimal in 2013 showed a mere 29% rise in traffic from mobile ad watchers.

Albertsons, which had dropped its customer loyalty program, is now showing signs of resurrecting it, and perhaps for good reason. Mobile connections with supermarket shoppers take place largely via their loyalty club apps. Some 57% of consumers charted by NinthDecimal in Q3 2014 had store apps on their devices, compared to 30% with CPG brand apps and 26% with digital coupon apps. The study uncovered a 16% increase in downloads of store apps in the quarter versus the previous year.

Interestingly, store apps are more popular among men, even though women have long been identified by grocery chains as their most profitable customers. Fifty-seven percent of store app users are male,

and a like percentage are millennials (18-33). More than two thirds of them are urban dwellers, while just under a quarter are suburbanites.

CPG marketers have plenty of room for improvement in their digital outreach. NinthDecimal’s consumer survey found that more than half of them are displeased with having to scan mobile devices at checkout to redeem offers. Yet more than a third of them expressed willingness to connect in-store, saying they’d like to be recognized and receive offers upon entering.

“You’re going to be more successful with any new technology if the technology adapts to consumers,” Staas observes. “If you make them scan at checkout, for instance, you’re removing a lot of the benefit.”

It comes down to an old mass marketing saw: Give the people what they want. “You can change shoppers’ behaviors in-store with digital methods if it makes things simpler for them,” Staas says. “QR codes never got a lot of adoption in stores, because it was too complicated to read them. But what if you used beacons to let people know what the average wait time was at checkout?”

The gross numbers on mobile connectivity at retail are becoming “mass” enough for lots of CPG stalwarts to take notice. Sixty-nine percent of consumers saved coupons to their devices during last year’s third quarter and 59% used them to make their shopping lists. Mondelez, Pepsi, Quaker, and other leading packaged goods companies are steadily increasing their profiles in the mobile channel.

“CPG is one of the fastest growing segments of mobile advertising,” Staas says. “The value proposition has changed for them with mobile.”

70 Percent of Consumers Buy CPG Products After Seeing Mobile AdsDigital targeting becomes a must for mass marketers. More than 50% of consumers make shopping lists and download coupons to their mobile devices. By Al Urbanski

Mobile devices not only hinder human interaction and leave users susceptible to data/

privacy breaches, but they’re also the culprit behind declining click rates and rising open rates, according to a recent report.

The “Q3 2014 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks” report from Epsilon shows that open rates are up 6.5% over Q3 2013 while click rates took a modest 0.5% hit, both of which are likely due to the increase in mobile usage.

“As consumers rely more heavily on mobile devices and engage frequently with email in this format, we are continuing to see open rates increase coupled with a decline in click rates,” says Judy Loschen, VP of digital analytics at Epsilon. “Mobile devices make it easy for consumers to read their messages on-the-go, yet they’re less likely to

click and purchase due to the mobile experience. This requires marketers to get smarter and more targeted with their communications and their digital strategy.”

The report also analyzes perform-ance trends by industry and message type—in this case, business as usual trends (BAU)—compiled from 8.7 billion emails across approximately 140 clients. Some highlights include:

• Open rates increased slightly from 30.8% in Q2 2014 to 31.5% in Q3; they’re now up 6.5% over Q3 2013.

• Click rates declined modestly from 4.5% in Q3 2013 to 4% Q3 2014.

• Non-bounce rates remained steady at 96%.

Findings from Epsilon’s triggered email metrics—compiled from approximately

340 million triggered emails across multiple industries—include:

• Triggered messages accounted for 3.9% of total email volume.

• Non-bounce rates were only 2.8% lower than BAU.

• Triggered open rates were 76.7% higher than BAU in Q3 2014, an uptick over the Q3 mark of 68.6% over BAU.

• Triggered click rates were 151.9% higher than BAU, which is slightly lower than the 156.1% higher in Q3 2013.

“With triggered messages outper-forming business-as-usual messages across a variety of key metrics,” says Loschen, “it’s important for marketers to leverage insights to deliver relevant messaging to the individual and drive brand and business results.”

