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Many say marketers' mobile alerts aren't useful or relevant

Written by Guest contributor

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, a Watershed Publishing publication providing up-to-to-minute data and research to marketers.

Sixty-six percent of respondents to a Hipcricket survey say they have received a text message or mobile alert from a brand in the last six months. However, only 45 percent found the message or alert to be useful. Primary complaints include the messages feeling "intrusive or spammy" (52 percent), not relevant to their interests (46 percent), and failing to offer any value (33 percent).

These appear to be common complaints not confined to mobile marketing.

Indeed, early this year, a study from Janrain and Blue Research found that almost all respondents claimed to have received information or promotions not relevant to them, including offers that:

  • Show the company doesn't know who they are (71 percent);
  • Contain mixed information across different methods of communication (51 percent);
  • Include basic errors about the consumers' identities (41 percent).

The same study indicated that more than nine in 10 respondents have developed an unfavorable attitude to the company or taken some kind of action to limit such messaging, including deleting the e-mail and unsubscribing from the messages. And in a new Science of Email 2014 report from HubSpot and Litmus, 58 percent of survey respondents reported reacting to an unwanted commercial email by unsubscribing, suggesting that relevant and useful content is a priority.

Returning to the survey by Hipcricket, a mobile ad company, the results indicate that motivating consumers to engage with brands on their mobile devices isn't a pressing issue for marketers. While six in 10 respondents reported engaging with up to 10 brands a month across various mobile channels, the most popular of those channels were emails and newsletters, with 81 percent interacting with brands through them during the past six months. Beyond that, respondents also engaged with brands via mobile by liking them on Facebook (47 percent), opting in to receive text messages (47 percent), receiving push alerts (19 percent) and following them on Twitter (12 percent).

However, marketers looking to tease more data out of consumers to better personalize their mobile interactions should look to incentivize them with relevant coupons or offers, per the study, as 41 percent of respondents said they would share more information with companies via mobile in exchange for those benefits. The most common forms of data respondents are willing to share are location data (20 percent) and demographic data (19 percent).

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