Way back when Apple was only awesome at personal computers, design software and portable music players, it faced a difficult decision in how to enter the mobile space. At the time the mobile landscape was murky, plagued by sluggish networks, device disparity and fragmented operating systems. Operators’ grip on the mobile consumer was unchallenged; they controlled the hardware, software and even mobile Internet. Apps? Psssh.

At the hardware level, while few challenged Apple’s chops for good design, many more thought the pecularities of mobile would handcuff the company. Devices were getting smaller, not bigger (remember the RAZR?), and the notion of a smartphone hadn’t really been fully baked at that point - the RIM Blackberry popular among email warriors notwithstanding. Would it have a full keyboard? Stylus?  Mobile operators had spent billions of dollars on expensive infrastructure, complex hardware alliances and OS design. Superbly-crafted walled gardens protected their feifdoms. How would a new player in the space be able to navigate this tricky landscape?

In a word, brilliantly. So brilliantly, in fact, that in its clamor to sell the device, AT&T all but caved to some rigorous, unprecedented demands from Apple, including a $10 per month royalty for every iPhone customer.  More importantly, the carrier yielded complete control over the design, manufacturing and marketing of the iPhone’s hardware and software.

Apple started with a clean slate, desigining a completely new mobile experience from the ground up with little, if any, regard for how mobile worked before.

Facebook is doing the same thing.

The same rumors that swirled around the debut of the iPhone ran rampant around Menlo Park as Facebook contemplated its next move in the mobile space. Would there be a Facebook phone? Who would make it? Will it compete with iPhone? What platform will support it? What carrier will ship it? How much will it cost?

In April, we got our answer in Facebook Home. It is an operating system. It is an app. It is the mobile web. It is all of those things. It is none of those things. It is, simply, mobile done right.

Here’s why

While the spending in mobile is on apps, video, mobile Internet and a dizzying array of mostly ineffectual advertising platforms, companies like Facebook are throwing away everything we thought we knew about how to do mobile.

First off, Facebook sought an experience that echoed the original intent of the phone as it was first imagined – to connect people. “Traditionally, phones and operating systems were designed with apps and tasks in mind. With this, we wanted to recreate the most social device you have around people,” said Facebook’s Justin Stahl. More tellingly, Facebook product director Adam Mosseri adds, “People and content should be first, and we thought that needed to happen at a really deep level. Apps get in the way. Having something meaningful show up the second I turn on my phone is by far my favorite part of the experience.”

The app (yes, it is software you download) immerses you in a world free of menus, widgets and rows and rows of apps. Acting as a sort of wallpaper for your phone, Facebook Home’s cover flow is an engaging presentation of the latest photos and posts from friends. It is gesture based - even more natural and intuitive than conventional touch screen UX design; Facebook describes it as “organic.” Chat Heads, Facebook’s innovative attempt at recreating the mobile chat paradigm, is a great example. You can touch a head or anywhere else on the screen to dismiss the chat, and then have fun flinging your friends’ heads around the screen at will. Blues Clues help Facebook Home users navigate around the app.

While the reviews for Home are decidedly mixed (there are nearly four times as many one star reviews as five star reviews), as a first pass I think this is a really strong effort from Facebook. For Facebook users more inclined to use phones as a way to connect with friends and family, rather than, say, play with apps or tinker with widgets, it is a solid choice. That Facebook took this route, rather than designing an entire operating system, or, worse, getting into the hardware game, is evidence the social giant is serious about addressing one of its most vexing challenges to date - how to monetize the mobile channel. Based on the amount of behavioral data Home can collect, the future looks pretty bright in Menlo Park. 

Example: Email on Mobile - ExactTarget Blog 'Mobile Design Tips'

The second quarter of 2013 is well underway, and marketers have had the opportunity to observe the trends that are emerging and slowly defining marketing this year. With the sharp upward trend in mobile usage last year and the increasing popularity of content marketing, video, and social media, we know we are in for some big changes and exciting innovations in every marketing discipline. When it comes to email marketing, what are some of the major trends we should keep in mind as we attempt to stay current and connect and engage our customers? Let's explore...

