Unmatched Opportunity of Engaging Mobile Users during the ‘Mobile Interlude’

Image source: Rise of the Messaging Apps @XploreeMoments

Heads down, fingers tapping fast on the keyboard, it’s quite evident from what we see around us; messaging apps are no doubt the favorite of most mobile users. Of the one hour per day people spend on their smartphones, more than half of that time is spent in communicating in one way or the other: talking (26%), texting (20%), and emailing (9%). (Source: Experian)

Facebook and WhatsApp are leading the engagement time around the world. These applications are doing well in leveraging this high involvement with targeted advertising on their platforms. ‘Facebook reported earnings of 17.5% of the overall ad revenues, which is in line with their share of time spent on mobile’. (Source: @FlurryMobile). With strong engagement times behind them, messaging apps have a brilliant future to be a platform in themselves. Can brands and businesses reach these millions of users in a non-intrusive and rewarding way?

Unmatched Mobile Interlude Advantage with Xploree

Conversations on mobile often result in short bursts of “wait period” where you are waiting for the other person to respond to your conversation. This is an unexplored opportunity which Xploree has pioneered to present an option to the user to discover relevant services or promotions in a very non-intrusive way. Awareness, Engagement and Rewards in the ‘Mobile Interlude’ – these are few of the value propositions that Xploree Search and Discovery platform brings to the mobile landscape this year.

Imagine a conversation between two users discussing or deliberating on a meeting place. Say for example, Sally is chatting with Harry and wants to meet for coffee at a place somewhere around their workplaces, but not sure where. However, during the chat session she encounters a usual scenario where the other person gets occupied in some other tasks delaying a reply or perhaps gets interrupted by another conversation or call delaying the response to the other. This moment is what we call the mobile interlude.

Here is an “idle moment” opportunity for Sally to discover in context. What aids in this discovery is the Xploree Presto Key glow. If the conversation had been around “coffee” or “meeting at a nearby place”, the Xploree Presto Key glows unobtrusively with recommendations of coffee shops nearby, deals from nearby restaurants or locally loved hang-out places.

So, by the time Harry gets back to the chat, Sally has used this opportunity to know about nearby places (awareness) to meet and drive a faster decision without them having to go through the conversation again (conversion).

There are mobile moments:

A mobile moment is a point in time and space when someone pulls out a mobile device to get what he or she wants immediately, in context. ~ Forrester Research

And there are ‘mobile interludes’:

Few moments of idle-time where a user waits for the other to interact or continue a discussion. ~ @XploreeMoments

There’s a huge opportunity to leverage these ‘mobile interludes’ to engage, inform, recommend and reward, thereby increasing engagement and delighting the user.

The two unmatched values that Xploree brings to this mobile moment discovery or you may call it mobile interlude discovery:

User stays within the messaging apps and does not lose context
User discovers content or services that match user’s intent and location

Twitter Mobile Search – An Opportunity in ‘Search-Interlude’

A recent addition we have seen being implemented by Twitter on its mobile app. Earlier, on tapping the search icon only the search field would show up with rest of the space blank. Identifying this as a valuable space to let users discover trending hashtags and tweets, now we see a complete scrollable area for the user to discover the top trending tweets which would have been otherwise overlooked.

There’s delight in discovery and the delight is even more pleasant when you have these idle moments which suddenly became exciting! It’s time retailers, brands and businesses embrace an incredible opportunity to increase brand awareness and reach a new customer base that was not reachable before.