A Thought Process for Mobile Marketers

March 17th, 2009 The Insider Posted in Mobile Advertising, Shortcode Marketing No Comments »


I created a simple thought process to help marketers new to the Mobile Channel add some structure to their mobile marketing planning.  While not perfect by any means, the process does highlight the importance of aligning your marketing objectives with how your customers might interact with your “mobilized” brand/service.  Click on the link below to access the PDF.

mobilethoughtprocess

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Mobile Marketing and the Super Bowl commercials

February 2nd, 2009 The Insider Posted in Mobile Advertising, Shortcode Marketing No Comments »


First off, GREAT game!  I tried to keep track of the commercials that featured a mobile component.  Here’s what I caught during the game.

1. Approx 6pm EST:  SPRINT re-ran its not-so-new NFL mobile campaign in which users viewed a call-to-action to TXT a keyword to Sprint’s 77777 shortcode for more information.

 

2. Approx 7:20pm EST:  Cars.com showed a man in his car viewing the company’s website on his “smartphone” before walking into a car dealership to negotiate for a new car (at least it was implied).  While no call-to-action to visit the mobile site and/or text message was displayed, I found it refreshing the commercial creators chose to display the interaction with the website via amobile handset.

 

3. Approx 7:43pm EST:  Monster.com encouraged users to enter a contest by texting “Fan” to 24421.  Users received an SMS with an embedded link in it taking them to mobile internet page where users could provide information to to join in on the fun.  I must admit that the mobile internet page was pretty well designed.

 

4. Approx 7:44pm EST:  United Way asked users to text “Fit” to their shortcode – I have to be honest I missed the shortcode because the call-to-action text came and went WAY TOO FAST.  I can’t imagine that too many people were quick enough with their mobiles to interact with this ad.

 

5. Approx 9:28pm EST:  The NFL encouraged viewers to vote for their game MVP choice via NFL.com on their PC or web-enabled mobile device.  NOTE the call-to-action was verbal – NO text display.

 

6. Approx 9:35PM EST:  - NFL re-ran SAME add as above.

 

7. Approx a few minutes after the game ended:  NFLShop.com encouraged viewers to call 1-866.NFL.5959 to pick up some Pittsburgh Steelers gear. To its credit, the commercial did show the complete numeric number above the mnemonic version in the initial scene, but then only showed the mnemonic version through the majority of the ad.  I wrote about this last month – the use of letters to represent numbers prevents mobile users with QWERTY keyboards from dialing or texting the correct numbers.  

 

8. Approx a few minutes later:  NFLShop.com re-ran the same ad, but I could have sworn that I did not even see the complete numeric phone number this time only the version with the mnemonic for NFL (1.866.NFL.5959).

So there it is, certainly not a lot, but then again Super Bowl advertising has always been more about building branding awareness versus asking for a direct response.   We’ll certainly see more next year.

 
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AT&T sends “Idol” promo via bulk SMS. Double standard indeed.

January 14th, 2009 The Insider Posted in MMA/Carrier Compliance, Shortcode Marketing No Comments »

The NYTimes reported yesterday that AT&T Wireless sent out a “significant number” of SMS messages to its 75 million customers, urging them to tune in to the American Idol season premiere on Tuesday night.

The AT&T spokesperson quoted in the article said the message went to subscribers who had voted for “Idol” singers in the past, and other “heavy texters.” He said the message could not be classified as spam because it was free and because it allowed people to decline future missives.

Besides the obvious SPAM question, the issue as I see it, is that we have a double standard in play for Carriers versus marketers when adhering to established mobile marketing guidelines.

Wireless Carriers, AT&T included, strictly enforce adherence to their own mobile marketing rules and to the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) Best Practices Guidelines – which clearly state that users MUST opt-in to receive messages from a marketer regardless if the messages are standard rated or free-to-end user (FTEU).  (Yes, Carriers can waive opt-ins at their choosing, but in this case they are promoting a TV program that they happen to have the exclusive text messaging voting rights to – seems to be a disconnect.)

