Have you ever been to an all-you-can-eat buffet? Giant appetizer platters, vats of soup, an endless selection of meats and veggies and desserts…it’s tempting to load your plate up with items that don’t even sound that appetizing. “It’s right in front of me—why not?” is the prevailing mentality (at least for gluttons like me). Of course, by the time the meal is over, you might as well roll me out of there. I will have eaten too much—without even enjoying a lot of it.

Right now retailers are at their own all-you-can-eat buffet of sorts. They have more options to engage customers than ever before. They have an array of technology tools they hope to use to nail marketing personalization once and for all, driving conversions and setting them apart from their competitors. There’s the standard fare, of course (email marketing, direct mail, PPC, etc.), and a few new gourmet options as well (native app push notifications and SMS alerts, geo-targeting, etc.). And retailers are pigging out.

They’re trying everything on the menu to deliver targeted offers to consumers, hoping to catch them at the right moment with the right message to make them to open their wallets. They’re sampling everything in the buffet…and leaving with nothing to show for it. In fact, over 60% of retailers say they expect ZERO ROI from so-called personalized messages they’ll be sending this holiday season. Talk about empty calories!

If the majority of retailers have no confidence in the return they’ll get on one-to-one mobile push marketing, we’ve got some work to do as an industry. Fortunately, through their loyalty programs, many retailers have access to the detailed shopper data that can make personalized marketing personalization effective. Add that to the data from consumers using the retailers’ branded mobile apps, and they have what they need to paint a pretty complete picture of their customers.

So what should retailers be doing with that data? Let’s start with the basics.

Bad Mobile Marketing Personalization: What Not to Do

A personalized offer can surprise and delight a customer (“Wow, this brand really gets me!”), or it can completely freak a customer out. Avoid creepy “I know what you did last summer” personalization.

Example: Customer has purchased two bottles of wine every night for the past three nights.

Not cute.

Also, if you’re going to use one-to-one marketing, make sure it’s actually personalized—not obviously programmed. Consumers catch on when they receive marketing messages from brands at the same time every day or week, and they learn to tune them out.

Example: No data collected.

This offer may as well say “Click here for something boring.”

Good Mobile Marketing Personalization

Good personalization leverages user data and context to deliver messages and offers that benefit users in some way—educating them, informing them, giving them discounts and promotions, or simply entertaining them. Segmenting app users and personalizing content according to the specific characteristics of each segment is a powerful way to keep users engaged.

When you layer this segmentation with location targeting capabilities, you’ve got the magic sauce. One location targeting tool is the geo-fence—a virtual GPS boundary used by marketers and advertisers to trigger campaigns and measure activity. To put it very simply, when someone with your brand’s app on their phone crosses through a geo-fence you have drawn around your store location (for example), it might trigger a message or promotion. Here are some examples of the types of high-converting mobile marketing messages you could deliver:

Example: Getting Creative with Geo-Fences
Data trigger: User has crossed through a pre-established geo-fence…

In-the-moment, contextually triggered marketing outreach like this just feels more relevant to the user—because it is—and it may even be welcome. (After all, who doesn’t love turtlenecks?)

Download our eBook, Capitalize on Context: The Savvy Retailer’s Guide to Location Marketing, to learn more about how mobile technologies help you understand and predict consumer context behavior.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

Measuring the Effectiveness of Personalization

Some users are always going to be creeped out by personalized marketing and will resist the urge to share data with you in exchange for a more tailored marketing experience. That’s ok. You’re marketing to the users who do want personalization, and the only way to figure out what works is to test it.

An important indicator of good personalization is the number of users who re-engage with your app after receiving personalized communication from you. Whether your outreach is via push notification, email or something else, make sure you have a clear and succinct call to action that draws them back into your app. Tracking how many users take that call to action will validate that your messages were user-centric and not generic or irrelevant.

Tailoring push notifications and other marketing messages to your app users is not only about personalized content—it’s about the right context, too. Analytics are your best weapon for defining the best time, place and message to engage your app users. Keep in mind that the right context will vary from app to app, and will ultimately be decided by the users anyway.

The moral of the story: if you don’t want to end up among the 60% of marketers who expect zero ROI from their mobile marketing, don’t pig out at the all-you-can-eat mobile marketing buffet. A carefully planned, data-backed personalization strategy is your best bet for recouping that marketing investment—and then some!

Want to take the guesswork out of calculating ROI? Use our free Marketing Automation ROI Campaign Calculator to find out how much automation can save your team.

Take Me To The ROI Calculator

The post “Click Here for Something Boring”: When Marketing Personalization Falls Flat appeared first on Phunware.

Amazon’s forays into brick-and-mortar stores are all over the news lately, with many analysts predicting doom and gloom for traditional retailers across the country. While retail brands are wise to be concerned, we’re here to point out that this turning point actually represents a big opportunity.

By embracing mobile in a whole new way, traditional retailers can expand their business models and change the game on Amazon. Mobile’s unique location technologies can turn local brick-and-mortars into hyper-personalized and highly nimble distribution centers for customers’ online orders. With the right mobile solutions, local stores can deliver faster and better than Amazon—and customers will reward them for it.

Mobile Can Turn Local Stores into Faster and Better Distribution Centers

We’re all accustomed to using location-based services for mapping and navigation. Warehouses and large distribution centers commonly use real-time location systems to keep track of inventory. Mobile gives retailers the power to combine navigation with the ability to find and track individual pieces of merchandise—within the footprint of a local store—and puts it all right in an associate’s pocket. As you’ll see, this enables local stores to deliver for local customers, faster and better.

What you need is an associate-facing mobile app with the following features:

• Barcode scanning that integrates with your inventory system
• Mapping and wayfinding with indoor blue dot navigation

This mobile app would interact with an in-store Wi-Fi network or beacon system to locate products and streamline operations, so the store can put products in customers’ hands as fast as possible.

DOWNLOAD THE RETAIL STRATEGY KIT

Use Case: BOPUS (Buy Online, Pick Up at Store)

Shopper Jane purchases an item online that is available at her local SportzStuff store. She decides to pick it up on her way to work, rather than wait for delivery. Associate Bob uses the associate app to locate the item, then navigate the quickest route to collect the item and return to the stockroom for packaging. When Jane arrives at the store 15 minutes later, everything’s ready for her—that’s faster than Amazon.

