Smyrna Development: Automakers rev up for mobile-driven features war

By Chantal Tode

January 13, 2016

State Farm Insurance coverage’s app for Subaru enables trainers to determine students’ driving

While self-driving cars are amassing lots of headlines today, the more immediate opportunity and difficulty for automobile brands in 2016 will be establishing must-have mobile features and software application that can win over drivers.

Smart technology is upgrading the American vision of what it suggests to drive a car, from new ownership designs to a reimagined in-car experience. While it is likely to be a few years before self-driving vehicles are a fact, more due to social approval and regulative problems than anything else, automakers are clearly concentrated on building their software competence.

“A more fascinating development is the weding of a self-driving fleet with the Uber service design,” stated technology specialist Chetan Sharma in an analysis of the news coming out of the Customer Electronic devices Show.”That’s where a great deal of disturbance is going to take location.

“GM’s monstrous $ 500M financial investment in Lyft is a protective bet in that future,” he said. “Don’t be amazed by some fascinating M&A activity in the sector.

“As hardware offers way to software application dominance, new models and players will move the market marketecture.”

Material managers

Among the big mobile chances for automobile brands in 2016 will be to offer new driving time content choices beyond radio.

There is noticeable already in a ramp up of mobile applications for in-car use across a number of classifications.

“Drive time radio has been a staple of commuting forever, considering that it was best designed for individuals who were driving,” stated Matt Rednor, CEO and co-founder of Decoded Advertising. “However, as we begin to become more of the traveler, and drive less with the continued development of ride sharing and the introduction of self-governing cars, we’ll have the ability to concentrate on other things, not simply the road.

“The average commute to work in the U.S. is 25 minutes, which is long enough for a comedy episode,” he stated. “Let’s see which brands blaze a trail with custom entertainment offerings that shift drive time radio to drive time material.”

Features war

Automakers will be declaring their new functions as loudly as possible in an attempt to stand apart. With consumers increasingly trained to anticipate new and exciting innovation regularly and a lot of automobile online marketers concentrated on software application development, brands will need to do their finest to stand out.

“Prepare for a features war,” Mr. Rednor said. “We’re going to see a lot more car marketing in 2016 displaying who has the most recent feature or partner integration.

“Given that the self-governing car isn’t really ready yet, the car brands will resort to the brand-new tech they do have, and highlighting Waze navigation or the ability to take and post selfies from your dashboard or being able to buy and spend for a pizza from your car on the method house is more interesting for them than the usual horse power conversation,” he stated.

“It’s going to seem like the Apple vs. Samsung campaigns with automobiles as the backdrop.”

Ford is piloting an on-demand ride-sharing service

As mobile software plays a bigger part in the automobile experience, automakers have an opportunity to develop a much deeper relationship with consumers, something the savviest brands will put a huge concentrate on in 2016.

Currently, Toyota partnered with Alliance Data to launch brand-new personal label credit cards for the Toyota and Lexus brands, leveraging a custom in-dealership redemption platform developed supported by mobile in order to turn Toyota’s credit offerings into loyalty tools and drive incremental income to car dealerships (see story).

“Consumers are trying to find more from automobile business,” said Keith Petri, vice president of strategic collaborations at IgnitionOne. “Car marketers have a genuine chance to use mobile to get a much deeper understanding of their customers, beyond the dealership, site and time of purchase.

“By capturing and using individual information, you can better get in touch with and serve consumers on an individual basis,” he stated. “Gathering and layering in information such as driving habits, travel history, service patterns and more, that consumer data can then further inform you in the best ways to finest communicate and contribute to your brand value based on that details.

“Pulling details through app or staying in touch at the service level can offer you added details to notify more advanced outreach.”

Cross-channel outreach

Another opportunity for automakers this year remains in much better leveraging sophisticated mobile technology such as beacons matched with cross-channel managed outreach to deliver more reliable geo-specific marketing, beyond what has been carried out in the past.

As mobile becomes a larger part of the automobile experience, one obstacle that is going grow in value this year is assuring customers that the mobile-enabled automobile experience is safe.

“They have actually already had a difficult time trying to curb texting while driving, which is now the biggest killer of teenagers in the nation, so it will be interesting to see how individuals, specifically moms and dads, react to the attack of new messaging the car brands will be promoting about their enhanced mobile connectivity,” Decoded’s Mr. Rednor stated.

Carmakers are also going to be swamped with mobile data and might not know how to sort through the details to find exactly what matters.

“Look for brand-new methods to add effectiveness to the client each day, which can then incorporate into mobile experiences,” IgnitionOne’s Mr. Petri stated.

“It has to do with finding brand-new ways to provide individuals exactly what they want, what they need, and exactly what they may not necessarily expect from your brand– serving and delighting them in such a way that it strengthens and solidifies their loyalty,” he said. “Then using the data from those experiences can just assist make the other more standard brand interactions that much more rich.”