Mobile Responsible for Rise in Email Open RatesBut a new study says that an increased use in mobile devices has also led to a slight decline in click rates. By Andrew Corselli

Tlelemarketing, like all forms of marketing, has its pros and cons for marketers—and for

consumers. According to a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by Wakefield Research for Five9, the trepidation some consumers have with telemarketing in general is spilling over to mobile as mobile adoption, and telemarketing to customers’ mobile phones, grows. In fact, 84% of consumers polled who have received a telemarketing call to their mobile phone say they felt like hanging up. No surprise there.

What might be surprising is what some Americans surveyed are willing to give up for a month if during that time no telemarketer called their mobile phones. Nearly a third of those polled (31%) would part with alcohol, 21% would give up coffee, 20% would go without chocolate, and 13% would abstain from sex. Drastic. A mere 4% say they would give up Internet for a month to avoid a call from a telemarketer on their mobile phone.

Among those surveyed, 63% say they’ve received telemarketing calls on weekends, 55% have received multiple calls from the same telemarketer in one day, and 41% have gotten telemarketing calls after 9 p.m. Nearly 52% of consumers polled have received telemarketing calls on their mobile phone.

When asked whether it would be worse to receive a telemarketing call or an email from work after 9 p.m., 81% of respondents say the former would be worse; 19% say the latter.

This feeling of dread carries over to telemarketing calls via mobile. Respondents who have received telemarketing calls via their mobile phone felt like taking some fairly harsh actions, according to the survey. The top reaction by far: As noted above, 84% of respondents say they wanted to hang up on the caller; nearly 38% say they felt like yelling at the telemarketer; and 37% say they felt like reporting the company calling to the FTC. A few respondents had a more emotional

reaction. Nearly 12% say they felt like blasting the company on social media, and 9% say they wanted to throw the phone across the room.

Although the survey didn’t ask whether any of the respondents carried out those inclinations, I’m guessing that at least a few couldn’t resist hanging up in frustration or sounding off via social. As for throwing their phones—I doubt it. Rare would be the mobile phone owner—you know, the people who keep their smartphones within arm’s reach 24/7—who would risk damaging their phone over something as innocuous as a telemarketing call.

The more important consideration is whether your company is one that’s irking consumers with unwanted calls to their mobile phones. As is said often these days, the personal nature of mobile brings with it new rules of engagement. (Opt-in, anyone?) Be sure that you’re following them or your customers may be the ones hanging up on you.

Telemarketing Is Going Mobile—But Customers Aren’t Along for the RideAmericans surveyed are willing to give up alcohol, chocolate, coffee, or sex for a month rather than get a call from a telemarketer on their mobile phone. By Ginger Conlon

Athird of consumers surveyed by mobile solutions provider Mobiquity complained that

retailers’ websites took too long to load on their mobile devices, that once loaded they couldn’t use apps to redeem loyalty points, and the ability to pay via phone was a rare experience. More than half of 1,000 shoppers polled by Research Now said that, when it came to mobile, retailers barely met expectations—essentially a grade of C-Minus.

“Here you have Amazon offering free two-hour delivery via an app. That’s so amazing. Amazon, at every moment, exceeds expectations,” says Eric Karofsky, who heads up retail solutions at Mobiquity. “Then we go into a store with our devices and we’re frustrated. There’s a big gap

between people’s expectations and the reality.”

Forty-four percent of people believe they should be able to redeem loyalty points on smartphones, 33% feel entitled to pay with the devices, and 39% feel websites and apps should have the same look and feel across Web, mobile, and in-store channels. But retailers fall down hardest in the area of cross-channel integration, according to customers, only 22% of whom said they were satisfied with advances made in that area.

Karofsky doesn’t cut retailers any slack due to the rapid advancement of mobile as a force in commerce. He is of the opinion that they should be acting like entrepreneurs who should identify important customer segments and behaviors and seize on

them immediately.“It’s all about context and

understanding the users’ needs. They’re missing a huge opportunity,” says Karofsky. “If someone is shopping on a PC, it’s hard to know what she’s looking for. But if I’m standing inside a store with my phone in my hand checking out a new television set, you can geo-locate me and you have a pretty good chance of knowing what I’m shopping for and how to approach me.”

A lack of training for store personnel and an aversion to exploring new in-store technology is also costing retailers money. One Mobiquity client—jewelry marketer Alex and Ani—equipped the “Bangle Bartenders” in its retail stores with hand-held devices that let customers make purchases in-aisle with their iPhones and avoid checkout lines altogether.

