We live in a ful­ly con­nect­ed world. With an esti­mat­ed 7 bil­lion mobile sub­scrip­tions world­wide, the ques­tion fac­ing mar­keters is: What can busi­ness­es do to ful­ly har­ness the pow­er of this tech­nol­o­gy in order to con­nect with con­sumers in mean­ing­ful ways? Sim­ply offer­ing a mobile app with a mini-Web expe­ri­ence falls short giv­en the vast poten­tial of smart­phones that are more pow­er­ful than a lap­top was 10 years ago. The secret to achiev­ing a new lev­el of mobile engage­ment lies in har­ness­ing the untapped pow­er of smart­phones to under­stand con­sumer con­text. This con­sumer con­text is revealed once mar­keters shift their view of mobile as mere­ly a chan­nel and approach it as a rela­tion­ship.

Mar­keters who always talk and nev­er lis­ten with­out observ­ing and remem­ber­ing what peo­ple like, what they do, and where they go, won’t keep rela­tion­ships long.

The tech­nolo­gies we uti­lize need to be smarter.

We need to observe more than loca­tion and we need to com­bine a series of events over time to real­ly under­stand con­sumer con­text, pref­er­ences, and intent in order to open the door to real engage­ment.

By tak­ing advan­tage of mobile-detect­ed trig­gers and com­bin­ing this infor­ma­tion with pur­chase his­to­ry and oth­er cus­tomer data, busi­ness­es can, for the first time, cre­ate high­ly per­son­al­ized mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that engage con­sumers with the right infor­ma­tion, offers, and/or mobile ser­vices, at the right time.

Beyond Location To Contextual Insight

The advent of loca­tion-based ser­vices that uti­lize bea­cons, GPS, Wi-Fi, mag­net­ic fields and even LED light­ing, offer valu­able insights into con­sumer behav­ior and pref­er­ences.

Busi­ness­es can see where con­sumers are going, when they go, and how long they stay to some extent.

This infor­ma­tion can be used to trig­ger offers; how­ev­er, when sup­port­ed with addi­tion­al con­tex­tu­al data gleaned from a smart­phone, such as dwell time, repeat vis­its, app activ­i­ty, etc., cus­tomer pref­er­ences and intent can be bet­ter inferred.

If loca­tion is the only dri­ving fac­tor, mar­keters run the risk of annoy­ing con­sumers much like the guy hand­ing out lewd post­cards on the Vegas strip.

To make loca­tion-based mar­ket­ing rel­e­vant and real­ly ele­vate con­sumer engage­ment, a con­tex­tu­al view of that infor­ma­tion is sore­ly need­ed.

For exam­ple, a base­ball fan at a ball­game will pass sev­er­al food sta­tions on her way to her seat. Rather than bar­rag­ing the fan with offers, a con­text-enabled app (assum­ing opt-in) can observe her lin­ger­ing in front of a burg­er joint for two min­utes, and detect­ing sev­er­al veg­e­tar­i­an-relat­ed apps on her phone, can offer a deal on a meat-free mush­room burg­er.

Context = Personalization

Being able to gain a con­tex­tu­al under­stand­ing of con­sumer cir­cum­stances and behav­iors allows for true per­son­al­iza­tion of mobile engage­ment that does­n’t just involve pro­mo­tions, but also per­son­al­ized ser­vice.

Con­sid­er this retail exam­ple:

A cus­tomer enters a home improve­ment store and receives a wel­come mes­sage on his smart­phone. The mes­sage asks if he needs help shop­ping today. He taps ‘not now’ and heads to the washer/dryer sec­tion. His phone inter­acts with bea­cons and detects that he’s been dwelling in the sec­tion for 15 min­utes. The phone also detects that he’s launched Yelp and Con­sumer Reports mobile apps.

Armed with this cir­cum­stan­tial knowl­edge, the store sends a price match­ing noti­fi­ca­tion to his device, offers free deliv­ery on washer/dryer com­bos, and asks if he needs assis­tance from a home appli­ance expert. The cus­tomer taps ‘yes’, gets the details he needs, and decides to make his pur­chase in store that day.

In this exam­ple the cus­tomer isn’t just offered a dis­count, he’s offered cus­tomer ser­vice at the right moment, from the right per­son, and remind­ed of the advan­tage of tak­ing home what they want­ed on the same day.

Even with­out any noti­fi­ca­tions sent to the device, these con­tex­tu­al insights of dwell time and app usage would help to iden­ti­fy show­room­ing behav­ior, allow­ing stores to plan bet­ter staff cov­er­age on the floor.

It’s an excit­ing new mobile world for mar­keters, but with­out a full con­tex­tu­al pic­ture, mar­keters are left with a big gap between what can be offered and what should be offered to con­sumers via mobile.

A con­text-dri­ven approach bridges that gap, bet­ter uti­liz­ing the intel­li­gence of smart­phones to enable high­ly rel­e­vant and time­ly engage­ment with cus­tomers.

Are you har­ness­ing the pow­er of smart­phones to under­stand con­sumer con­text and build rela­tion­ships with con­sumers?