Inside Mobile Marketing

That’s a lot of phones with removable memory slots! Of course the real trick will be educating consumers on actually purchasing these cards and using them, but that’s up to smart merchandisers and to some extent companies like SanDisk to figure that out. I can’t imagine the Carriers are thrilled with the concept of pre-loaded memory cards as it potentially cuts them out of application download revenue share and data usage fees, but nevertheless the concept has potential to spur consumers to utilize their handsets for more than just phone calls.

There have been companies (SEE ROK Media) that have loaded content onto mobile memory cards in the past, but the uptake to my knowledge has been negligible in a retail scenario. A good sign that this concept might work is that the practice of “sideloading” content, especially music, has had very good traction - especially outside of the States. Consumers, primarily youth, have discovered the cost savings associated with downloading and sharing music while bypassing their Carrier’s networks.

Marketers, especially those targeting Generation Y consumers, might start experimenting with mixing mobile content such as music or games with utility applications (e.g. the Kellogg’s Exercise reminder) that showcase the brand being promoted. Rest assured that their will be unique advertising opportunities within the memory card as the developers have significant control over the card’s actions.

Media companies dabbling in Mobile today may view mobile storage cards as yet another distribution outlet for their video content. I can certainly envision NBC packaging a special “OFFICE” SD Card filled with short snippits of the show’s best bits.

Interesting, but certainly not a shocking prediction given the rapid adoption of smartphones here in the U.S. and the increase in promotions from the Carriers for low-cost, flat rate data plans. However, there are a couple of things to consider when thinking about whether or not Mobile Email will be a next BIG thing that marketers will need to pay close attention to with regards to optimizing the consumer experience on a handset.

First of all, email users will need a data plan of some sort and Nielsen Mobile recently pegged the percentage of consumers with an unlimited data plan at 14%. The research firm also stated that 95 million (37%) subscribers paid for mobile internet access either as part of a subscription or transactionally and that 40 million subs were active users of mobile internet (used at least once in a given month).

There is an important distinction to make within the aforementioned numbers in that they don’t represent (at least I don’t think they do) those consumers accessing email via emails readers from say Good or Blackberry versus their mobile browser. It’s safe to assume that most corporate users are accessing email via a reader versus a browser, but as MMetrics noted, the smartphone penetration rate is close to 7% within the U.S.- This number isn’t exactly huge, but there is data that supports that these users are heavy users of email via their devices.

From an overall addressable market, MMetrics stated that 13.1% of wireless subscribers had used email on their phone during a specific time period and Nielsen Mobile stated that eMail was the second most visited category (on the mobile web) after Portals. Again, were not talking huge numbers, but significant enough to warrant a closer look at the consumer experience.- (NOTE: as of May 2008 Yahoo! had 14 million unique visitors to their mobile mail page according to Nielsen.)

I did some quick testing of some HTML emails via my Yahoo! email account on Nokia’s S60 browser, Palm’s TREO 750W browser and an Openwave browser via Verizon’s popular LG VX8300 handset. On each browser HTML gets stripped out and the rendering is not easy on the eyes to say the least. I even tried GMAIL on the Treo browser and some of the hyperlinks within an HTML newsletter were rendered inactive. On the reader side, trying to read HTML emails via a Blackberry reader or Palm reader produced equally frustrating results.

From a marketer’s perspective if you are targeting an on-the-go business crowd or a demographic that utilizes smartphones, it may not be enough to assume that handset OEMs, browser developers, internet email providers and email reader vendors will utilize tools and transcoding tricks to properly render your campaign emails properly. Your message may be lost and deleted before the consumer ever has the chance to re-read your email on their PC.

That said, there are some companies such as Pivotal Veracity that offer to optimize your emails for the various device types and email readers. (This company has some interesting comparison shots of how html emails render across a handful of different devices including Blackberry, Palm and Windows Mobile.)

Quick Anecdote: when attending industry events such as CTIA or MMA or presenting to advertising agencies it is always fun to watch a decent number of users fumble around on their smartphones when you ask them to participate in a demo via SMS. They have gotten so used to sending short emails back and forth between other smartphone-toting colleagues that TXTING is now an afterthought.

Okay.. with only around 15% (much higher for iPhone and Smartphones users) of total U.S. subscribers regularly accessing the internet from their phone - the “reach” numbers for marketers are fairly low with regards to rushing to build a mobile presence. The obstacles to getting more consumers to use their phone for browsing the internet are well documented. Putting aside for a moment that the U.S. has approximately a 26% 3G handset penetration rate and approximately 14% of subs have unlimited data plans (according to Nielsen Mobile)… and small screen sizes, lack of content, etc.etc.. What about browser usability?

Could the current browsing/data display methods be a significant hindrance to adoption as well?? You bet. So what’s on the browser horizon?? No one other than the representative from the speech recognition company vlingo really talked about future browsing paradigms. He said his company was working hard on using speech to search for information on the mobile, but reiterated that at the moment they struggled to find technical “hooks” into browsers to enable speech-powered browsing.

I’ll dig around to find what might be out there , but in the meantime there is an interesting 3D data visualization project I am watching out of MIT called E15. The gentleman behind this project is starting to tinker a bit with 3D browsing on the iPhone. ALSO - with the advancement of GPS-enabled handsets the ability to get location relevant information while browsing may turn out to be very interesting as well. Stay tuned.

– NOTE: optimization of web content for the small screen was discussed and so was transcoding. While you can argue that this either hurts or helps the mobile web cause, the issue I’m still interested in is the browser and how it displays information and how the mobile user interacts with it - these two “methods” are simply adapting to the current paradigm.

