Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 1

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 2

Introduction.

Engagement starts with trust.

Enter the circle of trust.

Enter the evaluation circle.

Enter the information circle.

Enter the location circle.

Enter the monetization circle.

Engage with trust.

3

5

7

8

10

12

14

16

Table of contents.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 3Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 3

Customer engagement is exactly what it sounds like: your

customers engaging with your brand. But in this age of

constant connectivity, getting your customers to engage

has become more important than ever before. Why? Because

today, there are more opportunities (i.e., more channels) to

help customers see the value of your brand, and to invite

them to engage with you. Retailers used to have just a handful

of channels: advertisements on billboards or the radio, and their

actual store. But now, online stores, comparison-shopping

websites, mobile apps, and geo-targeted advertising create

new opportunities for brands and customers to connect.

These modern channels—especially mobile—definitely give

your customers new ways to connect with your brand. But as

engagement grows, so do customer expectations.

In general, customers engage with you because of two impulses:

need and want. Whether these impulses are coaxed out by

Introduction.

your products and your messaging or by some other

influence, your customers engage with you when they feel

they have something to gain. In our customer-centric world,

the brands that succeed are the ones that speak directly

and effectively to a customer’s need.

Because mobile is such a huge part of this new status quo,

you need mobile marketing strategies that help you speak

to your customer on a personal level, and help them stay

engaged across all channels and devices.

Let’s face it. Mobile devices have fundamentally changed

the way customers engage with brands. They provide

new and convenient ways to explore and interact with

your products, services, and experiences. And beyond

that, smartphones, tablets, and other devices—like smart

watches and other wearables—have empowered customers to

engage with brands completely on their own terms.

With a world of information and accessibility in their pocket or

purse, they can engage whenever and wherever they want.

Because of this flexibility and convenience, mobile technology

has become an essential part of the way both customers and

businesses approach each other. But while consumers are

finding these changes to be natural and rewarding, the advent

of this mobile culture is forcing businesses—and marketers

specifically—to change the way they think.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 4

“The biggest challenges that retailers face are not really

coming from competitors,” says Faisal Masud, the chief

digital officer of Staples. “It’s really coming from the customer

because the customer has been trained pretty well in having

an appetite for things where and when they want something.

They want to be able to just search for products, find them,

purchase them, and then they expect to receive it within

two days or less. And that drives a pretty distinct behavior,

especially when compared to what retailers have been used

to in the past decade or so.”1

So the ability to browse through a store’s inventory on your

phone, for example—a feature that was until fairly recently

considered a luxury—has become a top priority. And to

complicate things even further, many brands are realizing

there’s a fine line between engaging customers and creeping

them out.

To make it all work, then, you need to strike a balance

between what you know about a customer and that same

customer’s ability to choose. In other words, you need to let

customers engage with you on their own terms. But you can’t

do this without gathering and using data about each customer,

so the challenge is to find ways to collect and use that data to

provide opportunities, without popping up too frequently

to remind them how much you know about their purchase

history, their preferences, or even their location.

And then, once you have that data, you need to do

something with it.

“The biggest challenges that

retailers face are not really

coming from competitors.

It’s really coming from the

customer…” – Faisal Masud

According to the Adobe Digital Index, in 2013 smartphone users spent

three times longer on mobile apps than on the average mobile website.2

According to Gartner, there will be 310 billion

app downloads by 2016.3

Get the stats on mobile apps.One of the main ways to engage customers on mobile is through the use of mobile apps. While the mobile web is still crucial for success, consider the growing prevalence of mobile apps in the

market, and how customers are responding:

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 5

Clearly, getting your customers to engage with you—especially

through their mobile interactions—is crucial to your business’

success. But how do you make that happen? How do you

change your existing mobile strategy to deliver what your

customers want, when they want it?

There are probably a number of answers, but one of the most

important is to fit the optimization of your mobile customer

experiences into the larger cycle of your strategy.

