As a marketing analyst, it’s my job to know the latest and greatest in industry trends. Is there a future in mobile? You bet there is. Is usage growing? Of course it is. How likely am I to recommend that a client should invest in it? Very likely. So it should come as no surprise that when the dawn of mobile coupons came along, I was one of the first to say, “Heck yeah!”

I blogged about the mobile-coupon revelation five months ago. I accepted it as truth that people would use their mobile devices to obtain, store and use coupons (or at least those with smartphones). It just made so much sense. Why wouldn’t you? But, alas, this is anything but the truth.

Here are the findings…
Recently, eMarketer came out with an article about mobile coupons. And guess what? No one cares! The article highlighted a poll about Internet users’ attitudes toward mobile coupons. Only 10 percent responded that they would feel comfortable using their mobile phones to store coupons rather than print them out. A variety of other scenarios were presented, but all with equal or less percentage of respondents. However, when users were given the option to chose “None of these,” a whopping 71 percent picked it.

It hurts. It does. I spend a large amount of time trying to bring the latest and greatest to our ever-expanding audience. For the last five months, I thought I had shared this nugget of wisdom with everyone. For the last five months, I thought people had been using these mobile coupons. Ouch. I was wrong.

Let’s skip to Step 6: Acceptance…
Before you try consoling me, you should know that I don’t own a smartphone (commence with the eye rolling). Maybe there is a little part of me that can accept this ugly truth. Why would the majority of people care about mobile coupons, if they don’t own a smartphone? The correlation is definitely there. However, this doesn’t change my views on the mobile industry, as a whole. I stand behind the fact that mobile is the future. The sooner you start testing, the sooner we can all reap the benefits. Especially the benefits of mobile coupons.

As for eMarketer? They better watch it. My heart can’t take another beating.