While these numbers are impressive and attest to the impact smartphones sales have had on various players within the Mobile Ecosystem, it is important for Mobile Marketers to remember that smartphones (especially Blackberries and iPhones) still represent a small percentage of the overall handset market in the U.S. and especially the World. Recent figures from M:Metrics/comScore peg overall smartphone penetration within the U.S. at around 6-7% of the total wireless subscriber base. On a global basis, RIM and APPLE combined only make up at best 1+% of the overall wireless subscriber market.

According to Gartner, Nokia is still king of the global smartphone market with 45% share of market and RIM follows second with 13.4% and Apple comes in third with 5.3% as of Q1 2008.

That said, marketers can certainly build campaigns that are targeted to and optimized for the Blackberry and iPhone toting crowd, however the greatest reach - especially with a younger demographic - still resides in targeting the lower to mid-range handsets in the U.S. from Motorola, LG and Samsung.

DEJA VU:

I swear at times I thought I was actually sitting in the 2007 MMF event as the same overarching themes and comments emanated from the various presenters. Here’s a few popular ones:

1. “We really thought it was going to be the year of Mobile”. No doubt this will continue to be said during the next couple of years as well.
2. Multiple sessions were dedicated to Mobile Banner Ads and Mobile Internet sites and how to drive traffic to them whereas SMS/MMS Advertising/Marketing was ONLY given a 15 minute slot with 4Info’s CEO Zaw Thet. This strikes me as a bit out of whack as Mobile web browsing doesn’t even come close to the reach and consumption numbers that SMS possesses currently. (M:Metrics pegs mobile web consumption in the U.S. around 13.7% and SMS usage around 48.6%)
3. Mobile education still is required at the Agency and Brand level – Admob’s Tony Northcutt did make the important point that education is especially important at the junior planner and strategist levels as many top marketing executives have already bought into the idea that Mobile will be around for the long haul.
4. Mobile metrics still need to be improved – “we still don’t know who our visitors are,” said WWE’s Rene Rodriguez referring to this company’s Mobile internet destination pages.
5. The U.S. Carriers need to share more demographic information with advertisers. Fair point, but the Mobile Social Networking panelists said they are finding consumers are proving to be very willing to share personal information when asked. It’s worth a try.
6. The Mobile Ecosystem is still too complex to navigate. Lots of players, each with a niche and each wanting a piece of the dollar bill spent on a campaign. Don’t worry, consolidation will continue to occur and processes will get straightened out over time.
7. Success with Mobile comes in the form of an integrated campaign. Standalone mobile programs will struggle due to lack of reach, consumer awareness and budget.

QUESTIONS:

1. Where were the M:Metrics and Nielsen Mobile analysts to place the mobile marketing efforts into some overall context as to what mobile users are actually doing – what the trends are, actual reach of technologies such as xHTML browsers?
2. How come the MMA did not have a representative discussing the highlights of their 2007 Mobile usage study? There is some good data in that thing.
3. For a mobile marketing forum – there was VERY LITTLE use of mobile as a direct response mechanism to poll the audience during and after sessions or allow participants to trail demo programs
4. How does T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless get away with NOT having representatives on the main Carrier discussion panels?? These guys claim they want to build better relationships with the MMA and the various industry players and yet they skip the largest North American gathering. I don’t get it.

PLEASANT SURPRISES:

1. Sprint announced via a representative during an LBS roundtable that they would begin selling access to some of their demographic information for location-based services. I am still however in the dark as to what this data may entail (e.g. sex, area of country versus city, income levels, etc..) and how it may be priced. Nevertheless it’s a good sign though from a major Carrier.
2. AT&T’s Jordan Berman stated in his slotted panel discussion that his company would be launching its self-service ad-serving solution for its MediaNet properties. Stay tuned.

NEED CLARIFICATION:

1. Verizon Wireless’ Stephanie Bauer had a slide deck that stated that VZW had 8 million mobile internet subscribers. I’m curious to find out exactly what that means…i.e. are there only 8 million VZW subs paying for a mobile internet data plan? If so, that would represent a small percentage of their overall subscriber base AND I would venture to guess a large proportion of the total are business users with smartphones subsidized by their employers.

I attended last year’s NYC event and must say it was worth the trip to the Big Apple. The abundant networking opportunities with the who’s who in the industry goes without saying, but I was more impressed with the slew of lil’ nuggets of “insider” information provided by most of the sessions/speakers. For example, the co-founder of Zumobi Dr. Ben Bederson talked about how his research at the University of Maryland revealed that the majority of handset users preferred operating their devices with one hand versus two. Coca-Cola Executive Mark Greatrex said Sprite sells 10 billion bottles per year. Scanbuy’s CEO Jonathan Bulkeley said 2D barcodes can trigger 26 actions on a mobile phone (e.g. SMS)

This year’s event is again filled with accomplished Mobile entrepreneurs and seasoned marketing & advertising executives from some of the Nation’s top companies. Here’s what I’ll be listening for:

• What is the MMA doing to exert more pressure on the Carriers to minimize their continued practice of creating new and ever-changing rules that ultimately supersede the MMA’s Best Practices Guidelines? (This is perhaps THE most frustrating issue within the Mobile Marketing space as the mad scramble to appease individual Carriers and their program Audit firms places costly demands on vendors and marketers alike to change systems, promotional materials, etc.)
• Will more brands step up and disclose their actual campaign results. (Look, everyone knows that the numbers will be low and in most cases disappointing, but we have to remember that we are in an experimental phase with this nascent channel. We can learn from each other’s efforts.. that’s how this is going to work for all of us.)
• Will the vendors, publishers, marketers dealing in the mobile advertising space talk about things OTHER than banner ads this year. It was a bit ad nauseam last year and according to eMarketer messaging advertising is expected to account for 88% of all mobile ad spend in 2008. I do see that 4INFO and Quattro Wireless have some executives on the docket discussing SMS advertising and “other” opportunities.