Dive Brief:

• Kitewheel took stock of more than one billion brand and customer interactions on its platform, which revealed that marketers are in fact taking advantage of omnichannel campaigns.
• Social media led the way in interactions at 48%, while mobile apps were the fastest growing channel for interactions, and email (23%) is up 270% year-over-year.
• Even though social media accounted for the most interactions, the research also found that 70% of marketers are still using the channel for broadcast messaging rather than more tailored and targeted campaigns.

Dive Insight:

While mobile apps were found to be the fastest growing channel, the tactic also accounted for a small percentage of interactions overall, indicating there is opportunity to be uncovered there.

Kitewheel President Mark Smith told Venture Beat, “I think that we were surprised to see such low volume of truly mobile-specific experience management — i.e. through a brand app rather than a mobile web experience or a social mobile experience.”

Smith added that the majority of interactions are happening on mobile devices, including social media and email channels. Still, he said there is opportunity because “many brands are not taking the most advantage of that and using the medium to its maximum effect, but are ‘making do’ with their content and programs built for other channels, just being deployed via mobile devices.”

Part of this can be attributed to how new mobile apps are as a marketing channel. Nancy Hua, CEO of Apptimize, told Marketing Dive earlier this year, "This is a quickly growing and developing industry. The 'experts' don't have it figured out because everything is changing so fast. You can be the expert even if you're not a developer. You just need the right mindset to go out there and experiment and learn."