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Mobile ties with TV in reach for millennials: study

Mobile devices and television each grab the attention of 94 percent of millennials per week, pointing to the need for seamless cross-channel marketing nowadays, according to a new study from Experian Marketing Group.

Experian?s fifth-annual ?2013 Digital Marketer Report? highlights the strong role that mobile plays for millennials. The report also indicates that marketers still have lots to learn about how to market to cross-screen consumers.

?Brands and marketers are taking notice of millennials and the fact that they communicate and behave differently than other generations,? said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services, New York.

?Marketers are increasingly understanding that they need innovative campaigns in order to engage this important segment of the population,? he said.

Plugged-in users
According to the report, early-adopter millennials spend 14 percent more time engaged with mobile devices than other generations. The study defines millennials as consumers aged 18 to 34-years old.

Not surprisingly, these users are also accessing the Internet from multiple devices.

In fact, one in five millennials visit Web sites from four different devices each week. Nearly 25 percent of adults aged 35 to 49-years old do the same.

Additionally, the average millennial smartphone owner sends and receives almost 4,000 SMS messages monthly. The number of messages drops by approximately 40 percent for each increasing age bracket, per Experian.

Fifty-three percent of young adults access social media via a smartphone.

The report also outlines some interesting habits of older adult mobile users.

For example, adults over the age of 50 spend 34 percent more time reading newspapers than the average newspaper reader.

Additionally, 25 percent of this demographic access social media via a tablet.

In the younger than 35-years old bracket, consumers are more likely to send emails from their mobile devices than they are from work. Forty-four percent of consumers in this group visit a site from their mobile device once a week.

Mobile device ownership has hit 93 percent of the adult and 73 percent of the teen population in the United States. Interestingly though, these numbers have not changed much in the past two years, which indicates that mobile device ownership has possibly plateaued.

Marketing challenges
To keep up with multiplatform consumers, 44 percent of marketers have synced up their online and offline marketing efforts. Another 30 percent of marketers are in the process of coordinating their different marketing channels.

Thirty-five percent of marketers said that response attribution was their most challenging multichannel marketing issue, pointing to the difficulties that come with cross-channel marketing.

Similarly, 22 percent of marketers said that campaign coordination was their biggest challenge, followed by targeted messaging and budget allocation.

Marketers were also asked about the percentage of their campaigns that run across multiple channels with an integrated message, creative and offer.

Forty-six percent of respondents said that 61 ? 100 percent of their campaigns were integrated. Thirty-seven percent of the respondents said that 40 percent or less of their campaigns were integrated.

Integrating campaigns seamlessly across multiple platforms is key for marketers because consumers do not break up a brand?s message into channels. Instead, consumers view a marketing message holistically.

Take email, for instance, which is increasingly being opened via mobile devices.

Experian?s study found that more than 50 percent of email marketers either currently or plan to optimize their campaigns for mobile devices.

When it comes to tactics that they are using, marketers are developing rich text mobile versions or optimized email dimensions for mobile. Additionally, marketers are using mobile email to drive application downloads.

?Marketers must align their campaigns around the full customer experience ? making the customer interaction seamless across all channels, which includes mobile,? Mr. Tancer said.

?Multichannel is no longer a trend it is a reality,? he said. ?Consumers move seamlessly across channels these days and are always-on. Successful digital marketers are the ones taking advantage of this new consumer landscape.?

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York