“Large retailers can use kiosks integrated with their POS systems that give shoppers a way to line-bust. Retailers need to start testing things out,” Karofsky says. “They need to understand what their loyal customers want and start taking action on it.”

Retailers also need to designate people within their organizations to tune into what’s going on in mobile and make sure store personnel is trained to be current with the evolving habits of customers. “Apple Pay came out and we went to stores to try to use it, and the reaction from some store associates was, ‘What’s Apple Pay?’” Karofsky says.

Mobile payment systems, meanwhile, are gaining rapid adoption on the part of consumers. Some 38% of them always use a mobile device to complement or complete a purchase, according to the survey.

Consumers Give Marketers a C-Minus in MobileMore than half said retailers aren’t so smart about smartphones, saying they barely meet ex-pectations. Load times are high and payment technology is scarce, they gripe. By Al Urbanski

Driving mobile conversions is often a fight that marketers fail to win. But production company

WWE Studios, a division of wrestling entertainment brand WWE, came out a champion by generating both sales and engagement through its first-ever mobile Web game.

WWE Studios launched the game, “Scooby-Doo! and the Race to WrestleMania,” in March 2014 to coincide with the debut of its new DVD Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery. Although Scooby-Doo and John Cena may not appear to be a likely duo, Julie Tustin, VP of marketing for WWE Studios, says that the cartoon

character and wrestling superstar both appeal to families and adults who remember Scooby-Doo from their childhood days. Like these television figures, mobile gaming also resonates with children and adults, alike. To put it into perspective, Rob Grossberg, CEO of mobile Web game developer TreSensa Inc, claims that one third of the time consumers spend on their smart devices is dedicated to gaming.

“It’s not just teenage boys playing games anymore,” Grossberg says. “It’s everyone.”

So WWE Studios decided to partner with Warner Bros. Animation and TreSensa to produce a mobile Web

game of its own that would drive brand engagement and DVD sales.

Here’s how the game works: Scooby-Doo and the gang are driving to WrestleMania when a ghostly bear starts chasing them. To prevent the monster from catching Scooby and his pals, players must steer the famous Mystery Machine away from road obstacles and collect clues that will help them advance to the next level. Each level features different scenes and wrestlers from the movie. Once players advance or lose the game, they can click to watch the trailer for the Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery movie.

WWE Studios Smacks Down Traditional Mobile App GamesA mobile Web game is the production company’s new superstar in terms of engagement and conversion. By Elyse Dupré

Players can also click a link on the end screen of the mobile game (or at the top of the desktop version) that takes them to an Amazon page where they can buy the film.

Unlike traditional app games that provide consumers with “snackable” forms of entertainment during their morning commutes or coffee pickups, mobile Web games engage users for longer periods of time, Grossberg explains. The games, which can be played on any mobile device or desktop, integrate marketing messages right into the user experience and across multiple levels to prolong engagement. And because they’re built using HTML5, Grossberg adds, it’s easy for marketers to update the content and share it across various platforms. Plus, brands can enable consumers to purchase right in the game. But the real benefit, according to WWE’s Tustin, is the seamless experience it

creates for users.“For us, [the game] really

accomplished the goal of being able to tap and play and have a much longer engagement with the property.... There was [also] an ability to purchase the DVD off of the game. That drives physical purchases and that’s not something that you can do with a downloadable game,” Tustin says.

To lure people into playing the game, WWE Studios promoted it on its website and social media channels. The production company also encouraged people to try the game at WrestleMania—or what Tustin refers to as the brand’s Super Bowl—which occurred two weeks after the game’s launch. WWE Studios offered tablets to fans waiting in line for wrestlers’ autographs, she says, to keep them engaged and get them to play the game on their own devices. Fans could also share the link to the game on social media, and Warner Bros.

promoted the game on its respective channels, as well.

The game locked in some heavy results for WWE Studios. “Scooby-Doo! and the Race to WrestleMania” garnered more than one million plays and WWE Studios sold out of the DVD on Amazon within the first week. Although Tustin admits that she can’t attribute the movie purchases to the mobile game with 100% certainty, the number of plays and distribution of the game make her confident in its performance.