What’s more, if the retailer’s app also has a customer-facing side, Associate Bob can receive an alert the moment Jane approaches store (mall, parking lot, etc.). That alert enables Bob to greet Jane by name at the door or even curbside, so he can present Jane’s purchase to her personally.

Not only is this approach faster, it also provides a more satisfying customer experience. Shopper Jane got exactly what she wanted with VIP treatment and little to no hassle, the same day she wanted it. If she wanted to try on the item in-store for size, she could do so quickly and make any necessary return or exchange conveniently—instead of having to find and schlep to UPS or an Amazon vault. Plus, stopping by the store gives Jane a chance to make an impulse buy or two.

Use Case: BOSFS (Buy Online, Ship from Store)

Shopper Latrelle also purchases an item online from SportzStuff. It turns out that item is available at the store just across town, so Associate Jeff uses the store’s app on his phone to locate the item in the right color and size, then navigate by the fastest possible route to collect the item and return to the stockroom for packaging and shipping. Because Jeff got the product out as fast as possible—and it was sent locally instead of from a regional distribution center—SportzStuff can beat Amazon again.

Use the Advantage You Already Have: Proximity

Think about it: As Amazon rolls out its brick-and-mortar strategy, it will have to procure space, build out, stock and staff stores across the country. Thousands of retailers already have those physical stores, close to their customers. Unlocking their potential with a mobile app can take as little as a few weeks—and Amazon can’t hope to beat that.

Mobile has so much to offer retailers. Want to learn more about leveraging a mobile app to improve the customer experience and drive sales? Download our Retailer’s Mobile Strategy Kit. And if you’d like to talk about challenging Amazon by expanding your business model, contact retail@127.0.0.1.

WATCH THE ON-DEMAND WEBINAR

The post How Retailers Can Use Mobile to Out-Deliver Amazon appeared first on Phunware.

But AR is just one interesting technology. Shopping isn’t the only use case for mobile retailer tech. And a smart mobile strategy isn’t purely about the app. So what is it about then?

Smart mobile strategy is goal-oriented.

If you start by selecting your favorite shiny mobile use case, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Instead, you must start with your business objective in mind. For example, if you want to improve the shopper experience, there are multiple mobile use cases that can enable you to do so—and some of them are actually driven by mobile capabilities built to empower store associate’s, not the shopper’s.

How can both customer- and associate-facing apps enhance the shopper experience? Download our on-demand webinar, “Redefining Retail: Surprising Mobile Use Cases Keeping Retailers Competitive” to find out.

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Smart mobile strategy is platform-based and user-agnostic.

When it comes to mobile retailer tech, Software-as-a-Service mobile platforms provide strong, scalable backbone that is flexible enough to support a wide range of use cases for many different kinds of users, from customers to store employees to warehouse teams and even back-office staff. The app experience and capabilities may be different for different users—obviously, shoppers aren’t going to have the same mobile needs as store associates—but the underlying platform can and should be the same. This synergy enables integrated data collection and reporting across all user groups, rather than creating another set of silos.

Smart mobile strategy is integrated throughout the business.

When e-commerce first started, it was on its own little island, separate from the rest of store operations. Eventually, retailers realized that e-commerce had to be central to the business. More recently, many brands have thought of mobile as a channel, primarily residing under marketing’s umbrella. That’s starting to change as savvy retailers recognize that the best mobile approach eliminates siloes and affects every aspect of the business.

Roughly half of the retailers surveyed in Boston Retail Partners’ 2017 Digital Commerce Survey reported that they are aligning digital commerce initiatives with the store organization, overseen by a C-level exec who manages anything and everything affecting the customer experience. Because mobile uniquely affects not just marketing and revenue teams but also operations, facilities, fulfillment and even product, Phunware CEO Alan S. Knitowski would take this a step further. As he outlined last year, the companies seeing global success with mobile align their mobile application, media and data science teams under one leader who is responsible for all digital transformation across the organization and manages all of these groups as an integrated unit.

Retail’s mobile-first transformation is a marathon, not a sprint.

By taking an iterative, lifecycle-based approach to mobile, retailers can initiate a continuous cycle of positive change that moves them closer and closer to achieving their business goals.

Phunware has helped many of the largest brands in North America develop smart mobile strategies all across the app lifecycle, and retail is just one of our areas of expertise. Want to learn more? Check out our case study of a Fortune 500 department store to learn about how Phunware’s solution helped expand their use of mobile solutions to improve store productivity and employee performance.

DOWNLOAD THE CASE STUDY

The post Mobile Tech in Retail: Shiny Objects vs. Smart Strategy appeared first on Phunware.

Retail’s New Playground: a Guided Tour of the Cisco Toy Box

Welcome to the Toy Box

At check-in, you receive an empty shopping basket and an iPhone 8. This being a convention, of course you need caffeine, so you stop at the Coco Café. The friendly staff greets you and introduces the café’s MenuPad, which presents the available fueling options. You opt for a large mocha latte and use the iPhone you were given to buy your drink via Apple Pay, directly on the menu board. Well, that was easy.

Let’s Go Shopping

You fire up the ToyBox app on your iPhone and got to your shopping list. If this were a real-world shopping experience, the store app would be integrated with your customer profile, so everything you’ve searched for online or added to your online shopping cart would appear in your list when you arrived at the store. Here at the Toy Box, your shopping list shows all the retail technology “toys” you expressed an interest in.

You choose your first item and select “Route.” Using Phunware’s real-time indoor navigation, the Toy Box app gives you turn-by-turn directions right to that item inside the store. (Imagine you’re in a large hardware store, looking for a new flathead screwdriver…. How great would it be to have clear, accurate directions to the right spot on the right aisle, right in the palm of your hand?) You head out towards your first item in the Toddler Toys section of the store.

But Wait, There’s More

As you navigate to your first item, a push notification pops up on your iPhone—”New Item Has Arrived!”—showing you a featured product along your route. You can choose to see more information about that product, but you decide to stay focused. You find your item in Toddler Toys and choose “Scan with MishiPay” to purchase. The Toy Box app opens to the scanner screen in the MishiPay app. You scan the item’s barcode and get details on price, name and brand, then add it to your cart. Behind the scenes, the store inventory automatically adjusts to reflect your purchase.

