In the first of a 4-part series, Anders Hansson, Senior Mobile Marketing Expert at Swedish mobile software development firm IntelliTech Software AB, offers practical advice on running mobile marketing campaigns, with
fictitious examples based on real-world companies, using the firm's
InfoNU free mobile communications platform
Mobile marketing is hot and is gaining rapid acceptance. This
article offers practical advice and guidance on what you can do via
mobile, and how to do it. In this first article, we are going to
describe powerful mobile marketing methods you can implement in just a
few minutes. We will investigate what the industry and the technology
allow us to do today, how to persuade people to sign up for your
service and which file formats to use when you deliver your content. We
will also take a sneak peek on what will happen with mobile marketing
in the near future.
The article is based on solving marketing problems with the help of InfoNU, a free, web-based mobile mass communication platform that supports the latest trends in mobile marketing. With InfoNU you can:
Send SMS messages such as personalized alerts and mobile coupons
Push mobile content like banners, mp3-songs, ringtones, video clips, visiting cards and java games
Push links to mobile websites
Create and schedule mobile campaigns
Sign up and manage consumers
Get your own icon next to the address book and calendar to publish mobile content without cost
View statistics on how mobile marketing efforts are received by users
Creative mess: As in all sectors enjoying explosive growth,
bright people gravitate towards mobile marketing, create start-up
companies, offer solutions and unfortunately also create a big creative
mess full of definitions, standards, ideas and solutions. This series
of article is the authors attempt to translate the web of technologies
into an easy-to-understand vocabulary that you can use in your everyday
marketing of your brand, company, products and services.
Permission Marketing and What Mobile Marketing is NOT
A
mobile phone is a highly personal communication device. Mobile
marketing is not about spamming uninterested people with irrelevant SMS
messages at 2 in the morning. Marketers have to respect this. Never
send messages to someone without having their permission. Sending
unsolicited SMS messages to people is not good marketing. Aside from
the ethical aspect of spam, it does not work and costs you a lot of
money. Dont do it. Permission marketing is central to mobile
marketing. Embrace permission marketing, protect your list of
consumers, and respect their wishes.
The Mobile Marketing Dance
Instead of sending unsolicited
SMS messages, the trick in mobile marketing is to persuade people to
sign up for your service and then to find a balance between providing
information to drive sales, and offering value so that your customers
are both informed and happy.
How to Persuade People to Sign Up for Your Service
What can you offer that makes your consumers accept the commercial side of your company? Here are a few suggestions:
1.
Promote the following message by printing it on your packaged goods:
Text COCACOLA to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). The first 100
people to text us will win a free subscription to Coca-Cola magazine.
After you receive 100 replies, call up the winners and get their
address.
2. Promote the following message on billboards,
posters, banners or signs around your town: Text WHEATIES to +44 77 86
202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new ringtone.
3. Promote
the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper: Text ABBA
to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song.
4.
Promote the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper:
Text ROXETTE to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new
video.
5. Promote the following text on your web site: Do you
want information about us on your mobile? Click on this link and enter
your contact details.
6. Promote the following text in your TV
commercials: Text ARMANI to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and win
a trip for two to Paris. The winner will be notified on 16 August.
7.
Promote the following text in your radio commercials: Text ATARI to
+44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and get Pac-Man to your phone.
8.
Promote the following text in your TV commercials: Text MCDONALDS to
+44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to claim your 10% discount coupon.
In
other words: Send something back as a Thank you for signing up. Give
your new user something for free. Give your new user a possibility to
win something nice.
To configure InfoNU so that you automatically send something back
when new consumers sign up to your service, log on to your InfoNU
account, select Settings in the Intranet Home menu followed by SMS SignupSettings, click on Details for your code word and enable Respond automatically with an SMS message.
You can send back an SMS message, mobile content like images, video and
music, a link to your mobile web site or a Java application.
To integrate your own web site with InfoNU as in the fifth example above, select Help in the Intranet Home menu followed by Integrate InfoNU and click on Generate Link.
File Formats to Use when Distributing Mobile Content
Since
virtually all mobile phones support SMS messaging, sending SMS messages
is the easiest and most reliable way to reach people on their mobile.
SMS messages, as we all know, are limited to 160 characters, but can
contain links to mobile content.
All mobile phones do not support
the same media formats. If you have no a-priori knowledge about your
consumers phones, but still want to reach the biggest possible
audience, use to the following file formats:
For Images, use Portable network graphics, and the file extension .png
For Sound files, use MP3, and the file extension .mp3
For Video clips, use 3GPP video, and the file extension .3gp
For Rngtones, use Midi, and the file extension .mid
This list of file formats comes from analyzing mobile phones
produced by the biggest manufacturers and ranking the phones by how
common each format is in practice.
Three other interesting file formats can be used for more specialised tasks:
For Visiting cards and address book entries, use vCard, and the file extension .vcf
For Calendar entries, use vCard and the file extension .vcs
For Java games, use Java application descriptor files, and the file extension .jad
Distributing links to mobile content with InfoNU is performed in the
same way, regardless of file format: You log on to your InfoNU account,
select Uploads and upload the content from your PC to your InfoNU account. To distribute the content to a single person, click that person's Communicate link. Make sure that Upload is selected as Type of Content.
