The Chart itself shows an obvious trend, but couple that with the latest survey information from ComScore and the picture becomes clear that "Mobile" is something we have to pay attention to with Newsletters, E-mail, and our websites...
"The number of consumers who seek local information on a mobile device grew 51% from March 2008 to March 2009,
according to data from comScore Mobile, which also found that mobile subscribers are increasingly using downloaded applications and SMS to access local content.
Methods of Access
The mobile browser is hands-down the most popular way to access local information, with 20.7 million users in March 2009, up 34% vs. a year ago, comScore said.
The strongest growth in the category is coming from downloaded applications (11.3 million users), which grew 83% during the same time period, followed by SMS (with 11.7 million users) at 72%. Despite the growth of applications and SMS, however, they still remain significantly less popular than mobile browsers for accessing local content.
"Given the explosion in application stores and associated marketing efforts, along with the growth in mobile phones using faster data networks, it would not be surprising within the next six months to see the number of people using downloadable applications surpass SMS for the accessing of local information via mobile devices," said Serge Matta, comScore SVP."
So why does it matter? Our recent Luce Performance Group newsletter e-mail blast went out and this came right back from one of our subscribers on an iPhone....
"Here's what your newsletter looks like on an iPhone. At first I thought that the first lines of TESTIMONIALS and CLIENTLIST spelled testicle! Ha ha! Jumped right out at me. "
I laughed too, but only for a minute before realizing that we need to provide a choice for our newsletter, website, and e-mails for "Mobile" as well. I didn't realize what it looked like until someone shared it with us as we create it for viewing on a computer monitor, not a phone screen. If consumers are adopting the technology, Broadcast and Interactive need to adopt it as well and make sure that we make it easy for consumers to communicate with us and with our properties.