Not Just for Shoppers

The Toy Box wasn’t only about helping store shoppers explore and navigate from item to item smoothly and seamlessly. The same technology that powers these shopper experiences can supercharge associate productivity related to stocking, restocking and completing Buy Online, Pickup In Store (BOPUS) orders. It can also help store associates navigate to shoppers requesting assistance and even notify them if VIP customers arrive.

Smart, integrated store experiences like the one offered at the Toy Box may seem futuristic, but they are rapidly becoming the norm. Learn more about how some retailers are using mobile to maintain a competitive edge in our webinar:

WATCH THE ON-DEMAND WEBINAR NOW

The post Exploring the Toy Box at NRF 2018 appeared first on Phunware.

So what steps can retailers take right now not just to survive in 2018, but to thrive?

1. Put Digital Front and Center

Your digital and mobile identity are now (or should be) integral to your brand. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2017, mobile (smartphones and tablets) made up 53.3% of traffic and 39.7% of revenue, according to Adobe. And Salesforce found that mobile accounted for 64% of shopping visits and 43% of sales orders the weekend after Thanksgiving, up from 54% and 33%, respectively, in 2016.

Despite these undeniably mobile-centric numbers, Boston Retail Partners (BRP) found in its 2017 Digital Commerce Survey that only 14% of North American retailers report having a mobile app that is working well, and a hefty 39% report having an app that needs improvement. BRP notes that “A customer’s smartphone is also the key to customer identification and personalization of the in-store shopping experience.” More than ever, today’s retailers can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and ignore the mobile app lifecycle.

To learn more, check out the eBook Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle For Transformative Business Success.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

2. Engage Shoppers with Better Context and Personalization

As BRP points out, “Expansion of mobile capabilities represents a huge customer engagement opportunity for retailers.” Adding location-aware mobile engagement or analytics to an existing app (or integrating them from the start) is one of the best ways to expand engagement opportunities.

With a mobile app and location-based technologies, retailers can:

• Personalize the in-store experience and give customers the VIP treatment
• Engage shoppers with strong offers in real time based on who and where they are
• Guide shoppers through stores with an indoor GPS-like experience
• Target shoppers with messages delivered in the relevant context of their daily lives—even at a competitor’s door
• Leverage location data to build more granular customer profiles and target or segment ads more effectively

To learn more, check out the eBook Mobile Marketing Automation: Why It Matters and How to Get Started.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

3. Use Mobile to Improve Efficiency and Empower Store Staff

Shopper engagement isn’t the only way mobile can help retailers compete. Mobile technology can help retail staff work more efficiently and get products in customers’ hands with the least amount of labor.

For example, some stores are testing location tech to speed restocking. Mobile indoor mapping and navigation can guide employees on the most efficient route to the proper location for restocking each item. This solution is particularly useful for seasonal workers who are not as familiar with store layouts and where products belong on store shelves and racks. In recent trials, store associate efficiency increased a minimum of 8%. Companywide, this efficiency increase result in significant payroll savings over time. And in the arms race against Amazon, every competitive opportunity counts.

As we recently explored, mobile is driving the transformation of physical stores into distribution centers, enabling highly efficient performance for options like “Buy Online, Ship from Store” (BOSFS) and “Buy Online, Pickup In Store” (which some writers are calling “BOPUS” or “BOPIS”). If 2 out of 3 shoppers have used BOPUS, it’s safe to say it’s more than a fad.

In retail, perhaps more than any other vertical, adopting a mobile-first mindset for digital transformation it critical for success. It’s time to harness mobile’s central role in consumers’ daily lives and take advantage of its hybrid digital / physical nature. Mobile can function as both a customer experience tool and a multifaceted business solution. Exciting times, to be sure!

If you’re planning for a more competitive 2018, come see us at NRF in January! We’ll be in Cisco’s booth (#2052), powering an on-site smart store they created for the event.

The post 3 Ways Retailers Can Act Now for a Stronger 2018 appeared first on Phunware.

Source: The Far Side by Gary Larson, 1980

These confusing doors are called Norman doors after Don Norman, a cognitive scientist and usability engineer who was inspired by many experiences with bad design to produce the seminal work, The Design of Everyday Things. Norman argued that good design is intuitive design—design that doesn’t require conscious thought to be usable.

When The Design of Everyday Things was released in 1988, the idea of user-centered design and applying design thinking to all areas of life was revelatory. Design thinking forces brands to ask the right questions, find the best solutions and implement the best approach to get results. Here’s what it looks like in its simplest form:

• Ask questions and empathize
• Understand and define
• Evaluate ideas
• Iterate

Although design thinking has been proven since 1988 to be a repeatable problem-solving approach in everything from business systems to software engineering, some business leaders still see design as a magical process, a superficial add-on or a way to use leftover budget dollars. But design should never be an afterthought. Without it at the heart of a project, usability problems will keep users away. Let’s explore how design thinking can be applied to enterprise mobile apps.

Applying Design Thinking to Enterprise Mobile Apps

App Strategy: Identifying Areas of Need

Good enterprise app design is not about making things look nice. It’s about creating a positive user experience and solving real problems for real people. Well designed apps remove frustration along the user journey, resolving pain points and anticipating issues users may not even realize they could have. These apps are able anticipate user needs because design thinking was central to their development process.

No matter how clever your designers and engineers are, real users have a way of uncovering use cases you would never think of and demonstrating how usability can be improved.

If you want your app to solve real problems for real users, do your research. Ask users what they need help with. If you already have an app, review existing engagement metrics to identify areas for improvement—where users abandon the app, for example, or which features they never seem to use. Analyze competitor apps to see where yours excels or falls short.

If you’re building a new app, conduct user testing or interviews with target users first. Get to know them and their needs, preferences, pain points and behaviors so you can make good design decisions and improve the user experience at every opportunity for iteration. No matter how clever your designers and engineers are, real users have a way of uncovering use cases you would never think of and demonstrating how usability can be improved.

Your app’s success depends on how engaged your users are. Learn more in this eBook: Sticky Notes: How to Re-Engage Your Users Like a Boss.

