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Feature: Mobile marketing is booming

Source: www.theidm.com (10 April 2008)
http://www.theidm.com

With over 2.6 billion mobile devices world-wide, mobile is poised to overtake television, PCs and cinema to become the "first screen," according to industry body the Mobile Marketing Association. Not too many years ago, it was the fourth screen.

Russell Buckley, managing director Europe for mobile advertising company AdMob and European vice-chairman of the MMA, says: "Mobile marketing offers marketers two crucial things - accountability and interactivity."

As a result, mobile marketing is starting to take off, in emulation of its equally-technology driven sister medium, online advertising. Indeed, the two media share much in common, with the mobile internet attracting a lot of attention from marketers right now.

The latest research by the MMA reveals that 90 per cent of Western Europeans now have at least one mobile phone, with an average of three handsets per household.

The research - published in January 2008 as the MMA's 2007 Mobile Attitude & Usage Study, also found that 15 per cent of the mobile users surveyed have already had some experience of mobile marketing, with Spain and Italy having higher than average rates.

On average, 41 per cent of the Europeans polled for the survey said they would be likely to opt-in to receive communications from companies and brands. A quarter - 24 per cent - say they are highly interested in having money-off coupons sent to their mobile phones, while 21 per cent would be interested in status alerts about accounts, purchases, or special sales.

Spanish and Italians more receptive

When it came to how receptive they were to receiving mobile marketing messages, 61 per cent of Spanish mobile users said they were either highly or moderately interested, while the figure was 53 per cent for Italy. By comparison, in the UK, only 35 per cent indicated high or moderate interest, and in Germany the figure was only 31 per cent.

Effectively, there are two types of mobile advertising: push, which includes SMS and MMS messaging, and pull, which covers ads on mobile internet sites and in videos that are downloaded.

Russell Buckley explains: "Push is interruptive and has to be permission based. But you have to remember that spam is what the consumer says it is when they get it."

Not in the mood

In other words, someone may consent to receiving marketing messages on their mobile one day, "but may not be in the mood for it another day. It's a very hard model to make work properly - and I speak as someone who has considerable experience in the market."

When it works, though, it can work extremely well - for example it is used by many major companies for Customer Relationship Management communications. As Buckley says wryly: "BA uses it to tell people that their flight has been cancelled - as happened to me last week when I was supposed to be flying in to Terminal 5."

Many marketers are still wary of dipping their toes into the mobile waters, says Nick Fuller F IDM, chair of the Direct Marketing Association UK's Mobile Marketing Council and a consultant with marketing communications company Jaywing.

Getting to grips with mobile

Fuller - who is leading the new IDM course, Getting to Grips With Mobile Marketing-- observes: "As a medium, mobile normally excites one of two opinions amongst marketers. Firstly, that it's exciting and its ubiquity means that it has to be in my plans. Secondly, that it's so new and there's such a vast array of technologies and legal requirements that it will have to be for tomorrow rather than today."

Fuller adds: "We want to help brand marketers and Agencies to understand and experience the medium so that they can both start to benefit from it today and also plan it into their long term strategies. Knowing the key audiences, applications and technologies will be key to the development of the medium and that is why our focus is on education."

One of the biggest potential pitfalls revolves around the fact that mobile marketing comes under different rules and regulations depending on what exactly marketers want to use it for.

Marketers are free to make voice calls to consumers' mobile phones without prior permission, unless the phone number is registered with a 'Do Not Call' list such as the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

However, electronic messages - such as SMS text messages, still by far the most common non-voice use for mobiles, or MMS messages - come under different and more stringent legislation, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR).

SMS needs prior consent

Under the PECR, based on a European Directive, companies and brands cannot send SMS, MMS or other electronic messages which have a marketing purpose to a mobile phone without prior consent from the phone's owner.

So to use mobile text messages as a marketing tool, consent must have been gained beforehand. This can be in writing, via a form on a website, in person or during the course of a voice call.

Alternatively, the consumer could have initiated the contact and indicated agreement to receive such messages (for example, by texting a number or shortcode they have seen on product packaging, a poster or print ad or in a mailer - see the Pedigree Petfoods Case Study, this issue).

Incidentally, the status of Bluetooth as a marketing tool has been in dispute for the last few years. The Information Commissioner's Office, which administers the PECR (and the Data Protection Act), had effectively banned Bluetooth marketing because the technology did not allow for the creation of an opt-in list of people who had agreed to receive marketing communications.

The ICO has now decided that Bluetooth is not covered by the PECR, so it now says Bluetooth is outside its remit. However, many mobile marketing experts feel that marketers must approach the use of Bluetooth with extreme caution, because of the possibility that a backlash against Bluetooth 'spam' might harm other forms of mobile marketing.

Most industry insiders, however, appear to agree that Bluetooth is acceptable when consumers are given clear warnings that they are likely to receive marketing communications if they enter a particular area, such as a 'chill-out' tent at a music festival, for example.

Mobile and Out Of Home media

Mobile devices are certainly useful when married to Out Of Home media (such as traditional posters, bus shelter ads, digital screens in shopping centres, railway stations or airports), observes Jonathan Bass, founder of mobile marketing agency Incentivated, who will also be tutoring on the IDM course.

But, Bass says, a growing and exciting use of mobile is to link it directly with the PC-based internet:

"I've seen marketers asking people to text their email address in, and in return they get sent a brochure to their PC. It's great if you see something on the move when you don't have a PC with you."

The other side of the coin is websites where visitors are asked to input their mobile numbers, so they can be sent a voice message, text message or music track. Such integration is common with the latest generation of 'Alternate Reality Games' which are increasingly being used as marketing tools, Bass observes.

For example, players who register to take part in an ARG where the aim is to solve a series of clues and work out the location of a hidden 'treasure' can all be sent the same recorded message or text at the same time.

Of course, there is also the mobile internet itself, websites which have been designed specifically to be accessed from a mobile device. Many people use the term WAP to refer to the mobile internet, but this is not actually correct. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) used to be the main technology used to create mobile internet sites, but there are now a number of other systems -- mobile operator 3, for example, does not use WAP for its websites, and nor does Apple's iPhone.

Having said that, right now, most marketers are sticking to the tried and tested. Mobile marketing expert Craig Barrack, founder of consultancy Mobile Networking, says: "Marketers are still running SMS text-to-win competitions. There are a lot of other technologies out there, but ultimately text is what consumers like to do and text is what consumers understand - near enough 100 per cent of us can do it."