| Growing Up |
| Wednesday, 23 June 2004 | |
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New Media Age - More brands are starting to use mobile marketing, and not just the youth-orientated ones you might expect, reports Dianne See Morrison. Whiskas cat food, William Hill the bookmaker and Novartis the pharmaceutical company don't seem like brands that would have much in common. And that's the point. Once thought to be the exclusive haven of text-crazy teens, mobile marking is growing up, and mainstream brands like Whiskas, William Hill and Novartis are eager to tap into that medium that marketers say is still one of the most targeted, tailored and engaging.The move towards the mainstream has been happening for at least a year now, according to mobile marketers and text messaging infrastructure firms that help companies get their campaigns up and running. According to the Mobile Media Monitor, a recent survey commissioned by mobile marketing firm Enpocket, 81% of all UK phone owners now use SMS. While it'll come as little surprise that nine out of ten in those 18-44 age bracket have used text messaging, the Monitor found that almost two-thirds of 55-64 year olds had also used texting. Moreover, within the 18-24, 25-34 and 35-44 age groups, the percentage of consumers taking part in SMS promotions was virtually the same, at around 20%. Enpocket senior VP Peter Larsen notes that while some marketers the company works with are still youth focused, its more the mainstream clients such as Orange, William Hill and US TV station Fox, that are more interested in creating campaigns that appeal to a wider audience. "These big brands don't discuss doing a youth market campaign," he says. "They say: let's do an SMS marketing campaign with a number of components each targeted at a different age group." As SMS campaigns target a broader audience, firms have found that mainstream audiences aren't as forgiving as the youth market. In the early days, while younger age brackets were more open to receiving straight outbound advertising from their favourite brands as well as text-and-win campaigns, older audiences have been more wary of these tactics. On Request This distinct shift in mobile marketing has been the near-death of outbound SMS campaigns. As Larsen notes, "With older age groups, the communication really needs to be consumer-initiated." Anders Hakfelt, UK MD of mobile marketing firm MindMatics, agrees. "Older demographics are much more suspicious of something appearing on their phones," he says. "A pull campaign works much better with them." Indeed, for virtually every recent mainstream SMS campaign, the norm has been to ask customers to opt in before sending them any promotional materials. Typically, campaigns are accompanied by flyers or posters that include a shortcode that consumers can text to receive additional information. William Hill, for example, put up posters in 1,500 of it's betting shops with a shortcode users could text to receive the latest odds on the Cheltenham races. Similarly, when Novartis launched is Allereze hayfever drug, it placed cards at point-of-sale displays in pharmacies that gave consumers a shortcode to text to receive pollen count information. Marketers have also found that mainstream consumers prefer alert-style campaigns, which are perceived to be more about information and less about aggressive marketing. This is especially true for campaigns that wish to include the over-45 demographic. Says Flytxt chairman Lars Becker, "When we target campaigns beyond 45-year olds, we try to reduce the interactive element and turn it into a service from which they can get useful information. Older age groups tend to be more interested in the service based proposition than the trivia applications or play-to-win campaigns." Becker also notes that it's important to give mass market audiences several routes into the campaign itself. When Flytxt created a campaign for Bayer, the German healthcare and sciences giant, it set up a crop alert service for German farmers to which they could sign up in order to receive weather alerts and adverse crop conditions, such as high airborne bacteria counts. The farmers, whose average age was between 45 and 65 years old, were given several ways to subscribe to the alerts. They could phone a call centre, text, or send a fax. The bulk, notes Becker, wee subscribed by fax. "We found they were quite happy to receive texts, but they weren't actually texting in. So it was important to give them other routes into the campaign." Helping Out As mobile marketing shifts away from outbound and text-and-win campaigns, it has moved squarely into the realm of customer relationship marketing (CRM). One of the strongest areas of growth has been in the use of SMS as a tool to get consumers "to help themselves", as James Critchley, director of SMS technology company Txt4, puts it. Txt4 has worked with brands like Volvo, Mazda and Kodak to create what Critchley calls "the virtual call centre". All of these brands have included a short code on advertising that lets consumers request more information on a product. Volvo and Mazda, for example, allowed them to arrange a test drive, while Kodak used it to handle brochure requests. The cost implications, says Critchley, are enormous, as the cost of call centres, the traditional method in which consumers can request information, is far higher than SMS request. Moreover, Txt4 says that in some campaigns SMS has twice the response rate of e-mail. "If you're already putting an ad out with a URL, email or contact why not make it easier for a customer to speak to your brand through their channel of choice, which SMS undoubtedly is?" asks Critchley. UFI, the company behind Learning-Direct, the online provider of business courses, piloted the use of text as a response mechanism last summer and plans to continue using after Phil Wade, director of marketing and customer relations at UFI, found it to "indicate considerable levels of success". He says, "The benefits are that it gives our audience an alternative and immediate way of responding." Home improvement retailer Wickes created a similar campaign to allow customers to request additional product information. In addition, however, they found that SMS let them build up a customer database. Says Gita Joshi, direct communications manager, "The main purpose of the campaign was to give consumers another easy option fire requesting a free brochure, supporting our brochure request service via phone and the Web. It does however, provide us with an opportunity to gather information on customers who might not contact us via the phone or the Web, thus increasing our customer database. Enpocket says the move to more CRM-style campaigns began in the middle of last year with companies that wanted to reduce call centre volumes. "Call centre volumes are going through the roof, which costs a tremendous amount of money," says Larsen. One area that Enpocket is active in, although it says it can't name customers yet, is product delivery notification. It's working with several retailers to reduce the number of failed deliveries. "We're using SMS to let people know when their shipment will arrive," says Larsen. If they're not going to be there, then they can arrange another time. "Mobile CRM is definitely a growing area," he adds. "There are some very easy things, like delivery notification, that cuts costs and significantly enhance customer satisfaction." © Copyright Flytxt Ltd 2006. Unauthorized use of any content constitutes a material breach. |
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