68% of people use their smartphone for email, 26% for shopping

The importance of optimising email campaigns for mobile has again been underlined by a new survey which shows that checking emails is among the most common activity for UK smartphone owners.

The Nielsen Mobile Consumer survey found that 68% of UK smartphone owners used their device to check email in the past 30 days. Only text messaging was more popular (92%), while using the mobile web (66%) and social networking (63%) achieved similar results.

US smartphone owners exhibit similar behaviours, with 86% using their devices for text, 82% for the mobile web, 75% for email and 63% for social networking.

How to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Mobile Facebook Nearby Users

A recent global update to Facebook’s Nearby mobile check-in made it possible for iOS and Android users to discover business information and reviews they may previously have asked a search engine.

Remember when Google+ pulled their existing local listings and paired them with Zagat reviews, in order to share social endorsements, maps and business info with people on the go, giving them an edge for local search? Facebook is now able to offer mobile users the same information within their far more widely adopted network.

The team from Gowalla, acquired by Facebook late in 2011, are responsible for the new Nearby functionality. Here are a few important details for marketers and tips to help you optimize your Page to appear in Nearby results.  

For B2Bs, Mobile Is Key to Unlocking Sales and Loyalty

As Ogilvy & Mather’s director of digital strategy, Jeff Stokvis works closely with the agency’s B2B clients and is a member of Ogilvy’s Mobile@Ogilvy cross-functional working group. Stokvis spoke with eMarketer’s Tobi Elkin for the B2B Perspectives series about the ways mobile is changing how B2B marketers communicate and the untapped business opportunities that mobile offers them.

eMarketer: Is there a low awareness among B2B marketers about the impact that mobile can have on their business? 

Transitional Marketing and the Connected Interface

There is no first, second, or third screen; there are only screens. Regardless of their uniqueness in form factor or function, these connected screens are simply humanized interfaces allowing us to communicate with and experience a digitally optimized world.

While much has been made of defining the distinctions between the various connected interfaces, be they mobile devices, tablets, connected television, etc., what’s been lost in the debates over how best to utilize each distinctly is how best to address the radical shift in digital user experience expectations and screen agnosticism. How do we address this fundamental shift from a technology-centric marketing model to one of experience centricity?

Must-Know Tips to Measure Your Mobile Marketing

As recently reported in Australia's Smart Company, six out of every 10 people on Earth, including children, the elderly and people in developing countries, have a mobile phone. This equates to approximately 6.7 billion mobile devices worldwide. With this kind of penetration, the chance that you'll be conducting some kind of mobile marketing or advertising campaign in the near future is huge. With the help of the Mobile Marketing Association's MMA Primer on Mobile Analytics, let me help guide you through the process of tracking and measuring your mobile marketing and advertising efforts.

First, some definitions.

Mobile Marketing - Getting a Grasp on the Basics

How do you know if mobile marketing is for you? Are you confused by terms such as SMS and an App? What's the difference anyway? What will it cost to get involved?
These are all fantastic questions and the questions many small businesses are asking themselves when it comes to mobile marketing. Just like any marketing endeavor, it's important to be educated so that you can make the right decision for you and your business.

What is mobile marketing?

As it pertains to this article, mobile marketing is marketing on or with a mobile device.

Over 85% of Marketers Plan to Raise Their Mobile Budgets

Over 85 percent of marketers have reported that they plan to increase their mobile advertising budgets in the near future, according to a new study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and MediaVest.

According to the study, 95 percent of marketers are currently using or plan to incorporate mobile advertising into their marketing plans. Study participants reported that brand building, awareness, and customer retention were the most common objectives for their mobile advertising plan.

How mobile wins Millennial travelers

Millennials will have more spending power than any other generation by 2017, and are the fastest growing age segment in travel. Between vacations and business trips, they’re already dreaming of and planning their next voyage. Travel brands will capture these dreamers – and win their bookings and loyalty – via mobile.

Mobile booking wins the Zero Moment of Truth, from anywhere

Powerful Marketing Via Mobile and Web: Use Your Target Audience’s Short Attention Span to Your Advantage

Want to do Powerful Marketing via Mobile and Web? Here’s your target audience summed up in Three Magic Words: Short Attention Span.

Most people don’t read anymore. They skim. You already knew this. But are you applying this knowledge to your marketing efforts every day? Probably not. Instead, when you or your marketing team sets out to build a page of content, you go back to tried and true methods you have been using since high school: You write your Headline or Title (h1 tag), you write your Topic Sentence (or maybe not!), First Paragraph, Second Paragraph, and so on. If you really knock yourself out, you might add an image or a subheading.

