The M&T iPhone app

Financial institution M&T Bank Corp. has rolled out a line of mobile services to help its business clients conveniently manage their finances while on the go.

M&T is rolling out the new business-focused initiatives after offering mobile banking to consumers for the past two years. The new mobile tools available for M&T business clients includes a SMS program, a mobile Web portal and a mobile application.

“Providing mobile banking for consumers and small business customers is simply good business,” said Mike Shryne, senior vice president for alternative banking at M&T, Buffalo, NY.

“It enables consumers and business customers to bank 24/7 from the only channel they carry with them all the time,” he said.

“M&T customers are increasingly using this channel for many things beyond their financial needs, and we believe this will increasingly be a vital way our customers choose to conduct their financial business.”

M&T claims to hold $78 million in assets and is one of the top twenty commercial bank holding companies with 776 branches along the eastern coast of the United States.

Bank on mobile
M&T’s mobile banking has been previously available for commercial and personal banking, and with the new announcements, the technology has been adapted for business clients.

The financial institution is making the move to mobile after seeing a high mobile adoption rate.

Two years ago, approximately one percent of M&T’s users had mobile banking set up. Today, more than 40 percent of online bankers use a mobile channel to bank.

M&T business clients can log-in to their account by typing www.m.mtb.com into their mobile browsers.

Consumers who want to manage their accounts via SMS can text the keyword MTBBIZ to the short code 62638. Users can then sign-up for the service via the mobile site.

Using specific keywords, users can check their finances. For example, by texting the keyword DEP to a short code, business clients can view the last five deposits to their accounts.

Additionally, the M&T mobile app is available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.

Using the app, consumers can check their account balances, view transactions, move funds around in accounts and find the nearest M&T ATM and branch.

Mobile shift
Mobile banking is becoming a crucial part of digital offerings for both large and small financial institutions.

According to a recent study from Javelin Strategy and Research, mobile banking grew 63 percent year-to-year.

Additionally, the study found that although mobile banking has become more prevalent, smaller institutions are still weary about including mobile as a resource for consumers (see story).

By using a three-pronged strategy that cuts across apps, mobile Web and SMS, M&T is showing that mobile plays an important role for its clients.

Although SMS still remains the most widespread mobile marketing channel, mobile banking sites and apps are also growing in popularity and are being used more by consumers as an extension of their online banking.

“Mobile is part of M&T’s regular marketing campaign,” Mr. Shryne said.

“The channel is part of a broader initiative to provide compelling products meeting our customer needs through the bank’s digital channels,” he said.

“M&T offers multiple ways to bank through mobile banking, allowing flexibility depending on the customer’s lifestyle and mobile device.”

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York 

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Furniture, lighting and home accessories store Heal’s has introduced a mobile commerce-enabled site that lets consumers search, browse and buy from its inventory.

The company used Venda’s mobile platform and Digby LocalPoint Storefront to power the mobile site. Heal’s decided to launch the mobile commerce site to give consumers more options to shop its products no matter where they are.

“Heal’s’ key strategy is to provide their valuable customers with access to Heal’s’ products anytime, anywhere from the convenience of their smartphones,” said Dan Lowden, vice president of marketing at Digby, Austin, TX.

“Heal’s’ mobile-optimized Web site is designed to allow consumers to search, browse and buy products whether they are at home, on the go, or in a Heal’s store,” he said.

Founded in 1810, Heal’s is a destination lifestyle store selling a wide range of modern, designer and contemporary furniture, housewares, lighting, accessories and gifts for the home.

Venda’s ecommerce platform offers retailers the scalability, stability and security for deploying world-class ecommerce sites.

Digby enables mobile commerce sites and provides Web-style analytics to the physical retail store – all through their own branded mobile experience.

Shopping experience
Consumers can access the Heal’s mobile site by entering http://www.heals.co.uk on their mobile browser.

The mobile site features large product images with additional views, detailed product descriptions and a homepage banner.

The Heal’s mobile site

Additionally, consumers can shop by category, store locator, as well as use the search bar at the top of the screen to look for something particular.

The Heal’s mobile site also lets consumers browse ratings and reviews to see what others are saying about the products and also features social integration such as Facebook and Twitter, which lets users share their favorite products with friends and family.

