Mobile Marketing Trends 2009 - Brad Beckstrom

Are you short of any mobile marketing ideas to use in your client campaigns ? You want to get some insight into what works and what does not ? You want to see statistics on mobile activity (albeit in the USA) ? This presentation will give you some good food for thought.

Brad Beckstrom is the founder and Managing Partner of ApolloBravo a Marketing + New Media company. Very much like his presentation on mobile marketing opportunities for 2009.

Like the following points - very true statements

1. Slide 2 - We are moving from a world of impressions to a world of engagement
2. Slide 4 Mobile Demographics - Text vs Email vs Taking pictures using mobile phone
3. Slide 16 - Customer Loyalty

Shrewd Businesses Using Text SMS in Economic Downturn

SMS marketing is proving just the tool for shrewd businesses look for innovative new media strategies to keep themselves ahead of the game during the economic downturn.

SME’s feeling the pinch are searching for ways to cut marketing spend without compromising results. It’s now more important than ever for businesses to improve efficiency, reduce waste and produce targeted responsive marketing campaigns and digital mediums such as mobile are proving the ideal solution ensuring much needed return on investment.

Below are 6 key marketing objectives where Mobile Marketing can shine for any business.

1) Direct Response Advertising
For businesses feeling the pinch return on investment is the key for ensuring profitability. It’s now more important than ever to ensure advertising produces results and costly advertising campaigns may be great for raising brand awareness but are not always the best option for businesses looking for quick sales and ROI. Targeted bulk text campaigns to a qualified database coupled with a strong call to action can prove powerful in reaching impulse buyers at just the right time to entice a purchase. The key to the direct response lies with the fact people carry their phones with them wherever they go and therefore there is no more powerful way to reach people than by their phone and with 75% of people reading their texts immediately the direct impact can be huge. Statistics provided by the Mobile Data Association (MDA) found that response rates for mobile are 4 times higher than other direct marketing mediums such as DM and Email and at only a few pence a text and no production costs a simple text message equates to a fraction of the cost.

2) Customer Retention Marketing
Anyone with a qualification in marketing will know that long term clients are the most profitable. It’s now more crucial than ever to ensure that businesses retain the customers they already have. Keeping customers will not only save businesses money but will make them money. According to a report by The Logic Group, loyal long standing customers account for over 50% of a company’s annual sales, they are also higher value customers happy to pay premium rates of around 30% to 50% more per transaction. For this reason a CRM program is crucial and regular communication via new media techniques such as email and mobile is a key player in helping maintain communication. However, of course no one wants to be bombarded with endless SMS marketing campaigns but a friendly personalised offer or promotion at just the right time will do no harm to your relationship and could provide just the push you need to increase sales.

3) Viral Marketing
Viral marketing includes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on marketing messages to others and with virtually the entire UK population owning at least one mobile phone, it’s little wonder that mobile communication along with the web is a key viral marketing channel.

With people looking for bargains, text is proving more powerful than ever. Texts are the ideal viral marketing tool capable of reaching much further than initial recipients alone. Good offers and promotions are often shared amongst friends eager to spread the word of a good bargain. If businesses send out tempting offers and promotions then it’s only human nature that people will want to share them and it couldn’t be any easier or convenient to pass on a good tip to a friend than via a quick text. Also, people genuinely like receiving texts from friends, with a whopping 94% of texts being opened and read which offers great opportunities for marketers.

4) Integrated Marketing
Mobile works best when integrated with other larger campaigns and therefore it’s important for it to be integrated into all marketing communications material such as newsletters, websites, e-marketing, POS, Outdoor, TV and radio in the same way a telephone or email address would be included. This gives customers and prospects another medium to get in touch, which many may view as easier than phoning or emailing. A quick text and people can easily register their interest in a product or service. E.g “Text BROCHURE + your email to 60777” All inbound opt-in details are stored in your online account for further contact.

Examples of this include businesses such as holiday and car companies that advertise heavily on television, radio and print, a punchy short code, is easy to remember and quick to respond to.

5) Lead Generation
So the question is how can marketers obtain good quality leads at a fair price? The tightening economy is sure to put lead generation tactics in the spotlight as businesses search for ways to generate new leads. Tactics such as Mobile Marketing enable businesses to build their own opt-in database of contacts at no extra cost, simply by publishing it on all marketing communications material. This is a much more practical way of operating than buying in cold call data from a broker. Displaying a Short Code should start to be general practice for every keen ROI business who will use mobile to generate warm leads to prospect to. For example “Text HONDA to 60777 – for details on latest Honda.”

6) Measuring and Tracking Results
During the tough economy it is more important than ever for businesses to implement marketing strategies that are trackable and measureable. There is no point investing in advertising if it’s not properly monitored. It’s important to track where sales are coming from then analyse the statistics and drop what’s not working in favour of what does work. It doesn’t cost anything to monitor where people heard of a business and SMS text promotions such as 2 for 1, free entry texts and buy one get one free are perfect for monitoring due to easy visual or coded redemption.

It’s also easy to monitor other aspects of text campaigns, such as how many texts are opened, bounce backs, unsubscribes and click through rates, all of which also need to be accounted for when monitoring campaign success.

Mobile Marketing set for Growth
Although mobile marketing strategies are still unfamiliar to a vast amount of SME’s, a recent survey by O2, predicts that mobile marketing is set to grow by 150% over the next 5 years as marketers seek a more targeted approach to their marketing campaigns. Mobile marketing firm www.txtlocal.co.uk have witnessed firsthand the growth in mobile marketing and agree that the trend is set to continue. Txtlocal MD Darren Daws comments that “A fraction can be spent on mobile marketing campaigns compared to other marketing mediums and yet the response from mobile can be much higher. SME’s in particular need to ensure they generate a good return on their investment and low cost and targeted new media tactics including mobile will continue to be a popular choice.”

