• Bank of America has more than 930,000 customers for its mobile banking services and is one of leaders in the space.
• Mobile click-through rates average 8.9% up to 49%
• Android has doubled market penetration and overtaken iPhone in the last 8 months.

There are basically three leading, different and incompatible operating systems on modern mobile smart phones. First there was the Blackberry, which handles email and business applications very well, and over a secure connection. Next there was the iPhone, which is Apple’s offering. The iPhone broke the mould with its applications market and has lead the industry for the last few years with slick design and flexibility. However, in the last few months, Google’s Android has come on the scene with its own applications market, and is now leading the pack.

So what does this mean for marketers?

Although mobile browsers only make up around 1% of total web traffic, you have to look at the demographics of mobile web browsers. For one they are almost certainly educated, tech savvy and with disposable income. Secondly, the lions share of web browsing happens during the commute. Basically you know you are talking to the early adopters when you are marketing online. Also, this segment is probably the fastest growing market segment at the moment, with mobile browser usage doubling every few months.

Who is doing it and what is working?

It seems that all the cool kids are doing it. Samuel L Jackson has his own app. Most of the big companies have started some kind of mobile marketing program, because Mobile Marketing can provide marketers with the holy trinity of

marketing, timely, personalised, actionable marketing messages. There are dozens of great mobile marketing case studies to look at that show how easy it is to get a response out of targets. The methodologies vary too, with some mobile marketing groups using SMS, and others using applications.

SMS marketing?

An example is this case study; McDonald’s says, send a SMS to Santa & get your gift within seconds. Promoted using unique codes on cups for consumers to send in with 1 text message – right in the restaurant. Every code wins – for the first time even physical prizes. It resulted in a stunning 25% response rate – with more than 1.5 million participations in five weeks.

Mobile App marketing?

This is where the cutting edge cool is at. Almost all smart phones now use GPS  to give users their current location. Now marketing professionals are tapping into this, providing targets with information about their brand. Reebok released a free app that allowed users to customise their trainers. This creates engagement and interaction directly with the brand. Time Out offer an app, like many other media groups, that taps into their information system and provides users with what is going on, events, gigs around them right at that moment.

So what does this mean for marketing professionals?

In almost any industry, you must be looking at mobile marketing as part of your mix. There are thousands of ways you can provide information to your customers through mobile marketing platforms.