Operators have always known that there’s a divide between men and women when it comes to smartphone usage and adoption.

Dig a little deeper under the surface, and you might find some valuable nuances that can improve your marketing efforts.

A recent analysis by Neuralitic using its SevenFlow solution specifically targeted content categorization based on gender. The analysis showed some discrepancies that are worthy to note. (This only adds fuel to the men are from Mars, women are from Venus fire – namely that men and women have different emotional needs, personal values, and as we will see below, distinct mobile usage patterns).

Based on the findings:

  • Women are much more interested in health content, as well as entertainment-related activities (e.g. browsing, social media, portals, etc.)
  • Men focus more on sports, business, and career-related content (e.g. LinkedIn), and are more inclined to check out technologies such as phone models and services.

A particularly important item of note is the differences when it comes to loyalty to mobile operators, with men more interested in scoping out competitors’ offering for special benefits and promotions, while women are more loyal to their existing carrier.

When analyzing device selection, the distribution shows that the female segment has a stronger feature phone presence (12% higher than men), while tablets are more popular with men. Women also generate on average 24% less volume by user than men.

However, when breaking down the data by services accessed, in general women still use more social media-oriented services such as MMS, Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and Instant Messaging, while men lean towards more technological services such as File Management and Peer-to-Peer, which also happen to be activities that consume the most data.

Based on the data presented, there are a number of possible marketing strategies that mobile operators can embrace to increase data revenue:

  • Segment marketing of smartphones and tablets to key audiences
  • Bundle applications that are relevant to specific gender behaviors
  • Develop tiered/smart pricing plans to increase revenues for higher volume data usage

Interestingly enough, telecom giant Mobistar revealed similar findings, pointing out that women in their customer base seem to communicate much more than men do, spending 19 minutes more on the phone per month. Women also send 51 more text messages per month than their male counterparts.

Marketers must start taking serious advantage of the data that can be at their disposal in real-time, and translating that data into a winning strategy.

SevenFlow is the only Mobile Data Intelligence (MDI) analytics solution that allows mobile operators to see and categorize content patterns based on specific demographic parameters, giving marketers a sharp edge when trying to acquire or retain customers.

What do you think – how can mobile operators use mobile data analytics to improve the bottom line? Share your thoughts in our comments section.