Of course, the process wasn’t all fun and games. WWE Studios had to ensure that the game aligned with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)—a regulation that prohibits companies from collecting data from children under 13 years old without parental consent. To make certain that the company was compliant, WWE Studios created a “buffer page” that notified players when they were leaving the game to make a purchase on Amazon.

“That was definitely a priority of ours and continues to be in all things that we do as a film studio,” Tustin says.

Because of the game’s success, WWE Studios is in discussions with Warner Bros. Animation to launch another mobile Web game called “The Flintstones Stone Age Smackdown,” Tustin says.

As for marketers looking to tap into the mobile Web game arena, Tustin recommends three things: Plan out the timing of the game’s development and launch, have a clear call-to-action, and make sure that the user experience is a smooth one.

“It’s important for marketers to make engagement for fans as seamless as possible and as easy as possible by rethinking engagement in terms of game play over an advertisement,” she says. “You’re going to find that your numbers in the end are going to be more robust.”

For many marketers today, video is where it’s at. In fact, analysts for technology company Brainshark

say that by 2017, 74% of all Web traffic will come from video plays.

In a recent campaign, marketers at tech giant Philips determined that mobile videos could be the switch to spark—and keep—the attention of one perennially hard-to-reach demographic: on-the-go young men.

“Our biggest challenge was reaching out to young guys,” says Lenze Boonstra, global marketing leader of personal care for Philips, as he described the company’s goals to market a new electric shaver to young men in Europe. Boonstra says that the typical Philips customers for this type of product are men ranging from 35 to 45 years old, who only buy a new electric razor about every five

to seven years.“So, of course, we knew that

we had to add new consumers to our business,” Boonstra explains. “Specifically, we needed young men into this category, who can be hard to reach. This was a new domain for us.”

Boonstra says the first step to attract these 20- to 25-year-old men in Europe was to recognize how the personal shaving styles of more youthful guys can be strikingly different than those of older men. “When you look around you, you’ll see more and more different beard styles. Even as recently as five years ago, it was not normal to have stubble or a full beard in the corporate office. Now, that’s completely changing.”

Realizing that young men often express themselves with different grooming styles, Philips’ marketers

had to determine the best way to engage this youthful customer base. “We wanted to do what we call a ‘deep dive’ into this demographic of young men and their daily lives,” Boonstra says. “The first thing was to get on the radar of these guys, and Philips grooming tools weren’t on their radar. So, we needed to create a campaign in which we could capture this category. And what we realized is that these guys consume media; they consume online videos. And in the online environment, engagement is critical.”

With that in mind, Boonstra says, marketers at Philips worked to create a campaign that was engaging, digital, and mobile. “We asked ourselves, ‘Where are these guys?’ So we created a focused media strategy rooted in YouTube. We also

Philips Sparks Deep Engagement With Playful Mobile VideosTech-savvy shoppers craft the storylines in a recent mobile campaign from the consumer electronics giant. By Natasha Smith

understood that mobile is extremely important. Why? Because these guys are mobile.” In fact, Precision Market Insights from Verizon reports that 76% of males 18 to 34 years old make purchases on their mobile devices.

So, with tools from Rapt Media, Boonstra and the marketing team built a playful interactive campaign centered on mobile videos to promote the Philips Click & Style electric razor. Entitled “Designed to Play,” the online campaign allowed viewers to create their own storylines based on their personal styles and grooming.

Young men across Europe who engage with the videos simply select the beard style of the main character to unlock varying plots. The idea is to uncover what happened the previous night. So a clean-shaven man, for example, might have spent the night chatting with a beautiful woman, while a young man with a full beard

may have had an adventurous night with friends. The fun part: The tech-savvy viewer is in control of every twist and turn in the plot, all while the website loads product information and styling tips outside of the video player. Engaging. Digital. Mobile.

“At the moment we have six initial stories, and they generate more than 1,000 combinations,” says Danielle Rua, marketing communications manager of male grooming at Philips. “So, it’s quite a few. Last year we began with 625 combinations. But we added new storylines to make them extra interesting and super engaging and personal.”

