Monkey business

The most common cases of mobile marketing today work in a very simple fashion: something of enough interest (an incentive) is offered to the end-user, who then starts the dialogue by texting some keyword to some shotnumber. The text ‘n win campaign is a perfect example of this. Using traditional advertising in mass media (print&tv) and/or on-pack, a price is offered to those who participate in the competition. Usually a reply message is sent back to the participant, which might trigger some new action from the end-user or continue the dialogue. Due to the limitations of the media, the dialogue can’t and shouldn’t be too long. We’ve done a lot of these types of campaigns, and the results have been very positive (we usually end the dialogue by asking the end-user for permission for mobile direct marketing – the opt-in rates have been very good).

One of biggest problems when talking about (and selling) the mobile as an advertisement media, is that it can’t be utilized as such without the consent of the recipients. It’s all about permission. And permission does have levels (go read Seth Godin’s book on permission marketing, it applies equally well to mobile marketing). The more inclined someone is to receive an advertisement, the more effect does it have. (e.g. in the above rant about text ‘n win campaigns combined with opt-in, the level of the permission that is gotten is high and the mobile direct marketing is very well received.). But it takes a lot of time, money and effort to build and maintain a solid permission base, something many advertising loving brand managers don’t necessarily have.

Therefore, we’ve made a strategic decision to start building a generic permission base that our clients can utilize as a part of their mobile campaigns, which we can sell per contact and with varying degrees of profilation. We hope to achieve this by launching a consumer service targeted at 15-25 year olds (1.3M of them in Finland), to whom a very compelling service is offered, as long as they opt-in to receive 1-10 advertisements per week (the maximum amount of received ads can be freely chosen, but does affect the service we offer them). We will launch the service in a week or two (probably officially at a presentation I’m giving at a SSML seminar on Sept, 20). The service is still being put together and not all the pieces are there yet, so I’ll get back this topic when we get nearer the lauch.