GET THE eBOOK

Solving Problems with Enterprise App Design

Once you uncover the problems your target users are experiencing, it’s time to use mobile to solve them. This part of the process can be messy, but it’s where you dig in as a team and experiment with strategies and ideas—even some that might seem crazy at first. Sketch, whiteboard, diagram, discuss, challenge and revise to uncover solutions worth trying. That’s where the magic happens.

It’s a good idea to look for an app development partner with expertise in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Google Material Design to create workflows that are useful and compliant. App design must feel fresh and timely without being too trendy—and therefore doomed to fall out of style. Choose a partner that will build for beauty, function and longevity.

The next step is to use the findings and wireframes from your discovery process to form educated hypotheses about how your app’s design can be the solution to your customers’ problems. Choose forward-looking technologies that will provide deployment flexibility and extend the life of the finished app. And test, test, test—not just to identify and fix bugs right before launch, but throughout the design and engineering process (and even after launch). Continual testing allows you to keep refining the user experience and uncover unanticipated issues before they cause bigger problems.

Iteration and Improvement

Good design recognizes constraints like budget and business goals as essential considerations for finding the best and most appropriate solutions. Long gone are the days of hero design, when eureka-like moments of inspiration seemed to appear out of thin air. The more effective process is working as a team with your development partner and end users to create prototypes and iteratively improve upon your initial ideas.

Experience proves that the best solutions come from testing and getting feedback from business leaders, designers, engineers, testers and end users at every stage to confirm that prototypes effectively solve the right problems. You may choose an app development partner that has already found effective solutions to common problems in your industry, but make sure they also routinely iterate and improve on even the smallest details for the best outcome.

How Design Thinking Can Help Your Organization

The American Marketing Association has said that customer experience is the new battleground and the customer journey will take precedence from today forward. Customer experience can now make or break a company, and word spreads among consumers in near-real time. Because your app is likely to be a central part of your customers’ experience with your brand, it’s essential to apply human-centered design thinking to the app lifecycle, from start to finish.

In other words, don’t put any metaphorical Norman doors between your users and their goals. Even minor moments of frustration add up to a negative overall experience. Instead, put the time and effort into thinking through how your app will work in the real world to provide the smoothest, most effective user experience possible.

To learn more about best practices at every stage of the mobile lifecycle, check out the eBook Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

The post No More Norman Doors: The Importance of Design Thinking in Enterprise App Development appeared first on Phunware.

Making Strides with Digital and Physical Feedback

Neil Blumenthal, Co-CEO of Warby Parker, told The Wall Street Journal back in January: “I don’t think retail is dead. Mediocre retail experiences are dead.” Elevating the retail experience to meet the demands of today’s on-demand and omnichannel consumer, however, requires understanding the digital and physical feedback that tells you what they want. In other words, it takes data—and lots of it.

In her Internet Trends 2017 report, analyst and author Mary Meeker spotlighted men’s shirt retailer Untuckit, which creates a synergistic digital / physical feedback loop between advertising, in-store and online interactions. The company reports a more than 2.5x increase in website visits from 2015-2016. Meeker also pointed to women’s professional-wear retailer MM.LaFleur, which is combining its data-driven, online styling / e-commerce site with a new high-touch, appointment-based, brick-and-mortar experience. Presumably, an individual’s online data is leveraged for the in-store personal styling session and vice versa. According to Washington Post, MM.LaFleur has experienced 300% year-over-year growth since 2013.

Both Untuckit and MM.LaFleur are clearly innovators, yet they lack a dedicated mobile app solution. That means they’re missing out on leveraging the vast amount of uniquely contextual user insights a mobile portfolio can deliver. This “daily digital trail” could give them a more detailed and personal understanding of their best customers than ever, enabling more relevant engagement at every touchpoint—whether it’s online, in person or via mobile app.

Where Retailers Are Missing the Point

The fourth-annual CEO Viewpoint 2017: The Transformation of Retail survey from PwC and JDA Software Group, Inc. indicates that 85% of global retail executives said they are investing in mobile-enabled applications (or plan to) over the next 12 months. 86% reported current or planned investments in big data. And overall, the survey found that a digital transformation strategy is the #1 priority for 2017.

Many U.S. retail execs…still have not defined or begun implementing digital transformation strategies, and some of them appear to be really struggling.” – Retail Dive

Yet, Retail Dive’s analysis of CEO Viewpoint 2017 noted that “The more interesting thing is that many U.S. retail execs, according to the survey, still have not defined or begun implementing digital transformation strategies, and some of them appear to be really struggling.” Digital transformation, as Retail Dive sees it, is about getting the organization on the right footing to compete at the highest level. This seismic shift needs to happen before adopting new technologies or ingesting huge new volumes of data. All the new toys in the world will do retailers absolutely no good if they’re not positioned to take full advantage of them.

Are you ready for a true digital transformation but not sure where to start? Download our eBook, Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success, to learn what steps to take.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

So What’s the Remedy?

Retail Dive says it’s likely that “retailers need to do their best to transform themselves from digital immigrants to full-fledged digital citizens, or they need to hire more digital natives to show them the way.” Actually, they need to do more than that.

Retailers, like all brands today, need to recognize and accept that they can’t treat mobile like a bolt-on to their larger digital strategy, because mobile drives the in-demand experience and customer journey. It’s time to build smarter strategies around the mobile application lifecycle and adapt organizational structures accordingly to achieve the digital transformation that’s necessary now.

Circling back to Amazon / Whole Foods implications, Bain & Company’s Darrell K. Rigby echoes the theme, noting that traditional retailers have got to relearn how to innovate and move to adaptive, agile and multidisciplinary teams (like software dev teams—there’s that mobile app lifecycle again!), all of which takes a deep commitment and a significant financial investment. As cited by Rigby, Amazon spends more than 11% of sales on “technology and content.” This past January, IHL Group reported that top retail CIOs were increasing their IT budgets by 4.7% in 2017. Yet those same CIOs said they’d need to increase their budgets up to 236% to compete effectively against Amazon.

