TechBytes with Anand Janefalkar, Co-Founder and CEO at UJET

Tell us how marketers are coping with Mobile Marketing experiences?

Customers today want to be met on their channels of choice. And since 2015, when mobile surpassed desktop use with 51% of total internet time is spent on mobile and smartphone devices, the preferred channel has been mobile. Whether it is through the customers app, mobile website, email, or even push notifications, marketers are taking a mobile-first approach when developing new campaigns and strategies to reach and interact with their customers. Marketers must optimize their sites, apps, and campaigns for better layouts, navigation, content structure, and context awareness with the goal of creating a fluid look, feel, and experience between device and desktop.

On top of this, marketers must look at the entire customer journey through a mobile-first lens. Step-by-step, what does the customer journey look like on mobile? From landing on your mobile site to a mobile purchase to contacting customer support, laying out the customer journey on mobile can help marketers fill in holes and identify opportunities.

Between Amazon and other e-commerce companies, what kind of technology gap are you currently witnessing?

Companies and marketers alike are investing in mobile more than they ever have before. For companies like Amazon, and other e-commerce companies, this means creating a path of least resistance across all mobile devices and platforms for customers to find what they need, access information, or make a purchase. However, while companies have been incredibly efficient in this area, creating a one-of-a-kind customer support experience on mobile has fallen behind. In fact, 52% of customers are less likely to engage with a company because of a bad mobile experience. At the same time, 82% of customers are using mobile apps as a communications channel compared to just 51% of support teams. Closing the technology gap, specifically on the support side, will not only make for a better mobile experience but an experience that keeps customers engaged and coming back.

Do online customers really know the places they leave their digital footprints? How can marketers make customers more educated on these multichannel footprints?

There is more awareness today about digital privacy and security than there ever has been before. However, with more than 5 billion people worldwide using mobile devices to shop, search, text, and connect via social media, there are trails of human behavior being left all over the digital landscape. What most users simply want today is transparency. Where are you collecting data? Is it being stored and how? What are you doing with it? Cookie notifications are quickly becoming an expectation rather than a nice-to-have, and giving customers quick and easy access to an organization’s privacy policy and certifications can help not only educate them on how their data is being used but make them feel more at ease about their digital footprint.

Why should Marketers and Sales professionals invest in Big Data and Analytics? What kind of Marketing skills do you seek in your MarTech teams?

For Marketers and Sales professionals, Big Data and Analytics can provide insights into your customers that you simply could not get without the adoption of these tools. In fact, customer analytics dominate the Big Data use among Sales and Marketing professionals. This should come as no surprise and Sales and Marketing teams need to better understand their customers and what makes them tick, in order to educate them on new product offerings, target them for upsell opportunities, and overall, simply create a better customer experience. One of the key skill sets that we look for in our martech team members is relatability.

You might be the best Marketer or best Salesperson there is, but if you are unable to put yourself in the shoes of the customer, and see things from their perspective, you’re not going to be able to truly speak to them or make them feel as though you have their best interests in mind.