Word of mouth
Heal’s will promote the mobile-optimized site across all of their sales channels and through traditional marketing efforts.

“Since 1810, Heal’s has been at the forefront of customer engagement and service in meeting the needs of their customers,” Mr. Lowden said. “They wanted to extend that great experience to mobile to be available to their customers anywhere and at anytime through their new mobile Web site.

“It helps drive new business and provides engagement and support across all channels,” he said.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York

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Cable network Speed used SMS to let users place bids during a televised automobile auction.

Speed used a digital game during the recent televised Barrett-Jackson automobile auction to keep users engaged and saw that 45 percent of entries for the game were made via SMS. Speed worked with mobile marketing solution Vibes on this campaign.

“It is a game of speed and time, so dropping in a quick five to six-digit code is the fastest method of entry,” said Kevin Annison, vice president of digital and interactive media at Speed, Charlotte, NC.

Speed is a satellite and cable network that focuses on automobile-related content.

Speedy fingers
The Barrett-Jackson automobile auction is Speed’s highest show on the network and takes place in Scottsdale, AZ.

The auction took place over 28 hours, where 28 cars were auctioned off.

During the event, calls to action on TV asked users to place bets either via SMS or online to guess the price of each car that was auctioned.

One hour before each car is auctioned off, users could enter their bids either on Speed’s Web site or via SMS.

Mobile consumers could participate by texting their bid to the short code 773333. The auction-specific SMS program was live from Jan. 19–22.

Consumers who entered their bids online or through SMS were automatically entered to win the grand prize – a Ford special edition Mustang. Users could also win smaller prizes, including iPads and TVs.

Approximately 1.6 million bids were placed during the event through both mobile and Web.

According to Mr. Annison, at some points during the telecast there were 85,000 digital bids on a car. Depending on the vehicle being auctioned off, close to 55 percent of bids could have taken place via mobile.

“Mobile is extremely important because text messages are becoming so prominent and a super-easy way to get an audience to play along and engage with content,” Mr. Annison said.

On-air engagement
Speed has been testing SMS over the years for the Barrett-Jackson automobile auction, and as mobile has grown, the company has seen increased interaction via the medium.

Speed claims that when it first began using SMS, 20 percent of bids were placed via mobile compared to its average of 45 percent from this past year.

Using digital elements to elevate on-air content is being used more by broadcast and cable networks as consumers increasingly multitask while watching TV.

For example, a recent study from Nielsen Co. found that 40 percent of consumers watch TV on multiple screens. In addition to watching content via mobile, consumers are using their handsets to dig up additional information from on-air content (see story).

In particular, SMS is an effective way for users to interact during a TV event because it is the channel with the widest reach.

“There is lots of hype about apps and the mobile Web, but one of the things that is important to remember is that half of people still use a feature phone,” said Alex Campbell, CEO at Vibes, Chicago.

“The combination of SMS with online provides a great relationship overall, and by looking at the response rates, it is clear that people are sitting in front of their TVs and interacting,” he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York 

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Luxury Daily today – Trump bolsters CRM through mobile presence; Neiman Marcus launches multichannel Louboutin anniversary campaign for social interaction.

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Lara Mehanna is general manager of DX Mobile at DataXu

By Lara Mehanna

Raise your hand if you are done with 2012 predictions. Me, too.

A lot of them are great, and they help guide strategy, but if you are in the trenches, trying to execute against your customer’s key performance indicators, well, strategy-schmatejy. What you really want are tricks and ways to avoid the traps.

With that in mind, here are 10 hard-won lessons from 2011 for you to use in 2012.

1. The toughest job you will ever love
Say you are running a mobile campaign for a financial services customer. You use a success metric of new account sign-ups – a process that is crazy complicated, involving lots of typing on multiple screens.

Feature phones may not work well in this case compared with tablets or smartphones, because it is generally more comfortable to type and navigate through multiple pages on a bigger screen.

It is surprising how tablet performance compares with display.

Think display is categorically more effective than mobile? Tablets often provide comparable performance to display, proving that even for the most complex conversion events, mobile can drive incremental outcomes for an advertiser.

Takeaway: Run your campaign across multiple channels and multiple device types to discover your price-performance sweet spot.

