Ecommerce Insider: David Murphy, Mobile Marketing Magazine

Mobile Marketing magazine, is the leading magazine dedicated to the mobile marketing industry. Its site is updated several times each business day, with news, views, interviews and analysis from the mobile marketing insiders. Mobile Marketing also hosts its own awards program for the mobile marketing business, the EMMAs – Effective Mobile Marketing Awards.

The EMMAs salute excellence in effective mobile marketing, its print edition is also now produced on a quarterly basis as a vehicle for more in-depth analysis of the mobile marketing business, to supplement the daily coverage on the website.

(Pictured: Founder and Editor of Mobile Marketing Magazine, David Murphy).

Mobile Marketing magazine launched online in November 2005 and now attracts 30,000 unique visitors per month. Here we speak to Founder and Editor of Mobile Marketing magazine, David Murphy on what online retailers can learn from the publication’s steady path to mobile marketing domination…

Can you tell us a bit about your duel responsibilities as Founder and Editor at Mobile Marketing Magazine?

Sure, I started the magazine in 2005 as I could see the potential for mobile as a marketing channel if brands could get it right and respect the user’s privacy. At the time I was working as a freelance journalist working for a lot of different marketing titles, and while mobile was more and more in the news, there did not seem to be a dedicated title for it.
Since then, we have added a quarterly print magazine and broad events portfolio to our offering. My role as Editor is to oversee the editorial content of the site and the magazine, and to find great speakers for our events. I probably spend less time than I used to day-to-day on the site, but still oversee everything and try to get to as many events as I can to see what’s hot, because in this business, things move fast.

What advice do you have to retailers looking to further their mobile marketing strategy?

Don’t just think that as a retailer you need to do what other retailers do or have done. Look at the profile of your customer base, what the customer journey looks like, where mobile could play a part. Also think about the way that consumers interact with your brand. Can you offer a seamless journey for someone looking at your website on their PC, then checking your app on their phone on the train, then going into one of your stores. Embrace change. Offer wi-fi in your stores, and when someone logs onto the wi-fi, take them to a mobile landing page which has relevant content and maybe offers for people who you know are in one of your physical stores right now.

Try to stay ahead of new technologies – the current buzz is around beacons for example – but don’t be seduced by the tech. Look at it objectively and evaluate whether it can solve a problem your customers currently have or add value to their relationship with the brand.

How do you find your leads for sourcing the latest mobile commerce insights, and stay ahead of the game so-to-speak when making accurate industry predictions? 

I think it’s a process of osmosis really. Get you of the office, talk to people, look at the trends around you. One of the things that fascinated me was the realisation, around three or four years ago, that so many people on the train, the bus, even waking down the street, are glued to their phone, so if you’re not available to them on their phone, you’re losing out to the competition. This was less obvious three years ago than it is today – look around you – but that is when I think is started to become a phenomenon.

Mobile Magazine is already optimised for iPad and mobile, is a native app next on the horizon?

Yes, it’s a bit of a case of the cobbler’s shoes really. A lot of work goes into the events, the website and the magazine, and sometimes finding the time to take out and get your house in order is hard to find, but it’s on the agenda. There’s no shortage of companies keen to do it for us, but we want to get it right, and we still have a bit of work to do on tweaking the main Mobile Marketing website. Until that’s done, it doesn’t make sense to start on the app.

For more information and to register for news alerts relating to Mobile Marketing Magazine, head for: www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com