They may be right, and yet that giant forklift isn’t likely to happen soon. What can happen is that retailers find a mobile partner who deeply understands mobile application lifecycle management and can help digitally transform in a stepwise, cost-effective way. With an integrated mobile solution, retailers can continue to iterate and expand their mobile strategies in a nimble way that moves towards their overall business objectives, gaining momentum as they go. Sometimes transformations are “overnight;” sometimes they’re gradual. The important thing is to begin with a partner who can help you succeed, every step of the way.

Wondering how to integrate an authentically mobile-first solution to your retail strategy? Drop us a line at sales@127.0.0.1 and let’s talk.

Learn more about how the latest mobile technologies are redefining retail in this on-demand webinar: Redefining Retail: Surprising Mobile Use Cases Keeping Retailers Competitive.

WATCH THE WEBINAR

The post So Amazon Gobbled Up Whole Foods. Here’s How to Cure Retail’s Heartburn. appeared first on Phunware.

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Increasingly, the only way to deliver that in-demand experience and journey is through “authentically mobile” experiences—those that are only possible on a mobile device. That means your organization must take a mobile-first, native-first and fully integrated-first approach to the mobile lifecycle. Mobile is the first screen today—not the second, the third or the companion screen—and experiences that fail to leverage the unique native capabilities of mobile fall short of user expectations. Mobile internet traffic has surpassed desktop traffic, and 85% of it is in native applications—not mobile browsers such as Apple Safari or Google Chrome. Your focus should be on native mobile applications first, mobile web second and traditional web last.

Because mobile has such transformative power, all functional areas should have a role in the success of mobile application portfolios—from Marketing to Facilities to Finance. Let’s explore where those functional areas fit into the mobile application lifecycle and what you could gain by structuring your organization for success in the mobile era.

Who to Involve in Mobile Application Lifecycle Management

In the early days of mobile applications, it was possible (not advisable, but possible) to treat mobile as an isolated tactic and channel. Before mobile use was ubiquitous and brands really understood how to make mobile data actionable, you could get away with treating mobile as another marketing avenue like PPC or direct mail.

Those days are long gone, however, and mobile applications are no longer siloed or set-and-forget. Even the simplest mobile application lifecycle now involves a complex interplay of mobile technology, media strategy and data science, and can impact areas of the business from marketing to operations to facilities planning alike. Here’s who you should always involve in your mobile planning and initiatives to ensure that you are always surfacing—and able to act on—all of the insights mobile can power.

Group 1: Mobile Team

Your Mobile team (it may be called the Digital or Virtual team at your organization) will define the value your brand will deliver to users through its mobile portfolio—entertainment, utility, information, etc.—and how that value will be brought to life in a mobile application experience. They will determine the devices (smartphone, tablet, watch, TV, etc.) and operating systems (iOS, Android, both, something else) your application should run on. Presumably you plan to achieve some business goal with this mobile initiative, such as generating revenue, increasing brand awareness, driving foot traffic, engaging Millennials, etc. Your Mobile team will be responsible for figuring out how your application will achieve that goal.

Now, you could feasibly stop here. It would be woefully misguided to do so, but you could actually build and launch an application with only your Mobile team. How would you build, engage and monetize your audience, though? How would you develop and act on the insights and data available through your application, both indoors and outdoors? By involving your Media and Data teams from the outset.

Group 2: Media Team

Your Media team should be there from day one to make sure you have appropriately strategized how you will build, engage and monetize your application audience. With literally millions of other applications to catch their eye, you can’t depend on your users to randomly discover your app on their own. Organic, viral application discovery tends to happen by accident. You should assume that mobile audiences are overwhelmingly built through paid user acquisition (UA) campaigns and tactics and expect to invest in performance-based audience building campaigns to acquire your app users. It will be critical to understand the lifetime value of each user so you can determine what you are willing to pay per user for your expected return on investment (ROI).

Post launch, it will be up to your Media team to monitor which of these campaigns is performing best so that you can then optimize your ongoing spend accordingly. You don’t just want to drive app downloads or brand awareness as part of this process—you want to acquire the users most likely to engage and spend in and through your application.

Group 3: Data Science Team

Your Data Science team should be there to plan what data you will collect through your application and how you will use it not only to optimize future versions of the application, but also business processes, marketing strategy and a host of other initiatives not traditionally thought of as “mobile.” Data is key to preserving and expanding the mobile revenue streams associated with your application audiences over time. Your ultimate goal for these mobile engagements and interactions should be to deliver the right action at the right time to the right user based on who and where they are and what they like and don’t like, on a 1:1 basis, indoors or outdoors, in real time. The key to these insights is data: their usage behavior and value to your brand.

Learn more! Download the eBook Mobile Data: the Missing Link in Your User Acquisition and Engagement Strategies.

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A smartphone is a digital device, but it moves through the physical world and is embedded with technologies, like GPS and accelerometers, that mobile apps can leverage for richer experiences. Additionally, mobile apps generate valuable data as users interact with them. Each interaction (or “event”) results in a data point—complete with location—you can use to improve and tailor the mobile experience. The Phunware platform, for example, grows by 40 billion events per month, thanks to the 700+ million unique devices touching it through more than 5000+ application portfolios.

These mobile events and data points are actionable far beyond the mobile channel. They can (and should) impact marketing strategy as a whole, media investment, operations planning—even real estate decisions. For example:

• Operations. Leverage data from mobile location-based technologies like beacons to streamline inventory control in a retail environment, monitor and manage patient traffic patterns in a hospital, or speed the flow of passengers through an airport or cruise terminal.
• Marketing. Use data from your mobile campaigns and app engagement to understand what offers your users care about, what app features they value, and where they live, work and play. Optimize your entire marketing approach based on these deep insights.
• Revenue. Mobile is a powerful channel for e-commerce, of course, but can also serve as revenue-generating platform through in-app media monetization and mobile engagement campaigns that drive real-world purchase conversions with full attribution at retail point of sale (POS).

Finally, your Legal team plays a role in brand protection, privacy and intellectual property enforcement, while your Facilities team plays a role in physical infrastructure investments needed to support authentically mobile user experiences—such as high and low density Wi-Fi, virtual and physical beacons and bandwidth.

Mobile as a channel goes far beyond the device in your users’ pockets…but it’s up to you to make sure you are tapping the right teams at your organization to take advantage of mobile’s reach.

