SMS Mobile marketing explained

Mobile marketing has become yet another buzz word in the 21_st century for marketers, sales people and technical specialists. It covers a vast spectrum of techniques to leverage mobile phone handsets and devices for promotions, advertising and brand identity.

This blog will cover the original mobile marketing approach - SMS. Many of the larger organisations of this world have realised that SMS is an essential part of their marketing mix but strangely a lot of smaller companies are either avoiding SMS or not realising its full potential. I will attempt to tell you how people might use SMS to increase brand attention, improve customers services and ultimately increase revenue.

The definition of SMS mobile marketing

SMS mobile marketing is the sending and/or receiving of SMS messages. People often group SMS marketing strategies into one of two categories, one way and two way SMS. One way is the process of sending or receiving an SMS message. Two way SMS is a more complex message flow, for example they might text you with a keyword that in turn enters them into a campaign to win a prize and let them know at a scheduled date if they have won via SMS.

Spam or an art?

People often think their text messages should be promotional or offer discounts with a WAP link, this is a very one dimensional approach to success. Consider your recipients, do they want to know about your new brand or offer? Are they inundated with irrelevant messages, emails, phone calls and door knockers? Marketing is not spam, it is the alignment of the customer with a brand. The gentle art of introducing a target audience to a brand can take time and requires careful strategy.

How to use SMS

I have been fortunate enough in my career to work with some incredible innovators and mobile marketing giants. One thing they always talked about was the monetisation of demographics. SMS can automatically and accurately build a profile of thousands of users within a short time.

One customer who is profiling right now is Future publishing. I am sure you have seen columns like "Text EDITOR to 87474" or "Tell us about your favourite gig of 2009, text GIG to 87474", this is one way Future encourage inbound messages from their readers. As the message comes in it gets profiled under the current and any previous campaigns, their answer and any personal information is stored against their number. All of this remains in the system and so long as they do not opt out or become blacklisted.

Once you have a number of profiled users you can promote products directly to their phone. At a recent conference Future talked about one such campaign for the Nintendo Wii. More than 16000 people entered a competition to win the latest Mario game and continued answering profiling questions on age, interests and location. Only 1% opted out from the service when they were asked if they wanted to receive promotional Nintendo SMS messages. The high street retailers jumped at the chance to pay for promotional SMS messages to reach this targeted audience with age and location appropriate viral content. For example "Did you know most young people aged 17 are buying Wii Sports Resort right now, join them at your local Game store in Stourbridge town." The ROI per text was high and Game sales increased with positive on-line feedback.

Future are experts at delivering content to their audience, they realised that in 2009 you have to monetise your content to maximise revenue. Retailers use mobile questionnaires to understand the wants and needs of their customers, using this feedback they can deliver more effective point of sale promotions and train their staff.

What can you do?

In laymen's terms you need to build a strategy based on your customers behaviour and your competitors weaknesses and fully commit to your marketing campaign. Firstly people need to opt in to the service, so set up SMS competitions, SMS subscriptions, SMS votes, an SMS support channel or mobile phone capture forms on your website. Build an extensive list of relevant subscribers and do not be afraid to remove irrelevant contacts. Once you feel you have a relevant and sizeable group compose a message with dynamic fields personal to each individual. When sending your messages make sure you set the interface to stagger the messages over a standard working day, this will give you a an impression of the ideal send time for future campaigns.

Other uses for SMS include charity auctions, third world targeted aid, SMS vouchers, loyalty campaigns, "Text the DJ", long messages, WAP push and MMS. If you want to discuss a potential SMS marketing strategy visit our SMS mobile marketing website.