Revving Up Your Mobile Marketing Program

January 27, 2009 by Tim Trummer

In the preceding entry we talked about pushing forward with a mobile text messaging program in order to learn about – and take advantage of – the surge in texting behavior. And, to be ready for the not too distant day when marketing to cell phones comes into its maturity as a major force.

The question is, how much progress can you make in 2009 in building your list – a topic for our next blog entry – and creating programs that work for your business? The focus here is on how to begin the process.

First, who does it?

As the person who pays the bills, the business owner probably feels some ownership of any new program. This could be a mistake, especially if you have people in your organization who are seeking new opportunities.

Delegation is a good thing, period. As a rule of thumb, the more people you have involved in the process, the better. Here are some things to consider when you decide how to manage your mobile marketing campaign in your organization

• Your employees may be younger and may relate to this program. It’s possible that someone in your organization has strong thoughts or good ideas about text message marketing already.
• Your employees may be looking for added responsibility, or to add to their skill sets. Capitalize on that energy and motivation.
• If you have a valued employee who is bored and you fear that they may want to leave, this might be the thing for them to focus on. During difficult economic times, business owners tend to focus on daily problems and challenges. Employees who buy into a grass-is-greener perspective may look for opportunities that they perceive to be better. Remember that it is your best employees who have the most opportunities. Give them something new and different to do.

Give an employee a specific purpose and responsibility to focus on, and show them that it matters with daily follow-up of even the most informal type.

Second, how do they go about it?

Many people – even bright ones you value – do not possess the creativity and initiative to go about this kind of thing in a systematic way. So, give them a framework for learning about mobile marketing. Here are some ways to do that.

• Assign them some reading. Reading! It sounds terrible, but it’s a great way to develop some perspective. Have them read the blogs and guides on the Optit.com site. Then, point them in the direction of a web site devoted to mobile marketing like http://www.mmaglobal.com so that they can begin to understand the background, the trends, and the opportunities. Don’t stop there. Ask them to talk to you once a week about something they have read about mobile marketing. It’s a good way to see if they are up to the job you’ve given them.
• Involve more people! Tell your designated employee to talk to as many people as they can about their assignment. Their grandmother is an unlikely candidate for this kind of thing, but even the act of explaining it to their grandmother stretches their ability to understand and talk about mobile marketing. Great ideas often come from places you wouldn’t expect, but they also come from your suppliers, your customers, and other business people.
• Have them opt into the mobile marketing programs of other companies in order to see what they are doing. Start with competitors, and then move on to similar markets or products, and then move on to companies you admire. You cannot collect too much market intelligence this way – it’s the easiest way to learn what your competitors are doing, and it will open your eyes to the many possibilities that exist out there already. Capitalize on the experience of others, and don’t let your competitors outflank you with new offers that you are not ready to provide.

As your expertise and experience grows, take things to a higher level. Chicago is filled with colleges and universities that have a tremendous interest in teaching new media. These may be business classes or they may be media classes. Ask a professor if you can present your issues to a class and see if an individual or a team want to take up your cause as part of their course work.

Finally, encourage your employee to take action. Especially at the beginning, be conservative and take baby steps. Use techniques you’ve seen others use and, monitor the results closely so you can see what works for you. Enjoy small successes and build from there. As the business owner or department head, stay involved and let them know mobile marketing is important to you.

We will talk more in future blog entries about how to design offers and measure results, and we’ll also talk about how to involve your entire organization in the mobile marketing program. In this entry we’ve talked about putting the program in the hands of one person in order to make sure that the responsibility belongs to one motivated person, and not a committee. As the program develops, you’ll want to encourage others to contribute ideas and help carry them out.

Change

January 22, 2009 by Tim Trummer

The word change has been used a lot in the past year, and we have supported the idea of change as necessary and desirable.

However, the economic circumstances we find ourselves in will demand change of a more personal kind – change in the way we think and behave, and change in the way we operate our businesses.

To bathe our economic misery in the light of facts, consider the report of the United States Department of Commerce from the second week of 2009 –

• Retail sales dropped 2.7% in December of 2008, following a drop of 2.1% in November, marking the worst holiday shopping season in 40 years.
• December marked the sixth consecutive month that retail sales had fallen.
• Consumer retail spending accounts for about two-thirds of the United States’ economy, which means that reduced consumer spending is both a cause and a symptom of the ongoing recession.

Few economists think that the recession, declining home values, the tight credit crisis, and job losses are going to end anytime soon.

Our own experience tells us that things are different and have to be confronted with hard decisions, harder work, and new approaches.

If you are reading this it is likely you have already decided that text message marketing is one of the new approaches. We’d like to reinforce that feeling.

