Vibes Predicts COVID-19-Driven Mobile Shopping Trends Are Here To Stay

New ‘State of Mobile 2021’ report finds that marketers enjoyed a 74x return on investment for mobile marketing in 2020, sparked by ecommerce, BOPIS and curbside pickup growth

Vibes, the technology leader powering the direct-to-consumer mobile engagement revolution, today announced the company’s brand partners saw a 74x return on investment with Vibes solutions. In 2020, Vibes helped brands in retail, quick service restaurants (QSR), financial services and auto make the most of healthy consumer growth in ecommerce and contactless shopping experiences.

“Brands are realizing mobile can help them fill a void left by the increasingly-challenged email and digital ad targeting space. We absolutely expect 2021 to build on the momentum of 2020.”

Vibes is also announcing the release of its new report, ‘State of Mobile 2021,’ based on insights collected from mobile campaigns including audience growth, engagement and retention. The report shares key findings from Vibes brands including:

• 24% growth in new mobile audience members
• 99.8% retention of existing mobile audiences
• 20% average click through rate on mobile messages

“With so many brands looking to adopt a direct-to-consumer model, and 73% of CMOs saying they are focused on retention in 2021, mobile’s unique customer connection is proving superior to many other marketing channels,” said Alex Campbell, Co-Founder at Vibes. “Brands are realizing mobile can help them fill a void left by the increasingly-challenged email and digital ad targeting space. We absolutely expect 2021 to build on the momentum of 2020.”

Brands increasingly expanded their use of mobile messaging not only for marketing, but also across their customer experiences in 2020, into post-purchase transactional messages and loyalty communications. According to Vibes’ data, brands were sending 200% more transactional messages per month by the end of 2020 than they were at the start as changes in consumer behaviors such as contactless order pickup grew throughout the year. This peaked in Q4 2020 as brands sent 400% more mobile messages for Buy Online Pickup In-Store (BOPIS) and Buy Online Pickup at Curbside (BOPAC) than in Q4 2019. Vibes forecasts that BOPIS and BOPAC messaging will continue to grow 45% in 2021.

“The data shows a very high adoption of pandemic-driven measures like BOPIS and curbside. These are popular with shoppers and will be here to stay,” said Vibes co-founder Alex Campbell.

The growth in ecommerce and mobile engagement in 2020 will prove to be a lasting game changer for mobile marketing and transactional messaging. Based on previous year trends, Vibes is predicting similar audience growth and retention rates in 2021. Vibes’ report also predicts that mobile ROI will continue to improve in 2021 as mobile audiences mature and consumer engagement with brands through mobile messaging remains high. As the most immediately accessible, personal channel, mobile marketing has registered the highest consumer engagement over the past several years.

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