Boonstra says that Philips’ campaign has far exceeded its goals to boost brand consideration and sales among young men in Europe. “We had 60% more sales than we originally planned,” he says. Boonstra says that when delving deeper into

the metrics, marketers at Philips discovered extensive engagement with the mobile video campaign. “These guys were experimenting in our environment. They spent almost four minutes with each video, which is extremely high. It’s normally one minute and 17 seconds for high-quality video. But what was even more stunning was that on mobile it was more than five minutes with the interactive video.”

Results that Boonstra says have prompted the team at Philips to create more storylines and continue to invest in its video content strategy. “The beauty of this campaign is that we have numerous storylines and infinite engagement,” he says. “So, the lesson that we learned is to give the user a fun, optimized journey. The possibilities with this mobile campaign—and with our audience—are endless.”

Last month, the Chinese city of Chongqing began testing smartphone lanes—or designated

sidewalks for pedestrians who are too enthralled in messaging to watch where they’re going—an initiative that makes more sense as mobile technology continues its rapid ascension. In January 2014, 58% of American adults owned a smartphone, while 42% owned a tablet, according to the Pew Research Center. Now—less than three months away from 2015—those figures are surely even higher, and as mobile penetration increases, so too our obsession with second screens continues to rise.

Mobile, no doubt, has tremendous effects on mobile users’ daily lives and marketers’ campaigns and strategies. Some of these changes are visibly positive, such as the rise of the social Web. However, mobile’s increasing influence has also negatively influenced society, such as—ironically—with the

rise of the social Web.Here, Jeff Anulewicz, executive

director of strategy at consumer engagement agency Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, chats about some of the ways mobile has transformed our lives, our businesses, and where the mobile movement will take marketers in the future.

Tell me. How is this second-screen obsession affecting marketers?As mobile technology continues to change, consumers’ usage continues to evolve. The greatest challenge marketers have is that things are moving so quickly; it’s sometimes difficult to foresee what is going to stick and what will end up being a fad. The focus should be on understanding the needs of the end consumer along their path to purchase and leverage technology—both established and cutting edge—to help them meet those needs. In

the end, it requires marketers to focus on following their consumers rather than chasing technology.

So, what are some of the unexpected ways that the mobile’s ever-increasing use has affected daily life?The sheer ubiquity of mobile devices in our everyday lives is just amazing. And with the rapid growth, in terms of network and chipset speeds coupled with storage capacity, the role that mobile devices play changes on a regular basis. I think the biggest unexpected change is how small it has made the world. You’re within a finger tap of reaching out and connecting with someone, with taking a picture of the world around us, and immediately sharing it or watching a video that was shot just a few moments ago on the other side of the world. Would you describe that as positive or negative change?Change will always have both positive effects and unintended negative consequences, for all that mobile technology has done to shrink the world and bring us closer together. At the same time it creates this heads-down experience that pulls us apart socially, preventing some from living in the real world. The best uses of mobile technology are utilitarian—it adds value to our everyday lives in small, meaningful ways—while still allowing us to have our heads up and interact with the real world.

Where do you see mobile technology in five years?In five years, mobile technology will be much more ingrained into our daily lives—so seamless, integrated into everything we do [and connected to] every object we interact with-that it will be impossible to imagine decoupling it.

Moving at the Speed of MobileThe second screen is changing everything. But one skillful marketer says it may not all be for the better. By Perry Simpson

Trends come and go, but direct customer feedback never goes out of style. Fashion

brand Chico’s FAS Inc—better known as Chico’s and as the parent company of Boston Proper, Soma, and White House Black Market—reinforced this lesson when customer community feedback convinced the retailer to make its survey more mobile friendly.

Ivy Boehm, senior director of consumer insights for Chico’s, and Carolyn Szczurek, the company’s manger of consumer insights, discussed the fashion retailer’s mobile makeover at the 2014 Vision Critical Summit in New York last week.

What Chico’s knew:Chico’s has a clear idea of who its customers are. A series of segmentation studies, customer statistics, and traditional research has helped the brand identify women 40 to 50+ years old as its target audience. This demographic is also high-end, loves to travel, and keeps up with trends—including technology—according to Boehm.

