Until this year, SXSW always seemed like the cool kids’ show. The show that I looked at longingly from afar, but could never justify attending as a mobile analyst, despite its buzz-worthy tech appeal. This time I finally made it for a private collocated pre-show event, which afforded me a fleeting glimpse into some of the mobile goings-on, and most notably Urban Airship’s “Mobile Saturday” event.
From a mobile perspective, a wide range of brands from Black Entertainment Television (BET), to Starbucks, World Wresting Entertainment (WWE) and Walgreens, shared unique insights into their largely mobile app strategies. Despite varying mobile product objectives, all are evolving their mobile products and are squarely focused on driving more personalized (including context and location), engaging mobile experiences. When the talk to turned to critical monetization/ROI metrics/measurement to justify current and future mobile investments, it’s clear that measuring success is an easier rode to hoe for some than it is for others. Below are a few highlights from the event:
- While later to mobile than other entertainment brands, BET showcased how it is integrating mobile-specific value-added elements, including touchscreen, location, and camera into its “106 & Park” second-screen app, with its primary objective to drive viewership to the TV. This includes its patent-pending (filed by parent Viacom), interactive, location-based heat map that shows where/who is logged into the app during the live TV broadcast, as well as other live interactive elements while viewing the show. Despite significant engagement in a number of mobile app features (e.g., voting), BET faces a couple of challenges: time and costs it takes to deliver great apps, and measuring its success, as multi-platform (mobile and TV) tracking/measurement is not there yet.
- Starbucks does not have BET’s measurement problem. For Starbucks, the ROI is much more straightforward. It’s about driving commerce through the app. And, as the early success story and consumer education point on how to use the smartphone to make a payment, Starbucks has been offering significant visibility into how many users, how many transactions, and how much money has been flowing through its mobile app. What the company is grappling with is prioritization of app development efforts, as well as enhancing personalization, gifting, social, and location capabilities. For a coffee company that is increasingly becoming a tech company, Starbucks is not afraid to continue with its launch and learn strategy.
- WWE, like BET, is committed and focused on leveraging its video assets and driving live, personalized (“Me Experience” – my universe and location), second-screen experiences. WWE emphasized the need to have focus and purpose with your mobile app strategy, and measurement/metrics should reflect that purpose. The company also shared one of the more interesting cautionary tales of how NOT to engage your loyal customer base in mobile with its “I have risen,” push messaging notification campaign to tease the WWE fan favorite “The Undertaker’s” return to the ring. What the company didn’t see coming, as mobile campaign developers were too close/in on the messaging, was that their push message would be alarming to their mobile users, with many interpreting the message as a foreboding “God (or Jesus) was coming.” Bottom line learning from WWE’s push messaging debacle: “Don’t get in your own way.”
- Dubbing its mobile efforts as “less sexy,” than say BET’s location-enabled heat map, Walgreens mobile efforts are pragmatic – focused on mobile-enablement of product refills via RX barcode scanning, as well as photo services, etc., and in-store mobile marketing efforts/calls to action to download the app at check-out.
These brands need to evolve and enhance mobile products, aimed not just on customer acquisition (and the download) but on driving engagement (and monetization opportunities) among loyal customers. Starbucks’ “focus, clarity and delight” (with apps) mission are certainly words to live by in mobile. The alternative is become one of the nearly half of all apps downloaded that are opened a handful of times, and never to be opened again.