Optimization is crucial in creating the kinds of customer

experiences that capture your customers’ attention and keep

them coming back time and time again. It’s at the heart of any

kind of personal interaction because it’s through the process

of optimization that you really come to understand customers’

behavior and then refine your mobile experience in response.

Engagement starts with trust.

Effective optimization involves the following seven steps:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Gather accurate data about your audience and their usage of your mobile offerings.

Use that data to identify improvements you can make at will to help you better achieve your business goals.

Develop hypotheses on how best to create these improvements through experience redesigns.

Put those hypotheses to the test, using thorough A/B or multivariate testing.

Analyze the results for a clear winner or for good ways to segment them.

Implement the changes suggested by your testing.

Repeat the process over and over again to continue to find the best ways to engage and convert your audience and to create loyalty.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 6

The end goal of this process is to deliver powerful customer

experiences that feel personal and intimate and that, ultimately,

convert. If done right, the experience will feel authentic and

your customer will develop a relationship with your brand

that’s genuinely beneficial on both sides. To get there, however,

your plan for creating and improving customer experiences

needs to account for a critical building block to any

relationship: trust.

Think about it. From your perspective, a customer benefits in

many ways from engaging with your brand. You’ve got a great

offering, and you understand what’s happening on both sides

of the exchange. For your customer, however, things are not

so clear-cut. When you ask for personal information,

location, or for financial information, you’re asking that

customer to trust you. And you’d better be ready to justify

that trust when they do, because if they don’t trust you, you

may as well go home.

As you’re considering where to optimize then—which

audiences to target and which features and experiences to

test—trust can be a helpful assessment tool. Ask yourself,

“in what ways am I asking my customer to trust me?”

Pay special attention to those areas as you analyze data,

develop and execute tests, and then take action.

In this paper, we’re going to look at four situations in which

you may be asking your customers to trust you, and then

we’ll look at some ways to consider optimizing in light of

those situations. Obviously, not all of these areas (or circles,

for you De Niro fans) of trust may be relevant to you, or you

may have other circles that are more specific to your brand.

Feel free to adapt as necessary.

The three Cs of mobile marketing.

As you win the trust of your customers, it’s crucial to remember

the three Cs of mobile marketing.4 When you focus on how,

where, and when your customers receive mobile experiences,

you’ll consistently hit the mark with your marketing efforts.

ContextPay attention to time,

location, device— of your customer, and

of your content.

ConnectionMake sure you always

deliver high-quality, relevant messages with personalized content.

CadenceCoordinate messaging and outreach across channels to create

seamless experiences.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 7

When you ask your customers to trust you, you’re asking to be admitted into their circles of trust. Here, we’ve identified four major

circles, or areas, where you’re expecting your customers to trade something other than money for what you have to offer. These circles

don’t go in any particular order, and they sometimes interact or overlap. The idea is to be aware of what you’re asking of your customers

and then plan your optimization tests with that in mind. You want their experiences to be flawless, and acknowledging and rewarding

their trust is a great way to do that. Here are the four circles we’ll be looking at in this paper:

Enter the circle of trust.

Whether you’re on the inside of these circles or the outside, considering what they mean to your customers can give you a fresh way to

approach the customer experience, and as such to optimize your mobile offerings more effectively. Let’s look at each circle in greater depth.

Your customer is nameless, but not unknown. They are evaluating your brand from afar, or simply using your services anonymously. You’re not asking much of your customer, but you have great opportunities to court their trust.

Your customer has trusted you with some kind of identifying—and in some cases personal— information. Maybe they’ve signed up for a newsletter. Maybe they’ve logged into an app or a mobile website. You’ve asked them to share something personal with you, so you’d better be prepared to make it worth their while.

Your customer has trusted you with their location. You know where they are at all times. Make sure you use this information wisely.

Your customer has shared sensitive, financial information with you. This may be a credit card number or they may have included you in a mobile wallet. You are asking them to trust you with perhaps their most sensitive information, so be prepared to take it seriously.

