By Alan R. Sultan

Consumers today are savvier than ever about the marketing messages they receive. It's no longer a pleasant surprise but an expectation, especially with digital media, that marketing touch points will reflect an advertiser's knowledge of them.

Consumers want to receive offers that recognize previous purchases and suggest complementary products or services. They want content that grabs and holds their attention and is tailored to their interests. Most importantly, they want to choose the brands with which they interact.

Mobile can deliver all of these things better than any other medium. But marketers and content providers risk alienating their best customers -- and forever losing this valuable channel -- if they don't make effective use of data assets to drive intelligent, personalized conversations.

Relevance with advanced customer data
Marketing and content decision-makers can employ several strategies to create a data-driven mobile marketing effort.

A major component of target marketing is the use of customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Today's CRM solutions have advanced to the point where even small businesses have the power to collect and segment a breathtaking range of customer data to drive personalized interactions.

But it's the quality of that data, not the quantity, which ensures mobile messages are as customized, relevant and accepted as possible.

The right data will vary by industry and advertiser, but should reflect the preferences, behavior and demographic details of your customers -- the information you need to make intelligent decisions about your marketing outreach.

If you are missing this depth of data, third-party data and analytics providers such as Acxiom can provide highly detailed financial, life-stage and demographic data on more than 200 million Americans.

These data assets are pooled into dozens of profiles that allow marketers to use very specific criteria to identify consumers with similar attributes.

There are several ways to leverage this data.

One solution is to match your existing customer database against those of third-party data providers to expand and update your database. You can also identify one or more pre-determined profiles from these providers that closely match your composite customer profile, giving you an instant database of high-quality prospects.

A properly-deployed mobile marketing initiative is not a stand-alone channel leveraging unique data assets. It should instead integrate seamlessly with your clients' existing CRM and data analytics investments, taking advantage of your organization's best customer knowledge to drive meaningful interactions.

Your solution must be prepared for the inevitable convergence of mediums to ensure that at the end of the day there is a continuity of marketing content to the consumer.

Data-driven intelligence
A data-driven marketing approach not only helps you determine when and how to market to your customers, but also helps drive the actual conversations and offers that you present to them.

The mobile medium lets you get even more personal by combining time and location with your content to deliver the right message to the right end user, at the time and place they are most likely to need it and respond favorably to it.

Let's say you are planning a mobile rewards program for a chain of casual dining restaurants.

To create an all opt-in subscriber base, patrons see in-location advertisements touting the value and specific benefits of the rewards program. A short code text message lets customers opt in directly from their mobile device.

Once the opt-in list has been created, you are ready to drive offers that truly match the preferences and needs of your patrons.

If your restaurant chain is experiencing unusually slow traffic one midweek evening, for example, you can drive offers for free or discounted meals based on a variety of criteria: How often they dine at your restaurants, what they order, or how long they have been a customer.

But to make the offers not just relevant but actionable, these mobile offers can be received when and where customers are most likely to use them.

At 4 p.m., your restaurant chain could identify every loyalty program member within a mile of each of its locations and, in real time, layer in your customer data to drive customized offers for a meal that evening.

Those empty tables begin to fill, which means you are making money off perishable inventory in a way that wasn't possible previously.

Alan R. Sultan is president of Acuity Mobile, a Washington, DC-based provider of mobile marketing services. Reach him at