EXCLUSIVE: Sidebar CEO Takes Wraps Off Participation Mobile Merchandising & Marketing
In-brief: An in-depth look at the pivotal role of personalization and some excerpts from a recent briefing with Sidebar, a company that combines conversation (via text), personalization (via algorithms and recommendations) and exposes the results to us (via smart menus) to help operators, content owners and media companies get the right stuff (apps, content, marketing) in front of the right people.
Personalization – being able to present individuals with mobile content, services, apps and experiences that are in tune with their profiles and preferences – is shaping up to be the factor that separates a successful sales/marketing pitch from a FAIL.
Granted, people can use mobile search to find what they want. But standard (universal) key word mobile search is not personal. No matter if you’re a scientist, a student or a silver surfer, mobile search delivers the same results to everyone – period. There are some exciting companies offering search services that inject personalization into the equation (and I will cover them here on MSG in the next weeks), but much of the burden is still on people to know what they want. And knowing what you want (a specific piece of content as opposed to a “cool game”) is no easy task.
PERSONAL SHORTCUT
A much smarter approach is to harness personalization technologies to expose people to what they are likely to appreciate. Bubbling up stuff (content, apps, marketing offers) that is perfectly aligned with people’s profiles, preferences, past purchases) is a great way to making finding and buying stuff a no-brainer.
I began tracking and analyzing personalization technologies and the companies that offer them in the industry-first report on the topic (Mobile Search & Content Discovery) I wrote in 2006. I have always considered personalization core to competitive advantage (deploying these technologies either alone or in combination with a mobile search service). However, personalization is only today taking a top-notch spot on the business agenda, driven the recent explosion of content and apps across a maze of app emporiums and handset maker-managed app stores.
Indeed, the new paradigm is personalized content-push based on a deep understanding of the individual’s purchases, passions and past click-behavior. It’s even more compelling if the technology can learn users’ likes and dislikes over time to dynamically and consistently deliver the right content mix.
ASK FIRST?
A number of players – both long established market leaders and nimble newcomer start-ups – “get” it. They range from content companies with personalization (and recommendation) capabilities “built-in” to their offer (Gracenote); to companies powering content discovery on behalf of mobile operators and media brands (Aggregate Knowledge, AMDOCS Interactive, Qualcomm’s Xiam Technologies).
Much of the profiling is based on keen observation and excellent numbers crunching capabilities. Put simply, these technologies use implicit personalization to make sense of the digital bread crumb trail we leave behind. What we do on the Web, what we do with our mobile phones, and, in some cases, how interact with advertisers – all these interactions become variables in the algorithms these companies use to present us what we are likely to appreciate (even before we think to ask for it!).
Implicit personalization has clear advantages, but is it enough to get the 360-degree holistic picture of what we are and what we want? Wouldn’t a hybrid approach that asks people – even if only for a reality-check – be potentially more effective? It certainly works in permission-based mobile marketing, where companies (operators, brands, agencies) achieve impressive results by harnessing opt-in to ask people directly about the advertising they are willing to accept.
SIDEBAR SMART MENU
Which brings me to Sidebar, a California-based start-up that recently reached out for inclusion in the reports I am currently researching and writing on behalf of GigaOM Pro. The series of reports (soon to be released) focuses on topics ranging from permission-based marketing to the future of mobile search. Personalization naturally plays a central role in both. (My personal thanks to Caroline Diaz and the team at Brew Media Relations for introducing me to Patrick Kennedy, Sidebar CEO, and Kieran Hannon, Sidebar COO.)
To date the coverage about Sidebar focuses primarily on the company’s Android and BlackBerry apps, which enable content discovery based on people’s answers to questions aimed at determining demographic data and individual preferences. It’s a great story, and timely since content discovery is a hot item in the industry.
But the real story is the company’s shift away from D2C to B2B, and the unique focus on what I like to call participation marketing (a term Patrick and I came up with during our in-depth briefing).
Participation marketing sits at the sweet spot between determining what people want/will accept by following and analyzing their digital bread crumb trail and knowing what they want/will accept by asking them straight out. Sidebar calls this intelligent mobile merchandising because it uses personalization and robust analytics to make storefronts (the current focus) smarter.
