More Than Mobile Monday

Last year's massive 55 percent increase in mobile commerce sales on Cyber Monday has led to some renaming the shopping day as Mobile Monday. And it's not just holiday shopping. The overall percentage of shoppers moving to m-commerce is quickly increasing. According to a recent report from research firm GfK, internet shopping using a PC or laptop has dropped by 15 percent in the past year, while the use of smartphones and tablets has nearly doubled. What's more, by 2017, m-commerce is expected to generate more than $108 billion in U.S. retail sales alone.

Clearly, retailers need to think beyond Mobile Monday by putting the mobile channel at the center of their digital strategy year-round.

More than any other channel, mobile offers real-time access to shoppers in a highly personal manner through a device that consumers increasingly have with them at all times. Mobile can provide near-real-time insight into consumers’ shopping behavior on their phone, their proximity to stores and their preferred channel of mobile communication, whether that's through a mobile-optimized website, branded app, email or text message.

Consumers increasing reliance on mobile gives retailers the opportunity to engage as never before. Social networks are becoming the first stop for customer service inquiries, and two-way text messaging is enabling conversations to take place with customers in real time, in a way that works for them.

So, as the holiday season draws near, savvy retailers should consider the three strategies below to make their Mobile Monday promotions stand the test of every season:

1. Get personal with mobile context. Geolocation has become a valuable data point in enabling retailers to send targeted communications based upon the location of a shopper's opted-in mobile phone. The mobile device offers many other contextual data points as well, including browsing and purchasing behavior, and opt-in preferences that can be layered to help optimize the user experience, increase conversion rates and enhance brand loyalty.

2. Be relevant with new mobile tools. New mobile tools like Apple's iBeacons and light apps like Apple's Passbook offer easier-than-ever ways to reach consumers with timely and relevant information. For example, to support increased engagement with a loyalty program, retailers can use Passbook to dynamically update a customer's loyalty points and, then, by using iBeacons, deliver timely, relevant loyalty offers to those customers based on their geolocation.

3. Deepen engagement by making it fun. Games, which naturally lend themselves to mobile environments, can be taken greater advantage of to strengthen customer engagement. Retailers can tap the power of gamification — i.e., using games or game-like elements — to enter consumers’ recreational world and offer branded interactions, such as scratch-to-win coupons or trivia. The more interactive retailers make their communications, the more engaged customers will be.

Whether for Mobile Monday or any day, using the strategies above and putting the mobile channel at the center of a digital strategy year-round is a must.

Mary Clark is the chief marketing officer of Syniverse, a provider of technology and business services for the telecommunications industry.