Inside Mobile Marketing

That’s a lot of bluetooth-enabled phones in the U.S. installed base!  (Although it should be noted that the U.S.’ second largest Carrier, Verizon Wireless, has and still does cripple the data transfer capabilities of many of its bluetooth-enabled handsets. (OBEX File Transfer profile and or OPP - object push protocol) I believe Sprint has done this on a couple of handsets as well in the past.)  Thus, you would think this would have Mobile marketers drooling over the prospect of utilizing the technology as a marketing tactic a lot more than seen today. But we haven’t.

Yes, there have been a few high-profile bluetooth marketing launches in the past here in the States (SEE CBS and Land Rover) and companies like Kameleon Technologies and Filter-UK have built up some impressive Client rosters (they’ve been doing this stuff in Europe since the early 90’s), but I really haven’t seen or heard too much in the way of hard results. 

I would assume the take rates would be fairly low as this new technology can be a bit challenging for the average consumer.  For example, how many consumers walk around with their bluetooth set to “discoverable” to accept incoming pings?  I recall seeing some figures months ago (I think from the NPD Group as well) stating that most consumers don’t use bluetooth even though their handset comes with it and when they do use it, it’s overwhelmingly for use with headsets.

Certainly to make bluetooth marketing work you need to use it in the right venue - e.g. events, shopping areas, airports, etc.  You need to ensure the call-to-action is prominently displayed and easy to follow  (this includes ensuring the opt-in message that is triggered on the receiving handset is very clear as to what the user is “saying yes” to accept.  Also - avoiding blue-spamming is a very important consideration - most bluetooth marketing vendors are able to discern between users that have already participated in a specific campaign versus those that haven’t.   One last bit, the content being sent to a handset via bluetooth terminals should also be evaluated in any campaign as many phones have issues handling J2ME applications for example.