BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Customers Talk Back To Brands And Retailers On Mobile

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The Rise Of Social Commerce Engagement On Mobile (Econsultancy)
Looking at content generation across all Reevoo’s retailer and brand clients, 25% of consumers receiving post-purchase requests to provide a review or answer a question via email choose to respond from their mobile device. In September 2011, the percentage of reviews submitted via mobile devices was just 8%. Have a look at the chart below, over the past 18 months, that’s a growth of 212%. The percentage of reviews submitted and questions answered via mobile is only going to get larger and larger. So what does that mean if you are a retailer, brand, car, travel or financial service company reading this? To engage and build a relationship with your customers, driving sales and long term customer loyalty, you need to priorities creating a seamless experience across all devices. Read >

In 2013 There Will Be More Mobile Devices Than People (Forbes)
Mobile devices will soon outnumber us— is the Matrix far behind? According to projections found in a new Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, this year there will be more mobile devices than people. Additionally:

40% of respondents prefer doing business on the iPhone, iPad, or iPad mini
Of the respondents, women are 8% more likely than men to share their personal mobile phone number
Texting is on the rise for small businesses, as 58% of respondents text for business at least once a month
Only 33% of survey respondents still listen to voicemail from business contacts
Only 18% of respondents will listen to voicemail from an unknown number
20% of men who responded said they would fire a full-time employee to cut their monthly cell phone bill by 50%

And more than one in three business owners (36%) use three or more mobile devices to run their business. Read >

Dish Bids $25.5 Billion For Sprint (TNW)
Dish has made a move to takeover Sprint after the satellite provider tabled a bid of $25.5 billion for America’s third largest mobile operator, according to an announcement made this morning. The bid is reportedly a 13% premium above that of Japan’s Softbank, with Dish said to be offering to buy every share for $4.76 in cash and an estimated $2.24 in Dish stock each. Softbank, on the other hand, agreed to a 70% stake for $20.1 billion. Chairman Charles Ergen, who spoke openly of the company’s desire to acquire an operator during AllThingsD’s Dive Into Media event earlier this year: "We think we’ve made an offer that’s much more compelling than the Softbank transaction." Read >

Despite Increased Use In Mobile Payments, Banking Dodged (Mobile Payments Today)
A new report from Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in partnership with InMobi and Viggle, has found that mobile users are increasingly using mobile devices to manage their money. The report shows that 58% of consumers regularly use their bank's mobile app and 50% use their bank's mobile-optimized website. Other results of the survey include:

Nearly half of respondents (46%) paid bill through mobile devices
More than a third (34%) paid for real-world goods/services using a pre-paid card on a phone
Digital products like music or apps were paid for on mobile device by 45% of respondents

The study found that 52% of those surveyed said a concrete guarantee of security — even if they lost their phones — would be a requirement for them to shift more financial activities to a mobile device. Read >

Mobile CRM Apps To Grow 500% By 2014 (TechCrunch)
Gartner Research is reporting mobile Customer Relationship Management (CRM) apps will grow 500% by 2014, another sign of a shifting market that has more to do with work getting done in the cloud more so than from a server behind the firewall. This is buttressed by Gartner’s news that SaaS providers will represent more than 50% of profits in the CRM market by 2016, and the steep decline in PC shipments that Gartner reported. Gartner reports there are 200 apps now in app stores. By 2014, there will be 1,200. Mobile apps will come in a variety of flavors, attacking specific aspects of the CRM experience. Gartner, citing a CIO survey of more than 2,000 people, predicts that vendors will need to build mobile apps around their specific strengths. Read >

Cars Connected: GM Committed To Enabling LTE In Vehicles (MetraTech)
General Motors is committed to embedding LTE in its vehicles, and we can safely assume that other automakers are set to follow suit. AT&T is the first Communications Service Provision (CSP) partner to be named within the new program. A couple of things seem apparent already.

Carriers will morph from being “self-contained” comms players into entities that are participants in some kind of giant, cross vertical mash-up offering. They’ll need to get outside of their traditional frame of reference to get it right.
In the future automotive industry, communications and connectivity might be as important an enabler of success as the nature of the car itself. Well, perhaps not quite as important, but it will count for a lot.

LTE-based value propositions in the automotive industry, most of which probably have yet to be identified, make telecom providers mission-critical partners for car makers who need to woo application developers away from (currently) more widespread device platforms and deliver real appeal to their prospective customers. Read >

How To Make Your Next Marketing Promotion Mobile-Friendly (Fast Company)
Your customers are mobile. Your online promotions, such as sweepstakes, giveaways and contests must be too. It’s not too late to embrace change and do mobile well. As you start seriously considering how your promotions will look and feel on mobile devices, follow these guidelines:

Make your promotion user-friendly
Remove barriers to entry
Simplify participation
Beware silver bullets
Optimize seamlessly

Not having a mobile strategy is no longer an option. If you fail to embrace this change, it will embrace you. Your consumers will happily move on to a mobile-savvy competitor. Read >

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