Jim Daleen, CEO of AppSuite, says the WhatsApp- Facebook acquisition highlights how important it is for a business to develop a cohesive strategy to attain a meaningful share of a consumer’s mobile attention span. “Facebook has valued WhatsApp at a stratospheric price of $16 billion, but not for the nominal revenue that the company is generating,” Daleen says. “They valued them for their ability to engage nearly 450 million customers on a daily basis.”
With the average American now spending an hour a day on their smartphone, mobile has become the Holy Grail of marketing channels. Daleen’s companyAppSuite (www.mobileappsuite.
“Businesses have to give serious thought to what their plan is to reach customers via mobile, as traditional channels of marketing without mobile are not delivering the results they once did,” Daleen says.
Daleen says most companies he works with are wondering what their strategy should be as it pertains to mobile marketing. The high profile deal between WhatsApp and Facebook will only push a sense of commitment to the digital marketing space AppSuite’s growth has been powered by the ability to deliver a mobile loyalty and rewards app that offers a simple and effective way to tap into the consumer mobile mindshare. A mobile loyalty and rewards app provides customers what they want in terms of benefits, rewards, offers, and convenience and in turn the app creates an invaluable platform where consumers opt in to push messaging, creating an amazing communications channel – push messages have a 95 percent open rate.
“Retail businesses spend much of their marketing budget on finding new customers. Engaging the current customer is essential to maximizing revenue opportunities in this hyper-competitive marketplace,” Daleen says. The Center for Retail Management at Northwestern University revealed that about 12 percent-15 percent of a company’s most loyal customers contribute 55 percent-70 percent of total sales.
“Undoubtedly this mindset helped power this mobile communications mega-deal,” Daleen says. “Facebook will be able to monetize this form of communication.”
About Jim Daleen
Jim Daleen is the chief executive officer for AppSuite, LLC(www.mobileappsuite.com). Since 2010, AppSuite has been pioneering the customer loyalty mobile application space. Daleen was the founder and CEO of Daleen Technologies, a global provider of high-performance billing and customer care software solutions. In three years, revenue grew from zero to $43.5 million; he raised $130 million in capital and built a global workforce of 535 employees. The Boca Raton-based company went public and eventually was sold. The entrepreneur was most recently the CEO of CPG Solutions, which saw 500 percent in sales growth and profits and was sold to an international buyer. Before that, he was the CEO of Affinity Express, where he increased revenue by 400 percent and led a successful turnaround and sale of the company from 2003-06.
