Just a few weeks ago I wrote an article entitled As
If They Need It, Another Reason Brands Need To Be Mobile which essentially
spelled out the fact that the most powerful brand ambassadors in the world,
moms – are a very mobile demographic and if marketing &
advertising folks want to succeed, they better be mobile as well. Literally.
In fact one of the things I used to make my point was
this chart, courtesy ofeMarketer which spells out what the activities moms
most like to do via their smartphone. Pay attention to the first two. Then hold
that thought.
Not long ago I received the results of a survey
entitled Shopping with Social Media which was conducted by Ryan
Partnership, a behavioral marketing agency. In the online survey of
primary household shoppers, which yielded over 10,000 results, consumers were
asked which digital tools they were aware of and which they used in the past
year.It is the third year they’ve conducted this study and according
to Kim Finnerty, SVP Research & Insights at Ryan Partnership,
this year they saw continued increasing penetration for newer, more mobile
tools like Load to Card coupons, product reviews, and mobile
payments.No real surprise there as far as I am concerned given the mobile world
we live in, of course.In speaking with Kim, I asked her if should could break
down the results to show just one particular demographic. A demographic which
accounts for anywhere from 80-90% of all household decisions. A very powerful
and influential demographic. Of course I am referring to moms.The reason I
asked for this breakdown is I wanted to see how moms fared compared to the
national averages and lo and behold, it seems good old email, the medium many
predicted years ago would go the way of fax machines, is not only popular among
moms, it outranks other mediums in the eyes of this most sought after
demographic. Go back and look at the eMarketer chart above, then look at
this:
Do you see it?
The question posed was “When have you used X to help you
shop or plan to shop?”
Retail emails
U.S. average – 13%
Moms – 16%
Brand emails
U.S. average – 17%
Moms – 19%
Retailer texts
U.S. average – 29%
Moms – 31%
So, moms are mobile, we know that. They check email and
texts on their smartphones but they are also checking email via other sources
as the chart above is channel agnostic.
In other words email marketing is extremely vital in
engaging with moms and potentially impacting their buying decision. The words
“help you shop” and ”plan to shop” are
the key phrases here kids. Anytime you use and hear the words “help” and “plan”
that tells you that whatever topic you’re discussing carries with it an
inherent value either in the positive or negative.
Go back again and look at the chart above from Ryan
Partnership see how email scores compared to social media and shopping apps. In
each instance, moms come in under the national average.
Yet for email, the opposite is true.
Finnerty, in speaking about the results of the survey
from an overall perspective says that the biggest surprise that came out of the
findings was how high email ranked. “Email is still a very strong tool for
changing shopper behavior and satisfying shopper needs,” she said. “While it seems
like an old-school tool compared to things like shopping apps and mobile
payments, marketers have had years to perfect it so it achieves objectives.”
She very well could have been speaking about the mom
demographic only.
