The Mobile Engagement Layer

By Lawrence Coburn, CEO and Co-founder of DoubleDutch

We spend a lot of our time speaking to customers and potential customers about the ROI of an investment in mobile. While there are a lot of potential benefits to choose from (always on, access to data, geosocial, context, sensors, etc.), there is one potential benefit that stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Engagement.

Here’s what I mean.

In my thirteen years working in Internet, with access to many sites’ analytics data, I have never seen anything close to the engagement data coming out of the mobile deployments that DoubleDutch has implemented over the last year. 20 sessions per user per day is not uncommon. We’ve cracked 40 a few times. We’ve even seen 50+ sessions per user per day at a couple of 1,000 person plus deployments.

And it’s not just us. In speaking with other mobile product and industry folk, it seems across the board that mobile engagement seems to be a different beast altogether than desktop engagement, especially when you layer in social features, game mechanics, and push notifications.

Here’s why this matters.

A quick look around your typical enterprise will reveal a number of systems of record: CRMs, ERPs, HRIS, etc.

These systems are powerful, secure, complex, and flexible, and are relied upon for mission critical tasks like forecasting, purchasing, and hiring. They are also only as good as the data that flows into them.

And let’s face it – UI and engagement for systems of record are afterthoughts at best. Sales people use Salesforce (or Siebel CRM, or SAP) because they have to – not because it’s fun and engaging software.

Where we think mobile is an absolute gamechanger – and right now – is as a means to turbocharge the amount of data that is flowing in and out of these systems.

Does your company rely on Salesforce for mission critical forecasting and resource deployment? Then why not radically increase the amount and frequency of data that goes into that system? Why not move from historical reporting, to real-time analysis?

This is the immediate opportunity for mobile in the enterprise. Whether a mobile-first system can eventually rip out an incumbent system of record remains to be seen. What is clear however, is this:

There is an immediate opportunity to put mobile engagement software to work – not to replace your existing systems, but to enhance them.

Please shoot us a note if you’d like to hear more.