According to a recent survey from Forrester Research, part of the holdup around investing in mobile marketing is the fact that the e-commerce department in many cases directs the area's marketing spend.
The survey of 81 retailers, conducted in May and June 2014, is the latest update to the Shop.org/Forrester Research's State of Retailing Online study.
Asked, "Which group/department owns the mobile marketing budget within your company?", 46 percent indicated Marketing and 50 percent said the e-commerce/web team. Five percent indicated "other".
"While the vast majority of retailers we surveyed say they plan to spend more on mobile marketing efforts for phones and tablets in the coming year, those figures are even higher if a department other than e-commerce owns the marketing budget," asserts Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru in the report. "Why? Because other store marketing teams are more likely to dedicate resources to efforts that drive store traffic versus just mobile shopping endeavors."
Indeed, 20 percent of retailers whose budgets were directed by marketing wanted to more than double spend around smartphones in 2014 versus 2013 and increase tablet spending by 12 percent. That compares to only three percent on smartphones and zero percent on tablets for those whose budgets were directly by e-commerce/web teams.
The study also found that many retailers are still working on the "basics" with a focus on optimizing search, e-mail and display ads.
Around some of the newer mobile marketing tactics:
- Thirty-nine percent use QR codes or other bar-code scanning;
- Thirty-six percent use mobile messaging (including SMS, MMS, push notifications);
- Twenty-one percent use other location-based marketing (e.g., NFC or geofencing via GPS);
- Eleven percent utilize "check-ins;"
- Five percent use Beacon technology.