There is a common misconception that most of the truly great stuff mobile engagement offers is the preserve of large organisations alone. That only they have the suitably deep pockets allowing for the levels of investment true multichannel/omnichannel offerings require; allowing them alone to build the supreme level of client engagement that smaller organisations can only dream of. Never mind the personnel, the support, required to maintain such solutions and relationships with connectivity partners. This could all not be further from the truth. Mobile Engagement is for everybody, SMEs included.

SMEs are hugely important to industrial growth globally. Once you strip away the curve-ball inducing layer of economic sway the global Enterprise behemoths appear to have from statistics, it is clear to see that SMEs employ the majority of people globally and indeed provide most of the new jobs as well.

Extensive European Union (EU) research concluded that about 67% of the employment in the non-financial business economy within the EU is provided by SMEs. Micro enterprises contribute about 30%, small enterprises about 20% and medium-sized enterprises about 17%. Apart from the effect SMEs have on welfare in the EU, SMEs also have a positive effect on economic growth. In other regions of the world (sub-Saharan Africa for example) the importance and opportunity to influence SMEs have is even higher.

SMEs affect all our lives on a daily basis. Whilst we may not give it too much thought, just think about the businesses that we interact with: from the local coffee shop you may pick up your daily Americano from to the petrol station you fill up your car at and the gym you frequent on a good day when you are feeling motivated to do so, all have the opportunity to use mobile engagement to deal with us.

Thanks to the work Mitto and other forward-thinking companies are doing, SMEs are being shown that they too can easily take advantage of everything mobile engagement has to offer. The key here is to make the world of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) easy for all to comprehend and implement. We are seeing some real understanding in this area coming into play which is refreshing our business and a key contributor to the steadily increasing content delivery transaction numbers globally.

APIs allow organisations of any size to easily integrate SMS messaging, push notifications, email messaging and even location-based advertising. They can help support an omnichannel experience and offer the opportunity to track a customer’s behaviour across multiple platforms which all helps to determine the real impact any campaign may have.

Apps are important and even small companies are seeing the real benefits of having and operating one brings, providing they push out only meaningful content which adds real value to subscribers and all in an unobtrusive manner. The ability to promote continual app engagement is critical and we are helping businesses to connect their messaging across multiple channels and manage the engagement. We encourage building relationships through customer interactions on multiple channels at every turn.  While this service is used by large enterprise clients of ours, it can be tailored to fit any business’s specific size and needs and we are seeing far more SMEs taking advantage.

No matter how good the mobile engagement solution offered and how many channels are integrated within it, the impact it has on any organisation’s client base can come to nought if the element of timing is not taken into account. In fact, bad timing can hurt any organisation considerably.

Many of us travel regularly with airlines and an increasing trend is for them to use 2-way SMS to seek feedback from clients. Logically they should only be asking us what we thought of their service etc. after we have flown but too often, I see such surveys sent out even before a passenger would have left home to travel to the airport for their flight! This turns people off and if you are anything like me, you’d be inclined to ignore the feedback request. Continue to get the timing of such content wrong and peoples’ perception of a brand can be negatively impacted.

Used correctly, mobile engagement has the power to benefit every subscriber. Every player in the wider industry has an important role in ensuring the message of just how much a force for good it can be is successfully delivered. We at Mitto take this responsibility seriously and look forward to continuing to educate and serve.