T-mobile Bluetooth Marketing Campaign
Written on Wednesday, March 25, 2009
I've just come across a very interesting piece of news: T-mobile is trying out bluetooth marketing. Here's more from the article:
I am saying this because network operators already use other mobile marketing techniques, such as sms marketing, etc. and it clearly shows there's also a place for proximity marketing in there, as it provides them access to consumers they can't otherwise get to!
This all just goes to show that bluetooth / proximity marketing is not a replacement for other mobile marketing techniques -- that's exactly what T-mobile's move means to me.
Proximity marketing is a complementary tool in your mobile marketing toolkit, which you can use to do exactly what it says on the tin. Offer you the opportunity to convey your marketing message to people in a certain location, at a very low price.
Of course, other location-based techniques (e.g. using GPS) will soon begin to offer location-based advertising as a revenue generating source, but then again there's been a hype around LBS for a good few years, and they've still not really taken off. Who knows when they will? Also, I wouldn't expect this to be cheap for clients if/when it comes around.
Pretty good news for a Wednesday morning, wouldn't you say?
T Mobile customers could find themselves tempted into the latest deals via a new initiative.This is one of the first examples of proximity marketing campaigns, that I know of, where the customer is a network operator. And I think you will agree that it's very interesting to see a network operator realising the potential of bluetooth marketing.
It was announced this week that as part of a pilot scheme in six of its UK stores, the network will utilise the latest in Bluetooth technology to send out messages to passing consumers.
The firm's director of retail Andrew Coull explained: "We see proximity marketing as an innovative and more targeted way of interacting with our customers and we hope that they will also see the benefits."
Consumers may find that receiving such offers tempts them into an upgrade to one of the carrier's exclusive handsets.
I am saying this because network operators already use other mobile marketing techniques, such as sms marketing, etc. and it clearly shows there's also a place for proximity marketing in there, as it provides them access to consumers they can't otherwise get to!
This all just goes to show that bluetooth / proximity marketing is not a replacement for other mobile marketing techniques -- that's exactly what T-mobile's move means to me.
Proximity marketing is a complementary tool in your mobile marketing toolkit, which you can use to do exactly what it says on the tin. Offer you the opportunity to convey your marketing message to people in a certain location, at a very low price.
Of course, other location-based techniques (e.g. using GPS) will soon begin to offer location-based advertising as a revenue generating source, but then again there's been a hype around LBS for a good few years, and they've still not really taken off. Who knows when they will? Also, I wouldn't expect this to be cheap for clients if/when it comes around.
Pretty good news for a Wednesday morning, wouldn't you say?
Posted in
bluetooth marketing,
mobile advertising,
mobile marketing,
proximity marketing
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How does it work? Is it a text message? Does the consumer have a choice in whether to receive the message? Can they pick what types they want to receive? Is there an application required on the consumers mobile device?
We've been hearing of proximity for a while, and it's great the somebody is willing to try it.
Cheers,
Steve
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My mobile marketing blog:
http://3rdscreenmarketing.blogspot.com
I don't know as I share your enthusiasm, although it is interesting to see a carrier using Bluetooth in their retail stores.
The first thing that concerns me is the cost associated with enabling a location to be a Bluetooth hotspot. As I understand it currently you could do one of 3 things:
1) Buy hardware
2) Rent hardware
3) Integrate a Bluetooth delivery software into existing Bluetooth enabled hardware (e.g. digital signage, cash register PC, etc.)
I'm wondering what the average costs are for each option and how affordable it really is. I imagine as the scale grows, the cost is cheaper but even so would require an investment up front.
The question of affordability is also interesting as without a sense of the standard ROI on a Bluetooth campaign-- the opt-ins may be good but if a retailer like a T-Mobile store is looking for conversions to purchase/upgrade I will be curious to see how the costs/returns measure up.
In fact the very question of proximity marketing via Bluetooth is interesting. SMS fits neatly into a common user behavior, texting, and the costs are minor for the consumer. Depending on where in the world you are and what device you are using the support for Bluetooth content transfers, and the actual user experience varies widely. Without sufficiently compelling content and strong signage to alert users (and give instruction if necessary) it seems like SMS is still a simpler, more natural way to interact.
Lastly, you mention, and rightly so that LBS has been talked about for quite some time and yet hasn't taken off.
I imagine it's fair to say proximity marketing is a given moving forward, but the mediating technology isn't. As phones become more powerful, network speeds higher, and data plans continue to become cheaper over time (an assumption, but a fair one I think), I wonder what the long term role of short range wireless technology like Bluetooth and Infrared really is when it comes to proximity marketing.
The biggest three hurdles I see for Bluetooth are:
1) Device detection
2) Usability
3) Brand Awareness
Device Detection
At this point detecting the exact device a user is holding via Bluetooth alone can be challenging. With the other two technologies, a web user agent is simple to detect, and a carrier knows exactly which phone you're using, reducing the complexity of delivering the right content to the right phone.
Usability
All security concerns aside-- visibility, discovery, object transfer support, application installation, media support, and user interface all factor into the complexity of using Bluetooth at the moment. For an SMS I simply text. For mobile web I either use Wi-Fi (a technology I'm very familiar with) or I use my existing mobile network connection (e.g. 3G).
What can I get from Bluetooth that I can't get from the mobile web?
Which technology provides the more interesting/memorable brand experience? Which has the greater CAPACITY to do so?
If I have an unlimited data plan and a decent phone why bother with the extra steps and learning to use a new(er) technology in a new way?
