During my recent trips across AP I liked to stop for a moment and look around. Try it. Count the number of people around you on their mobile devices. Be it in an airplane. In a train. In the car. Mobile devices have taken over a lot of ‘space’.
Deloitte is calling this trend ‘Smartphone addiction’: “More than one-third of consumers worldwide said they check their phone within five minutes of waking up in the morning, and 20 percent of them check their phone more than 50 times a day. The reliance on smartphones seems likely to increase as more features become available.”
There is no denying though that the importance of mobile devices is not going to decline. What is important now for brands is to embrace this channel and deliver value. Added value.
In the light of these trends, the requirement to deliver a personalized message of value and the growing importance of mobile marketing that matters I am very proud of our leader position in mobile marketing.
Watson Marketing has had a steady progress in various analyst reports in the last 12 months. This one specific report though makes me very happy: the latest Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms.
“Mobile interactions now play a dominant role across customer journeys, with mobile marketing platforms enabling marketing leaders to optimize engagements at any touchpoint. Use this research to find mobile marketing platforms that offer competitive advantage and measurable business value.”
According to Gartner, IBM is the only enterprise marketing cloud platform vendor in the leader position. Given the importance of mobile marketing capabilities to a lot of clients in the AP market, it is a great recognition of IBM’s continuous efforts to improve the Watson Marketing offering.
One of the key capabilities driving this effort is AI. To be more precise: “established artificial intelligence (AI)“.
An AI-powered service like Cognitive Location can mean the difference between a push sent and an action taken. Linking the message delivery to an understanding of where you customers are (e.g. Home vs Office) can drive exceptional value.
You can target customers based on their location:
- Geofencing: a virtual radius around a location that can trigger a message or a logged event when a customer enters, exits, or dwells in a location
- Beacons: Using hyper-local bluetooth beacons, marketers can detect where customers are in specific areas of a location, like an section of a store, a gate of an airport, a concession stand of a sports stadium, and much more.
- Cognitive Location: Personalized geofences that automatically determine customer’s location patters and establish favorite locations like “work” or “home” – all data is kept private on the device
In addition to the great recognition from Gartner, Watson Marketing also just released its 2018 Marketing Benchmark Report.
2 great insights on mobile marketing I have taken away from it:
- brands (and consumers) embrace mobile messaging globally
- mobile app users engage more with mobile inbox messages
Some of my great colleagues in Watson Marketing took the time to discuss some of the key topics for mobile marketing in a great webinar. Listen to it here.
They touch on:
- How to design personalized “transactional” mobile marketing campaigns to exceed customer expectations
- Learning from illustrations and examples across industries
- Using industry benchmarks for mobile marketing (NEW!) to set targets and improve performance
- Bringing mobile marketing to your customers with Watson Campaign Automation
To finish this topic on another high note, allow me to quote Gartner again: “References noted that IBM’s investments in imbuing Watson Marketing with AI-based capabilities keep them interested in the company’s mobile marketing roadmap.”
This type of outspoken positive feedback from references that IBM’s roadmap on AI-empowered capabilities hits the nerve of where the market is going is one of the best parts of the report.
Last, but not least – I am very happy to write this update on a great day for IBM – to quote Panos Mourdoukoutas at FORBES on the progress of IBM’s market position: “IBM Is Rising Again“.
Yes we are!
