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Lucy Nixon

Lucy Nixon

Online Moms in 2013 – Mobile, Influential, and Crucial to Brand Marketing

mother laptopResearch has shown again and again that women make or influence the vast majority of purchase decisions, and mothers who spend time online have become a coveted target audience that brand marketers are trying hard than ever to reach. However, messages and campaigns are still missing the mark.

New research from Burst Media reveals that the powerful “online moms” audience is more savvy and decisive than ever. Citing statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, Burst Media reports that 40% of all U.S. households with children under the age of 18 are led by mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the entire family.

Furthermore, Baby Center has reported that 81% of U.S. moms own smartphones and 52% own tablets with 68% of them using their smartphones while they shop. In other words, the “mother” market segment has evolved over the years, and old marketing tactics need to evolve along with the target audience.

Burst Media shared a number of key findings from its research that can help brand marketers better understand how the audience of online mothers is using the internet to make and influence purchase decisions. Some of the highlights are included below. Follow the link above to access the full report.

Usage

  • 91.9% of moms go online daily for personal use.

Mobility

  • 61.5% of U.S. moms frequently use smartphones or tablets to access websites and social networks.
  • 87.6% of mothers with household incomes of $100,000 or more frequently use smartphones or tablets to access websites and social networks.

Brands

  • 43.5% of moms have published a review, comment, or question about a specific brand online.
  • 60.8% of moms who have published a review about a brand online, published those reviews on social networking sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.
  • Moms are most likely to publish reviews, questions, or comments on social networks (62.2%) followed by shopping/retail sites (55.9%) and blogs/independent sites (32.4%).
  • 56.1% of moms share or post product coupons and sales incentives on social media sites.

Purchase Decisions

Moms are “very involved” in most household purchase decisions. For example, they make or influence purchase decisions as follows:

  • Furniture = 83%
  • Travel and family vacations = 81.9%
  • Large household appliances = 80%
  • Home repairs and remodeling = 79.1%
  • Banking, financial, and retirement products = 77.1%
  • Automobiles and auto repairs = 75.8%

Moms are also turning to the web to make purchase decisions in greater numbers than ever. When asked their primary information source for researching products and services, the results broke down as follows:

  1. Web = 41%
  2. Friends and family = 19.4%
  3. Brochures and product materials = 15.1%
  4. Social networks such as Facebook and Pinterest = 4.6%
  5. In-store displays = 4.1%
  6. Magazines = 3.9%
  7. Television shows = 3.5%
  8. Newspapers = 2.3%

Based on the results from this study, are you targeting online moms appropriately? Do your messages, social media activities, and content distribution strategies match what online moms are looking for and where they’re looking for it in 2013? Leave a comment and share your thoughts about marketing to online moms.

Image: Alicja Stolarczyk

Email Marketing Open Rates Down Since Gmail Tabs Launch

email marketinhg networkThe new Gmail Tabs feature, which rolled out to all users last month, appears to be having a negative impact on email marketing open rates. That’s according to research from MailChimp and is the opposite of what research from Return Path found. However, there is a reason for the discrepancy. Let’s take a closer look.

The Return Path study looked at email open rates during the week after Gmail Tabs rolled out fully. The MailChimp study looked at email open rates after the first week that Gmail Tabs launched in order to account for “shiny new toy syndrome.” You can follow the preceding link to learn about the Return Path study results. Following are some interesting details about the MailChimp study. Keep in mind, neither study can factor in the adoption rate of Gmail Tabs, so the data is limited in that respect.

MailChimp analyzed every delivery to a Gmail inbox over the past year from its database (12.5 billion emails with more than 2 billion unique opens) to identify open rate trends. Next, the data was narrowed to six weeks around the Gmail Tabs launch, which equated to 1.5 billion emails. Finally, the analysis of open rates was done by Matt Grove of MailChimp as follows:

“Gmail published their blog post about the tabbed inbox on May 29, which was the 22nd week of 2013. The week after that announcement, we actually saw increased open rates. Everyone likes a new toy, and the added attention that changing the inbox brings probably skewed results that week. To compensate, I skewed my concept of the “event” to the week after the attention died down. That’s when I saw a small but definite drop.”

As you can see from Matt’s explanation, his research corroborates the Return Path research, which saw open rates increase after the launch of Gmail tabs. However, a week later, open rates dropped. Matt explained his findings as follows:

“Before the tabbed layout, open rates to Gmail had been above 13% for 15 weeks. They never dipped below that threshold unless there was a specific holiday. The open rates stayed down for three consecutive weeks. From looking at a year and a half’s worth of data, I can say that kind of behavior isn’t normal.”

