Mobile Marketing

A new program offers tech companies cash and mentorship to work with Unilever brands and expand to new markets.

It's no secret that consumer programs aimed at the digital shopper represent a huge opportunity for brands to engage consumers and improve marketing efficiencies. That's one reason why Kellogg Company recently enhanced its consumer loyalty program.

McCormick's new digital service, FlavorPrint, is a testament to the role that collaboration (both internal and external) plays when it comes to delivering meaningful consumer experiences both online and off.

Despite the e-commerce boom, brick-and-mortar stores should still account for approximately 85 percent of U.S. retail sales in 2025. But that doesn't mean your company should stand still. Here, McKinsey & Company identifies five trends will most impact on the industry, from demographic changes to emerging retail business models.

Mobile commerce will grow exponentially during the 2013 holiday season with consumers buying at home and in store via their phone. In fact, mobility will drive e-commerce sales gains of between 13 percent and 15 percent. Today's sales and marketing strategies, therefore, need to acknowledge the mobile device not as a "channel" but rather as gateway to multiple channels.

Mobility is still new enough to create a lot of confusion around capabilities, with some claiming it is easy to develop enterprise-level applications that seamlessly run on all platforms and devices while integrating with back-office data. Others will tell you that ROI is difficult to attain. Let our experts help you wade through the hype and understand the true potential of mobile technology.

Today's digital channels have and will continue to fundamentally transform the consumer experience, creating a new class of more informed and more demanding shoppers. As a result, we are also now seeing a blurring of the traditional lines between trading partners, where the "war for the consumer" may actually be yielding to a truer form of collaboration than we've ever seen.

The acquisition is expected to help extend IBMs mobile capabilities to digital marketers across all industries through cloud-based services.