Mobile Analytics

Recently, mobile sites and applications employ built-in analytics tools. This is a great field that one can tap on. If you’re interested in return on investment, you want to invest in this new technology to monitor your campaign’s effectiveness. After all, tracking your campaign is a necessary part of mobile marketing.

Many experts believe that mobile analytics have challenges in terms of providing reliable data compared to web analytics. However, it should be noted that web analytics also have their own  disadvantages. 

Web analytics came earlier, and these traditional platforms have branched out into mobile channels. These let users gather information on keywords that brought their audience to their sites. Mobile analytics also show data on which referrers were used, as well as how long people spend on their site. Multiple tools will help you gain insight in your audience’s actions and create conclusions and generalizations about their intent. Your campaigns and web presence, then, are narrowed down. 

Advantages of Mobile Analytics

Most platforms for mobile marketing are easy to understand, but complicated campaigns may entail complicated analytics. Fortunately, mobile analytics can condense your data without missing out the important information. 

First, mobile devices are personal devices. Sure, this may feel like it is a difficult challenge, it’s important to note that permission and privacy earn trust. If you consider these two at the core of your campaign, it’s likely to be more effective. The only downside to this is, there is not enough space on the screen to explain privacy and permission. Thus, you have to guarantee that the permission  to market to the phone numbers is clearly stated on your database. Users should also easily opt out of subscribing to your marketing messages.

Aside from screen size, take note of the various browsers and operating systems being used. Standardizing your campaign materials and website may pose a lot of risks. 

Challenges of Mobile Analytics

One of the challenges of using mobile analytics is the way many users are looking for various types of data. The most basic information that mobile analytics offer include the device being used, network, browser, and some screen size details. For instance Metrics Insider’s Judah Phillips states that not all mobile brOWSERS support JavaScript. JavaScript is the most used procedure for collecting information. And the fact that it’s not available on mobile devices means that there should be alternative methods for implementation. This may include packet-sniffers and log files accessibility. Another disadvantage of using mobile analytics is handset capability detection, which  is not offered in many packages.

The small screen and keypad or touch interface on phones is also a huge challenge. Keep in mind when designing that mobile phones do not have a mouse and a full keyboard. There are very limited navigation options, meaning it’s harder for the user to input important information. 

Despite these challenges, mobile analytics continue to improve and develop tools that can provide substantial data. AdMob and Google Analytics are just a few of the many free channels for mobile analytics out there. Tracking iPhone and Android applications is possible in Google Analytics, along with monitoring mobile sites. It also features options for server-side tracking for tracking phone sites that do not support JavaScript.

Case Studies Regarding Mobile Analytics

One case concerning mobile analytics is the innovative and successful mobile campaign of Carling Black Label. They engaged soccer fans who use feature phones with a low internet penetration yet high rate of mobile access. This means they owned lower-end feature phones despite being active. The famous South African beer brand knew that Black Label drinkers are huge soccer fans. Like all fans in the world, their target audience are believed to do a good job at coaching Kaiser Chiefs, their favorite soccer team. 

They named the campaign “Be the Coach” for the brand to make the target audience feel a sense of involvement. The fans may choose players for the team and even change a player during a match. They advertised the entire campaign on TV, radio, Black Label bottles, and many other media.

There’s even a mobile site developed specially for the campaign. Here, the team, player, and voting information can be seen by the audience. They can also like and follow the Facebook and Twitter profiles of “Be the Coach.” Their mobile numbers are used to sign in the website. It’s a low-barrier entry to the program so it’s easily accessible to the fans. There are also Facebook ads, digital PR, and display ads to promote the campaign.

To participate, fans have to use the code inside the beer bottle cap. They vote on the names of the player to be included through USSD. After this, they participate in the live match by picking the names of the players who should be substituted. 

More Case Studies

Lastly, another mobile feature they use in the marketing campaign is Mixit. They advertised Mixit for two weeks on the portal. People can create a profile on “Be the Coach” on the mobile aspect and visit the mobile site from there.

The campaign has sparked a huge discussion among the fans over the seven-week course of voting. Even players, coaches, and journalists were talking about it, which led Black Label to gather very impressive results.

From mobile analytics, they found out that fans voted more than 10.5 million times for seven weeks. For the match, they sold 85,000 tickets while millions watched at the comfort of their home. The brand was most impressed by the Facebook and Twitter accounts which grew by 450% and 600%. The data also presented that there were 31,088 visitors on the mobile site. 18,405 of them are unique. They also visited approximately 6.97 pages for around 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

The opposing team, Orlando Pirates, won. However, it was still worth the experience for fans who got to “Be the Coach” for Kaiser Chiefs.

Takeaway

Mobile analytics is a great way to gather data from the mobile device to identify users, referrers, and whatnot. Marketers do not use mobile marketing separately since they usually accces this with other media, such as in the case of Black Label. The “Be the Coach” campaign has shown that mobile can put together different types of online and offline media. Therefore, it should one of your main considerations when mobile marketing.

© Image credits to faaiq ackmerd