MailChimp is continuing to monitor how Gmail tabs are affecting open rates. In the meantime, they suggest that convincing the people on your email marketing lists to move your messages to the Primary Tab in Gmail is the best way to get there. The MailChimp team has tried a variety of tactics to get email marketing messages to automatically go to the Primary Tab but they’ve had no luck so far. They also suspect that if promotional email messages do end up in the Primary Tab by bypassing Google’s methods of flagging them as promotional, Google will respond quickly by modifying their methods and ensuring those emails aren’t missed in the future.

Bottom-line, it’s not surprising that Gmail tabs are negatively affecting email open rates for brand marketers. However, brand marketers have to create amazing, relevant, and meaningful content. Be useful and timely with your email marketing messages, and you might just motivate Gmail recipients to move your messages to the primary tab.

Image: Sergio Roberto Bichara

Gmail Tabs Have Little Effect on Email Marketing So Far

email keyboardWhen Gmail tabs rolled out in July, email marketers took notice of this auto-filtering inbox feature. You’d be crazy not to. After all, knowing that your brand messages are going into a “secondary” tab by default is cause for concern. Ignoring the roll out of Gmail tabs is something that no experienced marketer would do.

While it’s still much too early to know how Gmail tabs will ultimately affect email marketing open rates, early results are positive. According to a study by Return Path conducted during the first week after Gmail introduced it’s tab feature, email marketing message open rates changed very little. Here are the key findings from the Return Path study:

  • Traditionally Low Read Rate Users: Gmail users who didn’t read many email marketing messages before the tabs feature launched (11% of users) read fewer after the tabs feature launched dropping 80.82% from a 2.19% read rate to 0.42%.
  • Traditionally High Read Rate Users: Gmail users who read high percentages of email marketing messages prior to the tabs rollout (11% of users) read more after the tabs feature launched increasing by 2.11% from a read rate of 58.64% to 59.88%.
  • Traditionally Medium Read Rate Users: Gmail users who read “medium levels” of email marketing messages prior to the tabs rollout (88% of users) read slightly fewer after the tabs feature launched dropping 8.30% from a 10.55% read rate to 9.81%.

The team at Return Path speculates that mobile had a big effect in the study results. With 44% of Gmail users in the study reading their email via mobile devices, Return Path explains that these users would not be affected by the new tabs feature. Therefore, the results likely do not show the full impact of the tabs feature on email marketing message read rates.

Furthermore, Return Path notes that the results are likely skewed due to the “newness” of the tabs feature. For example, many Gmail users tested the feature during the first week after its launch and probably read more email messages than they normally would in order to “train” Gmail to recognize and appropriately categorize email messages to the right tabs in the future.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the Gmail tabs feature is optional. The real adoption rate of the tabs feature might still be quite low and would have little effect on marketing message read rates.

Bottom-line, it is much too early to tell how Gmail tabs will effect email marketing message open rates in the long-term. For now, the most important thing for email marketers to do is to ensure you’re sending the type of messages your audience wants to receive. Don’t assume you know what they want based on what you’ve done in the past. The battle for email inbox space is changing, and you need to do your research and craft campaigns that make consumers want to receive them and proactively look for them in the clutter of their email inbox—or in the case of Gmail, in their Primary tab or Promotions tab.

Image: T. Al Nakib

Two Years in the Making – ABC Rebranding Is Released

ABC Logo RebrandingABC is one of the big three television networks in the United States. It has been around for over half a century and has been owned by Disney for nearly 20 years. During that time, the ABC logo changed very little with just one major overhaul in 2008, but for the past two years, ABC has been working with Loyalkaspar on a rebranding effort that has finally been unveiled.

You can see the primary iterations of the ABC logo over the years that played roles in the rebranding effort in the image above. In the ABC Brand Identity materials on the Loyalkaspar website, you can find all the details about the project. For example, Loaylkaspar explains that the rebranding effort involved looking at the entire ABC brand architecture and then reimagining it “from the ground up.” The result is described as classy simplicity—“Go back to basics. Strip everything superfluous.”

The rebranding positions ABC as an “articulate, luxurious, cinematic” brand while reverting the logo back to a design much closer to Paul Rand’s 1962 design to give it the “strength and simplicity” it lacked in more recent iterations.

The rebranding is supported by a new marketing strategy that focuses on simplicity and branding “nights” rather than “shows.” The tagline has been dropped in an effort to reduce competing messaging and again, simplify things. However, the “ABC Light” has been added which casts the logo in three primary colors: blue, red, and gold. I’m not a fan of gradients in logos, but the “light” does work well on screen. Colors will be used to brand “nights” with Loyalkaspar explaining the brand overview as 53% gold, 30% blue, and 17% red.

Without a doubt, the rebranding effort is a good one if for no other reason than getting rid of the Web 2.0 logo design that was so outdated. Everyone was rushing to revamp their logos to the hot Web 2.0 design trend back in 2008, but it didn’t take long for the trend to start dying. For example, Google dropped its Web 2.0 logo design for Chrome in 2011, and Facebook and Apple started moving away from the Web 2.0 logo design trend earlier this year.