2. Size does not matter
I know what you are thinking. Tablets are such a superior experience that they should always get the lion’s share of spend. Hold onto your iPads, partner.

Big screens are great for multi-step conversions, but not all conversions are multi-step.

Sometimes, the highest-performing handset can have the smallest screen. It really depends on the type of campaign you are running, and what metrics you are optimizing against. Feature phones can be great for direct response campaigns.

Takeaway: Make sure your vendor can target by a variety of criteria – carrier, manufacturer, device and device operating system. And then weigh every targeting decision against the reduction in scale.

3. Hit me, baby, one more time
Pardon the gratuitous Britney reference, but it fits this next point perfectly.

Frequency conversion analysis and across multiple campaigns and multiple verticals can be complicated.

Over the course of a 90-day campaign, do not be surprised if the effectiveness of subsequent impressions does not start to decline until well after the 40-, 50- and even the 55-frequency mark.
Paced over the course of a campaign, you would be surprised how much return can still be harvested at the higher frequencies.

Takeaway: Do not set pre-determined limits on frequency. Find a partner with a system that can optimize effectively across multiple hits.

4. Take the long way home
Supertramp alert. Am I showing my age?

Just because you are running a campaign where 60 percent of actions are completed within two days of exposure to the first impression does not mean that you should end the campaign. It might take days or weeks to hit 90 percent.

Takeaway: Do not take campaigns out of the field prematurely and make sure your attribution windows are broad enough to capture all of the activity you are driving.

5. Hello, is it me you are looking for?
Here is another big screen surprise: tablets did not always deliver for upper funnel awareness.

Feature phones can do admirably well compared to smart and tablet devices. We need more data before making any lasting conclusions but one hypothesis is: on a big screen, you may be competing with a lot of other stimuli. On a small screen, you are the star.

Takeaway: When it comes time to building awareness, cast a wide net. Tablets and feature phones can both deliver the goods.

6. These are not the droids you are looking for
Actually, that is not true. Droids should be part of your targeting mix.

Handset type is actually a pretty big driver of performance. But handsets have a way of surprising planners.

For instance, while BlackBerries have traditionally dominated within the audience segment of enterprise smartphone users , there are times when LG and Motorola phones will yield the best response rates within that demographic. You just never know.

Takeaway: Do not ignore hunches or history, but allow your plan to also find surprising pockets of demand. Expertise plus experimentation is the name of the mobile game.

7. A random walk down Madison Avenue
No matter the vertical or target metric, early data is not necessarily indicative of future performance.

Research In Motion devices crushed it in November and tanked in December. Everybody is working for the weekend in Q3. In Q4, weekend day parts go silent. Verizon is up. Verizon is down.

Takeaway: If you are still on a system that requires manual rules setting, run as fast as you can for the nearest exit. In a channel where change is omnipresent, your bids must be dynamic and based on ongoing learning.

8. Come to the Android side. We have cookies.
If and until Apple changes its tune on third-party cookies, iOS tracking will remain a drag, but with a large percent of the installed base in the United States, it is a necessary drag.

The bottom line is that iOS can be a huge performance driver – just look at how popular iPhones and iPads are.

Takeaway: There are ways to get around iOS’s third-party cookie limitations. Do your research.

9. AUUS (Ad Units of Unusual Size)
Despite unsold inventory rates as high as 85 percent, pacing in mobile remains a challenge. One reason: client concerns about brand halo.

If you are a financial services company, it is perfectly reasonable that you do not want to show up on sites such as Perez Hilton’s.

If you have a wide array of creative including non-Mobile Marketing Association standard sizes, you can avoid having your ads show up on sites from your blacklist, while still making sure they show up on a huge number of safe sites. Pacing is not a problem if you stack the deck.

Takeaway: It is a little one, but worth remembering. Get creative variety. From the get-go. It makes everyone’s lives easier.

10. Love the one you are with
There is a reason why mobile advertising is growing as fast as it is.

Ask the world what are the most important material things in life and the consistent answers are food and shelter, followed by telephony. Humans need to communicate. And they love to communicate.

Takeaway: Mobile is easy to love.

Lara Mehanna is New York-based general manager of DX Mobile at DataXu. Reach her at lmehanna@dataxu.com.

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