January 20, 2012
Text Tops Smartphone Usage, While Check-Ins Decline
Insight Express released the latest update to its quarterly Digital Consumer Portrait which reveals some very interesting observations on the mobile behavior of mainstream smartphone users. As Kathryn Koegel pointed out in her AdAge column yesterday, “…there is an overwhelming counter-intuitive trend emerging from the data: some advanced mobile behaviors are not on an ever-increasing trajectory.” Specifically, that text continues to top the charts for usage, while novelty behavior like check-ins are in decline.
This insight showcases one of the fundamental principles of marketing: selling to mainstream consumers based on the way they behave is always easier than trying to get them to act in a new way. Two years ago we saw the same phenomenon when we launched ShopAlerts – captured in our research and interviews with consumers at the time. ShopAlerts actually launched as an app on a smartphone. While we saw dramatic performance from people visiting stores and making purchases, and brands loved it, we also learned that most mainstream consumers just wanted to get an alert when there was something for them nearby. Brands needed the reach of any phone in order to get millions of users, and they wanted their message to break through the clutter to reach their loyalists when they are near a store and in a mindset to make a purchase. This lead us away from the app and towards text as a great way to alert a customer. Over 130 brands later and millions of active consumers in our programs, text plus location still ranks highest among the consumers in our programs as the mechanism for alerting them to a nearby offer.