1.       Mobile Email Marketing

• Number of users relying on mobile devices for email are higher than ever
• Around 80% of people are now using their smartphone for email
• Responsive Email Design is a great solution for mobile needs

2.       Triggered Campaigns

• Many marketers still have not instituted any sort of triggered campaign series, specifically a Welcome Email Series when their customers sign up for email
• Welcome emails are important because that is when a customer is at their highest engagement level
• Great examples for content in triggered campaigns: Welcome emails, Anniversary Reminders, Birthday Emails, Abandoned Cart Emails

3.       Personalization/Dynamic Content

• Many marketers now avoid sending generic sales emails
• Connecting with your customers is critical
• Most customers are no longer satisfied if they aren’t seeing personalized messages
• Pros to this are higher click through rates as well as conversion rates

4.       Social

• Encourage interaction through your social media platforms
• Send Social Media specific emails to bring your customers to your pages
• A good example for Social Interaction is to run a giveaway that leads you to Facebook or Twitter and the only way to enter is to either Like the page, follow the Twitter account, retweet, etc. 

5.       Video

• This has been an evolving trend over the years because until recently there wasn’t an easy way to embed video in email
• HTML5 video has now been a way to present video in email and many marketers have started to slowly integrate this

What are some other email marketing trends you've noticed so far this year? What are your predictions? Share your ideas in the comments.

Fans of the wildly popular HBO show Game of Thrones are anxiously awaiting the premiere of Season 3 on March 31^st, 2013 at 9PM in the United States. The show has become a worldwide phenomenon and in many ways re-defined what is possible for a television show.

As the fans know, core to the story are the different family Houses like the Starks, the Lannisters, and the Targaryens. Each House is represented by their coat of arms or Sigils that also bear their House Words like the infamous “Winter is Coming” words of the Stark family in the North.

At Definition 6 we are extremely excited to help launch Join the Realm, an experience that allows fans to create their own House Sigil and then download, share, and post it in a variety of formats for the leading social networks and other purposes.

Join the Realm, which can be used in 24 different languages, gives fans an interactive sigil editor to name your House, enter your House Words, and choose from a variety of backgrounds, patterns, borders, colors, and icons. It can then be downloaded immediately or saved while generating versions of it that include Facebook cover photos and profile pictures, Twitter backgrounds, Wallpapers, and Instagram versions. These can also easily be shared out to your social networks directly from the site. And if you don’t feel like taking the time to create one yourself you can always just use the automatic “Do It For Me” Sigil generator.

One very cool aspect of the experience is that HBO wanted it to be available on leading smartphone and tablet platforms as well as desktop browsers. So the interactive editor had to be designed and built in HTML5 and Canvas, allowing the full site to be used on an iPad and an optimized mobile web site version available to iPhone and Android users. This does mean older desktop browsers and older smartphone browsers aren’t supported, but in the Game of Thrones some browsers win and others must unfortunately die.

We hope you have fun creating and sharing your Sigils. We had a lot fun making the experience and working with our friends at HBO on this. It may be Spring now in the northern hemisphere, but Winter is still coming…

“It's the family name that lives on. That's all that lives on. Not your personal glory, not your honor, but family.”

- Tywin Lannister

Editor's Note: It’s that time of year again…time for Definition 6 CTO Paul Hernacki’s annual “Make Fun of Marketing People” Cartoon.  As usual, prepare to laugh… because the only other option for this kind of truth is to cry.

Yes, in my role as CTO for a Unified Marketing Agency I spend most of my waking hours squarely at the crossroads of marketing and technology. And our own marketing department at Definition 6 has been bugging me for weeks to write a blog post about the top things people should be thinking about in 2013 related to innovative use of marketing technologies. But the crazy pace of work that is so common in the agency world right before the holidays as we rush to finish up so many big projects and campaigns for our clients left me with little time to actually sit down and write something meaningful. So instead, I created this video. It's cloud-based. And cloud-ready. And cloud-enabled. With mobile accessibility and social shareability. Enjoy. And good luck to everyone in 2013... even the Mayans.

Planning the 2013 Marketing Budget
by: phernacki

There was a lot of great content presented at Mashable’s Media Summit last week in New York – far too much for me to summarize for you in 500 words. That said, Mashable did a great job summarizing the day via Storify. If you weren’t able to attend, you can get a good feel for the day’s content over there.

I would like to take a moment to highlight a couple of significant themes that emerged throughout the day, particularlyaround the rapid developments in Web design we’re seeing materialize before us on a daily basis. For a great current example, head over to Mashable today to witness the execution of the ideas I’m about to summarize. Mashable has revamped its Web experience to take full advantage of how content is discovered and shared on the Web today – across every type of device we use.

