Have you ever texted a word to a 5 digit number on your cell phone? Maybe to vote on American Idol or to give your opinion to a company?
This is just one way that a company gets access to mobile numbers and can begin building a relationship with customers.
Perhaps you heard that AdMob (largest mobile advertising network) was just bought by Google. Based on the projections by Forrester, mobile advertising really hasn’t taken off yet, but according to a white paper published by Admob, more than 10 billion requests for ads were made in October, 2009. See Metrics page 6 – Ad Requests by Geography – October 2009
Wow. 10 Billion. And increasing exponentially every day. From a marketing perspective, that is a media that should not be ignored. Being a marketer, I should be all over this, right?
But I find something is stopping me from taking that first step. No, I haven’t jumped in yet. Not as a marketer. But not even as a consumer. Why?
My mobile marketing fears identified:
1) Getting spammed by the advertiser
2) Not having a way to opt out later
3) Getting the phone number sold by the adverster and getting really really spammed
4) Texts on my phone now are from friends and family, no ads…
5) That first text cost “regular texts costs apply” 10 cents or free or big bucks — what’s that mean.
6) Voting, who cares.
7) Will the coupon I might get ever be worth the pandoras box I open?
It’s like the restaurant that asked for my email for their frequent diner program, and now I get an annoying email every other day. I know I can opt out and probably will in a few more emails.
But my phone seems more private. Even the home phone now only rings when someone wants to get a donation or make a political pitch. When someone reaches us, they call our cells.
I am probably being backward, but I just haven’t had enough reason to make the leap. Maybe it will take one of my favorite retailers to make an offer I can’t refuse. I am close. I’ve been studying it from a marketing perspective, but how can I recommend it if I haven’t used it from a consumer’s perspective?
How about you? Have you texted an advertiser yet? Have you tested a mobile marketing ad campaign yet?
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Chris, believe it or not, mobile marketing in the U.S. is surprisingly clean. What I mean is that carriers in the U.S. have implemented very strict guidelines that advertisers must follow in fear of being disconnected. Unlike email or voice call campaigns, SMS campaigns must be approved by carriers and managed according to regulations imposed by the Mobile Marketing Association. If you’re curious, you’re welcome to dive into the MMA’s 135-page Guidelines here: http://www.mmaglobal.com/bestpractices.pdf
1) If you’re receiving unwanted SMS messages, contact your carrier and let them know you’re being spammed and you have no way to opt-out. These types of complaints help monitor SMS traffic and quickly stop spammers from sending any future messages.
2) If you’re texting in to a short code (5 or 6 digit number), that means that the number is likely being managed by a legitimate company which has gone through the appropriate approval process. If this is the case, universal opt-out keywords are honored and you should be able to opt-out more easily than email. Universal keywords include: STOP, STOPALL, and UNSUBSCRIBE. There may be more (we use about 10 different unsubscribe keywords), but those should work regardless of the campaign.
3) Subscribers are usually tied to an individual short code. For example, if you text in to 12345, you will only receive messages from that short code. MMA guidelines prohibit the transfer of phone numbers from one short code to another, even if they’re being used by the same trustworthy company.
5) “Standard messages rates apply” is attached to all material for compliance with MMA’s guidelines. This is to inform you, the consumer, that even though it does not cost anything to participate in the campaign, your carrier might still charge you depending on your plan. If you don’t have a text message plan with your carrier (say, AT&T), you will incur charges based on your contract and carrier fees ($.10/msg?). This is to help the consumer better understand what they’re getting themselves into.
6) Apparently 100 million people that text in to American Idol.
7) Absolutely.
I would highly recommend you research the industry a bit more before coming to these conclusions. SMS marketing is a really fun industry, and nothing like traditional marketing methods.
Also, in your post above, you talk about different parts of “mobile marketing”, which encapsulates quite a bit. There’s SMS (short message service), which are text messages; MMS (multimedia message service), which are data based messages like emails for ringtones and rich content; and there’s WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), which is browsing the internet from your phone. The statistics from Admob on 10b ad requests is primarily for the mobile web, where people are browsing the internet from their smart phones and are being served ads just like you see on your desktop.
If you have any other questions, feel free to get in touch!
Warmest Regards,
Vitaliy Levit
Vitaliy -
Wow! Great explanation and comment. You’ve taken my obvious ramblings of non-specific worries and succinctly put each one to rest.
Thank you!!
Chris
I bookmarked this site, Thank you for good job!
brandandmarket.com – go to my favorites!!!
Completely agree!
Users are scared when it comes to mobile marketing because of the Spam and virus threats. I’m open to new technologies and ideas. Even in that case, i prefer to stay away from few text campaigns because they make it easy to enter and tough to come out of the campaign. For me it should be easy as log in to a WAP page, check out the content and log out when i wanted to (It will be better if the site can recognize my mobile and provide the best resolution for my screen)! Or simply turn on my mobile Bluetooth to accept message over mobile bluetooth and turn off the BT to opt out of the engagement! (Here in Bangalore there is a mall called forum where we get message from a source called blufi from a company called telibrahma). And even mobeile games are best way to keep some one engaged with full control to the user (Few companies like indiagmaes, hungamaa, zapac etc are leading mobile games developers in India)
nope i am not tested it yet