Please click here to access the archived webinar

Tablets hit their stride this holiday season in helping to drive sales, according to executives who participated in a Mobile Marketer webinar yesterday.

During Mobile Marketer?s ?Holiday Mobile Marketing: Lessons Learned for Future Holiday Efforts? webinar, mobile executives spoke about the role of mobile in holiday marketing initiatives. The webinar also offered marketers and brands tips on how to prepare for holiday 2012.

?Tablets bring a retailer?s product set to life for a complete shopping experience and in some cases show double the conversion rates of smartphones,? said Craig Etheridge, vice president of mobile advertising sales for USA Today, Gannett Digital, Washington.

?Therefore, the experience you deliver has to be concrete and to the point,? he said.

Mobile holiday
According to Mr. Etheridge, USA Today saw that some of its users were spending an average of 15 minutes on their tablets this holiday season, showing how the devices function primarily as an at-home device.

Also on the panel were executives from Michaels Stores Inc. and Dell. Kony Solutions sponsored the webinar and also presented its view on holiday mobile campaigns.

Anthony Price, senior director of digital marketing and PR at Michaels Stores Inc., Irving, TX, agreed that tablets proved to be conversion vessels for holiday 2011 sales.

?The biggest surprise from this holiday season was the number of consumers that wanted to engage on mobile and participate in activities such as price comparison,? Mr. Price said.

Brandon McGee, director of global mobile at Dell, Round Rock, TX, said that the company saw the number of users who interacted with the brand double year-over-year with holiday mobile initiatives.

Additionally, Mr. McGee said that HGTVs were popular mobile purchases this year, showing the high level of mobile commerce that some tech-savvy consumers were willing to use this holiday season.

?I think it is the fact that people have become more comfortable with using mobile to make purchases and that we are slowly moving beyond the security concerns of mobile commerce,? Mr. McGee said.

According to Charles Herel, director of product marketing at Kony Solutions, Orlando, FL, mobile showed signs of being necessary to any retailer?s strategy this holiday season.

?We categorize that mobile has moved from being nice to have to being a must have for our clients,? Mr. Herel said.

For smart holiday retailers, a sound mobile strategy included finding ways to support shoppers across three screens ? tablets, mobile phones and desktops.

Holiday 2011 marked Michaels' first foray into mobile marketing and although a majority of the retailer?s initiatives are aimed at mass markets, it is continually looking for ways to customize and tailor its mobile efforts with SMS and push notifications.

USA Today?s Mr. Etheridge said the publisher saw a high number of its advertisers using its mobile platforms during weekend hours and at night to hook tablet users. Additionally, brands that got their mobile marketing campaigns right put rich media at the forefront of their campaigns and made the shopping experience easy with as few clicks as possible.

?This year, advertisers were more prepared and spent more time developing mobile campaigns into their overall design ? it was used from last-minute dollars,? Mr. Etheridge said.

Plan ahead
According to the executives, brands need to start thinking for holiday 2012 already in order to keep up.

For example, Dell?s Mr. McGee started looking at what retailers were doing for holiday 2011 on Thanksgiving to start planning for 2012.

Kony?s Mr. Herel said that some of the best mobile marketing campaigns he saw this year involved retailers tying a mobile component to an in-store experience.

The executives also revealed which retailers they thought got holiday 2011 right.

Michaels' Mr. Price said he thought Toys R Us and Home Depot did an excellent job of giving consumers relevant, tailored mobile content over the holidays.

Additionally, luxury retailers including Tiffany & Co. gave users the opportunity to interact and learn more about its products, per USA Today?s Mr. Etheridge.

In addition, hotel chains and airlines stepped up their mobile games this year according to Kony?s Mr. Herel.

Dell used both paid mobile marketing in addition to free media to include mobile this holiday season by using mobile calls-to-action on television, print and Web initiatives.

Dell?s multichannel approach to mobile was echoed by the panelists as a way for marketers to include the channel most effectively.

?It is hard to pull lots of things together, so you need to start planning ahead of time to support all channels,? Kony?s Mr. Herel said.

Additionally, all the executives agreed that brands that did not include mobile into their overall marketing initiatives for 2011 missed a large opportunity to connect with consumers.

?With the fragmentation of media, you can no longer use one type of media to get to all consumers,? said USA Today?s Mr. Etheridge.

Please click here to access the archived webinar

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer