Does Mobile-Marketing work in the retail sector?

The most successful modern retailers have already started to re-evaluate how they market their products to audiences. They know that traditional channels like TV advertisements are in decline because consumers have switched attention to their smartphones. 

With each of us spending well over 3 hours a day on our mobile phones, it’s no surprise that mobile advertising spend has grown by 28015% in the last decade. But do mobile-focused marketing campaigns actually work in retail?

Are retail customers ready for mobile-focused marketing?

• Retail consumers are now demanding the personalised marketing experiences that mobile-marketing delivers, with 80% of shoppers more likely to purchase from a retailer that offers rich, mobile-marketing.
  
• Customers are already using their mobile devices to engage with brands, accounting for 65.4% of traffic to retail websites, and 57.1% of sales.
  
• 75% of retail customers prefer offers and promotions to be sent to their mobile devices over any other channel.
  
• The open rate for marketing emails in the UK is just 18.39% – the second-lowest in Europe – whereas the open rate for marketing SMS is 95%; customers are 134% more likely to respond to a text than an email.

But don’t stop there – there’s a bigger opportunity around the corner!

Rich messaging takes all of the best parts of plain SMS marketing and takes it to the next level. It combines high open rates, with next-generation functionality like images and video, chatbot integration, interactive buttons and more. All of this is delivered through the latest communication channels like WhatsApp, RCS, and SMS Landing Pages.

It’s all designed to help get your brand seen by more of your audience, and in turn, provide higher converting, stickier customers.

How does rich messaging stack up against the competition?

Let’s take a look at how rich, mobile-focused marketing compares against the ways that retailers are currently sending their personalised messaging experiences.

	Email	SMS only	Rich messaging
Message open rate	20.9%	95%	95%
Average customer response time	2.5 days	90 seconds	90 seconds
Link click-through rate	4.2%	19%	27%
Conversions	3.26%	32%	42%
Proportion of messages that are spam	90%	1%	0%

Data sources: Oracle | Remarkety | Adobe | Esendex | Digital Doughnut | Ofcom | Jibe by Google

What results have retail customers seen?

• Having spent £3,022 on RCS/ SMS Landing Page messages over a 12 month period, one of our retail partners generated £48,000 in sales, representing a 1488% ROI

• When promoting a sale event, deploying a rich, mobile-focused strategy resulted in doubled sales figures for an SMS Landing Page retail customer. This was compared to the previous year’s equivalent sale, which had no such strategy.

• Having traditionally used a standard SMS campaign to promote their products, a retailer saw a 30% uplift in sales when they deployed an SMS Landing Page campaign.
  
• Fashion retailer Express experienced higher than expected engagement for their rich messaging loyalty engagement program – their highest benchmark, with the addition of very low opt-out rates. 60% of the customers who received a rich message from Express, said that they preferred it to their SMS communications
  
• Paint retailer Club Comex experienced a 115% revenue increase when using rich messaging compared to a like for like SMS campaign. They also experienced a high click-through rate of 20%, compared with 2% via SMS
  

Start making more sales today

Esendex have worked with a wide range of retailers to convert more of their audience into paying customers who keep coming back. If you’d like to find out how rich, mobile-marketing could help you, please contact our industry experts today on 0345 356 5758 or email us at [email protected].