Just 27% of marketers across brands and retailers have holistic customer profiles that include mobile and other digital behaviors, according to a new Forrester survey of 414 marketing leaders.
That’s a concerning number, given the treasure trove of contextual data generated by consumers using their smartphones and other connected devices – telling marketers who they are, where they are, and when they engage with a brand.
Further, most marketers don’t even systematically use mobile analytics to generate insights. And even when they do, it’s primarily (59%) to understand the performance of mobile marketing initiatives apps, completely missing the potential of mobile data beyond mobile.
But the reality is, writes Forrester analyst Thomas Husson in the new research, mobile data will power all marketing initiatives, across all channels, so smart marketers must get on board with the mobile data gold mine today. For those brands that cannot get consent for access to customers’ sensor-generated data, they must turn to vendors that are integrating mobile data, or consider working with telecom players anonymizing mobile data.
“Mobile is more than simply another digital channel. Marketing leaders should combine mobile data with other sources of customer intelligence to get a deeper understanding of customers, anticipate their expectations, and act on these insights to improve all marketing initiatives,” says Husson. “However, the majority of marketers are not yet ready to exploit the convergence between mobile and big data. Harnessing and extracting actionable insights from this unprecedented wealth of customer data will enable marketers to serve customers in their mobile moments on a channel where they will increasingly spend the majority of their digital time.”
