3Ci, Taco Cabana and Calise & Sedei, the agency for the retail food chain, recently launched a mobile marketing campaign aimed at building a mobile database and testing the effectiveness of mobile marketing - and the early results show the immediate, positive impact of mobile! To build their mobile database, Taco Cabana took a two pronged approach over six days of promotion. First, a call to action was promoted at SanAntonio Spurs games asking fans to text in their vote for the best “kissingcam” couple and they would receive a mobile coupon for a free taco. Second, in store point of purchase promos called for fans to text in for a chance to win Spurs tickets. Taco Cabana then sent out a text message to the mobile consumers in their database, asking them to opt-in to the Taco Cabana mobile club and get a coupon for a free order of nachos.

An astounding 22% of the consumers were converted into mobile club members who will receive coupons on their mobile phones. In addition, they saw a 10% redemption rate on the coupons delivered during the promotions. Due to the overwhelming success of this test, 3Ci’s team is currently working with Taco Cabana to build additional mobile marketing campaigns that will
further build their mobile database and drive foot traffic to retail stores.

- Ainsworth

I sat through a great meeting yesterday with a direct marketing firm from Boca Raton. As I demoed our platform, we reviewed a couple of the firm’s ideas. A lot of direct marketing firms are dealing with e-mail or direct mail, which is a slightly different beast than SMS. There are particular ways to maintain conversions with mobile marketing, that wouldn’t apply for e-mail marketing. In addition, mobile marketing is about spending the time to build a database rather than simply catching and blasting opt-in messages.

This firm got the concept that many do not: Mobile marketing isn’t restricted to a stand alone campaign that can be monetized immediately. In fact, a well designed mobile marketing strategy will have always-on campaigns that support other direct marketing efforts. Your brand’s short code is equivalent to it’s URL. When I work with a client, this is one of the first concepts that I establish. Once your short code is live, you need at least one campaign that will run constantly and collect interested consumers who read your marketing material. Mobile activates traditional marketing in a way that websites cannot. Missing this concept causes a lot of brands to avoid mobile marketing because they aren’t quite sure how to monetize it.

Read the rest of this entry »

SMS Text News broke a report from SITA that mobile devices could save airlines over $600 million.  SITA’s report suggested that airlines use location based services to track users and send them message updates to guide them to their gate.

This is a really great statistic, but I see an issue: location based services are still in a primitive state.  That is not to say we don’t have the technology, but more that users are concerned about privacy.  Even the iPhone is limiting application developers to access GPS location in the the new 3G model.

I don’t think location based services are required for mobile to have this much of an impact.  This past weekend I made a trip to NYC using SpirtAir, which is notorious for delayed flights, especially with La Guardia.  My flight back was delayed 7 hours total, enough time that I would’ve enjoyed an early notification before sitting through the 2 hour check-in line.  Needless to say, there were several other passengers that were a bit more animated with their disapproval, and they were all granted free tickets.  

I think this all could’ve been prevented with an early notification to consumers via SMS.  British Airways has used SMS in a similar fashion after realizing that e-mail was useless within 24 hours of the departure time.  While the location based idea is useful, it carries a lot more variables than a standard SMS, which we’re all more comfortable with.  

- Ainsworth 

When the US mobile carriers established a ubiquitous system for sending SMS messages, they adopted a standard for end-users to manage the content they receive. As I’ve preached (here, here, and here), this is one of the main reasons that SMS has avoided the SPAM fate of e-mail. Unless you’re dealing with a newsletter, most e-mail SPAM does not have a clear sender or working unsubscribe options. On the e-mail front, SPAM filtering has become a “reactive” habit and, while most e-mail users are losing time, SPAM doesn’t have a measurable monetary penalty. Consumers pay for text messaging, even unlimited-messaging consumers so it is important to give them the correct methods to manage their subscription.

All US shortcodes must have universal keywords to receive help and to opt-out of a program. These keywords are designed to allow the user to receive additional information about a mobile campaign or remove themselves from receiving any additional charges and messages.

Stop, End, Cancel, Unsubscribe, Quit
Because users receive a standard rate fee for text messaging, they are more likely to complain about unwanted text messages. A properly structured initial message neutralizes complaints by giving users a clear and working way to unsubscribe. If a user texts a platform with “STOP”, the platform must prevent the end user from receiving any additional messages from that campaign. If the user is opted-in to several campaigns on the shortcode, an additional tiered response to clarify the correct campaign is acceptable; “STOP ALL” should opt-out the user for all campaigns.

Help
End-users should have clear information about the messages they are signing up to receive. A user who texts in “HELP” should receive a message back that includes:

Read the rest of this entry »

In my earlier post: 4 Mobile Ad Stats that will make you Think I discussed 4 key statistics that represent the success of SMS as an advertising medium. To support this article, I thought it would be important to mention two more key findings from the Limbo report:

5. In 3 Months the number of recalled advertisements rose from 78 million to 82 million. 
Limbo reports that the majority of growth occurred among women and those aged 25-34.

This is a significant statistic as the 25-34 year-old demographic has been notably difficult to reach for marketers. If mobile subscribers are able to recall seeing advertisements, it is also critical that they remember the brand.

6. 41% of those who remembered mobile advertising could recall at least one brand.

In total, this is a 20 percent increase from December 2007. Advertising is only as affective as the consumers ability to recall the brand. Although, women are the growing demographic, men are 10 percent more likely to recall the brand that was advertised. What is more significant is that the 25-34 age-group performed the highest. Marketers have tried to reach this demographic using the social networking world with little success.

One striking note in the report were the types of brands that were recalled the most. Mobile operators and mobile content providers were at the top of the list with a sprinkle of bigger brands (ESPN, AOL, Nike, Coca-Cola, etc.) in the long tail.

This is more a reflection of the volume of marketing traffic that is pushed by mobile content providers. Major brands have yet to embrace mobile as a 24/7 campaign tool, which hinders the exposure to consumers. As brands begin to incorporate mobile into their sponsored content campaigns or their own mobile campaigns, their brand recognition will increase.

- Ainsworth

I had been spending the past several weeks without an iPhone, and yesterday I felt a bit “out-of-touch.” I thought to myself: no one else was affected by my phone being stolen, and I’ve replaced it with a temporary standard-issue phone, so why the big deal? Then… my 3 year-old phone lit-up with my morning text message from IWantSandy. After painfully navigating through the interface I found my text message and wrote down my to-do list. That’s when I realized my phone wasn’t meant for email or text messaging.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new wave of the cell phone market has begun: the release of the iPhone SDK. While there has been a small market for mobile based applications, entirely new companies, some supported by KPCB’s $100 million iFund, will be spawned to produce iPhone supported applications. While the actual extent of this marketplace is still unclear, it still hits with the same sincerity that something is happening in the mobile world. I’d bet it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Mobile marketing and mobile content distribution functions at a more powerful level than electronic newsletter subscriptions. Undoubtedly, electronic newsletter subscriptions are key to maintaining close access to former customers, current customers, and future customers. At the touch of a button, businesses can easily deliver news to the e-mail boxes of subscribers. Therefore, users are receiving their content when you need them to, and not when they stumble upon it, many weeks later - if ever.

The truth is, those were valuable, back when users were subscribed to a select few lists and were more open to mass e-mails. Now users are opting out of these newsletters or driving them to their junk box; this brings new value to the RSS feed, allowing users to have yet another method to cleanly manage information they wanted to read while sparing their inboxes. While, the RSS reader is still increasing in value, it does not hit the key point of business marketing: reliably pinging your audience at the crucial moment - the tipping point.

Don’t forget: the iPhone has SMS!

Read the rest of this entry »