Here are my key takeaways from the day – consider this a cheat sheet for revamping your Web content experiences in 2013.

1.      Mobile first, not desktop – the post-PC era is here. It no longer makes sense to design Web experiences around the desktop as the primary device. Device proliferation requires a new solution, one that optimizes the experience for every reader. The most buzzed-about approach to designing for this new era – which you’ve no doubt heard of by now – is responsive Web design, where the Web experience adjusts to the device and browser used by the visitor. Responsive Web design only scratches the surface, addressing the problems of device proliferation. What about context though? Some would argue responsive approaches address context, but expect a new term – reactive Web design – to creep into the lexicon in 2013. Reactive web design as a label expands upon responsive approaches and strives to adapt the digital experience to predicted needs of the user. For example, using IP lookup, geolocation, or some other known visitor data, the Web experience (and content) can be tailored to render a more contextual Web experience. These will be exciting times for content marketers.

2.      Social first, not search – there’s been a lot of talk about social being the new search. I don’t like this, because social is not search – but I get the point. Old school SEO tactics – pre-Panda tactics – aren’t what they once were. Content that is shared aggressively will drive more consumption than content that is simply linked to a lot. Shares impact SEO – in many cases, impacting search rankings more than links. When planning your content strategy, search should follow social in order of importance. Writing a great, sharable headline that gets readers to read is more important than getting high authority links to that same piece of content. If it’s shared at a high frequency, search engines will reward you and the traffic will come.

3.      Visuals matter – high-quality imagery amplifies content consumption by a factor of two or more. Mashable reports that it generates 8 times more traffic on a post with a video than plain text. Brands should use images and video liberally on their content sites, and those images and videos should be easily shareable. In many cases, the images and video themselves serve as micro-content that users will share independent of the content on the site. This is particularly evident across the newer image-centric social channels such as Instagram and Pinterest. If you have high-quality images and video in your content, people will share your content across these channels. Remember, 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster. For example, posts that leverage video generate three times more inbound links than plain text (SEOMoz).

4.      Ads are content too – If you have ads on your sites, you need to remember that ads are content too. There was a lot of talk about native and responsive advertising at the Mashable Media Summit event. Stated plainly, responsive advertising is the application of responsive Web design to the ad units. Your ads should look great across any experience. You don’t have to be a responsive Web design expert to capitalize on responsive advertising. Expect ad-serving platforms to support your responsive advertising needs in 2013. Slightly different from responsive advertising is native advertising, where advertising is built into the content experience itself. Facebook’s sponsored stories or Twitter’s sponsored tweets are an example of this evolving ad unit.

I’m excited to see so much fresh innovation going on in Web design. It feels like it’s been a while since we’ve seen this much change in so little time. Then again, most of the innovation in  recent years has come on the back end of our sites. As we move into 2013, expect to see more site experiences built around content, context and conversations, the essence of our Unified Marketing strategy here at Definition 6.  

Editor’s note: In the midst of Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday shopping, let’s take a moment to examine how we’ve adapted to mobile since the birth of the iPhone, and where there is room for improvement in designing for mobile devices. Tablets have permanently changed the mobile platform, and as retailers work on designing their e-commerce experiences for the holiday rush, it is increasingly important to focus on tablets. 

It isn’t particularly courageous to argue Apple’s iPhone instantly transformed the mobile landscape when it made its debut in June of 2007. One look at the Nokia 1200 – at the time the bestselling device in the world, should make even the most strident of Apple haters begrudgingly concede its historical significance.

The iPhone was the first device to seriously challenge the notion that browsing the Internet on a mobile device was required to suck (unlike RIM, whose reluctance to embrace the mobile Internet is almost singularly responsible for its total irrelevance a mere 5 years later), and replaced goofy things like trackwheels, multi-tapping, and styluses with an elegant touch interface. The iPhone also brought high quality mobile content to consumers, wresting control of the market from operators too busy building walled gardens to realize it was Steve Jobs inside the shiny wooden horse out front.  Apple did nothing to knock down the walls, but it certainly evicted the tenants, and added a few bricks (a locked-down operating system) and a treacherous moat (iTunes) for good measure.

Like other breakthrough innovations, the iPhone destroyed as many markets as it created, playing a not insignificant role in the destabilization of the standalone GPS, camera, camcorder, wristwatch, alarm clock and portable music player markets.

