Retail and eCommerce Mobile Marketing Trends That Keep on Performing

Is the hype around mobile usage just that? Or are there sound reasons to hitch our wagon to this galloping juggernaut and hold on with both hands? Also, how do these relate to retail and eCommerce?

Great questions and we’re going to answer them below.

Mobile Marketing Trends of 2022

Before making smart decisions for your business, you want to know the facts. Here are some statistics to get us started in the right direction. 

• This year mobile commerce sales in the U.S. are expected to exceed $432 billion. (Forbes 2022)
• Smartphone users account for the majority of retail website visits (71%) and orders (56%) in the United States. (Finances Online)
• 81% of shoppers research their products online before making a purchase. (SalesLion)
• Mobile apps enjoy 3x higher conversions than mobile sites. (Medium)
• Social commerce statistics in America show that social commerce sales increased to $36.62 billion in 2021. (Earthweb)
• 65% of consumers ages 25-49 years old talk to their voice-enabled devices daily. (PwC)

It’s clear that mobile use is skyrocketing, and it’s where more people choose to make buying decisions and spend their money. Off the back of this data, we see businesses adjusting their mobile marketing strategy to cater to changing consumer habits. 

What changes in consumer behaviour should we be focusing on?

Voice Search

Remember when we used to feel a little silly replying to a voice prompt on our phone? Those days are gone! Over half of all U.S. households ask Alexa, Siri, or Google questions daily, and an uncomfortable percentage of people use voice search while driving. The fact is, voice search is easier than ever, especially now that AI and natural language processing have come along in leaps and bounds. 

It makes sense, then, to optimise your website to cater to more conversational language as opposed to truncated words or phrases. In the world of retail and eCommerce, this equals a keen focus on your product naming conventions and descriptions for fast and accurate results. 

Further to this, the fact that your customers are more comfortable talking to their phones points us to the clear benefit of using the voice facilities in WhatsApp or Messenger for a more personalised experience.

Visual Search

Google publishes over 30 billion ads a day. Add this to the ads served up to your customers on social channels, YouTube, television, and games, and you start to see the reason for banner blindness. Interruptive ads are not always welcomed, and the tired eyes of consumers are now accustomed to skimming over or ignoring them completely. 

However, when customers are actively looking for a product, they almost always click on an image to explore further. Google has placed its shopping ads front and centre and offers clear direction as to how your products can appear in this valuable space. 

But there’s so much more to visual search than displaying the right image at the right time. This AI technology is changing the way users search for products - starting with an image in the form of an item of clothing, home decor product, building, plant, and more. Smart algorithms assess shape, colour, size, location, and other factors to mine existing images and find what you’re likely looking for. 

Google Lens is one such tool that has taken visual search to the next level, where a single snap of the outside of a restaurant building can bring up its menu, ratings, address, and contact details. Likewise, Pinterest is a brilliant visual search engine where users can find similar items to what they love with a tap of a finger. 

Given that humans process visual information faster than text and retain it better, visual search is a brilliant marketing tool to add to your arsenal.

Shoppable Links

Shoppable links are the obvious next step in mobile marketing that feeds directly off voice and visual search. Allowing buyers to click through to the product they’ve just fallen in love with on a social platform or in an app and purchase it then and there provides a direct and frictionless shopping experience. 

Shoppable links are the perfect example of meeting your customers where they are and giving them what they want when they want it. 

The Mobile Marketing and Omnichannel Match

However, the fly in the digital ointment for many businesses is the fact that so many mobile platforms are available to users. Most of us use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram daily, run searches on Google and YouTube, and communicate through WhatsApp, Messenger, or email. So, how does a business choose where to focus its marketing efforts?

This is where omnichannel communication comes in; the ability to interact seamlessly with your customers across multiple channels while still maintaining a positive user experience. 

Omnichannel marketing ties together social, chat, ads, emails, and events into one cohesive user journey. It doesn’t matter where the customer entered the conversation, where they found or product, or how they choose to buy - covering all the potential touch-points allows your team to be available when and where they are needed. 

To achieve this utopia, businesses need one thing: automation.

Automation and Innovation with Mobile Marketing Cloud

There’s just no way your customer service and sales team can stay on top of all available channels to monitor and assist customers. Automation is the key to unlocking an amazing user experience and is the future of the growing eCommerce industry.

Mobile Marketing Cloud is proving itself as the most comprehensive, user-friendly tool available to businesses of all sizes. Here’s how:

Conditional Content

In light of the personalised journey that customers crave, a one-size-fits-all approach is never going to work. Therefore, making good use of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) as available from the Mobile Marketing Cloud allows you to deliver engaging and personalised content based on what you know about your customers. For example, a user’s age, interests, or location would determine the best products to highlight in a promotional email or even on your app.

Audience Segmentation

“75% of recipients are more likely to click on emails from segmented campaigns than non-segmented campaigns.” (Source) 

A data-driven approach to your marketing messages allows you to boost revenue simply by giving the right people the most relevant message. Again, automation is at the heart of this process, enabling forward-thinking businesses the opportunity to shape their customer journey across multiple channels. In a world full of choked with advertising messages, it makes sense to tailor your product campaigns so that they’re applicable to your target audience.

Test and Measure with Dashboards

The cost of blind marketing is too high, both in actual costs and customer impact. Dashboards inside Mobile Marketing Cloud offer a straightforward way to track your customer information from the CDP.

Telling insights from selected events can quickly be displayed in an easily digestible visual format to track customer data. Keep your finger on the pulse by closely monitoring trends, audience product preferences, or sales. Drill down to mine further information to determine variations in behaviours between age groups, locations, gender, or any other data points that you are tracking. 

Find Your Fish with CM.com

Mobile marketing trends in retail and eCommerce are undeniably a fast-moving target, but a necessary one to keep up with. The simple fact is that the only way to do so is to make the best use of the best business automation tools.