Mobile Marketing

Beyond the in-store promotions and advertising to increase consumer awareness when launching a new retail product, there's always the hope that satisfied customers will recommend the product to their friends and family. Nothing helps sell a product better than good old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

Macy’s will help consumers unlock magical moments in-store this spring when they scan a code or send a text message with Macy’s Backstage Pass. A groundbreaking new initiative for the retailer, Macy’s Backstage Pass customizes QR code and SMS technology to deliver exclusive and engaging video content to users’ mobile phones.

Cross-channel shopping is growing fast at Target. Website traffic from mobile phones increased nearly three-fold in 2010 and now accounts for 8 percent of Target's online page views.

Old Navy has launched a mobile marketing campaign with mobile app Shazam. Consumers with the Shazam app on their smartphones will be able to tag Old Navy-branded pop music featured in the campaign, and immediately unlock and shop the looks in the ads featuring those songs. 

To help meet customers' desire for immediacy during the shopping experience, Nordstrom President Blake Nordstrom announced that the retailer will deploy mobile devices for its store employees by this fall.

Mobile devices accompany consumers everywhere throughout a busy day. Through mobile initiatives, retailers have unique opportunities to engage with consumers as they move through each purchase phase — whether they're in a store, in transit, at work or at home.

Q: "What would you consider a good budget for a mobile launch? Our company is working right now on its 2011 planning, and we're aggressively moving on our mobile efforts — making our sites mobile internet usage friendly. We're looking at launching an application similar to Facebook and Yelp, but need to understand the cost behind the marketing."

Zappos, which was founded in 1999 as a shoe seller, is a relative newbie to mobile. It started developing apps only six months ago, and launched an iPad app in October followed by an iPhone app in December.

Mobile applications can be exciting, even essential tools, but the majority fall short when it comes to getting consumers to download them. Is the hype greater than the apps themselves? My company wanted to find out, so it recently conducted a national study to help marketers better understand who uses mobile apps and what makes an app a "favorite."

At the National Retail Federation's BIG Show in New York City this week, Andrew Koven, president of e-commerce and customer experience at Steve Madden, co-presented a session where he shared some secrets to his company's recent success in the mobile space.