Half of adults in the U.S. have a smartphone. Nearly 30% of Americans use mobile devices as their primary device to access the web. Retail sales for Black Friday are nearly 70% higher than they were this time last year. Game-changing technology does this. It is a good thing. 

As ground-breaking as the iPhone was, it will go down in history as less significant than the iPad. The iPhone changed the mobile phone. The iPad changes the entire digital landscape.

Responsive design or standalone mobile presence? Yes. Also, no.

Most organizations have either built or have plans to launch a mobile version of their website created specifically for smartphones. The process, distilled down to its most common ingredients, usually involves a red marker, wireframes of its desktop presence, a pair of scissors and a garbage can. The result is commonly a stripped-down, barebones experience that does a few things decently, if not elegantly, and little else. It is less of an exercise in building great experiences than it is in eliminating broken ones. Most typically, these organizations deliver the full desktop experience on tablets, the bulk of their design budgets allocated to the desktop.

Other organizations are embracing the concept of responsive design to create sites that dynamically optimize layouts according to the unique requirements of the devices accessing it. These companies essentially create variations of the same set of experiences across the entire digital spectrum. Here, the tablet is simply another accessing device. It’s great in theory yet rarely in practice.

But both approaches are in danger of missing the larger point, which is that the tablet - not the smartphone or the desktop, is the most appropriate starting point. The iPad is the perfect marriage of full-scale functionality and elegant usability.  It is as pleasing and easy to use as the iPhone, and nearly as functional as a desktop computer to the average consumer. Newer tablets like Microsoft’s Surface – itself an exemplary device, further blur the line between computer and mobile device.

Chances are good that the iPad is already outpacing all other mobile devices in terms of visitors to your website. Chances are better that what you’re showing them is simply a smaller version of your desktop site. Essentially, that’s enforcing a click and scroll paradigm on a device built for touching and swiping.

Let’s look at a few examples to illustrate the point.

Amazon’s smartphone website is the posterchild of reductionist mobile design. It is a stripped-down version of its desktop site, with an emphasis on search and an uncluttered navigation. Its tablet site is all but identical to its desktop site, complete with horizontal navigation, a dizzying array of calls to action, and a complicated filter and sort mechanism in the sidebar. Imagine if the e-commerce giant focused on the tablet first, and built an uncluttered, touch-optimized website featuring streamlined navigation, prominent search functionality, and a simplified checkout function. Now tell me why its desktop site wouldn’t benefit from that approach. That same approach would also yield dividends for its smartphone website, which would benefit from the focus on touch first, size second.

CNN is much like Amazon in its two-pronged strategy for smartphones and desktop sites, with tablet users simply getting the PC website. While the smartphone site is usable, it is ultimately the unloveable, yet serviceable offspring of its overly-complicated parent. The website rendered on the tablet is all but forgotten, requiring a combination of pinching, zooming and tapping that is much more frustrating than it ought to be. 

With a thoughtfully-designed hybrid navigational structure, readable fonts, and a layout that utilizes the entirety of the screen, ESPN’s tablet site is superior to its desktop site.

The discussion your marketing department should be having isn’t necessarily about a smartphone or desktop strategy, it should be about how good UX design for tablets can carry over to to desktops and smartphones. Clicking and scrolling are giving way to touching and swiping. And even if it takes the industry another ten years to make the mouse go the way of the floppy drive, the design methodology of the tablet will most likely improve your site’s performance in the short term.

As more tablets find their way under Christmas trees this season, the trend for shopping to be distributed across an array of digital platforms will continue. The lessons learned from effective tablet design can improve sales across all digital experiences. And that’s all any retailer really wants this season anyway.

As more tablets are released and they become more affordable and widely used, e-commerce will transition from the desktop shopping to tablets and smartphones. As the progression of technology gains momentum, retailers need to embrace a more tablet friendly approach to their overall web design. Will the tablet be the number one device for e-commerce next year? This 2012 holiday shopping season could easily mark the tipping point for more responsive design incorporated into e-retailers digital properties. 

We’re so happy to share some good news about La Quinta Inns & Suites, a client of ours that was just named as a finalist in the mobile category for this year’s IAB MIXX awards. 

