There?s something of a buzz (or is that a ring?) at the moment about the potential of ?mobile marketing?, writes Stuart Buchanan.
The reason that there?s so much excitement is that SMS has the ability to take a marketing message directly into the hand of the intended audience. That?s all very well, but how do you actually reach this magic mobile audience?
Obviously, you first need to collect some data. This process is relatively straightforward - collect mobile phone numbers at the box office, on your website etc. Once you have your data, you can use various websites or third party operators to send your message in bulk (e.g. http://sendbulksms.co.uk, http://www.textforce.co.uk, http://www.uvfx.tv). Costs vary from 5p to 10p per message depending on the service you choose. Always make it clear how people can unsubscribe from this service. If you can?t do it in the 160 characters of the message, make sure you do it on sign-up. Be wary of using third party data, as the volume of wastage will be high and results will generally be poor. Many data brokers collect mobile numbers on the basis that they will offer the phone owner general entertainment or retail offers. As we know, marketing?s golden rules include words such as ?specific? and ?targeted? - neither of which are applicable to such general data samples.
You also need to ask yourself ?am I providing a unique, valuable service or am I just doing this to be ahead of the pack?? It?s important to remember that both direct (postal) mail and email require the recipient to choose when to open their mail or to collect their email. Compare this to the loud double-bleep of a text message being received, at a time and place over which the recipient has no control, and think about how invasive this might feel.
You can reap a fair amount of reward from SMS marketing if you are clear about the ?who? and ?why?. Last minute deals and messages such as ?new tickets on sale? make good use of SMS - the campaign for ?What The Night Is For? (a West End play with Gillian Anderson) collected numbers from the website alone and scored a 40% direct response rate when announcing the on-sale date. General information such as ?new play opens tonight? is not so thrilling for the end user, and will almost certainly waste your time and money.
The most useful development for the arts community may well be ?mobile ticketing?, through which SMS is used as the ticket itself. Until this happens, conducting a transaction via SMS will continue to be a complex process. It requires both the user and seller to send around four text messages each - which can take significantly more time than simply speaking to an operator. You also need to have your credit card details registered with the message sender for it to work at all, and the experience of arts organisations which have tried it suggests that the response rates are disappointingly low. (Key suppliers in this market include http://www.scan.com and http://www.digitalrum.com). Mobile ticketing will enable tickets to be sold through operators such as Orange and Vodafone, allowing ticket costs to be added to the user?s phone bill. If this isn?t in place by the time you read this, it can only be months or even weeks away.
Stuart Buchanan was formerly New Media Manager at M+H Communications and is now Director of zerogweb.net, a creative new media company servicing the arts and
entertainment industries. e: mail@zerogweb.net