Great job with this post. Really like how you stress the importance of actually measuring mobile’s impact. We just put together a blog post about mobile trends when it comes to PPC and have some really interesting data from actual clients PPC accounts. If you ever wanted to share on of the images you’re more than welcome!

If you’re wondering what’s ZMOT, https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/collections/zero-moment-truth.html

And also take look at this: The new mobile consumer research

http://www.3rootsstudios.com/the-new-mobile-consumer-research-infographic/

In addition, there are plenty of companies out there to help app developers acquire installs on a CPI basis so there is less risk involved. For recommendations, please email me at trinh@motiveinteractive.com

Great article! Just wanted to clear up some things about SMS for business:

Open rate—The average open rate for SMS is actually 98%.
Cost—Low. From a company perspective, it only costs $1-2/month to provision a long code text-enabled number, and ~$100 for use of an SMS platform. Meanwhile, it costs about $150,000 to develop an app (with accompanying push notifications).
Opt-out possibilities—High. It’s important for marketers to offer people the chance to opt-out, and the Mobile Marketing Association, which oversees text marketing, demands double opt-in authentication and the opportunity to opt-out with a simple keyword.
Sender’s identity—Clear. If you are texting with someone, you know who they are, and if you text with a business, you can add your contact information to your phone for ease of recognition.
Engagement—High. SMS can be used for any business for a variety of different use cases (scheduling, reporting, payment, etc.) In customer service, for example, SMS engagement is very high because people are trying to resolve their problem on a channel they prefer. Push notification engagement is very low: only 6% of consumers react to (receive and clicked on) push notifications from mobile apps across industries and OS types
Personalization—High. By integrating with CRMs, SMS can deliver a personalized, contextualized experience, drawing from past interactions to inform future ones. SMS can incorporate data as simple as name or email, or as advanced as available appt times drawn from a scheduling system. Plus, from a customer perspective, text messages seem like they’re coming from a person
Record—High. Depending on the system you use, you can get advanced reporting about the message sent: how many people have opened your message, how many people have engaged with the text flow, etc.
Spam rate—Low (even lower with long code text messages). Texts on short codes are regulated by the CTIA, with clear rules for opt-in and opt-out. Failure to comply means your short code can be revoked.
Amount of information—The amount of information with SMS is medium. Although it may take a few messages to resolve a problem, the fact that SMS platforms can tie into a CRM means relevant customer information can be incorporated into the first text, speeding up the interaction.
Distractibility—SMS distractibility is only high if you aren’t expecting a text message. If you are waiting for customer service information over SMS, it won’t distract you to get a new message.

As I’ve laid out, SMS is a great channel for customer engagement. In fact, 64% of Americans would rather text than call a business. If you’d like to learn more, you can download our 2014 report here: http://onereach.com/resources/high-demand-for-text-message-2014-report

Cheers,

Kevin