This project is another great example of how unified marketing works – where creating the right experience in the right context garners measurable, meaningful results.  With the launch of La Quinta’s mobile site and apps earlier this year, a big focus was on the unique, dynamic experiences of La Quinta customers – with the mobile site being contextually aware of a user’s environment.   The mobile solution is focused on ease of use for La Quinta’s primary mobile customer – same day travelers – where the experience changes based on who you are and what you are doing. The mobile site and application are location-aware and the entire booking experience has been redesigned specifically for busy, mobile travelers. We also integrated sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor® to provide reviews and recommendations on restaurants, and the groundbreaking new feature – LQ-Instant^TM Hold – where guests can reserve a room using only your phone number.   The site also remembers you if you come back later in the day or for future bookings. 

"At La Quinta, we're constantly looking for ways to enhance the guest experience," says Ted Schweitzer, senior vice president, marketing & eCommerce for La Quinta Inns & Suites. “Having started with a mobile optimized site in 2007, we saw the significant shift in consumer behavior through mobile, and we improved and re-launched a completely new mobile platform including our iPhone app and a brand new Android app. With three industry innovations, our new mobile platform makes booking a room and staying at La Quinta even more convenient for the mobile user."

To learn more about the features on the LQ Mobile site, download our case study or watch this video.  You can also see it for yourself by going to LQ.com on your smartphone.

Earlier this week Mark Emery spoke at IAB Mobile with our client Ted Schweitzer of La Quinta Inns & Suites in New York City. More brands have begun to bridge the gap with their consumers via mobile devices and Mark likes to be right in the thick of it all. 

Whether your focus is on mobile apps or optimizing your site to render elegantly for a wide variey of smartphones, there is no better time than now.

Mobile Practice Lead, Mark Emery, delves into mobile solutions for the hospitality industry. Using key examples from the work Definition 6 executed for La Quinta Inns & Suites, Mark explains some best practices brands may utilize for a successful mobile web strategy. 

Mobilizing the Hospitality Industry

Mark Emery: The hospitality industry was really quick to develop e-commerce websites back in the late 90’s during the first tech boom if you will. Shortly after, they began to get into mobile as well and they were some of the early investors and adopters of mobile technology. They built lots of mobile websites and applications 10-12 years ago. Unfortunately for many, that’s where the investment stopped. Where we’re at today is we have consumers on faster and faster devices running on faster networks expecting rich experiences that are not delivered by a lot of hospitality websites simply because they were built a long time ago when you had to build for slower networks and devices.

La Quinta’s Mobile Solution

Mark Emery: Whereas most initial investments in mobile websites are really extensions of that is happening on the PC or desktop web, the new La Quinta mobile solution is the result of taking a look at what the mobile audiences want from the ground up and developing mobile content that is optimized specifically for a mobile audience. It’s the question of developing an optimized experience versus porting what’s already happening on the web. To do that effectively it takes looking at your audience form the ground up. 

La Quinta Re-Invents Mobile Booking

Mark Emery:  La Quinta identified the booking process as a uniquely painful experience on most hotel websites and got serious about re-imagining / re-inventing that experience for their mobile audience. What they came away with was the LQ-Instant Hold™. The Instant Hold feature of their mobile website and downloadable applications allows the user to book a hotel room without entering a credit card or filling out a complicated form and simply entering a 10 digit mobile phone number.

La Quinta’s Innovative Mobile Experience

Mark Emery:  The La Quinta Instant Hold is definitely unique. In fact, they’re actually trademarking the instant hold. Another is this website experience we developed for them is contextually aware. It’s predictive in nature so when I go to LQ.com on my mobile device as a new user, I’ll be asked for my permission to use my location and it will immediately show me results of hotels in my area. If I’m a repeat customer or perhaps I am on on-site or even post-stay the mobile website changes its performance and changes its behavior based on where I am at in that whole revenue cycle.

Tips for Brands Entering the Mobile Landscape

Mark Emery:  If you have a website at all, which you probably do, your mobile users are already using your website on mobile. They’re probably not getting what they want (or they are) in which case the first thing I would recommend doing is taking a look at your web analytics and take a look at a few things there. Check out what types of devices are accessing your site currently and where they’re jumping off, how much time they’re spending on the site, what they’re able to get and what they’re not able to get. You’re actually able to glean a lot of useful data about how your website is performing on mobile devices by simply looking at your web logs.

Why is it So Important for Brands to Address Mobile?

