IMV28 : Mobile Marketing

The following is a transcript for IMV28 : Mobile Marketing. The original podcast is located here.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast brought to you by MindComet. And now, here's your host, Ted Murphy.

Ted Murphy:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo. I’m your host, Ted Murphy. And with me today is Jamie Wells, managing director of TCS Mobile. Welcome to the show today, Jamie.

Jamie Wells:

Thanks very much.

Ted Murphy:

Jamie, can you start off by telling our listeners a little bit about TCS Mobile?

Jamie Wells:

Sure. TCS is a promotional marketing agency, a focus on the mobile channel. We’re located in Westport, Connecticut. We have offices in Seattle, New York City and Fort Lauderdale.

Over the past six years, TCS Mobile has driven the awareness, adoption, and usage of mobile technologies in the U.S., including text, picture, video messaging, WAP, the mobile Internet, ring tone, mobile games, graphics, Bluetooth, mobile video, etcetera, both from the consumer perspective, as well as marketing channels in their own ring.

Our clients include traditional non-wireless brands such as Gillette, Unilever, Wrigley, to mobile content developers such as DA Mobile, Gameloft, Oasis Mobile, Airborne, as well as some of the carriers directly, doing work for them directly.

Ted Murphy:

So the mobile medium is really taking off, even though it’s really kind of still in its infancy in the U.S. What are some of the advantages of mobile marketing as it relates to advertisers or marketers?

Jamie Wells:

Well, for marketers, the ability to participate in what’s quickly becoming the medium of choice if you will for many consumers is very appealing. For your under 25 set, mobile has already emerged as the medium of choice. And the 25 to 35 year olds aren’t really far behind.

The great thing about mobile is that it truly enables our clients to get in deep with the consumer and have a one-on-one engagement. Wherever the consumer is day or night, at the time of the marketers or the consumers choosing, which is very crucial.

The mobile phone really is the one device that consumers have with them, you know, virtually 24 hours a day, making it a great complement for nearly every effort that marketers are currently out there trying to activate, TV radio print, online, etcetera.

And it’s important to recognize that mobile remains the only out-of-home interactive channel period, really making mobile the most effective channel to extend and enhance, you know, existing out of home marketing efforts, such as, you know, print, outdoor campaigns, guerilla marketing efforts, event marketing, and sponsorship.

Ted Murphy:

So in terms of a campaign that a marketer might put together, give me some examples of the ways that difference marketers are using mobile technologies and the different things that they may be able to do to reach out to the end consumers.

Jamie Wells:

Well, it’s a wide range. You know, typically a marketer may start with a simple text messaging campaign. It could be sweepstakes proposition or some sort of contest or interactive television or radio event, voting, trivia, that sort of thing. From there marketers will often build an opt-in list of consumers that are willing to receive further marketing communications, much like e-mail marketing.

And from there, it really depends on the brand. A lot of brands are going into the mobile web. That’s becoming very popular. Building out micro sites and executing mobile ad buys just in the mobile Internet as its own sphere.

Other marketers are taking a more youth-oriented approach, doing a lot of things in and around music and entertainment, everything from ringtone downloads, you know, complimentary ringtone downloads to in-venue text –to-screen. Things like that. You know, they’ll wrap their arms around what consumers are really passionate about.

Ted Murphy:

So in terms of the initial text campaign that you mentioned, when I’m texting out, how does an advertiser target that initial group to start building that list of opt-ins?

Jamie Wells:

Typically you have a large national client, big advertiser, right? So they’re spending a lot of money on network TV. What happens is typically the networks will offer them some sort of added value buy. We’ll just keep this sort of television example for a second.

So, for instance, one advertiser’s buying a lot of FOX. So maybe FOX is going to extend to them some promotional inventory when they choose to activate – let’s just say American Idol, since that’s obviously associated with text messaging.

If the client can build a promotional spot, usually with the help of several different agencies, and again, it can be as simple as, “Hey, would you like to win a trip to the finale to American Idol? Text the word, ‘Win’ to 12345 and you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to win a trip. Standard text messaging rates apply.”

Consumer then receive the message back to their handset after they’ve participated in the event and say, “Thanks so much for entering.” And then, and really from there the fun begins, right? Because then you can branch off into other offers.

You know, would you like to click this link and opt-in and look at this mobile website? Or would you like to download this free ringtone? Would you like to receive more information about this brand?

Well, all of these different offers, depending upon the sponsorship or the activation that’s employed, really depend on the marketer’s objectives. But that’s typically how it starts, with some high profile, mass media, highly appealing offer.

Ted Murphy:

Let’s talk about a smaller brand. How would a smaller brand, say a shoe manufacturer who wasn’t one of the majors – how would they utilize mobile marketing in part of their marketing mix?

Jamie Wells:

Okay. Well, let’s see, the shoe manufacturers. This is an athletic, like a sneaker company?

Ted Murphy:

Yeah. Let’s say a sneaker company.

Jamie Wells:

Okay.

Ted Murphy:

Let’s get crazy.

