Add “The Declining ROI of Mobile Marketing” to the List of Pains Holistic Multichannel Strategy Relieves
According to Forbes, the average mobile advertiser's ROI is down 38% since Apple's iOS privacy changes of mid-2021. But, as two-thirds of customers use mobile to shop, marketers can't afford to neglect this channel. The solution lies in making your mobile marketing just one part of a multichannel strategy. And in focusing on your existing customers
In a world where most consumers want to know what brands are doing to address environmental issues, sustainability is expected to be standard business practice. In practical terms, it means that marketers are expected to follow the definition of sustainability, which is – according to the UN Commission on Environment and Development – ensuring that all developments meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future is not only an environmental challenge; brands face it in all facets of their business. Recently, marketing leaders have been struggling with this challenge as the value of mobile advertising has cratered.
A Mobile Target
Last month, Forbes revealed that since Apple’s privacy changes on April 21′, the average mobile advertiser’s return on investment has been cut by 38%. One obvious reason is the diminished capabilities to track your users across apps – the main result of the aforementioned privacy changes.
But that’s not all. According to “The State of Fashion Technology,” a new report by McKinsey and Business of Fashion, since 2018, the global average CPM on Facebook has increased by almost 17% per year. And as mobile commerce is growing at a rapid pace, the ROI issue is only getting more and more noticeable.
A recent study by Gartner found that 62% of consumers (including a growing share of boomers) use mobile devices to research or purchase products. This number corresponds with an Optimove market survey among 500 potential shoppers; 64% of the respondents chose at least one mobile-related option in their top 3 purchasing methods from retailers.
That’s why, despite the inefficiency of spending on mobile advertising, brands continue to invest heavily in mobile marketing – though they do so primarily in acquisition efforts. In February, Optimove surveyed 323 marketing leaders from companies ranging from brick-and-mortar to purely digital. When asked to select their top 4 acquisition tactics, mobile marketing was the second most popular tactic (behind email marketing).
A Holistic Solution
If mobile marketing has hit its efficiency wall, what is the solution? Well, based on our vast experience with retail clients from different industries and markets, the only viable solution is deploying a holistic multichannel marketing strategy, which amplifies your mobile marketing without leaving you broke at the end of the day.
Under a holistic multichannel strategy that not only balances channels but also acquisition with retention efforts better, marketers unify customer data in a fast, secure, sophisticated, and actionable Customer Data Platform, scale customer marketing personalization from tens to hundreds of customer segments and execute all mobile marketing campaigns natively – as part of multichannel campaigns.
In addition, they leverage customer models, predictive analytics, and AI cross-channel decisioning and optimization to improve their native mobile push notifications, in-app messaging, mobile inbox, geo-fencing, and deferred deep linking. Brands that execute such a balanced strategy smartly can see even a 33% increase in customer lifetime value.
Incorporating mobile marketing into a broader strategy also addresses cross-channel pain points many marketers share. 106 of the 323 decision-makers that participated in the aforementioned Optimove survey said delivering consistent messaging across channels is one of the top 3 challenges in acquisition marketing, and 114 said orchestrating marketing across channels is one of the top 3 challenges in retention marketing. An AI-based multichannel marketing hub relieves those pain points as well.
A Matter of Opportunity
Another trend that is evident when looking at what marketing leaders tell us through different surveys and reports, is that most of them still don’t recognize the incredible value of deploying a holistic multichannel marketing strategy; only 44.6% of the decision-makers we surveyed said they see high or extremely high value in basic tactics as unifying and synchronizing customer data across multiple channels.
When asked to pick the top 3 technologies they would implement next year, a mobile marketing platform was the third choice, while a multichannel marketing hub was only the fifth-ranked technology.
An optimist – and here at Optimove, we are nothing if not optimists – will see this as a massive opportunity for marketers. Since on the one hand, all the signals and tools are here to help steer an organization towards a holistic multichannel-based marketing strategy and succeed in doing so.
But, on the other hand, there are still tons of green fields to grab, as way too many marketing leaders are still behind the curve.
For those who understand how crucial this all is for generating sustainable business growth amid declining ROIs on mobile marketing and spiking CACs, there’s a unique opportunity here to change their perspective and adopt a more rounded marketing strategy, including investing in a multichannel marketing hub, and reap the rewards. After all, the current strategy, i.e., continuing to spend on mobile advertising, is not sustainable anymore.