Mark Emery:  Really there are two reasons; One, simply because consumers are holding powerful devices and expect really rich experiences on those powerful devices. They’re accessing data on high speed networks. Something like 60% of all smartphone data traffic happens over a Wi-Fi connection here in the United States so they’re expecting demand rich experiences.  The second one is simply the fact that our work, our lives as Americans and as global citizens for that matter is increasingly transient. We’re always on the go, we’re always in movement. Creating a mobile website and a downloadable application for people that are in motion was a smart thing for La Quinta do and it would be a wise thing to do for other organizations in the hospitality industry to take a look at. 

The next time you hear someone playing Angry Birds or checking-in using Greensquare from inside a bathroom stall, make a mental note with yourself to never borrow their phone. In fact, you might want to start avoiding all other phones from now on.

According to this infographic by Keeping It Kleen, 16% of all smartphones have poop on them. Yuck! And unfortunately it's not just phones that you have to worry about. All tech gadgets from keyboards and iPads to TV remote controls are covered with germs. It's enough to make Howie Mandel take another shower (he's an admitted germaphobe who showers 5 times or more a day).

Take a guess. What is dirtier: Your keyboard or a toilet seat? Toilet seat? WRONG. The average keyboard is 5x dirtier and has 60x more germs than your average toilet seat. Say hello to your new office mate. Her name is Bacteria. And the next time you stay in a hotel and want to worry about the bedspread, wake up and smell the poop. The TV remote is the dirtiest object in the room!!

If you want to make sure your phone isn't part of the 16% that's covered in poop molecules, then try to break out some Purell or rubbing alcohol on a regular basis and give it a good cleaning. And the next time you see a coworker or family member walk out of a bathroom with an iPad, make sure it wasn't yours.

On Sunday November 13, 2011 Green Week began and to help support the Green is Universal mission to raise Green awareness and effect positive change to the environment, my company built a new mobile application for iOS and Android devices, Green Square.


My team at Definition 6 was tasked to create the application that would integrate foursquare technology with a “Green” twist.

The Green Square app gives users the ability to easily spot “Green Scenes” nearby and learn site-specific "green" information about the location, or view eco-friendly tips from NBCUniversal talent.  From a user (and foursquare addict) point of view, I love the fact that I can easily see how Green my existing network of friends is, check-in to any foursquare location, and earn custom Green Badges. 

If you are a “Greenie” or an eco-savvy person you can also nominate locations to be deemed Green Scenes by the NBCU team from the app.  Of course, for my fellow foursquare addicts, you continue to earn points on your leaderboard and can keep or claim your mayorships by checking-in from Green Square.

By harnessing the power of the mobile, social, and location-based ecosystem, we were able to develop this app as a way for NBCUniversal to build a stronger, more personal connection with its audience during Green Week.

It was a great project to work on with my team at Definition 6, and the NBCUniversal team, and I’m thrilled with the way the app turned out.  In fact, I look forward to new features and functionality that may be added in future releases, taking into account the feedback and reviews we are gathering this week as more and more users download Green Square.

Take a look for yourself, download the app today for free, and see what’s “Green” near you! http://greensquare.greenisuniversal.com

Has this ever happened to you?  The woman next to you in line at the grocery store -- the one with the full cart standing next to an empty conveyor belt, holds everybody up while she chuckles at her iPhone.  Or the guy in the sedan in front of you who missed the light turning green because he is reading responses to a post he made in a gardening forum -- and will check 19 more times today. 

But let's face it -- it's not him. And it isn't her, either. It is you. And it is me. It's cliché to say we are a distracted people. It is cheap to complain about how our digital lives can lay waste to our personal ones. And it is a sine dicendo to say that when we can't get what we want, when we want it, at the price we want, and where we want it, we are prone to hysterics.

I elaborate more on this in a recent Mediapost article "Why Your Friendly Neighborhood Mobile Technologist Needs a Swift Kick in the Ass."

With the proliferation of tablets, smartphones and other connected devices, we are acccessing content more than ever on the go. So why aren't there more innovative mobile apps or mobile sites that "wow" us? Haven't we come so far that we can at least deliver something that won't make us leave the second we get there because of a fail to load or clunky navigation?

This is not a rant - but simply a call out to mobile technologists and developers to get excited. Get innovative. And to deliver something spectacular.