The evaluation circle. The information circle. The location circle. The monetization circle.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 8

When you’re trying to get into the evaluation circle of trust,

your customers are engaged at a distance. In many cases,

these customers are brand new, because the evaluation circle

is all about the kind of surface-level interest that’s often found

in new customers. You are only asking them to trust you on

the most superficial level, but that trust is important because

it leads to everything else.

These customers are exploring and evaluating your company

on any number of channels, from social media to your retail

website—even by visiting a store. These anonymous visitors

may be interacting with you in a variety of ways and may

not even be aware of the fact that you’re tracking them. This

means, as you consider ways to improve their experience, you

need to be especially careful with the information you do have.

Enter the evaluation circle.

When considering ways to optimize for customers who are

evaluating you, it’s important you understand all the ways

they may be interacting anonymously. For example, they

may be evaluating you in one of the following ways:

Are you gathering data on each of these sources? Are you

able to segment these customers effectively? Obviously the goal

here is to invite these customers to trust you enough to engage

more deeply with you, so it’s important you have the right data

to understand the difference in these anonymous evaluations

(and evaluators) so you can develop the right tests to improve

conversion.

As Peter Doucette, vice president of sales and marketing at

The Boston Globe, points out, you need to “understand every

consumer” who comes into your range.5 To do this, you need

data that will help you test and implement targeted solutions

that cater to specific mobile needs and, ultimately, create better

mobile experiences for every customer.

Browsing your mobile website.

Visiting your so-cial media chan-

nels.

Downloading apps, but not logging in.

Browsing in your store.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 9

One of the best ways to achieve this is to make sure that

both your mobile apps and your mobile websites are

differentiated from other user environments, such as the

desktop. This is about much more than responsive design.

It’s about a mobile strategy that looks at how your customers

engage on mobile, and how to engage them further by

refining the mobile experience.

For example, when media giant Comcast wanted to improve

their users’ mobile experiences, they started by looking at the

homepage of their mobile website. After looking at the data

they had gathered over time, they decided to focus on layout

and page organization, with a goal of making the mobile site

easier to navigate.

By testing a variety of different options, they discovered

that an “app-like” approach to the visual design on the

homepage that matched the one on their mobile app

was most effective.

Specifically, after testing and implementing this more

modulated, tile-based design, Comcast saw increased

revenue and conversion rates and a 36% bump in the

purchase of three-product bundles. In this case, because

of their thoughtful approach to their website redesign,

they were able to help evaluating customers understand

the value of engaging better than they had before.6

“We want to understand every

consumer that interacts with our

products…We want to provide

the optimal experience for every

user by segmenting them into

meaningful buckets and creating

targeted solutions for them.”

– Peter Doucette VP, Sales & Marketing, The Boston Globe7

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 10

When you ask your customers to “opt-in,” or share personal

information, things can get more complicated because

customer expectations increase. Of course, getting inside this

circle is crucial for you because it gives you the information

you need to really start personalizing their experience. And

that’s to their benefit too, but it’s up to you to help them

understand that.

Ideally, your customers have taken this step because your

marketing efforts have made it clear you have something

to offer. The types of information your customers are giving

when you’re in this circle—typically names, emails, phone

numbers or other identifying information—are shared

commonly enough that it doesn’t represent a huge show of

trust. But when your customers share any kind of data with

Enter the information circle.

you, it’s significant nonetheless. In so doing, they’re

signaling their willingness to become known to your

brand, which puts the responsibility on you to deliver.

Of course, the best way to figure out how to communicate

your value is through optimization. Again, look at the data,

segment your audience, analyze their behavior, and test

different ways of educating them on the value of engaging

more. Again, Comcast offers an example.

In the past, online shopping experiences for many Comcast

customers sometimes needed to be completed over the

phone, rather than through an online checkout. As you

may expect, this led to many customers abandoning their

experiences altogether, so Comcast decided to test out a

few options—which included testing ways to include device

context—to help customers stay engaged.