Making The Best Out Of Your Mobile eCommerce Application

You would be a really bad player in this racy eCommerce arena if you had paid $200 for a Mobile eCommerce App for your brand and have ended with a crappy app which is worth hardly a $50. This mostly happens with eCommerce business owners who are not that tech savvy about the developmental technical of the Mobile Commerce Application, so the developer could easily get away with it. The most mistakes happen because of the ‘bad choice’ of Mobile Commerce Application developers that you hire to develop your app. In order to kick start your brand right in the Mobile eCommerce App arena, the checkbox indicating your technical knowledge about the mechanics should have a bold tick mark.

4 Initial Steps Toward Effective B2B Mobile Marketing

Technology companies and marketing gurus have been touting mobile as the next big marketing thing for a while now. In fact, hum and hype around mobile marketing have reached a point where corporate marketers can hardly go a day without a new study or webinar invitation suggesting you’re woefully behind the curve if you’re not already well down the road with a “mobile strategy.”

Then again, for every statistic that says mobile devices are today’s happening marketing medium, you needn’t search far to find another which suggests mobile marketing’s momentum might be overstated.

Communicators: Get ready to start a communications mobility audit

A mobility audit is the first of three steps in a strategy to put the right mobile solutions in the hands of the right employees, according to a report The Altimeter Group issued earlier this month.

“It’s likely that most workers inside an organization are toting mobile devices,” the report says. “The question becomes what are the devices and who is using them.” Altimeter suggests a network analysis and determining the numbers and types of devices accessing company data.

Mobility is Making Customer Service Smart

Some aspects of customer service are never going to change – anyone asking for assistance expects to be helped by someone who is knowledgeable, pleasant, presents the answer from the caller’s perspective, and is professional. There are other characteristics that callers prefer in their service provider, but they are not a core requirement. Most of us want to be helped by someone who seems interested and cares, as well as someone who “really gets it.” It’s not easy to do a good job of delivering customer service, and it’s only going to become more challenging as customer expectations become more demanding.

Apps Take up 4 Out of Every 5 Mobile Media Minutes

Do you remember when phones couldn’t do anything but make phone calls? With every passing month, we’re adding more and more functionality to our mobile phones and it’s good for everybody’s business. Games, shopping, directions, news — we can even have our phones nag us when we forget to do something. About the only thing our phones can’t do is transport us to another location. . . someday. .  . someday.
In the meantime, it’s apps that are occupying our mobile minutes. 82% of our media time is spent with these mini-programs and there’s no end in sight.
comScore put together a list of the top apps and I have to say, I was surprised by a few of them. Take a look.

8 Mobile Marketing Strategies for Small Business

Mobile Marketing Should Be Part of Your Marketing Mix
When it comes to mobile marketing, your small business needs to be there or be nowhere for an ever-increasing percentage of the market.

A survey of wireless carriers revealed that over 285 million Americans are mobile subscribers, about 91 percent of the total U.S. population (2010).
Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley analyst, predicts that within the next five years "more users will connect to the Internet over mobile devices than desktop PCs" ( Mary Meeker: Mobile Internet Will Soon Overtake Fixed Internet, Gigaom).
So how do you get into mobile marketing? Here are mobile marketing strategies for your small business:

What's the most important mobile marketing tactic?

Perhaps this doesn't sound like a headline that belongs in Search Engine Guide, but trust me, it is. I was at the Brandhackers Meetup  in New York City on a panel focusing on what marketers need to know about mobile marketing. But what struck me is how much the audience needed to hear the most important idea about mobile marketing, which is that you don't do it in isolation. Your mobile marketing must be integrated with everything else you do for maximum effect, and I shared my opinion on what for most companies is the most effective mobile marketing tactic--search.

Το μέλλον του μάρκετινγκ χωράει στην οθόνη ενός κινητού τηλεφώνου

Στις οθόνες των κινητών τηλεφώνων και των υπολογιστών τύπου tablets βρίσκεται σε σημαντικό βαθμό, σύμφωνα με όλες τις ενδείξεις, το μέλλον του μάρκετινγκ για την τρέχουσα δεκαετία, καθώς τα διάφορα smartphones με λειτουργικό Android και IOS μπορεί να μην υπήρχαν καν πριν από λίγα χρόνια, αλλά πλέον καθορίζουν τον τρόπο με τον οποίο επικοινωνούμε. 
Μάρκετινγκ και διαφήμιση εξατομικεύονται, με βάση τις προτιμήσεις, αλλά και τη γεωγραφική θέση του χρήστη. Το «mobile marketing» (μάρκετινγκ μέσω κινητών συσκευών) είναι εδώ Οι εταιρείες έχουν λάβει το μήνυμα: οι μικρομεσαίες επιχειρήσεις ανά τον κόσμο εκτιμάται ότι θα δαπανήσουν φέτος πάνω από 6,6 δισ. δολάρια για διαφήμιση μέσω κινητών τηλεφώνων και tablets («mobile advertising»), έναντι 3,3 δισ. δολαρίων πέρυσι και 1,6 δισ. το 2010.