Last week I attended a great interactive marketing conference in Indianapolis (and yes, got a side dish of Katy Perry while there!) Of all the things I learned about unified marketing, one of the most interesting sessions I attended was about Email Design in the Mobile Inbox Age.  The presenter was Chris Studabaker from ExactTarget.

The Definition 6 team at the Katy Perry concert from ExactTarget Connections 2011.

Chris answered the question “What is mobile email?” with the following explanation: Email + mobile.

From this perspective a mind shift starts to occur and move away from thinking about designing email templates and brand communcations for a mobile device, or for any singular device at all which makes complete sense.  As a “connected consumer” just think of the places you are likely to consume email content: computer, tablet, mobile come to mind immediately.  Intuitively receipients interact different with messages based on the device they are consuming it on.  

Here are a few images of the data that Chris shared:











The graphs above were created by ExactTarget and distributed to Connections 2011 attendees.

Now that you know more about the landscape, let’s talk about the solution!  There are three things to consider in crafting the solution: The code (technology), visual presentation (content), conversion path optimization (experience). You must balance all of these with the level of investment and projected return. 

I’m going to focus on the content portion of the solution in this post but feel free to contact me if you’d like to talk more about the technology or the experience!

There are 2 major considerations:

- Small screen

- Touch

The mobile inbox has some different display restrictions that are important to consider with your content strategy.

- Subject Line – Display ~35 characters

- Preheader content – Accommodate between ~40 to ~80 character.

Try the following layout guidelines when you look at how you organize your content.

- Make sure the content is readable on a small screen

- Use a grid layout that you can “train” your subscribers and creators to expect

- Try a single column layout for primary content

- Strong language & visuals for primary call to action (CTA)

- No more than 3 columns for secondary content and beyond

Scaling and Text Size Guidelines

- 22px or more for Headlines

- 16-22px for body copy

- iPhone’s automatically scale up text under 12px

In the end it all comes back to your goals and your audience.  Email marketing gives the sender the great ability to data and easy A/B testing on changes so look into your performance, talk to your subscribers, develop an approach, and test!  That’s the only way our campaigns will improve over time because there is no “one size fits all” solution.

 

 

Definition 6's very own Mark Emery spoke at the IAB Mobile Marketplace on July 18th, 2011, discussing "Who's Buying...Who's Not...and Why? The Buyer's Side of the Story." IAB's Willow Duttge caught up with Mark after the panel to ask him a few questions.


Mark touched on some very interesting points, including his opinion of when he believes mobile should be considered as part of a client's strategy, how sometimes it is the first screen, and how mobile users relationship is very personal with their devices.  He goes on to say that is "the first thing they reach for when they wake up in the morning and the last thing they put down at night."  He also is seeing more mobile growth beyond just "I need an iPad app."

How are you planning for mobile?  Leave your comments below on what you'd like to see more of in the mobile space. 

 

On Monday of last week I had the (mostly) pleasurable experience of speaking on an IAB mobile advertising panel in New York. I say mostly because, technically, 10% of me burst into flames on the subway and never actually made it. 

Panels like these used to be the stuff of software geeks, carrier overlords and some gnarly, unholy combination of the two. The conversations were invariably technology focused as people scrambled to make sense of a fragmented industry growing at a bewildering pace. It took a few years longer than it should have, but at some point walled gardens, WAP decks and SOAP APIs gave way to use cases, ROI and sound design principles. 

The conversation has shifted again, and now people are beginning to contextualize mobile as part of a branding continuum, where digital, traditional and emerging media converge to tell a story that engages people in motion. Simon Bond, CMO of BBDO, pointed to a study his firm had done which found people are more likely to wake up and reach for their mobile device rather than their lover (or themselves, for that matter). Razorfish is doing really ground-breaking stuff in mobile advertising, working with publishers and networks to create dyanmic new ad models. Michael Collins of Joule talked about how the metrics mobile provide are on par with - even exceeding in many cases - the analytics available on the desktop web. 

At Definition 6 we are bringing serious innovation to our mobile clients. From mobile websites that predict behavior and present contextualized experiences, to mobile marketing applications that leverage unique combinations of variables like speed, distance, orientation and time of day, we are helping our clients deploy mobile marketing strategies that transform their businesses.

Check it out:
 


It begs the question - how is your firm using mobile marketing and advertising to build your brand? If you aren't, somebody else is. 
 

Looking for another lengthy blog post on the state of mobile technology in 2011?

Me neither. 