Ultimately, their solution included two calls to action, from

which the customer could choose at checkout. The first—“Call

us now”—allowed the customer to call Comcast directly to

finish their order. On the other hand, the “Call me back” option

promised that a Comcast representative would call the cus-

tomer within five minutes to complete the sale. By providing

these options, Comcast improved call frequency. Interaction

with “Call us now” more than doubled, while customers who

chose “Call me back” engaged at an even higher percentage.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 11

But these ideas didn’t come out of the blue. Comcast carefully

looked at what their audience needed, then tested different

options to see which were most effective, both for their

customers and for their own internal measurement.

Comcast’s example illustrates something that mobile expert,

Asif Khan, refers to as a “passive framework, a marketing

strategy that provides customer choices.” So rather than

actively pursuing customer information, a business allows

customers to choose how and when they want to be engaged.

Khan describes this framework as one that “revolves around

consumers opting in and sharing their data on a constant and

ongoing basis.”8

By now you’ve probably gathered that one of the keys

to effective optimization is good data. To be successful

in understanding customer choices so that you can

successfully test improvements, you’ll want to adopt

internal practices that help you continually collect and

analyze user data. Then, you can make more informed

decisions about what options to offer customers.

Also, use mobile services that are consistent with the needs

of both your marketing team and your mobile development

team. This makes it easier for you to collect and use the

right data and, as Adobe’s Ray Pun suggests, “enable both

analysis and optimization activities in one place.”9

Watch and learn.

Don’t be afraid to borrow ideas from other industries and

business models, even if they’re extremely different from your

own. Ask yourself, what are other industries doing to engage

their customers? And how can you emulate their success?

Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for the Adobe Digital Index,

says: “Brands can learn from marketers outside their industry.

Most marketers fall into the habit of following their competitors,

and while that’s important, there are insights and learnings

outside of their sectors as well.”10

Be sure to follow the optimization process before you fully

implement anything. Even best practices and innovative

ideas that work for others may not work as well for your

business. Try new things, but test them carefully and pay

attention to what the data is telling you.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 12

“Location is the new cookie.” – Asif Khan

If your content has resonated with customers, then you can

convince them to share their location with you. This is sensitive

information, so when customers share it, they do so because

they really trust that you’ll be respectful of it. Usually, this

behavior follows an offering of something compelling: a

promise that with their location, you will deliver incredible

experiences even more effectively. As Asif Khan says, “How,

once I know the location of a person, do I put the right

messages, information, and media in front of them?”11

Khan, founder and president of the Location Based

Marketing Association, argues that “location is the new

Enter the location circle.

cookie” because it “represents a way to track the movements

of consumers across day parts and media types,” and is

“supported by next-generation GPS and improvements in

indoor location technology like beacons.” Based on all these

capabilities, Khan predicts, “marketers will spend heavily on

mobile/location infrastructure in support of this targeting.

While there are privacy and ethical considerations, consumers

will understand the premise of true value exchange and

readily trade their data for content that is personally relevant.”12

His last point is critical: consumers will “readily trade their

data” only for the brands that provide “personally relevant”

content. In other words, marketers have to understand the

immense trust that their customers put in them when they

provide private information, and they need to make sure

that trust is justified. At the end of the day, marketers have to

make sure they honor the “true value exchange” as much

as customers do.

Optimization is key to making this happen. Only through

careful analysis of location data, then effective testing and

targeting of features, messages, and content based on that

analysis will you be able to deliver that “personally relevant”

content for which consumers will “readily trade their data.”

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 13

Due to the privacy and ethical considerations of sharing

location information, there are some barriers to consider

when attempting to engage customers through location data.

For one, many customers turn off their Bluetooth or location

services to save battery life, which can limit the availability of

customer data. But the more significant barrier is a psychological

one. Many customers still view location data as an intrusive

service, finding it difficult to recognize how they might benefit

from sharing their location with brands. By considering these

valid concerns, you can develop the right tests and thus deliver

the right content to enter this circle.

