Moving into mobile doesn't have to be a terrifying leap of faith. Here's an approach with proven reach and performance.
As Mickey Alam Khan of Mobile Marketer points out in his article "A victory for Obama, a victory for mobile," the Obama campaign's use of text messaging is one of the many historic marketing measures that propelled the Illinois senator to the White House. Although mainstream media still managed to scoop the story, the campaign's use of text messaging to announce Joe Biden as the Democratic VP to supporters first turned many heads in the interactive advertising community. By making receipt of the announcement exclusive to registered Obama supporters, the campaign captured supporter/donor data while generating more interest and excitement than in previous election cycles. Anybody remember John Kerry's announcement when he picked Edwards? I didn't think so.
As demonstrated in Khan's article, Obama's text marketing continues to pique interactive marketers' interest, and with good reason. In July, the Direct Marketing Association released the result of an online survey that found 24 percent of mobile phone users have responded to mobile marketing. The same survey found that 70 percent of consumers who responded to mobile marketing offers responded to a marketing text message.
SMS for mobile marketing
Short messaging service (SMS) has the broadest reach of any mobile advertising medium, making it an ideal way to initiate interactive media communication with consumers. According to eMarketer and Nielsen, the average mobile subscriber in the U.S. sent and received more SMS text messages in the second quarter of this year than the first quarter, making it the second consecutive quarter in which the average number of text messages was significantly higher than the average number of phone calls. Steady consumer growth in any area of interactive cannot be overlooked in a troubled economy.
Better yet? More than 90 percent of mobile phones are already SMS enabled. Most mobile phone users have data and mobile plans that allow unlimited text messaging, which means that many consumers targeted by your campaign will not be paying extra to receive your marketing messages. In fact, SMS is the most widely used mobile application, four to one over mobile web access.
What about SMS reach?
Despite what many marketers currently think, consumers do respond well to SMS advertising. Last September, 5 million Americans responded to an SMS campaign. The key to mobile marketing success is to make sure your campaign is a legitimate opt-in campaign. For example, when Americans call in to vote for "American Idol" or "Dancing With the Stars," they receive a prompt to opt-in for different marketing offers. As with email marketing, staying vigilant and making sure your SMS marketer is not spamming is imperative to your campaign success and positive brand building.
We know that SMS reaches virtually every cell phone. But positive reception of your message not only depends on opt-in, but also tailoring that message to the right person. Next, you probably want to know the answer to the real reach quandary: How do you target? How can you make sure your SMS campaign will only reach the consumers you want?
Finding the right audience is critical. SMS marketers can define target audiences, just like standard display ad networks. SMS marketers should be able to narrowly target 18-21 male soccer fans, 14-18 females who love Hannah Montana, men and women 18-34 who make more than $150,000 per year, etc. Any SMS marketer worth its salt is continuously improving its audience profiles, making each market segment grouping more granular.
SMS campaign performance
Last year, a luxury car brand used SMS marketing to raise awareness of a new SUV model in conjunction with the new model's debut at the New York City International Auto Show. The brand wanted to target business professionals with an average household income of $130,000 in the New York metro area. The objectives of the campaign were to promote the new SUV's debut at the auto show, reach out to interested business professionals through news and content alerts, and drive those consumers to a WAP site for email registration and mobile wallpaper downloads.
This campaign is a great example of how SMS campaigns can perform as well as other forms of interactive media, email, search and display. The campaign's 1.5 percent clickthrough rate resulted in conversion rates of 16 percent for wallpaper downloads and 1 percent for email registrations, outperforming any other campaign the brand had executed in any medium -- ever. This tightly targeted, time-sensitive SMS advertising campaign not only drove consumers to the auto show and WAP site, it also provided the car brand with a new communication channel to opt-in consumers interested in learning more about the brand.
A low-cost, low-friction entry point
While there are other mobile marketing tools out there, they don't have the reach of SMS and don't work with all carriers and all handsets. The SMS medium elicits high audience response rates because of the lack of media clutter. Thus, in many ways, SMS is more effective; the consumer is receiving opt-in offers without a lot of other distractions, unlike search, where consumers are presented with multiple offers with every query. If you are looking for a better way to engage consumers in a targeted, exclusive, opt-in, medium with flexible reach, SMS may be the key.
Alec Andronikov is CEO of MoVoxx.