In conclusion as marketing budgets are streamlined, marketers need to push their case for value for money from advertising and marketing spend and moving more towards more measurable, ROI-focused media such as Internet and mobile marketing. Mobile tactics such as short codes and text messaging should be integrated into larger marketing campaigns as an aid to increase potential in terms of sales, lead generation and campaign measurability.

Massive ROI’s: How Mobile Coupons Create Value

Planet Funk, an apparel retailer with stores in California, Texas and Colorado, was facing the daunting task of bolstering its sales through what many had said would be the worst holiday shopping season in decades.

Planet Funk took a look at its primary demographic of young, hip consumers who are never without their cell phones, and decided that mobile marketing was the appropriate channel to move forward with. By combining both brick and mortar storefronts with an online presence, Planet Funk needed something that would bridge the gap and work efficiently, while also being as simple as possible to use and highly trackable.

Planet Funk, who has a long history of using digital marketing very effectively, decided that mobile marketing, and specifically mobile coupons, would be the right choice. The retailer enlisted the help of mobileStorm, a digital marketing company with a long history of success, to aid in the development, distribution and tracking of a full-scale mobile coupon campaign. MobileStorm had been providing email campaigns for Planet Funk for quite a while using the mobileStorm 4.0 digital marketing platform, so the familiarity of the platform extended to the new mobile coupon system that was recently integrated.

In a matter of days, with the infamous “Black Friday” looming ahead, Planet Funk and mobileStorm compiled a mobile coupon campaign based on discount tiers, which offers more savings dependant on the total purchase amount at coupon redemption- $10 coupon for spending $100-$249, $30 coupon for spending $250-$399, and so on. “Discount tiers always have a successful psychological effect on consumers,” said Jared Reitzin, CEO of mobileStorm. “Most of the time they past the first tier in spending with the first few things they buy, and having the second and third tier really helps them go to the next level. You start thinking about buying just one more thing so you can get that next discount.”

To accomodate a fast launch, mobileStorm secured the keyword “Pfunk” for branding purposes, and utilized a shared shortcode to bring the campaign to fruition as quickly as possible. The campaign officially launched on November 21st, 2008, and utilized a variety of call-to-actions to drive traffic to the campaign. Signage was placed in all Planet Funk’s stores that showed the shortcode and corresponding keyword, and prompted a coupon as incentive to join the Planet Funk “mobile club.” In addition, Planet Funk pushed its mobile coupons via its Website, blog and the Websites of the malls in which Planet Funk stores are located. The key to the campaign, however, was the fact that the discounts could only be redeemed via the mobile coupon.

“It’s always better to use an array of marketing mediums simultaneously,” explained Jason Stith, Director of Sales Engineering for mobileStorm. “With an inbound mobile coupon campaign, you are not only delivering coupons and trying to generate revenue via coupons, but you’re also incentivizing your customers to text in and receive future offers. It’s very important to continually build your SMS database and coupons are a great aid in doing so.”

By limiting the end-discount to the redemption of the mobile coupon itself, it creates a massive incentive to sign up for future communication. In Planet Funk’s case, signing up for its “mobile club” was all that was needed to redeem the savings via the mobile coupon. Planet Funk benefits by adding mobile consumers to its all-important mobile database, and the consumer benefits by receiving the savings via mobile coupons.

By the conclusion of the campaign on December 31, 2008, Planet Funk realized they had created over 20% of their total December revenue via the mobile coupon campaign powered by mobileStorm. Roughly 2,000 coupons were generated, with a redemption rate at an impressive 91%. Even more impressive was the fact that Planet Funk realized an ROI at a staggering 377% based on the relatively low-cost of the campaign. Furthermore, 15% of those that redeemed the coupon opted-in to receive future mobile campaigns, which helped build Planet Funk’s mobile database.

“I don’t care what industry you are in or what you are selling, a 91% redemption rate is huge,” continued Reitzin. “Have we seen it before with mobile coupons? Yes, but it’s not a completely common occurrence.”

Using a form of digital marketing that is highly effective with their core target customers, Planet Funk was able to identify and develop a new, highly profitable marketing channel for its all-important holiday season. From just one inbound mobile marketing campaign, Planet Funk achieved amazing results, and now plans to expand their mobile strategy in the future.

“Mobile is a natural fit for our customers and being able to give them such coupons - both in store and online - that can be instantly received on their cell phones is a no-brainer,” said Kitri Lomaka of Planet Funk. “The results we experienced proved this and we look forward to continuing our partnership with mobileStorm to drive future mobile campaigns. We now realize that mobile marketing can not only be affordable for companies like ours, but also wildly profitable if handled the right way.”

Mobile coupons, and mobile marketing in general, has continued to prove itself in situations where ROI, targetability, and overall trackability are of the most important aspects. In a down economy when every penny spent on marketing needs to be accountable, no other channel out-performs the mobile channel.

“In June of 2008 before things really started to go downhill, Hitwise came out with a report showing that 6 out of 10 coupon searches online were for major brands,” explained Reitzin when speaking of the future of mobile coupons. “What this means is that people still want to stick with their brands even in a recession. They are going to actively seek out the brands they can’t live without, and there is no better way to get a discount than through a coupon. Furthermore, mobile coupons are digital, so not only are you saving the environment but your coupons can be saved, stored and accessed at anytime. Coupons have been around since the old Sears catalogues of the 1800’s because they are a successful promotion. Their evolution to the mobile phone is only natural and they will be around a long time to come.”