Brand Awareness
Bluetooth has focused its brand identity around convenience-- "hands free" or "wireless". The idea of using Bluetooth to receive and share content is hardly a close or immediate brand association. This is clear when you look at how phone software implements Bluetooth, especially in the US. Europe is definitely farther along in terms of user comfort with using Bluetooth but...
Unless Bluetooth starts making itself simpler to use and really pushes itself as a content transfer and not just a wireless/convenience technology, I can see things like Wi-Fi and the future iterations of high speed mobile networks passing them by as the intermediary technology for proximity marketing because they are simple to use, consumer awareness is high, and its a natural part of the user's device usage behavior.
As you say it is nice to see Network Operators, all over the world, slowly realising the potential of proximity marketing.
As with all new technologies, in my opinion, it's up to us (proximity/mobile marketers) to produce the campaign mechanisms that are both beneficial to consumers (i.e not spamming everyone walking outside the store) and to the brand (i.e a decent ROI through this marketing tool).
In reference to your comment about this being the first such campaign, I have read about such campaigns taking place as far back as 2005 (Ornage, France) but also Fluid here in Greece has been running campaigns for Vodafone Greece since last year.
In Feb. 2008 we ran a series of campaigns in 20 flagship stores in Athens with really good results. We tried to make the service useful for consumers and brand.
One of the campaigns involved pushing traffic to the (then) newly revamped vodafone.gr website, in order to promote the new online bill payment service. This is one of the ways, I think, proximity can really be useful. While waiting in line to pay their bill in the retail outlet, customers were informed that they could instead be paying their bill from the comfort of their own home and with a 20% reduction. The next step would have been to send a (wap) link so they could pay online and benefit from the reduction on the spot. This was not possible because payment over wap was not possible.
We have used this technique to 'push' traffic to Vodafone Live! pages though. At a lot of concerts last year (Linkin park, Grand Avenue, MTV GR day, Athens Fashion week amongst others) and most recently for the premiere of a Greek film called 'Soula Ela Xana', we used a wap link sent over bluetooth in order to send users to a special Vf live page where they could download free content. We always try to set up a limited hotspot area asking users to come to it, in order to download content, compared to trying to cover a huge area (that reduces cost for the customer as well). At the latest event we used wearble Hypertags (approx. 2m range) worn by promoters who 'took' content to users in the cinema foyer areas.
These types of campaign, I think, will continue to become more and more prevalent as the marketing staff in these companies start to see the benefits of using these types of technologies. Vf live traffic was affected by these campaigns and that is why they are continuing to use this mechanism.
Some really interesting views, thanks for sharing guys!
@Steve: Though I don't know the specific details of the T-mobile campaign, I am pretty sure consumers do get an option about receiving the message. On confirmation they probably receive an image (e.g. jpg, gif, etc) containing the marketing message. I doubt they've employed an application for this campaign, as that's mostly useful for interactive services / campaigns, and this didn't sound like that.
I put up here all the interesting proximity marketing campaigns I come across, so if you dig around, you're (hopefully) bound to find some more interesting stuff.
@Matthew: Very interesting comment. Regarding cost / implementation, yes you're right it's usually one of those 3. Sometime in the near/far future I think there will also be a 4th option where you can simply rent advertising space in a bluetooth marketing network. Some companies have already started building their own networks.
The cost might seem as you say pretty large, but so is the cost of building *any* other marketing/advertising medium you can control (and thus also start renting out to companies).
If you take up proximity marketing to promote your own business (e.g. a shop), then yeah, it can bring people into your shop, and it will work for you, so it's worth the investment -- as long as you play it right and don't spam! However, a company that starts using this approach to advertise other businesses/brands can really take advantage of it, and stands to make a considerable profit from it, regardless of the initial investment. It is very appealing to sponsors too, because it is both 'innovative' (quotes in place because this depends how developed it is in each market) and combines measurability (through statistics) and also access to the mobile phone as a marketing target. Regarding standard ROI figures, I'm afraid I can't publish any for campaigns I know of.
Bluetooth has been massively gathering momentum. It's certainly not SMS, but ask any teenager today -- not only do they know how to use it, but also use it for things like dating and ad-hoc social networking -- they create their own pictures and send them out to people they want to meet. Yes, SMS is simpler, but Bluetooth is much richer and powerful -- not to mention the killer factor - free!
You might be surprised to know that the biggest inhibiting factor for regular bluetooth users is .. battery consumption. I share your views about certain difficulties that arise from using Bluetooth. (Mostly young) people still use it though, because it offers them something other technologies don't (yet). Colocation. At NO cost.
My point is, though it might not be for everyone, there certainly is a market for it out there. Bluetooth marketing (like any marketing, really) just needs to be targeted appropriately.
@Alex: I stand corrected, I was not aware of the Orange campaign, and though I'd vaguely heard about the Vodafone campaign I was not aware of particular details. Thanks! :)
You've mentioned some really interesting cases there, are you at liberty to share some more specific results from these campaigns (e.g. for some of the concerts)?
I completely agree with you though, as soon as more marketers start realising the potential of bluetooth marketing and mobile marketing in general, we will see a risein such campaigns. And I don't think that time is too far ahead of us, though the credit crunch is certainly taking its toll..
Giorgo thanks for your reply. I would love to share specific Vodafone results with you guys, but I'm unfortunately unable to do so due to confidentiality issues. What I can say is that opt-out response rates reached 75% in some cases. One important challenge, at least in Greece, is 'convincing' clients to invest in adequate call-to-action materials in the venues in order to maximise the ROI from their proximity marketing spend. What we have seen is that there is a clear correlation between response rates and awareness of users at each location.
I will keep you posted on future such cases and will share any data that is available.
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