Jamie Wells:

Okay. So you have this sneaker company. And they’re probably doing a lot of retail specific promotions. That’s typically what happens, right? So they’re doing, you know, maybe for Foot Locker they have a special promotion they run around the back to school time period.

They don’t have any real media to spend. They just have their website. Maybe their running some online media and they’re not doing any national TV. Maybe their doing some print, some FSI local print, right?

So maybe for a sneaker company it could be as simple as in their print ad they’re running could be a simple call to action, which is text 'foot' to 12345 and you can win a new pair of our sneakers if it’s a sweepstakes proposition. Or you can get a coupon for 20% off these new shoes. Go to footlocker.com to redeem it or straight to our store retail.

Most of these promotions don’t live by themselves as pure mobile promotions. They’re usually part of an integrated campaign. Either it’s linked with an online effort, a print run, something along those lines.

Ted Murphy:

Obviously, a lot of our marketers are really into numbers and being able to track conversion rates and open rates and things of that nature. Talk to me a little bit about the type of data that’s available through a mobile marketing campaign. What type of penetration can I expect? Is there an effectively open rate for people or can you tell if they’ve consumed information? How does that all work?

Jamie Wells:

Most are pretty well trackable, to make up a word.

Ted Murphy:

Let’s call it tracktastic.

Jamie Wells:

Yes. Exactly. It’s really – it’s trackalicious. The reason why we keep emphasizing the one to one engagement is that because people rarely share their mobile phones. The MIN or the mobile identification number or what consumers call their mobile phone number is basically a user ID, right?

So we can track their activity based on that number. So we can definitely tell how often and what time of day they’re interacting with any number of campaigns and to what depth. So we know what pages they’re browsing on on the mobile web. We know how many times they’re downloading individual pieces of content, etcetera.

Now as far as benchmarks and what you can expect for success, you know, I can tell you what we’re seeing, what we think is a successful campaign or what we consider a program that’s under delivery.

Basically, if it’s an on air text messaging campaign or print driven text messaging campaign, a WAP, a click through, and an end coupon redemption all range in about 3% to 5% conversion or redemption, which we would consider to be successful.

Ringtone and wallpaper offers, mobile content offers typically creep a little higher. We’re talking about 7-8% conversion or really targeted campaign. And the highest take rates really, which is surprising to many are in venue activities. So if we’re running text-to-screen at a concert, we’re seeing participation rates at about 20% of the unique audience.

That’s just those that are participating. Now each one of the people is usually participating four or five times. But one of every five people in that venue are participating in the event, which is, I think, pretty astounding.

Ted Murphy:

For our listeners who aren’t familiar with text-to -screen, can you explain that concept a little bit?

Jamie Wells:

Sure. Well, text to screen is probably the most simple user generated content in a shared space. So typically what it is is a consumer will see a message and say, “Hey, you know, text your message to the screen.” It’s very simple. It is what it says. Text –to-screen.

Consumers will send a text message from their phone to a short code, which is a five digit telephone number, a common short code. So it’s common to all carriers. They send a text message into the code. It comes into our system where we’ll man it to make sure that it’s appropriate based on the brand’s content guidelines, which vary considerably.

If we decide that it’s appropriate for public consumption, we’ll approve it. It’ll then go through our system and we project it onto a screen in venue, which typically is also running full motion video, sometimes pics to screen, which is picture messages also to the screen.

It’s amazing when you see it live. I don’t know the age segments of your listeners. Anybody under the age of 30 or 25 who’s been to a concert legally, it’s basically what you do in between sets. And everybody’s doing this. It’s fantastic.

Ted Murphy:

I have actually been amazed to see text-to-screen used at a lot of smaller venues, even bars and smaller night clubs now where they’re actually using that technology inside the bars. So, I think it’s really starting to catch on.

Jamie Wells:

It’s catching on. It’s very successful, and it’s fun. Because what usually we do is after an event we have a log of all the different messages and we usually categorize them based on what they’re all about.

I would say that three quarters of them are about, you know, hooking up with the opposite sex, which I guess isn’t too surprising if it’s a night club. But it’s all like, “Hey, meet me behind the bar. I’m the guy with the funny hat,” etcetera, etcetera.

Ted Murphy:

So in terms of using mobile as a two way mechanism, what is the type of information that can be collected from a mobile marketing campaign? Are you able to get information – like demographic information that can then be used for other re-marketing purposes?

Jamie Wells:

Well, yes and no. It isn’t passed automatically. Typically, what we’ll do is, you know, for brands we’ll – and we’ve done this in the past for many brands-- is we’ll actually execute consumer profiling surveys on the mobile handset, which is very base level.

You can do text messaging based or mobile Internet based question and answer sessions designed to tease information about the consumer that marketers wish to have. We usually offer incentives to participate in these events. Ten will get you twenty was one campaign we ran for a client where we would give them $20.00 if they answer ten questions about themselves.

It can go on and on. The databases currently aren’t built so that if a user logs in and we see their mobile number we can just pull up instantly, know who they are and where they’re coming from. And we’re building the databases, but they’re not completely populated yet.