What Chico’s didn’t know:Of course, as with any retailer, Chico’s had gaps in its customer insight, and Boehm had a hypothesis as to why: If Chico’s didn’t know something about its customers, there’s a chance that its customers didn’t know it about

themselves either.Take, for instance, the in-store

study Chico’s conducted last year. To better understand shopper flow and store layout influence, Chico’s interviewed customers as they exited its stores and placed cameras inside of its stores. When the company asked customers what they thought of the store, they responded with adjectives like “elegant” and “sophisticated,” Boehm said. However, the video footage told an entirely different story. While shoppers moved methodically through larger stores, they beelined through smaller, awkwardly laid out sections of the store. This tighter layout rushed customers out of the

Chico’s Updates Its Survey Style Through MobileFeedback from customer communities revealed that it was time for a new look. By Elyse Dupré

stores, Boehm said, and ultimately, prompted customers to spend half of the time in smaller areas and purchase only half of the number of items as they did in more spacious ones.

“She couldn’t tell us that because she didn’t know that,” Boehm explained.

What Chico’s wasn’t aware that it didn’t knowStill, there were some insights that even Chico’s didn’t know it was missing. Although the retailer knew that mobile engagement was growing rapidly, it didn’t know how much its older audience was interacting with mobile.

Chico’s noticed this mobile reliance after asking customers to answer survey questions on a format that wasn’t mobile friendly. The brand received complaints from customers, Boehm said, because participants couldn’t complete the surveys on their mobile devices.

To better gauge customers’ dependence on mobile, Chico’s conducted a bit of research via Vision Critical’s customer intelligence platform. According to the data, 23% of its research community members use mobile devices—nearly doubling from 12% in 2012. The number of community members using tablets also surged from 6% in 2012 to 12% in 2014.

“As researchers, we need to get on the train,” Boehm said.

A collection of communitiesAfter seeing these results, Chico’s decided to use Vision Critical’s platform again to take a deeper dive into its customer panel and community members’ mobile usage.

“This is our year of learning,” Boehm said. “This is our year of testing.”

So Chico’s kicked off its “slim and trim year,” as Boehm called it, by reaching out to its four customer panels and communities. Three of these communities have 15,000 members and the newest panel has about 5,000. To build its communities, Chico’s taps into its loyalty club and database members.

When inviting members to participate in a study, the company may segment its members by age, region, and spend to ensure that it has a wide representation, Boehm explained. Any time a customer participates in a panel, they’re entered to win a $100 gift card. Panel members can also receive a coupon for longer surveys; however, Boehm said that Chico’s is moving away from this tactic. And to avoid burnout, Chico’s spaces out the number of studies customers can participate in. So for example, if a customer participates in a fall shoe study, the brand won’t ask that customer to participate in a winter shoe study, Szczurek said.

Finding the right fitCustomers’ reliance on mobile was underscored when Chico’s conducted a study in which panelists were asked to share a photo of themselves wearing a certain style of pants. Most of the participants took photos and attempted to upload the pictures via their mobile devices.

“We need[ed] to catch up with her,” Szczurek said.

This insight—paired with additional research and analyses of what other brands were doing—convinced Chico’s that the company had to create a more mobile-friendly experience. So, it started decreasing the number of survey questions that it asked panelists across all of its platforms. In fact, Szczurek said that the company cut its survey questions down from at least 25 to 10 or less.

In addition to adjusting the number of questions, Chico’s changed how it asked questions. The fashion retailer started spacing out questions over more pages and included a specification box next to questions that marketers wanted customers to elaborate on.

“It’s taking the fish and making it an easier sushi roll,” Szczurek said about the brand’s more succinct strategy.

And because Chico’s wants to enable desktop or mobile participation

for both its quantitative and qualitative studies, the company expanded its forum capabilities. When asked to upload a photo, participants can now share it through email—a capability that works on both channels.

ResultsSince beginning its mobile modifications, Chico’s has seen its White House Black Market panelists, who tend to skew a bit younger, come to mobile faster and more frequently. Additionally, mobile engagement for the Chico’s brand has doubled.

Chico’s is able to keep its communities engaged through par-ticipation reminder messages and by sending quarterly newsletters to panelists that tells them where customer feedback made an impact.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even trust the data [from] really long surveys anymore,” Boehm said explaining that customer focus tends to drop off after too many questions.