Mobile Marketing Is an Increasingly Important Part of the Marketing Mix

• There are 260 million mobile phone subscribers nationwide.
• In a 2008 survey 29% of moms said that the cell phone was their most important tech gadget, vastly surpassing their second choice, the internet at 29%.
• Text message marketing is based on permission – the people who receive your messages “opt in,” and therefore view your messages as less intrusive and more desirable.
• Mobile marketing is a highly measurable approach for ROI purposes
• It is easily observed that young people are particularly enamored of text messaging and are particularly receptive to text message marketing. Among 18 to 34 year-olds surveyed this year, just 22% had never sent a text message, down from the 38% the prior year.
• Nielsen reports in 2008 that text messaging has increased by 450% from two years before, and that the trend will continue up.
• M:Metrics forecasts that by 2011 global mobile marketing expenditures will surpass $16 billion.

This blog will continue to provide compelling data from new research as it arrives, and other pages on this site make the case for mobile marketing in other terms, but the core message for all of us is that text messaging behavior is becoming an intrinsic part of consumer behavior regardless of the state of the economy.

The Future of Mobile Marketing Is Coming Quickly

By now we all know that the latest mobile phone applications run on what it called 3G or third generation networks. These networks are significantly faster than earlier networks, and allow web browsing, email with attachments, and other data intensive applications like GPS.

But, faster networks that carry more data and more services are coming.

LTE is the common name now used for next generation 4G mobile networks, and LTE is in advanced testing with all major carriers. Rollout of this next generation technology is expected for 2010, and will allow carriers to deliver an ever increasing number of advanced services to the latest versions of smartphones, like the iPhone and the Blackberry. While smartphones made up only 11% of the total mobile market in 2008, this is the fastest growing segment with current growth of 100% in the U.S. and forecasted growth in excess of 50%.

So, there will be plenty of consumers with smartphones who will be able to receive compelling multimedia – not merely text – from you in 2010 and beyond.

By building and perfecting your approach to today’s simple text marketing, you are preparing your business to compete in the coming environment of multimedia messages made possible by 4G networks and smartphones. Building mobile lists and programs in 2009 puts you in the right competitive position to take the next step.

Change is real. The way it was two years ago – we aren’t ever going back there. The landscape on the other end of this dark economic tunnel is different from the landscape we knew going in. There will be adjustments to be made. But with the right planning and the right choices now, you’ll be set to go when you come out the other end of this dark tunnel. Text message marketing – and the mobile multimedia marketing that will follow it – are two of the tools that will have you set to go.

Blogs coming in the next weeks will focus on how to come up with effective text marketing programs, and how to build a list of mobile phone users who are willing to receive text from you.

Opt It, Inc. Moves Headquarters

October 17, 2008 by Brian Stafford

Opt It, Inc. completed its relocation to its new corporate headquarters on September 15, 2008 to accommodate future growth and expansion of the company. Opt It is now located at 212 W. Superior in the River North area of Chicago just north of downtown.

Due to the great customer response of the Opt It Mobile product, expansion into a larger office was aligned with the company’s strategic goals. Expansion will benefit our long term growth allowing us to hire additional resources to better serve our customers on a daily basis. In addition, it will improve the quality of our employees work environment fostering greater innovation in the mobile industry.

Previously located at 191 N. Wacker in the heart of downtown Chicago, Opt It has moved a few blocks north into the city’s loft/warehouse district. This new loft space has flexible conference areas, improved facilities for collaboration and ample bandwidth for a growing software company.

Our recent growth is attributed to our dedicated customers who have worked with us during the past four years. We truly appreciate your business and the trust you put in us as your mobile experts. We look forward to bringing you the newest and most innovative products in the mobile industry that will allow you to drive your businesses forward.

This is a great achievement for Opt It and a sign of great things to come.

Team Opt It

Improved usability for unsubscribing

September 11, 2008 by Brian Stafford

A new unsubscribe sequence was launched for Opt It subscription programs. We have penetrated various geographical markets and mobile phone users are starting to appear in more than one group on the same short code. In the past, when a user would try to unsubscribe by texting “STOP” to one of our short codes, they were being removed from all their subscribed groups. This was not the desired interaction by the user when they belonged to more than one group. Typically, the user only wanted to be removed from the group that they communicated with last.

To overcome this undesirable behavior, we have put the end user in more control over their experience. Now, if a user appears on more than one list we give them the option of which group they would like to unsubscribe from or to respond ALL for all groups. Again, this is only if a user is subscribed to more than one program on a shared short code.

This added feature was a result of feedback from our users. If you have any comments or feedback, please let us know – info at optit dot com.

Look who is doing it right – Metro Chicago

August 27, 2008 by Brian Stafford

Metro is THE music venue to see the best local, regional, national and international emerging artists in Chicago. Since 1982, Metro has accomplished this goal repeatedly and established itself as one of the country’s premier, cutting-edge new music venues.

Recently, Metro has deployed text messaging to send out special offers and promotions to its’ loyal fan base. Because of the wide variety of talent that performs at Metro, they needed an easy way to segment their text messaging user base to allow them to send targeted messages to their customers.

To solve this problem, Metro used the new sign up form and added a number of interests to the form to allow their customers to select the type of music that they are interested in. This allows Metro to send out very targeted and relevant text messages to get the most out of their text campaigns. View the Metro sign up form.