And they’re also not shared between marketers. So there’s not one company out there buying up all this data. Because of best practices, we’re really not allowed to share that data with other marketers. It’s in its infancy, but again, the best way to go about it is for the brand to go out and collect that data themselves through the mobile channel.

Ted Murphy:

But it’s definitely possible.

Jamie Wells:

Yeah. Absolutely possible. We’ve done it many times. We’ve done, I mean, everything from consumer profiling, polling intercepts. We’ve done price sensitivity studies for mobile content just, you know, typically right on the handset, consumer segmentation analysis. It runs the gamut of anything you can do online you can pretty much do on the handset for profiling.

Ted Murphy:

So what do you see as the future of mobile marketing? What are some of the latest advancements and where is it heading? What do the Japanese have that we don’t have?

Jamie Wells:

Well, I kind of think – I try not to go down that road because, you know, it’s a bit of a trap because every culture is so different. The Japanese have things, I mean, in another part of their culture that hopefully we’ll never have here in the U.S., some pretty scary stuff that I’m sure. I don’t know if you’ve seen their game shows, but –

Ted Murphy:

Oh, yes.

Jamie Wells:

Yeah. I mean, it’s fun to watch on cable, but I certainly don’t want my grandmother watching that stuff. So what’s next? I think that obviously with the expansion of mobile broadband you’re gonna see two things basically happen.

One, the mobile web is gonna really open up. This is the year that it’s really opening up. We’re already seeing mobile usage exploding, which is very exciting because the mobile web really opens up a lot more interactivity than you can get just from messaging.

And two, with mobile broadband comes multimedia, right? So we’re already seeing a lot more picture messaging this year than last year. We’re seeing a lot more interest in mobile video, mobile broadband.

Things like full track music downloads are becoming very popular. Audio streaming is becoming very popular. So it’s following the same basic path as the Internet did when broadband caught up to user interest. It’s happening a little faster because, you know, everything happens faster over time, right?

Ted Murphy:

Yeah. So what would you say are the top three things that marketers should know about the mobile marketing channel?

Jamie Wells:

Okay. Top three things. Well, I – you know, other than calling a trusted mobile marketing agency such as TCS and helping them with their campaigns, there’s a lot of things you need to keep in mind when trying to activate mobile.

The first is that the mobile channel is really very unique. So what we really tell our clients is you try not to just sort of shoehorn ideas or create it from other campaigns or channels into mobile. Mobile’s permission-based. It’s always on, always near, has its own set of rules. And it really needs to be treated as such.

The second thing is its an incredibly personal medium. And again, every mobile marketing communication, every message you send out needs to be truly valued by the recipient. You can’t really say the same for any other sort of medium, you know.

If you get a direct mail piece and you don’t want it, you throw it out. It’s not a big deal. Mobile is different. And, you know, marketers often forget that consumers will really drop anything they’re doing to answer the phone if it rings, you know.

So just sort of reminds me of the – there’s a famous survey that BBDO did last year that showed I think something like 14% of consumers have interrupted the sex act to answer their phone. So, when you put it in that context, what you’re pushing out better be valuable to the consumer or they’re gonna be really upset and really disenfranchised when they’re reading that message, right?

So the third thing is that obviously that the space is, you know, quick moving and evolving, right? You know, what’s gospel today will be outdated tomorrow. So it doesn’t mean that everything I just said will be outdated in a few weeks. What it means is that you need to really pay extra special attention because it’s moving so fast.

For example, I’ll give you a couple of examples of how quickly the mobile business is moving. About a year and a half ago, mobile video was a dream, right? It was – nobody really was doing it and there wasn’t any mobile video enabled handsets in the U.S. market. It was just sort of a pipe dream.

Then Motorola launched the Razor, which has a video player on it. And now pretty much everybody has video on their handset and it’s become a reality. And it didn’t take very long to do. I’ll give you another example. Last November everybody in the industry knew, they knew that if you were gonna launch a successful mobile application you needed two things.

You needed carrier support from, you know, support from the wireless carriers. And you needed to charge the consumer something, either a fee for downloading or a subscription fee, right?

Everybody knew that. That was the truth. Then all of the sudden Google launched their map, their mobile mapping application, right? Without the support of wireless carriers, completely free. And, you know, just like that the rules changed. And now it’s a completely different paradigm.

So to sum it up, original, respect the privacy of the consumer, and you know, keep your eyes open all the time really are the three keys I could give anybody who wants to get started in the mobile marketing space.

Ted Murphy:

Well, Jamie, I really appreciate you coming on the show today and talking a little bit about mobile marketing. If you guys have any questions about mobile marketing, you can always leave us a voicemail at (866) 206-4461 and we’ll try to answer that question on one of our future shows. Jamie, thank you for coming on this show and I hope you have a great week.

Jamie Wells:

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

Announcer:

For more information on this week's topic, visit http://www.InternetMarketingVoodoo.com. This podcast has been brought to you by MindComet, the Relationship Agency.

[End of Audio]

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