No sooner do direct marketing fundraisers get the message that success involves building relationships — customer relationship marketing (CRM) — when along comes MRM … mobile relationship marketing!

Here’s a good summary of mobile usage data from a variety of sources, compiled for the Chief Marketing Officer Council.

A few factoids that struck me:

• 4% of mobile users go online to advocate, compared to 41% of desktop users
•  70% of all mobile searches result in action within one hour
• Mobile payments are expected to quadruple to $630 billion by 2014 (Juniper Research)

Beyond the factoids, here’s what the marketers are saying to each other:

“More targeted, timely, and helpful messaging and info sourcing through mobile communications channels are helping consumers get trusted advice, find the right products, and source the best deals in any place, at any time. In addition, customers are now empowered to transact and interact on demand without limitations or restrictions on where and how they buy.

Mobile relationship marketing (MRM) is the new call to action for companies looking to to ensure continuous customer touch and interaction, sustained support and service, closer and more dependent connectivity, as well as greater insight and intimacy. MRM has vast potential to create business value, improve process efficiency, trigger product consumption and use, further loyalty and repeat purchase, and increase customer feedback, assistance, affinity, and advocacy.

In this new age of the consumer-initiated engagement, marketers cannot afford to allow the mobile channel to simply be another tactical execution point that sits apart from the overall customer experience. An effective MRM strategy integrates social interaction; customer insight gathering and listening; consumer engagement and loyalty; market listening; purchase incentive or inducement; and lifetime revenue optimization, all through optimized use of the mobile channel.”

A Pandora (music streaming) case study in the report enthuses:

“In five years, the adoption rate of smartphones among US consumers leapt from single digits in 2007 to more than 50 percent today, and it is projected to be 75 percent by the end of 2013, according to Nielsen.

These devices have had a pronounced impact on consumer behavior, and they are by far the most intimate and immediate conduits to consumers. It is this rapid adoption and the intense personal connection they carry that are emerging as key drivers for marketers to quickly adapt and seek answers in understanding how to tap into the power of these always-on devices to engage consumers.”

You can download an exec summary (free) or the entire CMO Council study ($199) on mobile marketing here. It’s the most comprehensive one I’ve seen so far.

Tom