Here's what the graphic says for those who prefer to read than scroll through an egregiously long infographic:

1) There are a lot of people in the world;
2) Many, many of them have mobile devices;
3) Many, many of them have smartphones;
4) Many, many of them have iPhones;
5) But not as many as you might think
6) SMS is huge;
7) Advertising is huge;
8) Apps are still growing;
9) The U.S. is behind in smartphone adoption and mobile broadband;
10) Most mobile websites still suck*

*This is not actually on the infographic, but still true. Call us, we can help. 

Background: It’s almost impossible to describe the smartphone market accurately without sounding overly prone to hyperbole. Worldwide, nearly half a billion smartphones will be shipped in 2011. By Christmas of 2011, one in two Americans will have one. Gartner predicts that in 2011, 85% of all handsets shipped globally will be able to access the mobile Internet.

In Q1 of 2011, Android supplanted Apple as the #1 smartphone OS in the U.S. While smartphone manufacturers jockey back and forth with one another for frontrunner status, swapping places with every latest hardware entrant, only feature phones (where the OS is proprietary firmware, and NOT a third-party development environment) are left in the starting blocks; there is little churn in the segment. In fact 2011, according to Nielsen, will be the year smartphones overtake feature phones in global mobile shipments.

For brands looking to build or maintain a mobile presence, the smartphone onslaught simply cannot be ignored. Nor can it be oversimplified. Too many American marketers think mobile is merely a stripped-down digital experience, a checkbox extension of their digital initiatives created automatically through the advent of rich smartphone browsers. The reality is that, worldwide, more people access the Internet through mobile devices than personal computers. It is the first screen, not the third. That over 95% of domestic digital marketing budgets are earmarked for non-mobile initiatives is an unpardonable lack of imagination, courage and good sense.

Smart brands and advertising agencies must consider several factors when evaluating how to create a mobile presence for smartphones. First the upside of browser-based mobile applications:  

• Write once, run anywhere: This is the siren’s call of mobile that promises cost efficiencies by keeping the time spent creating, maintaining and updating applications to a minimum through the utilization of a tool-based multi-platform design paradigm.

• Universal browser availability: A rich browsing experience is all but universal in the smartphone market. If a brand presence can be defined and made accessible through a mobile web browser, it reduces the number of headaches to resolve for platform-specific nuances as long as you stick to the lowest common denominator.

• Support of advanced features available in HTML5: There are some components of HTML5 that will be a boon to mobile devices. Unlike mobile browsers of old, HTML5 promises offline support. Also, video in HTML5 is standardized, which will make adding video content to websites much easier. HTML5 also supports a GeoLocation API, allowing web developers to capture critical location data.

• Layout standardization: Web browsers depend on a layout engine at the presentation layer. While there are myriad mobile browsers available, WebKit and Gecko are the layout engines used by most, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

Unfortunately, there are also downsides to a browser-only approach, including:  

• Browser diversity: The most prevalent smartphone browser in existence is the Blackberry, which has its own layout engine used by precisely nobody other than RIM. At the very minimum, creating a browser-based smartphone application that works on a majority of devices will require at least two completely separate development efforts.  

• Limited HTML5 support: When Steve Jobs lambasted Adobe’s Flash in 2010, he pointed to HTML5 as the author of its death spiral. Somebody forgot to tell RIM, who supports the Opera browser while remaining ambiguous about HTML5.  

• Hardware-specific amenities: Downloadable applications are typically able to access many features baked into the hardware that a browser-based application simply cannot. From the iPhone’s popular “shake” feature to other phones cameras and GPS chips, in order to unlock the richest of features from a mobile device, you have to think thick-client.

While the debate continues, what is certain for brands is to contemplate the merits of downloads vs. browser-based applications on a case-by-case basis. Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of Mobile concludes, “with mobile media consumption on the rise, the discussion of how consumers are accessing content -- whether it is via application, browser or both -- continues to be an important factor for companies looking to invest further in their mobile brands.” In every scenario, however, it is important to consider what will not work, and that, specifically, is to think that just because an HTML-based application works on a personal computer, it is sufficient for a mobile device. Mobile users have limited and hugely variable display capabilities, awkward and difficult input mechanisms, and the mobile mindset differs vastly from the PC user’s mindset.

In future posts, I’ll talk about mobile application design principles and dissect smartphone platforms in an effort to provide color for brands contemplating including them in mobile marketing strategies.