Mobilized Marketing: How to Drive Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile Devices

Conclusion

So Where Are We with Mobile Marketing?

Like many, Louis Gump entered the mobile world by circumstance. He was doing online business development for the Weather Channel in 2001 when his company identified a match between a consumer with a mobile device and a weather product that was needed every day.

Over the next decade, he was arguably mobile’s biggest champion, traveling worldwide to evangelize on behalf of the Weather Channel, CNN, and the Mobile Marketing Association.

“I believed from about day two of what was happening in mobile that this was going to be a very big deal,” he says. “I’m not at all surprised. However, I’ll say that there was a lot of uncertainty. But the phone is turning into the new generation of a personal computer in the literal sense of both words. Actually I think in some ways we’ve just come light years and in other ways we’re just beginning. I’m not at all surprised but I’m so pleased to see it happening because I felt like the indications were there. But I also don’t think that it was inevitable.

“A lot of this couldn’t have gone this way. What if we didn’t have the iPhone today? Imagine a world without the iPhone. What if the carriers hadn’t implemented cross-carrier text messaging and picture interchange? What if we didn’t have 4G today? What if we didn’t have advertisers who see this as a very effective channel? There are a lot of things that didn’t have to go well.”

Gump says the doubters can’t see the forest from the trees.

“For everybody ...