The Altimeter Group has published a research paper detailing the state of mobile marketing apps for retailers.
It’s all available on Slideshare via Jeremiah Owyang’s feed. Recommend you pass this onto your retail clients.
Summary of findings
The Creative Agency Secrets team has written a summary cheat-sheet below, if you don’t have time to read the full report.
Make an App for that: Mobile strategies for Retailers
2011 was the year of the mobile consumer take off
- Most consumers are using mobile especially in store
- Shopping is high on the mobile ‘to do’ list
Most retailers are not stepping up to the plate
- Buyers are eager if only retailers had the right mobile app plans to serve them
- Common mistakes: mobile for mobile’s sake, missing the chance to target mobile users
- How the mobile leaders are winning: align mobile with other key teams, focus on what the user needs, allocate the resources necessary to make mobile successful, mobile means multiple platform
Retailers must understand their engagement path
- Map mobile strategy to one of two end goals: Enrich or Engage
- Choose an application type to drive enrich or engage: informational, buy/ship, multichannel lite, multichannel heavy
Appendix A on pages 17 and 18 has a helpful check list which Altimeter used for its scoring.
Take this checklist and use it to write your requirements specification or RFP for your internal team assessment of mobile apps for your retail clients.
[...] – When you review your mobile marketing strategy (see our posts here and here) think hard about how you can encourage your customers to buy and share the experience all [...]