Mobile marketing on the move

The fact that it guarantees direct contact with an individual is extremely powerful, especially when coupled with its immediacy (unlike email, the vast majority of users really do have their mobiles with them at all times) and has the scope therefore for delivering very timely and contextually relevant messages.

Reach, relevance and relationship, a recent report by technology analyst firm Quocirca, considers the potential for the mobile channel. The report says, “Markets are fragmenting, industries are converging, and relationships are more dynamic and fragile. So how do organisations build a connection and maintain an ongoing dialogue with their current and future customers?” It’s an extremely valid question, and the mobile channel seems to hold the answer.

 

The report was written by Rob Bamforth, a principal analyst at Quocirca who specialises in mobile technology. While he concedes it is still early days for mobile as a B2B marketing medium – primarily due to cultural reasons (firms are reluctant to alienate target customers by overwhelming them with contact, especially via such a personal means) – he believes the only real limit to what’s possible is marketers’ imaginations.

“These days, everyone is time-poor, rushing around and on the move, so mobile is an ideal medium in a business context,” agrees John Cunningham, technical director at Avenue A Razorfish, a digital full-service agency that has embraced the mobile channel.

“Calls have become cheaper with set fees for unlimited talk times and hundreds of free text messages; handsets have become incredibly sophisticated (think of the iPhone and its large screen); and above all, people have their phones with them almost all of the time,” he says. “This all adds up to a valuable extra hook for communicating with them – provided they have given their permission.”

 

A good example is a recent campaign by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to drive time-sensitive sales of a hay-fever remedy, targeting assistants at the frontline in pharmacies. Previously, GSK had relied on direct mail to alert pharmacies that a high pollen count was coming. The new campaign, by contrast, invited pharmacy assistants to sign up for an up-to-the-minute mobile information service, informing them of the imminent pollen count in specific geographical areas.

The purpose was to keep a particular brand of nasal spray firmly on the radar, encouraging the pharmacies to get stocks ready, Cunningham notes. It worked, too. “ The uplift was large, at 50 per cent,” he notes. “This was a very simple use of SMS and the impact was significant.”

While simple text messaging remains the primary mobile vehicle used for marketing, because it is supported by almost all devices and does not require a special high-speed mobile connection, innovation is on the rise as marketers begin to push the boundaries of the technological possibilities to keep customers interested.

In the consumer world, particularly among young customers, it’s easy to appreciate why. This is an audience that is technologically savvy, which expects a lot and is easily turned off. So when London’s XFM and Capital Radio stations held a series of special 10-year anniversary ‘gigs’ in the summer of 2007, they used MMS (multimedia messaging) to transmit unique ticket barcodes to competition winners, allowing them to turn up on the day with only their phone as proof of entitlement. This was more immediate and secure than paper tickets sent by post, and appealed directly to the target audience.

 

Cunningham sees considerable potential for related innovation in a B2B context. “I can see retailers using phones to scan and send barcodes to wholesale suppliers if something is out of stock. Micro-payments are another big area bringing this medium to life in new ways,” he adds. “From London Underground Oyster cards to parking and drinks vending machines, we’ll see mobiles being used increasingly to pay for low-cost transactions, which will further fire companies’ imaginations in marketing.”

“It’s vital to get explicit permission from the user before starting a conversation with them via mobile,” Cunningham warns. “After that, the key is to ensure that the content is relevant and meaningful to the recipient. Don’t blast them with 100 different messages hoping that one will stick. Finally, don’t simply regurgitate content from other marketing media – make sure it fits the medium. In short, don’t waste this valuable opportunity to have a unique conversation with your customer base.”

While researching the medium for his report, Bamforth says he caught himself watching a spider building and rebuilding a web, which sparked a useful analogy. “I noticed that, although spiders build their webs on a single plane, they always retain a control line outside of the main structure. It struck me that mobile can be viewed like this – a separate line into the web, i.e. used in a complementary way to other on- or offline media.”

Illustrative examples of what’s possible here include the integration of location-specific poster advertising campaigns which draw on inbound mobile text (SMS) to encourage immediate responses. A business traveller at an airport for example, may be encouraged to respond ‘now’ with an SMS short code to qualify for a discount on a hotel, or a special price the next time they need airport parking. Rather than being intrusive, such an application invites customers to proactively volunteer their contact details, and succeeds because the campaign is well targeted and in an appropriate context.

Businesses that can think along these lines when they approach mobile marketing will overcome many of the apparent cultural objections to the practice.

 

The good news is that the technology is being sharpened all the time, making it easier than ever to send, receive, respond to and monitor mobile marketing content. Networks are faster, allowing more sophisticated content to be sent; mobile handset screens are becoming bigger and clearer; and the range of business and marketing applications and tools designed or tailored for the mobile medium is growing all the time.

2ergo is one of many providers of convergent mobile communication solutions. It recently launched MultiSend, a range of messaging products designed to introduce a new level of interaction and engagement between organisations and their target audiences.

“We believe the next generation of interactive messaging is based around messages which are more personalised, offer an in-built response mechanism and allow consumers to interact with brands using the form they choose, whether that’s SMS, MMS, email or voice,” says Neale Graham, joint CEO of 2ergo. “MultiSend also allows organisations to achieve this next level of interaction from a single application.”

Companies that have already signed up to the solution include Thomas Cook, National Car Rental and publisher Reed Business International.

Specifically, the application suite gives organisations the capability to fully automate many of their regular outbound communications, and to engage in one-to-one dialogue with their target audience – not only to encourage rapid responses, but to also conclude many forms of business transactions (e.g. appointment and payment reminders, membership and subscription renewals, marketing campaigns and customer surveys).

When responses are captured, MultiSend intelligently recognises each person, the nature of the transaction and the next action to take (such as whether to send a further personalised and interactive message to a customer, or trigger an alert to a customer services representative to mail out a brochure or call the customer).

 

Mobile marketing company Sponge, which works with many high-profile brands, publishers and businesses, won the B2B marketing award category at the 2006 Mobile Marketing Awards, so has plenty of experience of where the mobile medium can be used to best effect.

Its award-winning activity involved incentivising employees of retail outlets to sell Adidas ‘TaylorMade’ golf shoes. The campaign produced a number of benefits for Adidas, including a sales uplift and an opted-in database of retail sales people at the frontline of customer product decision-making.

Sponge’s client services director, Douglas McDonald, says, “This shows how mobile can be used for brands with a large indirect sales channel. Many other brands sell through similar channels and mobile is by far and away the best way to communicate with people who are not sitting at desks all day.”

She continues, “Today, the biggest marketing related activity is probably CRM which has obvious value, but it’s early days and use of mobile marketing in the consumer market is providing plenty of food for thought for B2B marketers looking for the next means of reaching and influencing busy, increasing mobile customers.”

As handset manufacturers devote themselves to producing scaled-down versions of standard desktop tools as standard, enabling people to access standard documents remotely, the potential for marketing via the mobile channel can only soar. Already, the iPhone allows access to standard web sites possible from a mobile, while Blackberrys and PDAs are increasingly common.

As Quocirca’s report concludes, “In a rapidly changing market, solutions evolve, so learn by taking small steps rather than large ones or none at all. A few who take giant leaps into the unknown may be lucky and not fail, but many who do nothing will be left behind.”

 

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