If you want to send an SMS message to many people, create a campaign by clicking on Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu followed by New campaign. With InfoNU, you can also schedule campaigns to be run at a specific date and time. Go to Campaigns and click on Schedule campaign to define the start date of your campaign.
Sample Mobile Marketing Campaigns
After your user has
signed up for your service, his/her mobile phone becomes an excellent
communication channel. This section lists proven marketing methods for
you to use:
Task: Inform customers about new products and updates, new offers and relevant company news.
Solution: Send an SMS message at an appropriate time with the information.
In
order to decide when to send your message, ask yourself the following
two questions: When is this information relevant to my mobile user?
When will the message have the biggest impact? If you are selling
umbrellas, sending your message when your customer is outside your
store on his way home and it is raining outside might be a good idea.
When is it not a good idea to send a message? At night? In the morning?
InfoNU
supports sending personalized SMS messages. By using the tags
{FirstName}, {LastName}, and {Mobile} in your SMS text, you can
personalize the message with the recipients name and mobile phone
number.
Task: Promote your bands new album.
Solution:
Promote the following message: Text THECHAINSAWS to +44 77 86 202 988
(normal SMS cost) to get our new song. Follow up by sending an SMS
message to everyone who signed up when your new album is released.
Distributing
video to mobile phones is possible today, but do not expect top quality
and do not expect to send out clips more than 10 seconds long. Advances
in mobile streaming technologies will make longer video transmissions
possible in a few years.
To distribute a song to mobile phones, convert it to an .mp3-file, log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads
and upload your song from your PC to your InfoNU account. You can
distribute the song either to an individual person or create a campaign
to send content to large groups of fans.
Task: You have a nice jingle that you would like to be recognised on the streets.
Solution: Produce a ringtone and send it to your customers for free.
Task: Increase sales by distributing a mobile coupon to your customers.
Solution:
Send out the following SMS message to your consumers: Here is your
coupon for the movie. Show this message and get two tickets for the
price of one. A43-K32-F83.
To create SMS coupons with InfoNU, use
the {Coupon} tag in your SMS text. InfoNU will automatically create the
coupon text for you. To view coupons and its owners, select Mobile Users and click on Mobile coupons.
Task: Get new customers by using viral marketing.
Solution:
Create an SMS campaign with the following text: Welcome to Marty's Bar.
This is your VIP pass. Show this message and get a free beer. Feel free
to send this message to your friends.
Task: You want to create an SMS newsletter that is delivered once a day.
Solution: Create several days of SMS campaigns with your content. Schedule the campaigns so that one is run every week.
To schedule a campaign to be run at a specific day, log on to your InfoNU account, select Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu and click on Campaign schedule.
Task: You are having an event together with all your employees and customers.
Solution:
Send out an invitation as an SMS message one week before the event.
Send an SMS message the day before to remind everybody. Schedule SMS
messages to be sent during the event to sychronize people. Send out an
event the day after the event to say thank you and to follow up.
But...we have invested in a WAP Site
If your company has a
WAP site, use SMS messaging to simplify access to your site. Send an
SMS message with a link to your site. To visit your site, your consumer
simply opens the SMS message and does not have to enter your URL
address on the mobile phone:
Task: Promote your mobile web site and make it easier to access.
Solution:
Add the following text to your web site: Mobile Access At All Times.
Get our news on your mobile. Text REUTERS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal
SMS cost). Send back an SMS message that contains a link to your mobile
web site. Your consumers can access your site by opening your SMS
message, instead of entering the URL address on the handset.
To
distribute a link to your mobile web or WAP page, create a text file
that contains the URL to your site, save the file with a .lnk file
extension and upload the .lnk-file to your InfoNU account. To
automatically send back the link, select Configure Settings, SMS Signup settings so that people receive your .lnk file as a response when they sign up to your service.
The Future of Mobile Marketing
Handset manufacturers are
now working hard to unify the user experience on mobile phones. This
will make Java applications and mobile web pages look and feel the
same, regardless of handset manufacturer.
Manufacturers are also
implementing a video compression standard called h.264. This
compression technique is twice as efficient as the one used today. If
you have ever tried video calls and been disappointed, expect to
experience higher image quality within a year or two. The h.264
compression technique will be used for video calls, Mobile TV (in the
DVB-H standard) and for video streaming. The telecommunication industry
believes that h.264 will make video calls and mobile video streaming
viable in practice.
In Part II of this series next Friday, we will
take a closer look at mobile applications and how marketers can design
mobile chat, newsletters and community services in just a few minutes.
Anders Hansson is Senior Mobile Marketing Expert at IntelliTech Software AB, a Swedish mobile
software development firm. The company is delivering consulting
services for customers including Ericsson, Symbian, Sony-Ericsson and
several European mobile operators. The company also develops the open
mobile marketing platform InfoNU. For more information about
IntelliTech, click here.