Be certain that you’re taking advantage of the best ways to

gather location data, so you can be armed with the best

analysis as you develop your tests. To put it simply: IP

address methodology doesn’t work on mobile. You’ll need

to use the HTML5 Geolocation API if you want to customize

mobile experiences based on location.13 Beyond the capabilities

of old location services, the HTML Geolocation API can be

used to do the following:

Fifty-seven percent of mobile marketers surveyed in the 2015 Adobe Mobile Marketing Survey are using or plan on using beacons in 2015 for location-based marketing.14

Location-aware creative outperforms traditional ad creative with up to 150% lifts in foot traffic to the same retailer.15

Get the precise geographical position

of customers.

Gain highly accurate location knowledge—

up to 10 miles.

Target mobile experiences, and

keep up with mobile customers.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 14

It’s an important step when your customers trust you enough

to make purchases and monetize their relationship with your

brand. Customers can monetize in a number of ways—

through traditional in-store transactions, online purchases,

in-app purchases, or even with new payment tools like

Google Wallet or Apple Pay.

When you’ve entered the monetization circle, your customers

have shared a lot of information with you and have entrusted

you with private, personal data, such as their credit card

number. To honor this trust, it’s your responsibility to make

sure your customers are happy with everything about the

transaction, from the product or service they receive to the

way you treat and store their data after its been shared. As you

might expect, optimization plays a huge role in getting this right.

Enter the monetization circle.

So how do you take advantage of your customers’ decision

to share their private information with you?

1. Look at mobile metrics such as launches, monthly engaged users

and lifetime value, and focus on performance metrics such as cost

per install (CPI) and cost per engagement (CPE). These pieces of

information help you better understand how your customers are

using your mobile offerings, so you can make their next

experiences even better.16

2. Incentivize future visits to encourage repeat visits and customer

loyalty. You’ll obviously want to test a variety of different incentives

with each segment to make sure you’re getting it right.

3. Give customers options to make their engagement more

personal. Again, try a variety of options and analyze the results

to see which mix works the best for each audience.

4. Understand the so-called “mobile elite” and deliver specific

experiences to their unique set of needs.

There will be nearly 2 billion smartphone users in 2015.

Thirty-six percent of retail sales are influenced by digital-social-mobile channels—that’s $1.5 trillion.

Eighty-six percent of people use mobile to influence their shopping decisions.

Monetization is everything in retail and mobile technology is making a big difference in the

way people shop. Here are a few ways mobile is taking over the retail space:17

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 15

“Mobile elite” is a name given by Adobe to mobile users who

have truly adopted the mobile way of life. They expect more

from their mobile experiences, and they spend more time and

money than any other demographic within the mobile space.

The mobile elite aren’t significant simply because they spend

more time and money on mobile, however. They’re also more

likely to be early adopters of new mobile tools. For example,

80% of the mobile elite pay bills and transfer money via

mobile, compared to 63% of general users. And the mobile

elite are more than twice as likely to apply for a financial

account on their mobile device and they consume more

music, movies, travel experiences, and social media:

Because members of the mobile elite are so tuned in to the

mobile space, marketers need to deliver them top-of-the-line

experiences. They will definitely benefit from more

mobile-focused strategies that take into account higher usage

times and bigger budgets.

Mobile elite customers are also obsessed with apps and

adopt new mobile tools more quickly than others, so

they’re the perfect audience with which to test out new

methods, practices, and tools.

Nearly three in five make social posts, compared to less than 40% of general users.

Nearly 60% more likely to consume music on mobile.

More than twice as likely to book travel, check itineraries, compare prices and research destinations on their mobile devices.

The mobile elite.“The mobile elite spend more time and more

money within the mobile space.”18

Who are they?

18-29 years old

34% 36% 30%

Male Female

30-49 years old 50-64 years old

53% 47%

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 16

Ultimately, the goal of optimization is to earn the trust of your customer so that they come back to you without hesitation.

If you want them to come back to you again and again, however, you need to come back again and again to your optimization process: gather and analyze audience and usage data, use that data to intelligently break your audience into meaningful groups, and then develop and execute tests to improve each segment’s experience.