Structuring Your Team for Mobile Application Lifecycle Management

Now that you know which groups to involve in mobile application lifecycle management, let’s take a minute to discuss org structure. Your Mobile, Media and Data Science teams are likely separate and siloed under these leaders:

This is normal—companies don’t set out to exist in silos, but unless you make a concerted effort to merge them, application, media and data science teams will likely remain separate. This separation is something you will want to address quickly, however, if you want to create and maintain a competitive advantage at that high value touchpoint between your brand and your anytime, anywhere audiences and communities on mobile. Importantly, the companies seeing global, enterprise-level success in mobile have these same three teams, but roll them up under one person who oversees and manages them as an integrated unit:

Every company aspires to have a CDO, CMO and CRO, but even without these roles, it’s critical to have one executive at the top of your organization with direct or dotted-line oversight of those controlling mobile, media and data. If you’re not working in synergy and driving towards the same goal through every stage of the lifecycle, you’re leaving significant money on the table.

Check back soon for the next installment in my blog series, where I’ll cover how to structure an RFP to find the best mobile lifecycle management partner.

To learn more about best practices at every stage of the mobile lifecycle, check out this eBook: Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

The post Organizing for Digital Transformation: The Role of Mobile Application Lifecycle Management in Maximizing the Customer Experience and Customer Journey appeared first on Phunware.

“Surveyed and interviewed marketers seem to agree that the ability to personalize customer experiences at numerous touchpoints will become an essential feature in future marketing departments.”

—The Economist Intelligence Unit

We couldn’t agree more. True contextual personalization, as enabled and delivered by mobile devices and location marketing, may well be the most powerful development to hit retail marketing in a generation.

In the chart, you’ll see that context can be lots of different things—from where users are to what you know about them and even what they might be doing. Location marketing gives you access to more of that contextual information, which retailers can use to unlock multiple new touchpoints AND capitalize on them with personalized engagement.

For example, any and all of these potential touchpoints can be opportunities for compelling personalized engagement:

• A customer who frequently purchases fishing tackle enters the parking lot of a local lakeside park
• The competition opens a huge new outlet three miles from one of your brick-and-mortar stores
• Heavy rain is forecast for the day of a big local event, sponsored by your brand
• A member of your loyalty program enters a different mall than her usual, but you also have a store presence there
• A power shopper approaches the dressing room in your store — and your associate knows she left items in her online shopping cart

And that’s just for starters. As The Economist Intelligence Unit put it, “Engaging customers with compelling, contextually relevant experiences is the new competitive high ground.”

Download our infographic Who, What, Where? Location Intelligence Boosts Offers and Engagement to learn more.

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The post How Retail Marketers Can Unlock More Touchpoints with Location Marketing appeared first on Phunware.

Loyalty doesn’t mean what it used to.

As part of its 2016 Omnichannel Report, MasterCard took a hard look at loyalty, finding that the qualities that make shoppers sign up for loyalty problems are not the same qualities that drive repeat business.

MasterCard points to affinity as the key factor in driving repeat business—not loyalty. Affinity is defined as a higher level of trust in the brand and an emotional concept of personal value, built around relevance and resonance. David Rosen, writing for the TIBCO Software blog, tends to agree: “The realization that emotional (elated) relationships are not limited to a few fashion brands, luxury automobiles, and Apple, is leading to an expansion of how brands engage with their customers. Achieving this higher level of bliss has profound impact on customer value.”

How can retailers deliver on the need for deeper, more meaningful customer relationships?

Mobile technologies give retailers an unprecedented ability to create rich experiences that deliver on genuine customer needs, build trust and engagement, and go beyond transactions to generate real brand affinity.

Whether as a stand-alone loyalty program app or as complete mobile brand experience (we’d argue for the latter), a branded mobile app is the ideal platform for connecting with your most engaged customers—and truly delivering personalized value. TIBCO‘s David Rosen echoes this idea, saying “Rewarding with a compelling experience (no doubt) has a deeper and longer-term impact than [rewarding with a] discount or coupon.”

By harnessing location-based technologies like GPS and beacons, retail mobile apps can recognize who and where customers are in their stores and in the wider world. This visibility empowers retailers to personalize their engagement, optimize in-store experiences and deliver previously impossible benefits.

For example, a retail mobile app with location-enabled features can identify customers when they enter the store—enabling staff to personalize their interaction and triggering personalized greetings and special offers on the customers’ smartphones. According to the Boston Retail Partners special report, 53% of retailers plan to implement this capability within the next five years. Yet the technology to do it now—and do it easily and cost-effectively—already exists.

Download our eBook to learn more about how retailers can make the most out of location marketing to drive foot traffic, influence shopping behavior and ultimately generate more sales.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

These gaps between what customers want and what apps can currently deliver represent key opportunities for retailers to differentiate themselves and build genuine trust and affinity. The smart retailers will close these gaps ASAP.

“When executed appropriately, real-time personalization provides retailers the ability to deliver a better brand experience, which encourages ongoing customer engagement, sustainable loyalty, and sales uplift.”
—Boston Retail Partners, “Loyalty Programs—Rewarding the Customer Experience”

Next-generation retail apps take loyalty to the next level.

The majority of North American retailers are making mobile a top priority for 2016. Yet, according to the Boston Retail Partners special report, 73% of retailers did not offer mobile access to the features of their loyalty programs. 56% of retailers said they planned to take their loyalty programs mobile within the next 5 years. That’s moving in the right direction, but perhaps not quickly enough.

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn more about how embracing mobile in a new way can help brick-and-mortar retailers become more effective and change the game.

WATCH THE ON-DEMAND WEBINAR

We’ll be watching the evolution of loyalty and the intersection of loyalty programs with mobility. Stay tuned for more!

The post Beyond Loyalty Programs: Tracking the Future of Retail Customer Relationships appeared first on Phunware.

With marketing automation (MA), your brand can take targeting and personalization to a whole new level, leveraging consumer behavior and smartphone capabilities out in the real world.

What sorts of goals can you achieve with location-based marketing?

• Driving new and repeat foot traffic
• Increasing brand awareness
• Boosting the value of your mobile app
• Encouraging loyalty program sign-up
• Pushing sales with coupons and promotions
• Promoting an event, such as a store celebration, charity event or a sponsored community event such as a 5K or carnival
• Enhancing the customer experience and relationship

Want to deliver an amazing connected mobile experience? Check out this on-demand webinar: Mobile at the Intersection of Hardware and Software to learn how to engage with users where and when it matters most.

