Written on Friday, August 28, 2009
The past couple of months I have not been able to keep you as up-to-date with the latest updates in the mobile marketing field as I would have liked. Please believe me when I say, however, that I am doing my best to put as much time as possible in this blog.
Your responses, and the connections in the mobile marketing world I have made through here, are invaluable, and have also led to some meeting some good friends. I can only hope that in a few months time I will be back on a daily basis. Until then, I just wanted to state, on the record, how grateful I am for your e-mails.
Anyway, reading through the major news of late I came across Pizza Hut's latest sms marketing campaign for promoting one of its newest products, the Hershey Dunkers. But here's the main bits from the article:
Quick-service restaurant Pizza Hut used mobile to generate buzz about its new Hershey’s Dunkers offering and built a mobile database of consumers to remarket to.
Calls to action ran on Cox Media's cable network asking viewers to text the keyword HUT to short code 269411. Consumers who texted in were entered for a chance to win a Pizza Hut pizza, once a month, for a year straight.
Obviously, up to here, it sounds just like your average sms marketing campaign, and you might be wondering why I'm bothering.. Well, for once, I am glad to see big brands keeping up with putting out new mobile marketing campaigns.
This means that mobile marketing is moving / has moved (take your pick) past the trial phase, where we were seeing each firm usually do one or two campaigns, then stop - and wait. But now that the big names in the field are putting out new campaigns every couple of months, that, for me, is a certain indicator that mobile marketing has become ordinary practice.
Also, what was impressive about the campaign, was what it all comes down to: its numbers.
Ms. Simmonds said that in just two weeks the campaign has received more than 2,000 opt-ins and 54 percent moved on to double-opt-in.
Pizza Hut was faced with the challenge of trying to find a way to make its new product launch stand-out from all of the other offerings being launched by competitors in the same market.
Consumers who texted in received the following message: “Congrats! You are NOW entered 2 Win a free 1 topping pizza every month for a year from Pizza Hut! Winner
notified via phone call on 8.23.09.”
Participants were then sent a confirmation and a chance to double-opt-in: “Reply YES Now for 10 more entries to WIN & to get Xclusives from Pizza Hut. max4msgs/mo. std txt rts apply. Reply YES Now!”
The final message said, “Success! You are subscribed! STOP 2 quit. HELP 4 help. Std msg chrgs apply. Look 4 exclusives on your Mobile Phone!”
Not only is the response rate very good, but more importantly, the second opt-in percentage was also very high, which means that it was pretty well targeted, and the campaign also probably led to a good number of conversions.
Anyway, it's pizza time around now, so time to go. :) Till next time guys..
Posted in
mobile marketing,
sms marketing
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Written on Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Another great service is a store locator, that helps consumers find the location of the shop they want to visit in seconds -- very useful i'm sure you agree, in crowded high-streets or huge shopping malls.
The consumer could simply
browse the list of shops on his/her mobile phone, or
search for the shop in question (e.g. send an sms with the name of the shop and his current location/post code, or use a mobile phone application that also knows the consumer's current location). The consumer would then keep the map on their mobile until s/he reaches his/her destination.
In a simpler, more limited, form, the store locator could be substituted by a map or floor plan, that could easily be stored(even for future use) on the consumer's mobile phone.
This is almost too easy to implement -- you walk into a
shopping mall and see a poster with: 'text map to XXXXX to receive the mall map on your mobile via MMS'. Or you get prompted to turn on your Bluetooth in order to receive the map. I believe however that, though simple, it is still unused.
Of course, advanced proximity marketing systems, that are also aware of the consumer's current location could also project this location dynamically onto the map, adding in an LBS element, and making for a much more useful service.
- Proximity marketing campaigns for products utilizing e-coupons, mobile games, contents and media content (images, video, sound).
Obviously, and perhaps needless to say, you can also run content push campaigns, i.e. sending via Bluetooth for example a promotional message to everyone with BT turned on. This is a great way to reach the widest possible audience, but you do run the risk of spamming everyone, as I have pointed out above.
- Track Customer Movement Patterns
I really love this
proximity marketing application because it is so simple, completely unobtrusive, private & discreet, yet hugely useful.
With a
Bluetooth Marketing System installation, it is fairly straightforward to track consumers' movement patterns anonymously. Let me elaborate, with a bit of background.
