Stand back everyone. I am ready to make the official announcement and proclamation that 2014 is year of Mo… No. I cannot bring myself to say it let alone write it. I steadfastly refuse to proclaim this year or ANY year the year of that word which rhymes with global and starts with “mo” and ends in “bile.”

Ok maybe that wasn’t the best way to split that word up but you get the idea and my point, which is we’ve heard literally forever this is the year of mobile.

Well, and perhaps it is the optimist in me, those in the marketing world have finally awoken to the fact that essentially the entire world is on some sort of mobile device at pretty much every point in their daily lives at one point or another. From a recent Gartner press release re: the findings of a survey on global marketing budgets: ”In 2014, marketers plan to make long overdue expenditures for mobile marketing tools and techniques.”

Clearly one of those “tools” has to be mobile marketing analytics for why mobile marketing be any different than any other form of marketing. As Barry Levinewrote last September for CMS Wire in discussing the findings of a Forrester report Make The Most Of Analytics To Meet Your Mobile Objectives, “It seems obvious that objectives, measurement and analytics are required for any marketing channel, particularly one with as many variables as mobile.”

As Levine continued “nearly 40 percent of marketers have not even defined their mobile objectives, much less developed measurements for determining effectiveness.”

mobile is here

Devices (Photo credit: adactio)

Mobile Analytics 101 

The obvious and very layman definition of mobile analytics would be something along the lines of “analyzing all the data that emanate from the various touch points in the mobile space.”

Yes I just made that up off the top of my head but to be more specific, mobile analytics “provides marketers with new insight into their customer’s behavior on mobile sites, creating actionable data into how device and context impact what a user does on their website and how this affects conversion and engagement,” according to Daniel Weisbeck, COO and CMO, Netbiscuits.

Two industries where mobile marketing plays a major role (Note: mobile marketing should play a major role in EVERY industry) are travel/hospitality and retail.

Riko van Santen, Vice President Digital Strategy & Distribution at Kempinski Hotels S.A., Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group. “Whether it is marketing investment, or IT investment, hotels need to be confident that the resources put into their mobile representation and interaction with the guest are delivering the intended results,” he said. “This can be financial (reservations or ‘on property spend’ ROI) but also brand delivery. If mobile applications or sites are too slow, or difficult to navigate, then the expectations of the guests are not met. Analytics provide an effective means of determining the quality and performance of such digital activities.”

As for retail, Ralf Baumann, Vice President T-Online.de & Audience ADNC +0.79%Products says it’s all about getting to know their customers. ”Analytics allows us to get a better understanding of our audience,” says Baumann. ”We gain further insight into the devices being used on our website as well as how device and context influence user behavior on the mobile web. Through data analysis and device detection we want to be able to deliver best customer experience across both current and emerging devices (e.g. screen size, touch optimization).”

Say It Isn’t So

One final excerpt from Levine’s article, which touches on a Forrester finding.

“In fact, Forrester said that 29 percent of marketers still use mobile primarily to appear innovative, although that’s a fuzzy and outdated goal.”

I have to tell you when I read that line, not only did I cringe, I winced and I may have even trembled a little, too.

That line is 1000% akin to when social media came into vogue and every marketer rushed right out to set up a Facebook and Twitter account so they could say to their fellow marketers around the water cooler “Yeah, we’re in social media. We’re experts.”

Ugh.

Source: CMS Wire

This article was first featured on Forbes and can be found here.