As usual, during my family’s Sunday night Wii bowling championship, my son decided to call it quits after a few frames. To make it fair, my wife and I decided to bowl his turns left handed, obviously thinking his score would never surpass ours. But to our surprise, we both bowled a Turkey (which means three strikes in a row for those of you who aren’t avid Wii bowlers). Who would have thunk it? From that point on, we both changed our ‘technique’ to ambidextrous bowling!

Sometimes in marketing, we get accustomed to doing things a certain way. If our batting average is 300 – at least some of the time – why risk changing things? With that said, two questions always linger….what could I be doing differently and what would the result be?

In the ‘olden days’ marketing was limited to traditional media channels, which limit the ability to tweak a marketer’s message. You run a 30-second television spot or a print ad and your message is set in stone. If you realize a week into your month-long placement that you’re not driving the results you anticipated, there’s no changing it. You wait it out and then apply the learnings to the next round of communications – and pray to the marketing gods that your ROI stays in the positive.

With the Internet, a new age of dynamic marketing began. Place a message, analyze the results quickly, and alter the message until you drive the results you want. But with limited usage and demographic data, it becomes a guessing game of determining a message broad enough to appeal to a broad audience yet targeted enough to drive action.

Now we have the mobile channel. The opportunity to interact with consumers on the go is exciting, but a risky move if you’re not sure your message is spot on. Consumers view their mobiles as highly personal so if not presented correctly, your brand can quickly be ‘annoying’, ‘irrelevant’, or worst of all, ‘ignored.’ So what’s the key to delivering the right message? Being able to determine what drives your customers’ actions.

What if you knew that a 10% discount delivered on a Tuesday at lunchtime drives 25% higher click thrus and 10% higher revenues than a $15 discount delivered on a Wednesday after work hours? Or that the probability of driving a sale increases by 30% when you target those highly connected to social influencers who have completed a transaction in the past 48 hours? Or that someone who works near your retail location during the week is 50% more likely to act on a ‘deal of the day’ offer than someone who happens to be in town for the day?

The amount of customer and behavioral data available to the mobile channel far surpasses that of any other. But without the right tools to use it, the point becomes moot. Let’s be honest. Marketers are some of the most creative, innovative people on the planet but sifting through thousands of data points (or relying on other teams to find the needle in the haystack) to determine the ‘perfect’ treatment (right message, right context) is a task no marketer is up for. So what does that mean? We all get the same 10% discount offer on Monday at 4pm, regardless of our unique preferences, behaviors, location, availability, profile characteristics, and propensity to buy.

Fortunately, mobile operators have seen the light and are leveraging new technologies to automate the analytical process. Imagine being able to test hundreds of treatments simultaneously to determine the efficacy of contexts and messages, learn through automated analysis and model generation, and then seamlessly iterate and optimize campaigns to ensure delivery of the best treatment to each customer.

Believe it or not – operators are starting to use these techniques today. No more guessing games or fear of trying something new. Solutions that incorporate machine learning and automation are freeing marketers to think big and act quickly. And with the ability to determine the best context and the right message for each customer, they are achieving better results.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Are you using the same marketing techniques you’ve used for years? Are you too bogged down with process to think more creatively about what to offer customers? How many different treatments are you testing as part of your mobile marketing campaigns? How are you ensuring that your messages are in context and actually primed to influence your customers’ behaviors?

It’s time to stop the insanity and take advantage of new marketing technologies that will take your mobile marketing success to the next level. And while you’re at it, give ‘ambidextrous bowling’ a try!

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