CMO Council Explores How Mobile Relationship Marketing (MRM) Puts More Interaction for Consumers

CMO Council Explores How More Relationship Marketing (MRM)
Puts More Interaction in the Hands of Customers

New Thought Leadership Initiative Studies Value and Benefits of Providing Customers More Mobile Interaction, Sustained Support and Intimacy

PALO ALTO, CA (April 20, 2012) – The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, a peer-powered network of global, senior marketing decision-makers, along with the Mobile Marketing Association and the Mobile Marketing Research Association, will take a look at how Mobile Relationship Marketing (MRM) is creating business value, improving process efficiency, triggering product consumption and use, furthering loyalty and repeat purchase, as well as increasing customer feedback, assistance, affinity and advocacy. Today announced, "Engage at Every Stage,” a new CMO Council authority leadership program with Pandora, will engage marketers on a qualitative and quantitative level, accelerate knowledge transfer, highlight best practice innovations, identify opportunity and application areas, as well as discuss issues and obstacles to greater adoption and use.

The mobile phone represents the most pervasive channel of communications and targeted engagement, with more than 5 billion users globally. The immediacy, convenience, pervasiveness and personal attachment to mobile phones make the device an ideal means of expanding marketing messages and enhancing engagement with a global customer base.

"An effective MRM strategy integrates social interaction; customer insight gathering and listening; consumer engagement and loyalty; market listening; purchase incentive or inducement; as well as lifetime revenue optimization, all through optimized use of the mobile channel,” says Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. "Mobile Relationship Marketing (MRM) is the new mantra for companies across multiple industries to ensure continuous customer touch and interaction, sustained support and service, closer and more dependent connectivity, as well as greater insight and intimacy.”

Customer insight, intimacy and engagement are essential to sustaining successful brands. Yet for many companies, especially those who sell through indirect channels or to cash-only customers, connecting with and influencing the customer is a serious struggle. Consumer marketers around the world are now trying to overcome these traditional obstacles by leveraging the power of the web and mobile social networking to create more direct relationships with customers.

Areas of exploration for this initiative will include:

· Merits and attributes of the mobile channel

· How MRM is integrating social interaction

· Customer insight gathering and listening

· Consumer engagement and loyalty

· Market feedback

· Purchase incentive or inducement

· Lifetime revenue optimization.

Other CMO Council strategic interest groups participating include the Customer Experience Board and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). Both groups serve a vibrant global ecosystem of communications service providers, device manufacturers, network equipment vendors, mobile operating system developers, mobile application and CRM solution providers, loyalty and rewards program operators, as well as resellers, dealers, integrators, consultants and distributors. In addition, the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE) and the LoyaltyLeaders.org community will also participate.

About Pandora

Pandora (NYSE: P) gives people music they love anytime, anywhere, through connected devices. (OK, we've added comedy as well so we're also up for playing some jokes you'll love.) Personalized stations launch instantly with the input of a single "seed" - a favorite artist, song or genre. The Music Genome Project®, a deeply detailed hand-built musical taxonomy, powers the personalization of Pandora®internet radio by using musicological "DNA" and constant listener feedback to craft personalized stations from a growing collection of hundreds of thousands of recordings. Tens of millions of people in the U.S. turn on Pandora to hear music they love.www.pandora.com

About Mobile Marketing Association

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association established to lead the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. The MMA is an action-oriented organization designed to clear obstacles to market development, establish mobile media guidelines and best practices for sustainable growth, and evangelize the use of the mobile channel. The more than 700 member companies, representing nearly fifty countries around the globe, include all members of the mobile media ecosystem.

About Mobile Marketing Research Association

The rapid evolution and increasing use of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets is creating unprecedented opportunities for the marketing research industry. This fast developing and complex industry needs a unifying body, a single voice, and a place to exchange the best and most innovative of ideas.

MMRA exists to unite and serve the industry in developing best practices, professional standards and ethics regarding the use of mobile devices for marketing research. MMRA is building a foundation for education, conducting studies and creating communications to foster this growing industry. For more information on how you can shape future of the mobile marketing research, please visit: http://www.mmra-global.org

About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 6,000 members control more than $200 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 20,000 global executives in nearly 100 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), LoyaltyLeaders.org, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Market Sense-Ability Center, Digital Marketing Performance Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). More information on the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org.

CMO Council Contact:

Crystal Berry

Communications Manager

cberry@cmocouncil.org

650.433.4149

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