sms wrks: Marketing and Promotions

While new business will certainly be created in wireless space, under the present arrangements, the most obvious area in which SMS may be useful to a wide range of companies is in marketing and promotion.

A recent study by wireless services company, Quios, discovered a very ready acceptance of advertising and promotion making use of the mobile. Reviewing the findings following their Euro 2000 Soccer messaging service, the company found that although advertising in this medium was expected to have the same effect as direct mail, it already has a much higher response rate at a much lower cost per head. This high success rate is due to a combination of attractive qualities that text messaging posseses for its audiences.

» Immersive: SMS messaging has an interactive quality that younger users find particularly attractive. Personalized SMS messages, particularly those that are delivered in response to a SMS request, involve users in an interactive experience familiar to and desired by those with a knowledge of the online world.

» Freedom from clutter: For the moment, clutter has not particularly afflicted this area. Advertising messages tend to be less common than in other media and importantly tend to remain highly pertinent to the mobile experience, alerting users to such things as new rates or other offers of particular and immediate relevance.

» High recognition: High ad recall (79 percent of participants had 60 percent of recall of wireless advertising-a study by Quios).

» WOW factor: As a spin-off from the lack of clutter in this area, messages maintain a degree of surprise. Not yet inured to being communicated with in this manner, users have a higher degree of acceptance.

» Viral marketing: Due to a combination of the two factors above, the proliferation of messages through viral means is an appreciable contributor to the effectiveness of campaigns. As mobiles are habitually used for social communication, the possibility of enhancing the effectiveness of messages via communities of interest remains strong. Users often interact with their mobiles while with groups of friends 'showing off' any attractive new content. (70 percent of those surveyed for the Quios report said that they had recommended the soccer messaging service to a friend.)

» Communication at point of purchase (with GPS): The fact that advertising is received on mobile personal devices means that the audience can, in theory, be located right next to sales points.

All of these factors play particularly well for the 15-24 year old group, where the mobility and social interaction around technology are highly desirable.

The Golden Rules of SMSa

But, to ensure attitudes to text advertising and promotions remain positive, IndusMobile suggests that those marketing in the wireless space must ensure that:

» Messages include value-added elements: Among an age group that has become used to interactivity, successful messages will be those that invite participation and response.

» Information received is highly accurately targeted: The high level of acceptance of text advertising and promotion relates intimately to the relevance of products and services promoted.

» Facilitate easy opt-out: Maintaining control of the flow of messages to a mobile device is perceived as highly important by users.

An Eye on the Future?

The year 2001 promises to bring higher bandwidth connectivity, so what does the future for vanilla SMS promise? Such services as General Packet Radio System (GPRS) will not include SMS facility, though they will include more sophisticated messaging services. But that does not mean that SMS will be disappearing in the short-term. As far as 2005, SMS services are likely to remain popular, if they continues to grow at the present rate.

But even given the obvious end-point for SMS as we know it, it is still essential for businesses to enter the fray, since those who have come to understand the possibilities of mobile, non-voice communication will be the best place to lead developments in forthcoming GPRS, Enhanced Data GSM Environment (EDGE) and other imminent mobile technologies.

While there has in recent months been a highly mediacized "WAP-backlash" it is beginning to seem likely that adverse reactions (often due to these alistic promises) are nowhere near as severe as earlier imagined. In the UK, for example, Genie, the BT owned mobile Internet company, recorded 88 million WAP page impressions in the UK in the month of January 2001, as compared to 62.5 million at the end of December 2001, an increase of more than 40 percent. Reports of the death of WAP, it seems, have been highly exaggerated.

Perhaps, the most important aspect of the rise of SMS technology to recall is the way in which the developers of the technology were not necessarily best placed to say exactly how it will be used. As we move more and more towards providing tools for creating entertainment rather than creating content, it seems increasingly necessary to follow the consumers demand very carefully. And the best way to do this, right now, is from within the SMS space.

On the other hand, mobile games have huge advantages associated with being portable. Given the restrictions, mobile games must create what one game firm (4) has dubbed 'immersion by imagination'. In some territories, branded gaming has emerged, its novelty proving more than enough compensation for the low-bandwidth styles.