I’m also a big fan of simplicity in logo design and brand imagery, so overall, this rebranding ticks a lot of the check boxes that I like to see in a brand identity. I agree with Armin from The Brand New who wrote, “If we assume that gradients are a must for ABC, then this is one of the better executions we will see.”

What do you think?

Image: Loyalkaspar

Mobile Changes the Media Landscape – There’s No Going Back Now

mobile graph increaseIn June 2011, I wrote an article on the Corporate Eye blog discussing predictions that mobile content consumption would surpass online content consumption in the near future. Fast forward to July 2013, and it happened.

According to research conducted by eMarketer last month, the average time per day that U.S. adults spent with major media using mobile devices was 2 hours and 21 minutes, which is two minutes more than they spent consuming online content.

The eMarketer study also revealed that the growth in mobile content consumption has led to digital content consumption (including online and mobile) surpassing television content consumption for the first time. Together, U.S. adults spent 5 hours and nine minutes per day during July 2013 consuming digital content compared to 4 hours and 31 minutes consuming television content. Coming in third place was radio at 1 hour and 26 minutes followed by print at 32 minutes. The full breakdown follows:

  • Digital = 5:09
  • Television = 4:31
  • Radio = 1:26
  • Print = 0:32
  • Other = 0.14
  • Total = 11.52

Clearly, mobile has changed the media landscape. Looking at the data another way, eMarketer found that mobile surpassed desktop for the first time based on the share of time spent per day with major media by U.S. adults. In this study, digital came out on top followed by television with mobile accounting for 19.8% of time spent with major media per day and online (desktop) accounting for 19.5%. The full breakdown is below:

  • Digital = 44.4%
  • Television = 38.1%
  • Radio = 12.1%
  • Print = 4.5%
  • Other = 1.0%
  • Total = 11:52

Not only are people consuming more content using mobile devices, they’re also sharing it more frequently using their mobile devices. Research by ShareThis conducted in June 2013 found that globally people are twice as likely to share content using mobile devices than desktop computers. iPhone users topped the list with 12.4% of this group sharing online content using their iPhones, which is significantly higher than the 7% of Android users who shared content through their devices. The top three sites that drive a lot of mobile shares, according to this study, are Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

It’s hard to believe that it was just two years ago that I wrote the article about predictions for mobile media consumption to overtake desktop content consumption. Mobile changed the media landscape and there is no turning back now. Your brand is either ahead of the mobile curve or you’re already trying to figure out how to catch up. One thing is for certain, we might not be at a place where brand marketers need to follow a mobile-first marketing strategy yet but that time will probably get here sooner than you think.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment below and share your opinion.

Image: Sergio Roberto Bichara

Top Reasons Consumers Use Brand Mobile Apps

iphone apple iosIn a study of mobile consumers, Ipsos OTX and Ipsos Global @dvisor found that 52% of the global mobile audience and 42% of the U.S. mobile audience are more likely to buy brand products after using the brand’s mobile app. However, in all areas of the world except Japan, China, and South Korea, mobile consumers would prefer to follow brands on social media than use brands’ mobile apps. Globally, 55% of mobile consumers would prefer to use social media to follow brands versus 45% of mobile consumers who would prefer to use brand mobile apps.

For companies that do invest in brand mobile apps, consumers are looking primarily for three things: information, discounts, and convenience. The full breakdown of the reasons respondents to the Ipsos study gave for using brand mobile apps via eMarketer follows:

  1. Keep informed about the brand, store, or company = 43%
  2. Get discounts and coupons = 41%
  3. Easier and quicker than going to their website or social media page = 38%
  4. They have tools that help me = 35%
  5. They have fun, interesting, and cool content = 27%
  6. Participate in their contests = 20%
  7. Offer opinions and suggestions = 18%
  8. They make me feel connected to the brand, product, store or company = 17%
  9. None of these = 9%

One year ago, I published an article on Corporate Eye that included a long list of statistics about what’s next for branded apps in an infographic from Neolane. Based on the data in that infographic, 70% of iPhone users will have downloaded a brand mobile app. The data also showed that the most successful brand mobile apps provide users with information and and personalization, but most importantly, the best mobile apps provide users with a connection to a brand they trust.

Within just a few short years, the importance of mobile marketing has grown from an experimental channel to a critical channel for marketing and sales. With mobile app overload cluttering most smartphone device owners, brands no longer have to decide whether or not they should have a mobile app but how best to meet consumers’ needs with their mobile app.

Today, brands are finding that creating mobile apps might not be the best way to connect with mobile consumers. One thing is for certain, for a brand mobile app to have a chance at success, it needs to offer useful information and discounts in a faster way than consumers can get that information and those discounts anywhere else. Does yours?

Image: Gonzalo Baeza