Each mobile phone Bluetooth transmitter (and bt transmitter in general) is identified by a unique address, which is no way correlated with the owner's mobile phone number.This makes it possible to create an anonymous 'profile', identified solely by this
bluetooth adress. Unless the consumer somehow chooses to share his/her personal information - such as his/her mobile phone number - with us, there is no way we can otherwise retrieve it directly.
So, imagine a mall/high-street covered with a
bluetooth marketing system installation. If this is sophisticated enough (and provides coverage like a
bluetooth network), you can build a database of consumer appearances in each shop / mall area / high-street shop / etc. and by using an appropriate algorithm analyse the movement patterns and see whare people go first / most, or how they move from section to section / shop to shop.
The same idea, at a smaller scale, can obviously be used withing large stores, such as super markets, where shoppers' movement patterns are almost a science of its own -- i'm sure enough of you out there know what I mean -- and be able to track which aisles people go to and how they move generally within the store.
Of course, with bluetooth the sample might not be 100% representative , but with most newer phones now equipped with bluetooth, and practically every consumer owning at least one mobile phone, all you have to do is give them a decent incentive for keeping their bluetooth turned on.
Whatever the cost for the supermarket manager, I'm sure this kind of information would come in pretty cheap for them.
Posted in
bluetooth marketing,
mobile marketing,
proximity marketing
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Written on Monday, August 10, 2009
Today's brainstorm of ideas is about mobile marketing campaigns in shopping malls/high-streets, and shops in general.
I've put down a number of ideas that I've long had in mind, and would love to see applied somewhere in the world soon. (I'm not claiming none of these has ever been applied -- this is just a summary of what you could do with mobile marketing in such a setting).
Note: this started out as one post, but I've now split it in two because it turned out too long. Part 2 coming soon..
Perhaps one of the most obvious applications for proximity marketing in malls/stores/etc, is using mobile coupons (mCoupons) in order to attract passers-by inside the store, by publicizing offers to them.
mCoupons work a number of different ways, using a number of different mobile marketing techniques, ranging from sms marketing (but people would have to sign up first giving you their number), to mobile internet marketing (where you would publish the offer on a relevant page and then use internet marketing techniques accordingly), to in-game mobile marketing, etc.
Now, some would say at this point that what proximity marketing has to offer in comparison to the aforementioned approaches is that you can reach everyone in range of your system, without the need for them to initiate the interaction -- and this is true you can reach everyone that has bluetooth on, for example. The question is, do you really want to?
This is a common mistake that's easy to make (frankly, this also the main reason why proximity marketing is sometimes 'misunderstood' by the consumers) -- let me explain why by painting this picture: imagine walking through a mall/high-street and receive an ad message on your mobile phone for every single shop you walk past -- obviously not everything interests you, and not everything is relevant. You get the picture, right?
That's why it is important, even with proximity marketing, to let the consumer initiate the interaction (i.e. run opt-in campaigns, rather than opt-out). This way you will probably end up with less recipients for your message in total, but with a dramatically higher percentage of potential conversions, because your message has now become both targeted and relevant. Also, and perhaps more importantly, you don't end up spamming everyone else that's not interested.
So, proximity marketing does offer the ability to reach passers-by, but I would advise that you still let them decide and indicate to you that they are interested. Once they do, mCoupons are ideal because they are portable, stored on the consumer's most personal electronic device, in a multimedia form, and very direct.
There is a certain type of shopper that goes into the store already knowing what it is they want to buy. These shoppers would usually have to go inside every shop in a mall (or high street) trying to find what they need.
A proximity marketing system installation (or similar mobile marketing service -- implementations range from sms marketing to bluetooth marketing, etc) could come to fill this need, by providing the shopper with the ability to quickly browse each shop's catalog using their mobile phone, or even better search for the product(s) they need using the appropriate keywords, so as to retrieve the list of stores with the product in stock.
- Polls / Questionnaires/ Quizzes
Malls already frequently run a number of quiz campaigns, often hand out questionnaires, or run polls to get consumers' views on certain subjects.
Turning these mobile has plenty of advantages, including a richer interaction, a more direct and a more personal approach.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, it makes data entry and analysis much much simpler tasks and also allows for dynamic statistics, which could be very useful in adjusting the campaign in real-time.
Finally, because this is still relatively new, I have seen such approaches boosting participation rates, even if only at the beginning of the campaign.
That's it for today, hope you enjoyed it -- part 2 coming soon...
Posted in
bluetooth marketing,
mobile marketing,
proximity marketing
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