Download Mobile Marketing – R U up 4 it

Mobile Marketing – R U up 4 it? – Russell Buckley
The mobile phone is the hot new and powerful marketing channel that savvy
marketers are all talking about. It’s already huge in the UK and parts of
Europe and is about to unleash itself in the US too. So what’s it all about
then?
As well as being able to use your mobile to make phone calls, you can use it
to send and receive text messages or SMS (Short Message Service, for you
jargon junkies). This has been widely and passionately adopted by consumers
– initially youth groups but spreading rapidly throughout the age spectrum.
Adoption has been driven by the fact that SMS is cheap and convenient. It’s
also discrete, a bit like passing secret notes in school!
A Social Phenomenon
SMS has had a significant impact socially and culturally too. A new language
has emerged, which can be indecipherable to those not in the know.
Examples might be:
R U up 4 it? Are you up for it?
Cant w8 4 2nite. I can’t wait for tonight
C U L8R. I’ll see you later.
And emoticons are prevalent, such as the smiley  and more arcane ones
like ;@) meaning, pig!!
As well as language, it’s affected the way people behave, especially in the
dating scene. 17% of UK under 25’s have been dumped by SMS! And it’s a
major dating faux pas not to send your lover an SMS first thing in the morning
and last thing at night. Watch out or you may be one of the 17%.
SMS has grown unbelievably in a few short years. It’s difficult to put into a US
context, but the most impressive stat I’ve seen is that over 50% of 14 –19
year olds send more than 90 SMS’s every month and over 20% of them send
180 or more!
The case for mobile marketing
It’s difficult for marketers to understand quite how big SMS has become in
such a short time. Despite understanding the stats, as a non-user you don’t
have a “feel” for it. But in Europe a recent report found that 56% of Marketing
Directors planned to use SMS in 2003 and were allocating 7% of their
budgets to it. To put this amazing statistic in perspective, Mobile Marketing
didn’t exist 2 years ago and the total annual budget for online marketing is
only 0.9%.
And it’s now coming to the US, in case you haven’t noticed! 1 billion SMS’s
are sent every month now and you’ve seen some early campaigns already.
So since we’ve been doing it for a while in the UK – I’ve been involved in over
1,500 campaigns to date – you can learn some lessons from our hands-on
experiences.
So what types of mobile marketing are there? Broadly, the mobile can be
used in five ways:
1. Promotional Communication and Fulfilment (Pull)
This is now the most common form of mobile marketing. An example might be
an instant “Txt n’ Win” campaign. The promoter simply puts a phone number
on pack (or their advertising) and consumers text it to find out if they’ve won a
prize – immediately! We’ve seen response rates as high as 27% using this
technique.
In my opinion though “Txt and Win” can also be viewed by consumers as “Txt
and Lose”, so think about how you treat losing entries and see if there’s
something else you can give them, like a free ringtone or logo for their phone.
This technique could also be used as a “Txt and Collect” for points and prizes.
TIP: If you open up a channel of communication people will use it. So expect,
plenty of BackText (make sure your service provider gives you a return path –
a way for consumers to reply to your messages). Don’t be surprised when
consumers text back gushing “thanks” messages or even ask you for dates!
But the serious issue is that you need to think how you’ll respond to these and
manage them. If you don’t plan for them, they can overwhelm.
2. Outbound (Push)
This is the phone equivalent of Direct Marketing. Again, while very powerful,
you need to follow a few rules here. And since it’s the most controversial area,
I’ll go into a little more depth.
Guinness ran a promotion during Soccer’s World Cup in 2002 in conjunction
with Diageo’s Nightfly. They targeted known Guinness fans, inviting them to
purchase a case of the black stuff at Asda, a national supermarket, owned by
Walmart.
There was no price incentive, but respondents could claim a free joke
football wig. They had a 47% response rate.
Sending a message to someone’s mobile phone is a very intrusive act. This
has the upside that your message will almost certainly be noticed and read by
the recipient. The downside is that if the message is not appropriate to that
consumer, there may well be a backlash against the sender, much as we’ve
seen with SPAM in email marketing – only even more so! So here are the
main rules:
Rule One - Get Permission
If you’re building a database for future communication via mobile phones, ask
their permission to use their mobile number in this way. And remember, just
because they failed to tick an opt-out box years ago, doesn’t mean to say that
they’ve automatically agreed to receive mobile messaging from you forever
more.
Equally, if they’re responding to an inbound campaign, you need to specify if
you’re going to add them to your database. “Get Permission” means that
they’ve expressly agreed to communication via their mobile. For
instance, many people will be quite happy to receive marketing
communication via another medium (say, direct mail), but get genuinely
annoyed if the marketer automatically assumes that gives them the right to
extend the relationship into mobile marketing. It doesn’t!
If you’re using a list supplied by a third party for an outbound campaign, make
it your business to find out what level of permission that supplier actually has.
It’s your company who will be damaged if they don’t have the level of
permission you’d rather have.