WATCH THE ON-DEMAND WEBINAR

How does marketing automation work?

Essentially, you build a strategic message plan around specific information about where your mobile app users are and what they are doing. By taking advantage of built-in technologies on the user’s smartphone—as well as intelligent analytics—you can understand your users better and reach them more effectively.

• Location-aware technologies such as geo-fencing, beacons and GPS can tell you where your mobile app users are—whether that’s your store, your competitors or anywhere that might be relevant to your brand
• Push notifications send relevant messages right to the lock screen on the app user’s phone
• Analytics provide a wealth of data about customer behavior, such as:
  • When they visit a specific location (your store, the competition, etc.)
  • How long they stay
  • Where they go before and after
  • How frequently they visit and at what intervals

By combining location insights with your back-end customer information systems, you unlock a deeper understanding of your customer than ever before. You can use this understanding to personalize very specifically—you can even target just a single person with a highly specific message. This gives your marketing much more relevance and a stronger chance to succeed.

More and more consumers are demanding a personalized experience—online, in-store, and on mobile. “Consumers want more than just an experience—we want a personal connection that identifies with who we are, our interests, expectations and abilities.” (CMSWire)  Marketing automation can help make your app super-important to your users, even as it makes their shopping experience more pleasurable and useful. And all of that helps increase customer loyalty and sales.

Want to a more in-depth look at marketing automation and insights on how different industries are using it? Download Mobile Marketing Automation: Why It Matters and How to Get Started.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

The post What Can You Do with Mobile Marketing Automation? appeared first on Phunware.

People are digital-dependent in almost everything they do, and that’s not much of an exaggeration. If you have brick-and-mortar stores and you do nothing to tap into digital experience capabilities, you risk losing market share.

Perhaps you’re already offering digital experiences to your brick-and-mortar shoppers, like email-based promotions or a mobile-optimized website. That’s multichannel marketing, and you’re on the right track.

The next step is to move toward omnichannel marketing, which focuses not only on accessibility via any channel consumers might use, but on offering a seamless experience for customers. There should be as little separation as possible between shoppers’ activity in your online store, on your branded app, and inside one of your physical store locations. If a shopper was looking at a particular coffee maker in your online store but didn’t buy it, you can prompt that shopper with a promotional offer on that coffee maker the next time he enters one of your locations—a seamless digital/mobile/physical transition that is entirely personalized to that shopper and highly effective as a sales tool.

How do we reach shoppers in so many ways?

Short answer: mobile apps and location-enabled marketing tools. By tapping into location technology such as GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, you can target customers using geo-fencing near your business locations and inside your stores. You can even know when customers who use your app go to competitors’ stores or visit nearby partners, which can be invaluable data for future campaign planning.

Learn more in this eBook: Location Technology 101: Understanding Bluetooth, Blue Dot, Beacons, Geo-Fencing and More.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

We made an infographic that shows how the omnichannel purchase cycle might play out for a customer in your store. Take a look to follow along with Sue’s interactions with a retailer like you.

Download Infographic Here

The post Omnichannel Marketing for Retailers: Yes, It’s Within Reach. appeared first on Phunware.

Right now, organizations are bringing their departments together to reflect on the holiday season’s successes and failures. And the smart ones are learning from 2014 to become bigger and better over the next 12 months.

In spirit of this aspirational time of year, below are five mobile resolutions for the retail industry. Keep in mind that these are just high-level concepts for you to mull over as you finalize (or get started on!) your strategies.

When it comes to mobile (or any investment), there is no universal strategy. The unique goals and target audiences of each organization are what ultimately drives their approach to mobile.

1. Make mobile experiences seamless and easy to shop.

Research from Apigee indicates that by the end of 2014, 63% of U.S. smartphone owners used apps at least once a month, up from 56% in 2013. Moreover, 20% of smartphone owners said they plan to increase how much they spend via apps this year.

To keep pace with this surge in demand, retailers need to create streamlined app experiences that are organized, intuitive and easy to browse. After all, when the user experience is clunky, disorganized or otherwise unpleasant, users are more likely to get frustrated and abandon the shopping experience altogether. Supporting this point, research from Contact Solutions found that 51% of consumers abandon their carts and close apps when they have a poor experience. Up to 20% stopped using the app entirely.

2. Personalize the app experience.

Beautiful UX is only the first step in a long journey to app optimization. Today’s empowered consumers expect anytime / anywhere access to information, content and services that enrich their shopping experience. Loyalty programs play a major role here.

For example, beauty retailer Sephora’s app integrates with its Beauty Insider loyalty club. Once logged in, club members receive a personalized experience that tracks their loyalty points, sends them unique rewards and offers and monitors their Beauty Bags (records of past purchases and “Loves”). How can you create a similar user-focused experience?

3. Use push notifications to drive foot traffic.

Hyper-precise targeting by user location, demographics and loyalty is what makes push notifications so powerful. But there’s a fine line between being engaging and annoying. Walgreens is one retailer that does it right. The pharmacy retailer uses Passbook to send notifications when consumers are in close proximity to a store, encouraging them to stop in and take advantage of timely coupons and deals. Integration with the Walgreens app and loyalty program also allows consumers to receive more personalized messages, and even receive notifications when their prescriptions are ready for pickup.

4. Guide customers through the store.

Recent success stories from top retailers like GameStop and Lord & Taylor are helping to accelerate adoption of beacon technology. These two retailers take different approaches to beacon engagement:

• GameStop allows consumers to use their smartphones to “activate” beacons on shelves. Once they do, they can access complementary content, such as video game videos, ratings and reviews.
• Lord & Taylor embeds beacons in different store departments to trigger alerts as app holders move throughout the store. Retailers can build on Lord & Taylor’s strategy and personalize beacon-triggered alerts. That way, users would receive offers tailored to their unique tastes and preferences. This approach keeps shoppers engaged, surprised and delighted by the mobile brand experience.

5. Turn associates’ mobile devices into their little black books.

For decades, associates who work in department and luxury stores have relied on their little black books. These handy resources hold invaluable information about clients, past purchases and preferences. With tablets and smartphones, associates can access this same information with far more detail and context.

This year, consider how mobile can act as your hub for associate engagement and empowerment. How can you integrate associate apps and resources with enterprise information such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems and sales data?

Does your retail organization have any mobile resolutions in place? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

The post 5 Retail Mobile Strategy Resolutions for 2015 appeared first on Phunware.

New Strategies for Attracting Shoppers

By embracing mobile in a whole new way, some retailers, like a national department store (which happens to be one of Phunware’s customers), use a slightly different strategy. They use push notifications to deliver shoppers. How do they do it? Most recently, they sent a push notification to 1 million mobile devices users who downloaded their app. What did the notification say? It simply told users about an offer of 20 percent off in-store purchases.

Of course, with traditional marketing, it would be very difficult to prove the ROI of a single outreach campaign and to track who engaged with that campaign. With a mobile app, however, this kind of direct attribution becomes easy.

When tapped or swiped, the notification took the user to an offer wallet containing a coupon with a unique barcode. When the user made a purchase in-store and presented the barcode for scanning to ensure the discount, the store could attribute the purchase to the notification. Additionally, because the purchase was tied to an individual app user, the retailer gained an opportunity to learn more about its individual users—and how to market to them.

The Results Speak for Themselves

Click to view the full infographic.

So what happened when the department store sent this coupon to a million users? Within three days, 14.2 percent of the recipients went to one of the store’s physical locations, resulting in $500,000 of revenue directly attributable to the campaign. Not bad for one push notification.

Who’s on Board with Push?

Most retailers avoid push notifications, even though studies indicate that 68 percent of consumers enable push notifications and 50 percent say that they intentionally download an app to get access to special or exclusive offers.²

When you develop a push notification strategy, you must prioritize the customer experience—and their preferences—above all else. Blindly pushing notifications is a proven path to marketing failure. What’s evolving, slowly but surely, is a recognition among marketers that tailored, optimized push notifications boost response levels. The days of “spray and pray” are fading—it’s critical to create push notifications that matter to your users.

If you’re a marketer working for a brick-and-mortar store, and you’re looking for additional foot traffic, Phunware has worked with many retailers to implement push successfully (and profitably). Download the full infographic to see how we helped our customer conquer revenue goals with relevant and timely targeted messages.

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The post Can Push Notifications Boost Retail Foot Traffic? appeared first on Phunware.

To take advantage of these buying patterns this year, best-in-class retailers invested in creating apps that are entertaining, enjoyable and make consumers’ lives a little bit easier. While some released completely new apps, others refined their features and capabilities to appeal to holiday shoppers. Here are a few to note:

1. Target

This big box retailer implemented a few different mobile initiatives for the holiday season. For one, the company partnered with Google on the Art, Copy & Code project to create a holiday-themed game experience in stores. In its brick-and-mortar locations, Target rolled out tablets where consumers can play Bullseye’s Playground, which includes a variety of games and activities. For every game played, Target donates $1 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

But that’s not all. Target also launched its Wish List app for parents and kids. As kids add items to their lists, parents can share them with friends and family. An augmented reality feature also helps make the Target Kids’ Gift Catalog more fun and compelling.

Finally, the retailer re-launched its mobile and tablet apps specifically for the holidays. New indoor wayfinding enhancements allow consumers to locate items in stores more easily using interactive store maps and shopping lists. (At least they do in theory. It’s often easier said than done—even for Target.) And of course, Target ramped up its Cartwheel experience by offering daily deals and holiday exclusives.

• Key takeaways: Target took a variety of different approaches to mobility, adding utility and fun to its overall brand experience. When you develop your mobile strategy, it’s paramount to consider what your customers want out of the shopping experience (both online and in-store), and what you can do to make their lives easier. You will be able to develop a solid foundation of features and capabilities from there.

2. Walmart

Although Walmart’s Savings Catcher app was popular long before the holiday season, the retailer tailored the mobile experience to align with consumers’ browsing and buying behaviors during this time of year. Consumers use the Savings Catcher app to scan their receipts. The app then aggregates prices from local competitor ads. If a competitor has a lower price, Walmart will give shoppers the difference on an eGift card. Funds can either be accrued and saved or spent immediately.

While this feature of the app is normally used for grocery items, Walmart expanded the product assortment for the holidays to include toys, a top category.

• Key takeaways: Savings Catcher was already easy-to-use and provided instant gratification to shoppers. Walmart simply expanded eligible merchandise to take advantage of holiday monetization opportunities. You can take a cue from Walmart: Instead of reinventing the wheel, what small adjustments can you make to your existing mobile experiences to align better with your customers during special seasons or events?

3. Neiman Marcus

At the end of October, luxury retailer Neiman Marcus launched Snap. Find. Shop., a tool available within its mobile app. Using visual search technology, Snap. Find. Shop. allows consumers to take photos of items they see out and about, and shop Neiman Marcus inventory that is similar or identical.

A key benefit of this tool is that it provides immediate access to products and information, and it helps merge the digital and physical worlds. What better way to facilitate inspired impulse gift buys for friends and loved ones?

• Key takeaways: Sure, not every retailer wants or needs visual search in their app, but there are ways you can still make the browsing experience easier. Sometimes a mobile customer will prefer leisurely iPad shopping, while other times they know exactly what they’re looking for and want to make a purchase quickly. Are you providing the tools and capabilities to appeal to both personas?

4. Office Depot

Everyone knows Elf Yourself. It has become a staple during the holiday season. Although it’s not directly correlated with Office Depot products, it creates a great image and personality for the brand. This year, the retailer unveiled the Elf Yourself app, which includes new customizable dancing elf videos in nine languages. Users can create customized videos and even upgrade to new video options and add different songs for a small fee.

• Key takeaways: Simply put: Sometimes it’s okay to have some fun and not always think about selling! During this time of year, it can be difficult to stand out. Creating a fun, energetic and out-of-the-box app that has a seasonal spin is a great way to generate buzz. And if you can leverage a freemium pricing model like Office Depot, even better!

How are you going to use these takeaways in 2015? Comment below and let us know!

The post Mobile Merriment: How Top Retail Apps Brought the Holiday Spirit appeared first on Phunware.