Consumers are looking more and more to mobile as a key part of the shopping experience. As a result, retailers are adjusting how they approach their marketing mix. Although change can be difficult and sometimes scary, Target took a chance and embraced a new, innovative mobile solution that significantly improved the effectiveness of one of their most important marketing vehicles during the 2011 Back to School season.

Today at the Mobile Marketing Forum in Los Angeles I’m revealing how Target, Microsoft Advertising and Phluant Mobile found success with a new dynamic mobile circular – the “Dynamo” – and how retailers are moving towards richer, more interactive formats and experiences to connect with consumers in meaningful ways.

Before I dive into the marketing experience, it’s helpful to take a step back to understand what Target was trying to accomplish. Their key challenge was to find a new, innovative way to reach busy, on-the-go parents to promote Back to School deals. That led them to form the following marketing objectives:

· Create a mobile marketing solution that complemented and leveraged Target’s existing weekly newspaper circulars

· Look for innovative media partners that could effectively reach parents with busy, on-the-go lifestyles.

· Build a compelling, rich and engaging experience to get relevant local deals in front of consumers.

Using Mobile in Combination with Weekly Print Circulars

In this campaign, mobile served as a connective tissue with Target’s existing print circulars. Simply put, mobile can do what weekly newspaper circulars can’t. For starters, flexibility in the print medium is a challenge. Once you lock into your promotional messaging, you’re committed for a set period of time. And although savvy marketers can see what’s resonating in the weekly newspaper circulars via in-store sales, print circulars don’t allow the retailer to really do anything else about it.

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Target Partners with Microsoft Advertising and Phluant

From a media perspective, the Target campaign started and ended with their audience, parents. Target leveraged Microsoft Advertising for the scale of our network and audience leadership to target parents age 25 to 54 – on our premium properties like MSN for mobile, MSNBC and Fox sports… and across all the most popular smartphones, like the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.

In order to fully engage these busy, on-the-go parents we created the “Dynamo Mobile Circular” - a completely new mobile rich media creative experience in which the ad creative automatically customizes based on the user’s location, local product availability, and other factors… all in real-time.

The Dynamo and How It Works

The Dynamo is all about getting the right deal in front of the right person, at the right time and place, and with as little effort as possible. The solution allows marketers to customize ad creative in real-time using a host of available data which we’ve found is extremely effective at driving consumer engagement and interaction.

The Dynamo dynamically assembles ad creative based on the consumer’s location and a real-time product feed from Target so that the ad can show the most relevant products and offers at any given time. That could include backpacks, printers and smartphones for a dad in Seattle or diapers for a mom in Boston.

From a marketer’s point of view, instead of delivering fully built creative, they can create a set of templates that can rotate through dynamic data feed headlines, offers, calls-to-action and images., All of this takes place in the background as the advertising loads, making for a seamless experience for consumers.

Campaign Achieved High Engagement and Interaction with Target’s Dynamo

Of course, the real value of the Dynamo was in driving high impact and consumer engagement for Target.

During its two month duration, the Target campaign received more than 250,000 engagements, meaning that consumers voted with their fingers and interacted with the ad unit on 250,000 occasions. What’s more, the campaign yielded an average of 5.3 swipes per engagement, resulting in a total engagement rate of 19%, nearly 20 percent higher than the industry average.

And of the 250,000 consumers who interacted with the Dynamo, 56% spent at least 15 seconds in the ad, 40% spent 30 seconds and nearly a quarter spent more than a minute engaging with the ad. All-up, consumers spent an average of 40 seconds engaging with Target’s ad experience.

In addition to engagement metrics, more than 22% - that’s nearly 1 out of 4 parents - signed up to receive Target deals via text message for later in-store redemption. That’s a very strong indicator that the Dynamo really resonated with consumers, and that nearly one out of four was looking to continue the engagement with Target well into the future…

Final Thoughts

In the end, it’s all about using mobile to improve the results of your most important marketing channels.

With the Dynamo, Target leveraged real time engagement and data like location to put the right offer in front of the right consumer… at the right time and at the right place. And with mobile, they had the flexibility to adjust offers, pricing and messaging, and to react quickly to market behavior to drive business results.

We’re excited about our partnership with Target and Phluant Mobile – and looking forward to building out the next set of innovative experiences to advance retail marketing.

To download the Target Case Study, please click here.

Thank you!

Mario