• by Aaron Baar , August 17, 2011

Believe it or not, people are craving communications from brands -- but they want those communications to be relevant and on their terms.

According to new research from consumer insights agency Communispace, people want more personalized brand communications through their mobile devices, and they want tools that help them manage and filter the flow of content.

"The general U.S. consumer is connected fairly continually and it's generally throughout their lives," Katie Adams, senior consultant with the IdeaGroup within Communispace, tells Marketing Daily. "What we found was that these connected consumers have a generally high awareness of interaction with brands on their mobile devices."

Despite this high interaction, there are still a set of rules people expect brands to follow as they communicate through mobile devices -- the first one being to avoid unsolicited contact. According to the research, people still value their privacy and don't want to engage in brand interactions that they have not approved.

"A very specific [good] example would be having a mobile app that, whenever [a certain] product is on sale, it sends me an alert," says Julie Wittes Schlack, senior vice president of innovation and design at Communispace. "I, as the consumer, have indicated what I'm interested in and I've opted in. And the message you're giving me is information that I want."

Once people have acknowledged they'd like to receive marketing messages, the brands should be ready to communicate with messages that provide some value for the consumers, whether they are a deal on a specific product or a location-based offer.

"If you're a retailer or manufacturer and you know someone is in a specific location, reach out to them in the moment," says Wittes Schlack. "Or do it by creating apps that actually provide value, and not purely advertising or offers and promotions."

At the same time, marketers have to learn to let people dictate the flow of the conversation. Ultimately, they'll decide the level of interaction they want to have with a brand, and it will be up to the brand to provide those many (and specialized) levels of communication.

"What we're hearing is that people want to be selective in who they want to hear from and how," Wittes Schlack says. "But if people have opted in, it's because they want that content, that dialogue and that promotion. [Brands] have to be really broad and really nimble in how they respond."