M3 Mobile Training

What You Need To Know To Be A Successful Digital Mobile Marketing Expert:

• How Mobile Works
• What Type of Businesses Are Use Mobile (Txt) Marketing
• What is the ROI on Mobile Marketing in General
• How Does an IC Make Money with Mobile Marketing
• M3 Mobile 360 Mobile Packages
• Custom Mobile Campaigns

Some of the considerations:

The golden rules to consider when building, maintaining and operating an opt-in mobile messaging list.

Stage 1: Building the opt-in list.

No company can simply buy a list of mobile numbers and start sending bulk text messages. This is spam.

Remember the mobile phone is a highly personal device. Mobile marketing requires an opt-in database – with explicit consent and reconfirmed consent from each recipient that they are happy to receive B2C communications to their phone. Failing to comply will damage brand reputation as well as undermining consumer trust in SMS.

Stage 2: How to get the opt in

The crux to building a quality list is finding the right medium and incentive to persuade the target audience to opt-in:

1. The medium may be a bill-board, print, TV, Web or mobile Web advertisement. In-store display, Display Ad etc.
2. The call to action - this is the inducement that grabs the consumers' attention and encourages them to interact. It may be a competition – these can be popular with consumers; a discount voucher; or promotion for free mobile content e.g. a free ringtone; or simply additional information.
3. Short codes are the common method of response – whereby the consumer texts a keyword to a special short number. Short codes are quite versatile, they can be charged at premium, normal SMS rates or (where operators allow) no charge.
4. An automatic response is triggered by the consumer's message to the short code this (i) sends the requested information, free promotion, confirmation that you've entered the draw etc and (ii) asks if the customer wants to opt-in for future offers or messages.
5. N.B. this does not need its own advertising campaign. Adding the call to action to an existing TV, print, Web and/or mobile campaign, not only saves money, it adds value to the campaign e.g. it makes a one-way bill-board, print, TV ad interactive.

Stage 3: Getting the best results

To get the results, messages do not just need to be opt-in, they need to be relevant and targeted at the individual. If the messages aren't compelling the consumer will not respond. If it is irrelevant, irritating or too frequent, they will opt out of future messages.

This requires the marketer to consider:

1. The Preferences of the recipient and how the list will be fine-tuned using demographic profiling, analytical tools and feedback mechanisms, including surveys and by taking note of which products, promotions etc have interested the consumers in the past.
2. The content of the marketing message – one of the benefits of SMS is the brevity, as a limit of 160 characters forces the sender to be precise.
3. The timing of the message. Time of day or year can influence response rates e.g. a promotion for a restaurant at lunch time or a special birthday offer or an event e.g. when the national team is due to play a match or following a relevant purchase.
4. The location of the recipient will become increasingly important as location-based services become available to marketers. Today LBS faces many hurdles, not least privacy concerns.
5. N.B. The beauty of the opt-in database is that it is that it is easily repeatable – communication of special offers, sales, or product can continue in perpetuity, the art is making each successive message more relevant and harder to resist.

Stage 4: Play by the rules

Industry associations such as the MDA, IBA and the MMA have helped to provide guidelines for mobile marketing. Industry regulators have also established standards – such as the PhonepayPlus regulations in the UK, which covers premium rate. But regulations and guidelines for text marketing remain fairly sparse.

Not only should messages be consensual and targeted, it should be simple for recipients to opt-out. If customers cannot reply to the message with "STOP", they will be suspicious of your motives.