The “Moms Go Back-To-School with Mobile” survey looked specifically at how smartphones help make the back-to-school season less stressful. Results were collected from a 10-question survey that was conducted from August 8 – 12.

“Marketers need to realize that use of smartphones is not niche or limited to early adopters,” said Joe Laszlo, senior director of the Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence at IAB, New York.

“Reaching moms today – or almost any other audience segment – requires marketers to have a strong mobile presence,” he said. “This can include adding mobile to media plans, mobile-optimizing their Web presence and potentially creating branded apps or services suited to mobile devices.”

Mobile moms
One in five moms uses her smartphone to shop online, per the IAB study. Additionally, 21 percent of moms use smartphones to create shopping lists.

Sixty-eight percent of the moms surveyed said that they were more stressed about back-to-school shopping this year compared to last year. When looking at the group of moms with three or more children, 73 percent said that they were more stressed than last year.

Eighty-five percent of the study’s smartphone owners claimed that their device made the back-to-school season less stressful. Additionally, 90 percent of moms surveyed say that owning a smartphone has made life easier for them.

The study also looked at how age matters when it comes to how moms interact with their smartphone. For example, half of moms with preschoolers use smartphones to take videos and pictures. Forty-four percent of elementary school and 33 percent of high school moms used smartphones to take pictures.

“Moms of all ages are coming to rely on their smartphones to make back-to-school less stressful and to make it easier to be a mom in general,” Mr. Lazlo said.

“But it’s interesting to note that moms of preschool-aged children use their smartphones most intensively — more of them use their phones for a wider range of activities,” he said.

“It seems likely that the mobile usage intensity we see in preschool moms today will remain steady as their kids get older, and so mobile’s importance as a medium for reaching moms is only going to grow over time.”

Shopping for deals
Marketers stepped up their game this year for back-to-shopping season by using mobile as part of multichannel marketing efforts (see story).

Compared to other groups, back-to-school shoppers often already know what they are looking for – making deals especially important with more consumers scouring for better prices while in-store via their mobile device.

“Moms as a group have a lot on their plates. They need to stay in touch at all times, to be highly organized and to be efficient multitaskers,” Mr. Lazlo said.

“Those characteristics, which are amplified during the busy back-to-school season, make them a natural segment to embrace the tools and capabilities that smartphones enable,” he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York