I used my briefing with Patrick and Kieran to get the inside track on the company’s Smart Menu and Smart Messaging solutions and progress to date in Brazil and India, where content companies have implemented it to super-charge their content storefronts.
What is Smart Menu?
It’s the capability mix that allows Sidebar to take any WAP or app-based content and present it in a way that we are likely to appreciate. Think dynamic clustering and personalized presentation. Put simply, Sidebar’s engine learns from user behavior and dynamically clusters users into groups. But it also lets people input their personal preferences and rate content – additional information that can help hone personal content recommendations. The menu also has slots that can also be “programmed” by storefront managers to showcase specific content or fulfill partnership obligations with third-party developers/content owners.
How do they work?
Patrick is predictably tight-lipped on the nuts & bolts, but it’s enough to say that Sidebar collects partner metadata (via APIs) about the content/apps and any other information that has been collected about the people using the service. It combines this with what people volunteer about themselves and their interests (what they like and what they don’t), information they input while they interact with the portal on their mobile phone. Sidebar then uses its own technology to analyze the data and determine what users will want and appreciate (before they ask for it).
Interestingly, Sidebar can use this to optimize/personalize the complete storefront, or it can simply create a “Just For You” section category that exposes stuff that is aligned with what the user would likely want and appreciate. Moreover, the algorithm can be tweaked to optimize/personalize content and app suggestions based on ROI goals. Thus, people are presented with recommendations ranked by both purchase probability and how much each purchase would contribute to ROI. Put the two together and the highest ROI opportunity takes the top-notch spot in the recommendations.
And the list of options and combinations goes on. Personalized recommendations can also accommodate other variables such as price sensitivity (the price at which people will likely buy, or the level at which the service provider wants to sell), location (local recommendations) and even social network (what your peers and significant others on Twitter and Facebook like).
DRIVING (RETURN) VISITS
But dynamic personalization is just part of the picture; Sidebar also brings text messaging into the mix to reality-check user segmentation, gauge customer satisfaction and facilitate a conversation between the company (storefront owner) and the individual. As Patrick puts it: “It’s all about leveraging all the data captured for each user to deliver highly targeted promotional messages.”
The combination covers all the consumer touchpoints – and can also pull in data from other channels/platforms including PCs, games consoles, iPads/Kindles and set-top boxes. This might be why mobile operators are showing a particular interest in the solution. In the case of one operator, the strategy is to use personalization of WAP and website portals as a “launch pad to transition consumers, as they inevitably move from featurephones to smartphones.” The logic here: By providing users a personalized offers carriers can “come to be seen by the consumer as a provider of entertainment content they like.”
Another plus: a significant uplift in content consumption. Patrick reports that Sidebar’s own tests show personalization resulted in “a remarkable uplift that surprised even ourselves and more.” As Patrick puts it: The core value here is harnessing participation marketing to create a personalized merchandising experience, but the driver is the “realization by operators and storefront owners that they have a limited amount of time before people start to see app stores and other destinations as the place to get their digital stuff.”
Names and negotiations are under strict NDA (Patrick will share this news with MSG first), but one client Patrick can discuss is Indiagames, a leading Indian games publisher using Sidebar to offer personalized recommendations via its portal. Billed as the number one Indian mobile game publisher, Indiagames offers both mobile and online games. Its products are developed and published across all major technology platforms and are distributed through partnerships with mobile operators in over 75 countries.
MY TAKE
When it comes merchandising personalization is important – which is why companies in this space are in a good place. But it’s also important to get information about what people want/appreciate from the people. It’s not just about choosing the right content, although that is a BIG part of it. However, combining personalization with conversation is a powerful (and potentially lucrative) algorithm for success. Sidebar encourages this exchange, inviting people to participate and actually tell retailers what they like. Connect the dots, and participation marketing shows people what is appropriate and relevant for them. But this approach can do more than potentially allow storefront owners and mobile operators to cross-sell, up-sell and encourage the all-important impulse buy. It’s easy to imagine combinations of Sidebar’s smart messaging and menus that enable mobile commerce in the physical store, enhance mobile advertising campaigns or just give us a segment of the hundreds of channels on cable TV that we will really enjoy.
