Mobile messaging becomes marketer’s key tool for digital disruption
Asia Pacific will turn to mobile messaging apps for engaging customers. There are more than one billion users combined on various messaging apps like WeChat, Viber, Line, and KakaoTalk, which will lead to brands to directly connect and engage with new and potential customers.
This was highlighted in Forrester’s Asia Pacific (AP) top ten trends outlook launched as part of Forrester’s series of 2015 global market predictions.
Digital transformation will drive technology spending growth of 4.9 per cent. The survey indicated that about 79 per cent of business and technology decision-makers say that improving the experience of technology-empowered customers will be a high or critical priority for their business in 2015. Around 57 per cent said that meeting consumers’ rising expectations was one of the reasons that they would spend more money on technology next year.
A company blog stated, “The majority of companies in Asia Pacific will be unprepared for digital disruption. Companies that fail to keep up with, let alone anticipate, the pace of their customers’ consumption behavior will struggle to survive. Although the region is home to some of the world’s digital leaders, a minority of regional companies understand how to build a digital business. Organisational inertia is the biggest hurdle to digital transformation in Asia Pacific and our data indicates most regional organisations do not place a high enough priority on digital disruption.”
In emerging markets across APAC, there will be successful SMS-based applications that reach remote areas, said the report.
The report also stated that customer experience (CX) will fuel better CIO/CMO collaboration. The blog stated, “As CMOs in AP become increasingly involved in tech strategy development and procurement, CIOs have struggled to develop constructive relationships and position their teams for success. In 2015, CMOs will become increasingly aware of their technology limitations and the drag that poor planning for integration, application management, security, and compliance can place on their marketing agility. At the same time, more regional CIOs will shift their focus from back-end IT to customer-facing BT. CX initiatives will occur where these two forces meet.”