So what gives AT&T the right to send out messages to their subscribers to promote a television program via unsolicited SMS – especially to those subs who may have never voted via SMS for the Idol show a.k.a “heavy texters”?

Many people in the Mobile Industry will interpret this action by AT&T as a double standard fueled by greed. Expect some “eyebrows” to be raised in the blogosphere and at upcoming MMA industry gatherings when the Carriers are present.

NOTE: I do support marketers having the ability to communicate with participants via SMS if the users opt-in and are clearly aware they may get marketing messages in the future from a brand.

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Disconnect between use of mnemonics and QWERTY keyboards

December 31st, 2008 The Insider Posted in Mobile Advertising, Reach, Shortcode Marketing No Comments »


Marketers should be cognizant of the rise of the QWERTY keyboard found on both Smart and Feature phones as the keyboard’s layout negates the practice of using only word-based mnemonics to represent shortcodes and phone numbers in marketing materials.

WHY? With QWERTY, the standard 12-button keypad and its corresponding letters that have long dominated both landline and mobile phones is displaced with a new layout and thus QWERTY users are unable to tap out mnemonic call-to-actions if the numbers are not displayed as well. TRANSLATION – QWERTY users are precluding from participating in campaigns.  Now it may not seem like a big deal, but I have seen some examples where major U.S. companies have made this mistake in their advertising (e.g. Text CHASE –  Another example would be just displaying 1-800-FLOWERS without the corresponding numbers).  

BEST PRACTICE:  marketers should always display the numbers near their mnemonics.  For example, Text CHASE becomes Text CHASE (24273) and Call 1-800-FLOWERS features (1-800-356-9377) next to it.

Interesting Side Notes:

  • The NPD Group in Q3 noted, “Mobile phones with a QWERTY keyboard experienced the greatest year-over-year rise in sales; 30 percent of handsets were sold with this feature in Q3 2008, versus just 11 percent the year prior.”
 
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T-Mobile announces marketing program changes. Marketers quietly rejoice.

November 19th, 2008 The Insider Posted in MMA/Carrier Compliance, Shortcode Marketing No Comments »

T-Mobile contacted its messaging Aggregator partners earlier this week to announce the following changes to their off-deck messaging campaign requirements:

1. TMO used to require the phrase, “Other Charges May Apply” to be present in a couple of outgoing campaign messages and marketing materials (e.g. website) – now the Operator will adopt the widely accepted “Standard Messaging Charges Apply” – (assume abbreviations accepted as well)

2. TMO used to require that recurring Standard Rated messaging program (e.g. daily weather alerts) have a double optin message present (e.g. to receive your weather alerts, reply Yes).  Now the widely accepted Single optin process is accepted (e.g. user texts keyword to shortcode – this counts as optin.)

3. The maximum price point for single-optin interactive TV programs (e.g. vote now for your favorite dancing star) has been raised to $1.49 from $1.00

4. Live, real-time Customer Support assistance must be extended from 8AM – 8PM EST – this adds 2hrs to the previous 8-6PM EST requirement.

To the outsider, these changes may elicit a “so what?” response. To mobile practitioners these changes have a two-fold impact:

First, they reduce costs (except #4) for marketers. Significant effort is required by engineers to ensure their messaging platforms comply with the ability to deliver carrier-specific messages. It also lessens the amount of compliance review time required of marketers.

Second, and arguably most important, is that these changes (except #4) signal a willingness by a major Carrier to “play nice” with the other Carriers to help standardize a set of cross-industry, cross-Carrier mobile program regulations. This bodes well for all in the Mobile ecosystem as the biggest knock on the industry is fragmentation. Fragmented Carrier messaging just got some help. Thanks T-Mobile.

 
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The Verizon Wireless 3-cents backlash – Questions remain

October 10th, 2008 The Insider Posted in MMA/Carrier Compliance, Shortcode Marketing 1 Comment »


So now that pretty much everyone in the Mobile industry has heard that Verizon Wireless (VZW) has told its U.S. messaging Aggregators that starting November 1st 2008, they will be charging them 3-cents for every standard and premium MT (outgoing message) that goes over their network for off-deck programs – let’s take a closer look at the situation:

  1. SPRINT has long stated that it would charge 3-cents per MT, but has yet to enforce the policy to date. Will they wait to see what falls out of this VZW news OR follow suit?
  2. T-MOBILE has charged for MT messages for some time now, but their charge is definitely less than 3-cents and may feature tiered-pricing depending on volume of messages. Will this change?
  3. AT&T to my knowledge has never charged for off-deck messaging program MTs. Will they follow Verizon’s lead OR wait out the maelstrom?

