[TRIBUNE] It’s no longer enough to be ‘Mobile First’, it has now to be ‘messaging first’

Mobile first: an established fact

Marginally at the beginning of 2010, in recent years the mobile phone has become the first screen, in front of the computer, and now captures most of the digital time for consumers.

According to a recent study by Médiamétrie, the French actually spend an average of 1:35 a day of their free time on their smartphones, as opposed to 40 minutes on the computer. This statistic is even more impressive among young people, who spend an average of 90% of their daily digital time (3 hours 39) on a smartphone or tablet. According to the organization, one in three mobile phone users have turned their PCs into “mobile only”, especially on weekends.

If the mobile phone became the world’s first digital screen in the fall of 2016, with more than 50% of the masses, its dominance was further strengthened and it now weighs nearly two-thirds of the audience of major or major media outlets. E-commerce sites.

First app: craze for conversation environments

But this rise in the mobile phone has been accompanied by another shift that many professionals have sometimes escaped: the decline of the web in favor of application environments.

According to a study conducted by Flurry in 2016 and confirmed since then by App Annie, comScore or Médiamétrie, 90% of mobile time is spent on apps, compared to barely 10% for the web via a browser like Chrome or Safari.

Among the applications, “conversation” environments such as messaging or social networks alone account for a third of the time spent by young people and more than 50%.

Messaging: An explosion of uses for users

Whether called WhatsApp, Viber, iMessage, Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, or now TikTok, these “super apps” have been incredibly successful in recent years.

In France, more than 27 million people use these apps every day. Thanks to + 150% growth over the last two years, they’re now on par with an app like Email, which has been democratizing for a quarter of a century.

And if individuals gradually abandon channels like the web or email in favor of chat channels, the same holds true for big brands like Carrefour, Axa or Le Figaro, which are now investing in these new environments.

Messaging: A New Opportunity for BtoC Communications

As the latest figures from the AF2M show, SMS, for example, remains a particularly popular lever for brands, with annual growth of over 15% in 2020.

But brands are also investing in more creative environments like Apple Business Chat on iMessage, RCS on Google Message and of course WhatsApp Business, with over 175 million people already interacting with a company in this messaging system every day.

Real alternatives to websites or apps, these conversation environments allow brands to provide customer service, but also – for SMS and RCS – they have a real acquisition tool.

Correspondence first: transformation in digital transformation

For companies, the challenge in the next decade is not just about transforming their relationship with customers, by adding new relationship channels to the traditional phone or email.

It’s about placing the mobile phone, and more so “messaging”, at the heart of their digital transformation, in order to reinvent the acquisition, conversion and of course loyalty phases, while improving the experience. Quality of interactions.

While “mobile first” has been the buzzword in the past few years, we are convinced that the future will be “correspondence first” with companies that will put conversational commerce at the center of their strategy. By being on the channels that their customers are already using for personal use, companies have everything to gain: improve customer satisfaction, increase return on investment, collect more data and much more …

Jeremy Delero is CM.com’s Southern Europe Director