SAN FRANCISCO ? A Chase executive at the 2013 Mobile Marketing Association Forum San Francisco said that as consumers turn to their mobile devices as a primary way to access their finances, the company is focusing on a mobile-first mentality.

During the ?Enriching the consumer experience through rich media? session, executives from InMobi and Chase discussed how mobile marketing and advertising can be effective as part of a media spend. Additionally, the Chase executive dished on the company?s mobile strategy.

?We want to be sure that we are building around the mobile-first mentality ? it is a reality that the moment that you wake up, you have an alert that is sitting in your queue that says, ?here?s your bank account,? said Russ Eisenman, head of mobile product marketing and partnerships at JP Morgan Chase, New York.

?Those are all things that change behavior and immediately engage with that bank accounter,? he said.

?Those are things that as we build enabling tools ? today they are about real money ? down the line it becomes more about what you do with the things that you pay with. So [it is about] a credit card and how you buy things or the rewards that you have available to you.?

Bank on mobile
A mobile-first mentality for Chase means that the company has teams within its design and customer service that focus on how mobile is designed first.

For example, a mobile page is not a truncated version of a Web page. Instead, it is built for the type of device that a consumer has.

When Chase originally began offering mobile banking, the demographic was more skewed towards early technology adopters. As the technology has become more mainstream, consumers? expectations for mobile is changing.

According to Mr. Eisenman, mobile bankers tend to be more active bankers, meaning that they want to regularly check their accounts and information.

When it comes to types of information, checking account balance is the No. 1 activity for mobile users, meaning that push notifications and messaging plays a big role in making a mobile device the first place that users go to access their financial information.

More sophisticated features ? such as mobile deposits ? are also being favored by users as they become more comfortable interacting with their devices.

Chase?s mobile strategy is focused first on task-oriented features before some of the more complex mobile banking features.

Loyalty and being able to take rewards into the real world is something that needs to be more engaging for customers.

However, keeping a user?s privacy and patience in mind is key. For example, although mobile messaging does let financial institutions build a deeper connection with consumers, it can also be invasive if it is abused.

As far as platforms go, Mr. Eisenman said that the company?s iPhone app is the most popular app platform, followed closely with Android.

Engaged group of users
According to Crid Yu, vice president and managing director of North America at InMobi, Palo Alto, CA, said that mobile has the ability to touch a consumer at every stage of the purchase process.

In fact, research from InMobi found that mobile helped 45 percent of consumers make a purchase either online or offline.

Additionally, the InMobi exec said that mobile is a mainstream media channel and consumers find mobile ads useful.

Mr. Yu also presented results from an ad campaign with Tums. The ad used in-banner animation and when clicked on, users could engage with the brand on Facebook or Twitter or visit the company?s mobile site.

The ad generated 7,091,798 impressions with a 92 percent click-through rate.

Research from InMobi also found that mobile has taken over as the primary marketing channel that consumers spend time on.

However, there is a big gap between the time spent on mobile and the ad dollars that marketers are allocating to it.

?We saw this with online, which is consumption leads and ad dollars follow,? Mr. Yu said.

?Many years ago we talked about how online is disproportionate to offline with ad spend, and we see the same with mobile,? he said.

?Mobile is very powerful and it is begging for us to take advantage of it cross-platform. There is no such thing as a captive screen anymore.?

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