Mobile Analytics — So Where Do I Start?

I was in San Diego last week (yes, a choice loca­tion) speak­ing on a mobile ana­lyt­ics panel as part of the San Diego Soft­ware Indus­try Coun­cil (SDSIC) annual Forum on Ana­lyt­ics. The event was held in Del Mar and attracted many local soft­ware pro­fes­sion­als as well as other notable fig­ures in the “ana­lyt­ics indus­try” such as Daniel Yankelovich, con­sid­ered by many to be the found­ing father of pub­lic opin­ion research. Other mem­bers of my panel included experts from Qual­comm as well as a COO and CEO from two mobile startup com­pa­nies address­ing mobile appli­ca­tion mea­sure­ment and mobile brand­ing, respec­tively. Fol­low­ing this event, I then attended the Mobile Mar­ket­ing Forum held on Coro­n­ado island. This event was pro­duced by the Mobile Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion and was well attended by mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als rep­re­sent­ing the mobile car­ri­ers, adver­tis­ers, pub­lish­ers, and tech­nol­ogy & con­tent providers.

Over the course of the week, I observed two key issues based on the ques­tions I received from the audi­ence at the SDSIC forum as well as the ques­tions I asked of the exhibit­ing com­pa­nies at the MMA Forum. The first issue was that peo­ple don’t really know where or how to start with the mobile chan­nel. I heard numer­ous ques­tions about “What kind of mobile adver­tis­ing should I con­sider?” and “What kind of brand impact can I get with mobile users?” The sec­ond key issue I observed was that ana­lyt­ics and mea­sure­ment are wholly under­used and under­rep­re­sented in the mobile space. I spoke with numer­ous mobile adver­tis­ers and their cus­tomers who are NOT EVEN MEASURING sim­ple view­ing met­rics! We’ve come a long way with Web ana­lyt­ics, but we clearly have a LONG WAY to go with mobile ana­lyt­ics and with all the com­pa­nies who would ben­e­fit from mea­sur­ing and opti­miz­ing their mobile mar­ket­ing efforts.

If you are con­sid­er­ing get­ting started in mobile mar­ket­ing, allow me to offer a few ideas:

1. Start simple.

There are a seem­ingly over­whelm­ing num­ber of ways you could start engag­ing your cus­tomers via mobile mar­ket­ing. Instead of try­ing to “eat the ele­phant all in one bite,” start with some­thing small and sim­ple. With mobile mar­ket­ing, you have choices span­ning SMS or text mes­sag­ing cam­paigns, build­ing a mobile inter­net or WAP site, devel­op­ing down­load­able mobile apps, cre­at­ing mobile videos, and or devel­op­ing IVR or voice cam­paigns. If you are try­ing to build aware­ness, you could focus on devel­op­ing a text mes­sag­ing cam­paign to pro­mote your prod­uct or ser­vice. Or, con­sider search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) efforts so your mobile site achieves bet­ter rank­ings when mobile con­sumers are search­ing for some­thing you offer. If you’re try­ing to improve cus­tomer loy­alty, con­sider a trig­ger email mar­ket­ing pro­gram that sends an SMS when a cus­tomer mile­stone is reached (such as follow-ups to pur­chases, or points reached in a loy­alty pro­gram). The key is to exper­i­ment with mobile pro­grams that sup­port your busi­ness objec­tives, but keep it sim­ple to start out.

2. Start Measuring.

As I stated ear­lier, it was inter­est­ing (but alto­gether not sur­pris­ing) to learn how many play­ers in the mobile space are not mea­sur­ing. As you begin to start sim­ple, ensure you start mea­sur­ing as well. With the mobile ana­lyt­ics avail­able in Site­Cat­a­lyst, there is no longer an excuse not to mea­sure how your online efforts are per­form­ing with cus­tomers. Are your site vis­i­tors view­ing the mobile videos you’ve pro­duced? Are they down­load­ing ring­tones you’ve posted? Are they pur­chas­ing prod­ucts on your site via their Black­berry, iPhone, or Nokia devices? Ensure your efforts and your invest­ments are effec­tively being mea­sured so you’ll gain greater insight into which mobile pro­grams are work­ing, which need improve­ment, and which should be discontinued.

3. Start with basic metrics.

As you start with a sim­ple pro­gram that you now mea­sure, focus on some basic met­rics first. You may need to answer ‘Which of my mobile pages are most pop­u­lar? How deep do vis­i­tors go in mobile site? Which mobile pages most fre­quently influ­ence suc­cess?’ You should focus on met­rics such as page views, time spent on site, and time spent on page to ana­lyze the effec­tive­ness of your site and its con­tent. Other ques­tions may be ‘Which cam­paigns drive most traf­fic to my site? Do mobile efforts out­per­form other cam­paigns? Do mobile efforts pro­duce bet­ter con­ver­sion rates than untar­geted efforts?’ For these ques­tions, you should look at met­rics includ­ing click-throughs and site con­ver­sion to increase ad spend effec­tive­ness, email & newslet­ter effec­tive­ness, or iden­tify which paid part­ners drive most traffic.

Mobile mar­ket­ing can rep­re­sent a dif­fer­en­ti­ated way to bet­ter con­nect and engage with your cus­tomers. While it may appear over­whelm­ing at first, be sure to start sim­ple, start mea­sur­ing, and start with some basic met­rics so your efforts will be rewarded with the most effec­tive investments.

Good luck!