In addition to driving engagement, Chico’s has been able to learn how to better address different customer segments. For example, Boston Proper customers are generally jet setters who are business-oriented and like snappy bits of content. After creating a community for the Boston Proper audience this year, Chico’s discovered that its members dropped off if the company began a survey with an open-ended question.

The brand has continued to discover customer insights about specific products. After asking customers to upload pictures of themselves wearing a pair of pants featuring a new length, Chico’s discovered that panelists didn’t know which shoes to pair with this style. This informed the marketing team that they had to feature the pants in a head-to-toe outfit in their creative, Boehm explained.

Looks like mobile and customer feedback will continue to be main elements in Chico’s community collection for seasons to come.

Still wrestling with responsive design of your websites and wondering where you’re going to

find the budget to conquer the mobile challenge? Unfortunately, there’s no rest for the weary. According to a new report from eMarketer on the Internet of Things (IoT), the next big digital wave is rolling in and getting ready to break.

The researcher’s just-released report, “The Internet of Things, Net Neutrality, and Why Marketers Need to Care,” shows a fairly wide variance in size forecasts for the phenomenon. International Data Corporation

currently pegs the worldwide market for IoT solutions at $1.9 trillion and predicts it will swell to $7.1 trillion within six years. On the other end of the prognostication spectrum, Markets and Markets values IoT at slightly over $1 trillion today, growing to $1.4 trillion in 2020.

The early money will flow to the tech solutions providers who will be connecting all the unconnected machines, vehicles, gadgets, and systems. But calling IoT a “relatively untapped market with seemingly limitless potential,” eMarketer cautions marketers to remain on high

alert. From a marketing perspective, it’s perhaps best to take one’s eye off the tech money and focus on how many non-PC and mobile objects will be connected in 2020—some 26 billion by Gartner’s estimate.

“There’s no doubt the world is moving toward a more connected future, but the speed with which consumers and enterprises make the transition to the Internet of Things is still to be determined,” says Noah Elkin, executive editor at eMarketer. “The timing of adoption will determine just how much money and how many things are involved.”

Is the Next Mobile Trend Already at Hand? Researchers quibble about just how big the Internet of Things is going to be, but a new report says it’s going to be huge and that marketers need to pay heed. By Al Urbanski

With Black Friday just a week away, most marketers are in full holiday mode. And some

have been since before Halloween. But earlier might not always be better, according to a holiday shopping survey of 315 consumers ages 18 to 44 conducted by Demandware. In fact, location may present just as much of an opportunity as timing.

Consider these survey stats: Only

9% of holiday shoppers polled start buying three months in advance; the bulk of consumers (36%) start their holiday shopping one to three weeks in advance, followed by those who kick off their shopping one to two months ahead off the holiday (29%). And there are plenty of procrastinators. Twelve percent of consumers polled start their shopping the week of the holiday, and 4% hold out until the day

before the holiday.These stats may be no surprise

to marketers obsessed (and rightly so) with capturing their share of consumers’ holiday spending. What might be is where shoppers are making their purchases. And I don’t just mean which channels. But let’s start there. Of the shoppers polled, 70% plan to shop via digital channels and 30% plan to shop in a store. I’m certain the latter group includes all the procrastinators…

Those in the former group are doing a fair share of shopping via their smartphones, considering the various locations they’re making their purchases from. Half of the consumers polled have made a purchase in the bathroom (really?!) or in their car. Lest you think that’s because many of those polled are millennials, I’ll just say that I fall into that latter group and I’m 51. I’ve purchased grocercies, music, and movie tickets while in the car (and, yes, I was a passenger not a driver at the time). The other 50% of respondents are either amazing multitaskers, or perhaps rude or just bored, considering that they’ve made purchases during a meeting, while on a date or attending a family event like their child’s soccer game, or when at the gym.

Indeed, 45% of millennials polled do research for future purchases while at work—hopefully, during their break; though more likely during a meeting according to the survey findings.

Not surprisingly, consumers polled want their digitally purchased good shipped stat. Two-day shipping was “fine” with 37% of respondents; 30% would like same-day delivery, but 18% don’t think it will ever be an option. An ever-hopeful 14% are holding out for drones.

The Gift of Mobile: Consumers Will Buy From Just About AnywhereYes, shoppers use their smartphones to make purchases everywhere from their car to meetings to the bathroom. By Ginger Conlon