Other questions…

MMS – Most of these aforementioned Carriers haven’t determined what their Standard or Premium messaging rates will be for MMS programs. Not that there are a lot of MMS programs running in the U.S. today, but will this 3-cent rate be tacked on to these forthcoming delivery charges? Hell, those companies trying to get MMS-MO programs off the ground (aka User Generated Content) may have to hold-off even longer now.

FTEU – I have written about this topic previously– the industry is still waiting to see what the economics will be for running these types of programs in the future. VZW states that 3-cents will not apply to FTEU programs, but how will the 3-cents charge influence the per message fees that will be associated with FTEU?

Senate Oversight Committee – Will Senator Herb Kohl and his gang of anti-trust committee members throw this development into the mix of items to investigate? Probably will, especially if other Carriers follow suit.

SMTP SMS – will companies start to seriously look at sending SMS via SMTP to consumers as viable option? I would think that the Carriers will anticipate this move and enhance their filters to watch for it and potentially block it. An argument can also be made that the SMTP option will make things worse for wireless subscribers due to SPAM and lack of MMA/Carrier compliance regulation.

Direct to Carriers – will this force large enterprises like Google, Yahoo, Visa, etc,etc that are sending millions of messages on a monthly basis to negotiate preferred rates with the Carriers or Aggregators?

PREDICTION

With the industry backlash that is swirling on the internet now, I am predicting that VZW will pull back on enforcing this policy until further notice. They will need some time to listen to ideas/pleas from other ecosystem players before moving forward. Heaven forbid they do go forward with this and they start losing subscribers to other Carriers because their subs complain of not being able to use ChaCha or vote for their favorite dancing star because the program provider can’t afford to support VZW.

 
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Adding context to SMS usage in the U.S. – from a Mobile Marketer’s viewpoint

October 3rd, 2008 The Insider Posted in Reach, SMS, Shortcode Marketing No Comments »

Nielsen Mobile has garnered quite a bit of press – including mainstream coverage – of their recent survey results regarding the amount of text messages an average wireless subscriber sends per month.

From CBSnews.com... “For the second quarter of 2008, U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month, according to Nielsen.”

“…The surge in text messaging is being driven by teens 13 to 17 years old, who on average send and receive about 1,742 text messages a month. Teens also talk on the phone, but at a much lower rate, only making and receiving about 231 calls per month. The report even suggests that tweens or kids under the age of 12 are also heavy text users, averaging about 428 messages per month.”


WOW! That’s quite a lot of text messages, however a couple things are worth noting as a Mobile Marketer:

  • If you look at data from either comScore/MMetrics, Nielsen Mobile regarding the percentage of U.S. subscribers that actually send at least 1 text message within a month, than these aforementioned numbers are essentially generated by approximately 50% of the total wireless subscribers in the U.S. (Note: Jupiter Research states that approx 62% of wireless bases uses text messaging)

Just 6% of teen mobile users responded to a poll or contest via short code–i.e., voting for an “American Idol” contestant–in the past month, slightly higher than the overall population (4.5%) but still not a critical mass. Even fewer teens responded to a text-message ad (1.6%), in contrast to the 2.4% of overall mobile users. And just 1.5% of teens responded to an offline ad that directed them to text a short code in.