Finally, nothing’s forever, so give them a chance to easily opt out of
communication with you if they want. Every time you send them a message,
it’s going to cost you real money, so simple economics suggest that there’s no
point in sending out something that the recipient is just not interested in.
Rule Two - Be Timely
One of mobile marketing’s great advantages is its timeliness. At one level,
that means that a marketer can prepare and send out a campaign in a
matter of minutes, unlike conventional direct mail, which would take days, if
not weeks. Mobile messaging also has a sense of immediacy, if not urgency,
from the recipient’s perspective. Therefore, the timeliness of the message and
content is key to whether it’s appropriate.
As an example, sending a message out about a TV programme broadcast on
a Sunday is probably not a good idea with this medium, if you send it on a
Monday - the recipient will have forgotten all about it 6 days later. Equally,
telling a consumer about an offer which has expired is also a cardinal sin, no
matter what the medium.
The general rule of thumb, in my view, is that there must be a good reason to
send the message to a mobile, rather than via another medium. Therefore,
best practice is time-limited messages or ones appropriate to their location at
the time of receipt. Location in the context of mobile marketing is actually just
a subset of time anyway.
It’s also important to consider Timeliness when selecting your choice of
service provider to transmit outbound messaging. Some have better records
than other in terms of timeliness of delivery (delays of days and non-delivery
are still issues in some cases). So chose your partner with care.
Finally, Timeliness also refers to frequency of message – don’t bombard
recipients with messages, as it will backfire. It’s also worth finding out how
frequently suppliers of lists send out messages – if you want stand-out, less is
obviously better.
One of the best examples of a timely and location-based campaign is one I
was involved with at ZagMe. ZagMe was a mall based service which sent
shoppers SMS based advertising from retailers in the mall – obviously with
their permission!
Reebok wanted to promote a new store and simply wanted footfall. Therefore,
we developed a campaign whereby we sent out a message saying that the
first person to go to the store and shout, “I’ve been Zaggged!” won a free pair
of trainers.
3 minutes after the message was sent out, over 50 people RAN into the store
shouting.
As it was an early campaign Reebok also received massive press exposure
and ZagMe was featured in news programmes on all 5 terrestrial TV channels
in the UK, as well as normal marketing press!
ZagMe also achieved something I’ve never heard of before – a consumer
phoned a leading regional radio station to dedicate a song to “ZagMe for the
great offers they send my mobile.”
Powerful stuff.
Rule Three - Add Value
Mobile messaging is primarily a promotional channel rather than
advertising one. This is an important point and often missed by companies
running mobile marketing campaigns.
By this I mean that the message should add value to the consumer in some
way, rather than simply contain a branding message. For instance, the
chance to enter a competition or free prize draw or access to an exclusive
offer (price led, but also, for example, limited edition merchandise or gift with
purchase) or even information of value to the consumer (perhaps announcing
a new tour by a favourite recording artist they like).
Rule four – Use targeted messages
As well as being intrusive, a message on your mobile is very personal.
Therefore, in order to succeed, it must consistent with this impression.
At its most basic, you should consider targeting by gender and age. The latter
is exceptionally important, not just in what you say to them, but also in how
you say it. In my experience the same message can have 100% difference in
response rates depending on how the copy is written. So re-write the same
message for different ages, using contemporary SMS language for younger
groups.
If you can gather the data, the better the targeting, the better your response
will be – but that’s just simple marketing.
Rule five – Be relevant
Perhaps a sub-sector of Targeting, relevance refers to the appropriateness of
that message to that recipient. For instance, there’s no point in sending
information about a new car, if the recipient can’t drive. Or an offer on ladies
dresses to a boy.
3. CRM
CRM is perhaps an over used, as well as a misused phrase, but in this
context I’m taking about creating closer relationships with consumers on an
ongoing basis to maximise loyalty and therefore profitability over time.
This whole area is an article in itself and really needs to be considered in the
specific context of your business. But as well as an ongoing marketing
dialogue, SMS can be used to deliver timely and valuable information such as
delay announcements for an airline or account balances for a bank.
4. B2E
Business to employee communication may fall into the remit of Enterprise
Messaging – a whole new ballpark. But in certain circumstances it can be
used as a promotional tool. For instance, if you want to announce and run an
incentive programme for store managers or bar staff.
The Future
We’ve only really explored the plain old text message in this article (and
there’s a lot more to it than space allows) and we’ve seen just how effective it
can be, if used properly. But the future’s even more exciting. We’ll soon be
able to use color, images, sound and even video in our messaging, which
opens up a whole world of marketing possibilities.
Marketers need to start learning about this new channel today, so that we’re
ready for tomorrow’s opportunities. The message is jump in and do
something. Or as Yogi Berra put it slightly more prosaically:
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”
Russell Buckley is a leading author, speaker and consultant on Mobile
Marketing in the UK. [email protected]
 Russell Buckley 2003