Impact of Mobility Solutions on Consumer and Brand Experiences

This moderated panel discussion was designed to enable the panelists to discuss how leading brands and institutions are generating greater value from their customers through the mobile channel and how they build customer affinity and brand recognition at a deeper level to develop stronger customer relationships.  It was interesting to see that mobile solutions is still very much in ‘wild west’ territory.

The panelists were:
Zaw Thet, CEO and Co-Founder, 4Info, Inc., a SMS content and advertising company.
Dan Miller, VP Mobile Solutions, Neighborhood America.
Kathy Volpi, Director, U.S. Cellular and is responsible for mass advertising and sponsorship for the carrier.
Frederick Ghahramani, Director and Co-Founder, AirG.

The moderator, Gene Keenan, VP of Mobile Services for Isobar Communications used his role well by kicking off the panel discussion with prepared questions that continued throughout the session.  The first question was right at the top of almost all marketers and agencies which is “what would be a good response rate be for a SMS campaign?”

Zaw Thet said that there is a big difference between mobile marketing and mobile advertising and that success rates for SMS campaigns he likes to see are campaign results of between 20-30%.  Dan Miller thought that mobile campaigns are just now getting on the radar for marketers as something to consider separately from online and that you can expect higher results from mobile campaign efforts.

The lone carrier on the panel, Kathy Volpi of US Cellular, said they tend to be very conservative in their approaches and look for 7-12% response rates as being ‘successful” however higher numbers can and have been reached.  Frederick Ghahramani of AirG said that ‘it depends’ which is what a lot agencies and brand managers are saying these days.  When panelists were asked how long it would take before mobile metrics would get down to the ‘pathetic’ levels of online, the panelists all agreed it could be as soon as two years or less.

The discussion continued throughout the session in this regard with the moderator pulling and pushing for answers on key aspects such as examples of mobile campaigns that have worked well.

Interestingly enough, the panelists all mentioned political or humanitarian type efforts as best of breed examples such the work for World Vision for getting more governmental funding for AIDS research which succeeded in pulling in 50,000 signatures in a 72 hour period via a text message effort.

The attendees of the session included a mix of agency and brand marketer representatives (when asked) and one asked where were the examples of big brands succeeding in the mobile space.  There certainly have been some but clearly the mobile marketing arena is one that continues to grow and provides ample room for new entrants to take advantage of the ‘wild west’ environment.

The search for the ‘killer app’ for mobile such as what some say occurred with YouTube online, continues and one of the panelists suggested that perhaps Voice will be that killer app (the jury is still out) but when you hear examples such as the actor/musician Tyrese getting angry that his new album wasn’t going to be picked up and straight out of the meeting he called and left a message for his 100,000 strong cell message subscribers to call one particular music executive’s cell number in protest, it worked.  They got flooded with feedback and picked up the album.

Different user segments respond differently so it is important to keep campaigns simple.  Know your customer and design campaigns accordingly.  Simple yet sage advice.
Lastly, the moderator asked about the impact of the iPhone. While the panelists thought it was great to get the overall lift from the interest the iphone has generated in the mobile category, its impact is well off from being able to market shift the overall landscape…yet.  While it has taken years for aspects of mobile marketing to produce strong interest from marketers, iPhone sales are ramping up faster than what occurred for the iPod, and we all know how popular those little devices have become.

SMS spam is still a big worry for everyone. The amount of targeting is very attractive to marketers however. SMS is a permanent cookie to each user via their SMS tied to one specific phone number. WAP can’t do that.  Only the carrier can see that data and it varies on how much they are willing to share with their partners.

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