  • Also — VeriSign’s wireless aggregation business stated that A2P, such as news alerts, ring tones, promotional video clips, and enterprise messages sent to mobile users rose sharply in Q2 2008, from approximately 186 million messages in Q1 2008 to approximately 249 million (A2P) messages in Q2 2008, an increase of close to 33 percent. NOW, Verisign processed a total of 52 BILLION messages in Q2 2008 – which would mean that less than 1% of these SMS being sent were A2P or marketing-based (in some sort of fashion)
The good news is that all of this supports the fact that text messaging is a legitimate medium that more and more of Americans are embracing. The challenge now is for Marketer’s to find ways to encourage texters to participate more often in their mobile programs.
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Uh-Oh! U.S. Senate antitrust panel investigating rise in text messaging rates

September 10th, 2008 The Insider Posted in MMA/Carrier Compliance, SMS, Shortcode Marketing 3 Comments »

According to an article on REUTERS, Senator Herb Kohl, the chair of the U.S. Senate’s antitrust sub-committee, sent a letter to the “Big” four U.S. mobile phone companies (ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless) on Tuesday (Sept 9th) asking them to explain what he said were a doubling in the price of text messages in three years.

Kohl, noting the four companies served more than 90% of U.S. mobile phone users, said the cost of sending or receiving a text message had doubled since 2005 to 20 cents on all four carriers.

“What is particularly alarming about this industrywide rate increase is that it does not appear to be justified by rising costs in delivering text messages,” said Kohl.

“Also of concern is that it appears that each of companies has changed the price for text messaging at nearly the same time, with identical price increases,” he wrote. “This conduct is hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace.”

Kohl asked the four companies to explain why the price of texting had risen, and how the price of texting compared with sending e-mails or making telephone calls.

Props to reporter Diane Bartz for this story! Nothing like a Senate subcommittee to stir the pot and place the U.S. Carriers on notice ;-) . I am not well versed on how these sub-committee processes work so I won’t comment on that angle.

However…..On the Carrier side of the business, perhaps these price increases are being used to ‘influence’ subscribers to sign up for a recurring messaging bundling where revenue recognition is greatly enhanced?? Are these higher prices designed to ‘milk’ the increase in SMS traffic all of the Carriers have experienced year over year??

While text messaging functionality may be ubiquitous on today’s U.S. installed handset base, not everyone is using SMS nor is every wireless sub signed up to a text messaging plan. Mmetrics/comScore peg the number of active (sends at least 1 message per month) at around the 50% mark.. other analyst firms come in around that figure as well. Yes, frequency of use does differ across demographic profiles e.g. Gen Y are heavy text users -72% text at least monthly according to Forrester Research. PLEASE ALSO KEEP IN MIND that the overwhelming majority of the text messages being sent are Peer-to-Peer (P2P) versus Application-to-Peer (A2P) aka Mobile Marketing programs.

Regarding a messaging plan – I have seen where Jupiter Research estimates that 2/3 of all wireless subscribers belong to some sort of text messaging plan. (I’d like to confirm with each U.S. Carrier what they actually see)

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Virgin Mobile USA hires off-deck mobile program audit firm – joins rest of the pack

August 29th, 2008 The Insider Posted in MMA/Carrier Compliance, Shortcode Marketing 1 Comment »

Virgin Mobile USA recently communicated to its various mobile aggregators that they would begin auditing off-deck mobile marketing programs (i.e. shortcode-based programs).

They will look to the audit shop, Wireless Media Consulting (WMC) to manage the audit process on their behalf. WMC also manages the off-deck auditing for SPRINT. To date, Virgin USA has not issued any formal documentation around their proposed audit policy.

With the FCC hovering in the background, the U.S. Carriers are certainly doing their best to police their own off-deck mobile marketing/commerce programs as all of the major Carriers now utilize third party program audit firms. And while the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) continues to try and establish a set of cross-Carrier industry standards via their Consumer Best Practices guidelines, the major U.S. Carriers still have not adopted the guidelines as their de jure “LAWS’ as each major Carrier has issued addendum’s to the MMA’s guidelines. These addendums are essentially enforced by the audit firms each Carrier has contracted with.

As I’ve blogged about before, this is part of the reason why Mobile Marketing – at least from a program execution standpoint – is confusing and at times exasperating. Ensuring your mobile marketing program is compliant with the MMA guidelines, plus say 4-5 subtly different sets of Carrier rules is taxing on human (QA, account managers, engineers, etc.) and technical resources – especially when the individual Carriers make sudden, unexpected changes to their policies (as they have been known to do).

