Urban Outfitters Goes More Mobile with Marketing
by Christina Lee on July 7th, 2009
Urban Outfitters’ latest efforts to target its 18 to 30-year-old hipster of a customer have gone more mobile.
The apparel, accessories and home furnishings retailer teamed up with Acuity Mobile last broaden its presence through mobile web as well as texting.
“By providing this customer experience, we hope to communicate with our customers in a targeted and relevant way,” said Dmitri Siegel, managing director of Urban Outfitters Direct, in a statement.
About 88 percent of U.S. consumers use mobile phones with text capabilities, according to the Mobile Marketing Association. But of those consumers, less than 24 percent opt to receive messages from a company via text. And while advertisers have been hesitant to reach out to consumers via mobile phone, the rising number of mobile marketing advertisers could soon turn this fear into profit.
As many have discovered, the key toward a successful text ad campaign is urgency – and one way to create such urgency is through offers or coupons. Just 18 percent of consumers who opt for company texts receive these now, though such coupons received a 7 to 14 percent redemption rate – much higher than the 1 percent rate of traditional couponing, said Margaret Donnelly, vice president of business devleopment and marketing of mobile messaging company Jittergram, to Inc.
“We’ve already seen local restaurants send the day’s specials to nearby lunch patrons,” said Kim Bayne, author of Marketing Without Wires, to Entrepreneur. “The cost is fairly low, and it can be done from a PC, without involving a pricey service provider.”
Acuity Mobile will also oversee the launch of the Urban Outfitters mobile site and m-commerce suite – both of which could reach 64 percent of U.S. mobile phones users. Such secondary Web sites have become a major focus of mobile marketing advertisers, as most mobile phones cannot display business Web sites utilizing more than basic HTML.
With more than 144 stores worldwide, Urban Outfitters may be more of a major retailers. But, as entrepreneurship experts have long explained, small business owners are also capable of using -and affording – mobile marketing.
The first steps can be as simple as updating your profile on online business locators like Google Maps, or figuring out how to make your business Web site more mobile friendly. John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing discloses that he uses a service called MoFuse.
Small business owners, have you used mobile marketing yet? Share your experiences in the comments.