Today is the first of two overview articles on smartphones, marketing and fundraising.

This first article deals with smartphone ownership and usage in the US. [I would expect similar patterns in the other countries where Agitator readers tend to congregate.]

Tomorrow I’ll turn to marketing implications, featuring two or three ‘guide’ resources I think fundraisers will find helpful.

There’s no better source on America’s digital habits than Pew Research. They follow the trends systematically with a consistent methodology … and they have no products, software or services to sell.

Pew has recently published a new bible: U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015. It’s free. Get a copy.

Beyond the exhaustive traditional survey data, an enriching twist I like in this research is what Pew calls ‘experience sampling’ — basically, calling a panel of users twice a day at different dayparts over a week, asking questions about their smartphone usage over the previous hour. Pew’s analysis teases a lot of insight out of these responses.

Here’s a taste of the basic data.

64% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in 2011. For 10% of Americans, their smartphone is the only form of internet access at home. To say Americans regard smartphones as a positive presence in their lives would be a gross understatement:

What do they use them for?

[Please Pew, someday ask about making donations!]

According to Pew, a substantial majority of smartphone owners use their phone to follow and share news events with others:

• 68% of smartphone owners use their phone at least occasionally to follow along with news events, with 33% doing so ‘frequently’.
• 67% use their phone to share pictures, videos, or commentary about events happening in their community, with 35% doing so frequently.
• 56% use their phone at least occasionally to learn about community events or activities, with 18% doing this “frequently.”

To me, this sounds like the publicly-engaged part of the community that most fundraisers are seeking to engage. The ‘first responders’ to natural disasters, for one example.

And this is not just a phenomenon of the young. Pew reports: “Four-in-ten smartphone owners ages 65 and older use their phone at least occasionally to keep up with breaking news, half use it to share information about local happenings, and one-third use it to stay abreast of events and activities in their community.”

Note that in the table below, 80% of age 50+ respondents use their smartphones for internet browsing, 87% for email, and even 31% for video calls.

The full report provides tons of data on smartphone use, from text messaging to podcast listening, across numerous demographic characteristics (age and income variations will probably be of most interest).

If this report doesn’t convince you to master the medium, might I suggest you sign up instead for The Agitator’s correspondence course on smoke signals.

Tomorrow … what advice do marketers give about using the mobile channel?

Tom