Quick note on the audit firms: program auditing is a niche industry that has recently grown to prominence within the U.S. Carrier-Aggregator-Marketer ecosystem. It is NOT a perfected science yet, as the audit teams have the tough task of educating their employees on the current set of “rules”, keeping up with ever-changing executions of 3rd-party programs and maintaining a fair and balanced interpretation of the many “grey” areas found within the many sets of policy guidelines we as an industry strive to adhere to.

 
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Free-to-End-User (FTEU) Mobile Messaging Programs – why the delay?

August 6th, 2008 The Insider Posted in MMA/Carrier Compliance, Mobile Advertising, SMS, Shortcode Marketing 2 Comments »

The Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) recent update to their U.S.-focused Consumer Best Practices document (SEE HERE) has added additional language pertaining to Free-to-End-User (FTEU) messaging programs. These are essentially programs in which the consumer does NOT incur ANY charges (e.g. 20 cents in many cases if consumer does not have messaging plan) for the delivery of program-specific messages to their handset. Advertisers/Marketers would subsidize the delivery costs for the messages in their program.

The promise of FTEU messaging for Advertisers/Marketers is that they can increase their campaign participation rates because they can promote to cost-sensitive consumers that their campaigns are indeed Free (MMA states prefix of “Free Msg” can be used in outbound text messages) and the programs will require only a single opt-in mechanism (e.g. consumer sends keyword to shortcode to participate).

To date, the only major U.S. Carrier that is supporting FTEU mobile programs is Verizon Wireless. The other major Carriers may claim they do on a case-by-case basis, but it’s my understanding they have yet to launch any off-deck programs. To boot, the only off-deck FTEU programs that I am aware of running on Verizon Wireless are SMS only and Charity-related (aka mobile donation programs – e.g. UNICEF).

So what’s the hold up? One of the major hurdles to overcome is the ability of the wireless Carrier’s existing billing systems to process FTEU messages. Generally speaking, all messages sent through Aggregators for off-deck marketing programs are either tagged at a Standard or Premium rate and are processed accordingly by the Carriers. Technical changes need to be made by both parties – especially on the Carrier’s side.

In addition to technical enhancements, I suspect the Carriers need to map out the business processes for these FTEU programs. At a high level, the current process for off-deck messaging programs works like this: The Carriers receive messages via their Aggregators. These messages are “tagged” as either Premium (if they carry a charge) or Standard Rated. In either case, the Carrier is responsible for billing the consumer and/or debiting the user’s message allotment if the consumer has a messaging plan. For Premium programs, the Carrier will send the Aggregator a record of successful billing attempts and will pay the Aggregator their negotiated share of revenue. The Aggregator then pays the Marketer their share of revenue. Everyone is happy.

For Standard rated programs, the Aggregator more often than not simply tallies the number of messages processed via their gateways to the various Carriers and charges the Advertiser/Marketer the pre-negotiated messaging delivery fees. (NOTE: I am aware of only one major U.S. Carrier that currently charges their Aggregators for Standard rate messages (MTs only) once a specified threshold is hit. Another major Carrier has stated it is well within their rights to charge for Standard MTs, but has yet to enforce this.)

The FTEU business model poses some interesting challenges and questions. A possible scenario will have Advertisers/Marketers negotiating FTEU message delivery rates with their Aggregator (assume the Carriers will have special rates for Aggregators as well for these programs). Unlike the current Standard rated process, the Aggregator may be forced to reconcile these FTEU messages with the Carriers especially if the Carriers are charging per MT and/or monitoring the delivery of these messages on their end – all of which requires manpower and system changes.

QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE: what happens when Advertisers want to run FTEU programs that establish a 2-way dialogue with a consumer – who will pick up the tab for messages sent by consumers (MOs)? What happens when Marketers start inserting advertisements in their FTEU messages and the Carriers want a cut of the advertising revenues?

SIDE NOTE: I am aware that one of the major Carriers is working on their FTEU business model now and we would hope to see something from them by the end of 2008.

 
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