If you want them to hold up their side of the relationship, you need to hold up yours.

Engage with trust.

Once you’re in these circles of trust, you need to respect that trust and do your best to justify it

using effective optimization to deliver incredible customer experiences. Consider the following

steps for developing a mobile optimization plan across your entire organization:19

1

2

3

4

5

6

Start with mobile development to ensure your app or website is ready to experience the traffic it could get. Be sure to identify the business goal of the app or website, then use that as your guiding light throughout the process.

Examine your mobile analytics to better understand what customers are doing, where they’re coming from and which assets and products they’re interested in.

Map the way to reach your ultimate goals by creating a long-term plan.

Improve mobile experiences by testing different methods and content with your audience.

Segment your audience to gain an in-depth understanding of customers and to better deliver on what they want.

Deliver informed, relevant content to all your customers through personalized mobile experiences.

Circles of trust: Use mobile to engage better. 16

Copyright © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of

Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

1. Giselle Abramovich. “The CMO.com Interview: Faisal Masud, Chief Digital Officer, Stapes.” CMO.com. February 11, 2015. Accessed August 24, 2015.

2. “Mobile App Users Most Loyal to Brands, According to ADI.” CMO.com. November 6, 2013. Accessed August 24, 2015.

3. Sandy Shen and Brian Blau. “Market Trends: Mobile App Stores, Worldwide, 2012.” Gartner. August 17, 2012. Accessed August 24, 2015.

4. “Mobilizing messages for a cross-channel world.” Adobe Summit 2015, S115. Accessed August 24, 2015.

5. Stephanie Overby. “CMO.com Interview: Peter Doucette, VP, Sales & Marketing, The Boston Globe.” CMO.com. May 19, 2015. Accessed August 24, 2015.

6. “The role of mobile web in optimizing sales, service and cross-sell.” Adobe Summit 2015, S605. Accessed August 24, 2015.

7. “CMO.com Interview: Peter Doucette”, VP, Sales & Marketing, The Boston Globe.

8. Samuel Greengard. “Geomarketing: It’s Where It’s at Today.” CMO.com. July 23, 2014.

9. Ray Pun. “Part 2: Mobile Marketing Just Got Easier — The Window to Amazing App Analytics.” Adobe Digital Marketing Blog. November 12, 2013. Accessed August 24, 2015.

10. Giselle Abramovich. “How Does Your Brand Stack Up Against the Best of the Best?” CMO.com. March 9, 2015. Accessed August 24, 2015.

11. “Geomarketing: It’s Where It’s at Today.”

12. Ray Pun. “Slide Show: 10 Marketing Trends for 2015,” slide 5. CMO.com. January 19, 2015. Accessed August 24, 2015.

13. “The role of mobile web in optimizing sales, service and cross-sell.”

14. “Slide Show: 10 Marketing Trends for 2015,” slide 5.

15. “CPG Brands Drive Sales With Location-Powered Mobile Ads [Infographic].” CMO.com. December 12, 2014. Accessed August 24, 2015.

16. “Slide Show: 10 Marketing Trends for 2015,” slide 2.

17. Jennifer Cooper. “10 Steps to Seizing the Mobile Opportunity in Media and Entertainment.” Adobe Digital Marketing Blogs. July 18, 2014. Accessed August 24, 2015.

18. Kevin Lindsay. “Meet the Mobile Elite: Consumer Behaviors of the ‘Most Mobile’.” Adobe Digital Marketing Blogs. September 29, 2014. Accessed August 24, 2015.

19. “The role of mobile web in optimizing sales, service and cross-sell.”

Adobe Marketing Cloud is the most comprehensive and integrated marketing solution available, enabling marketers to measure, personalize, and optimize marketing campaigns and digital experiences for optimal marketing performance.

With its complete set of solutions, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Social, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Media Optimizer, and Adobe Campaign, as well as real-time dashboards and a collaborative interface, marketers are able to combine data, insights, and digital content to deliver the optimal brand experience to their customers.