We’ve all read over the years many different explanations of what mobile marketing is, what can be done with it, and seen some case studies of cool and successful campaigns. Usually, these explanations follow a pretty similar pattern. The benefits of the media are described (personal, fast, ubiquitous, interactive, etc.), common use-cases are mentioned (customer acquisition&retention, sales promotion, direct marketing, crm, loyalty, etc.), technologies are described and somewhat hyped (mms, streaming video, lbs, etc.), and estimates of the market are given. This should all be familiar, so I won’t talk about these things. Instead I’d like to point out one important area that I think doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

Permission marketing

Gathering a committed audience that is willing to listen to you over time is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable marketing activities you can do. When using mobile technology as the channel for acquiring and activating this permission base, many of benefits of mobile marketing can be reaped. We’ve noticed that when combining an opt-in option as a part of a mobile campaign (i.e. when you’ve already gotten the dialogue going with an end-user), the opt-in percentages can be surprisingly high (of course there is substantial variation between different demographic segments, but when targeted correctly, the results are amazing).

A mobile strategy

But building a permission base is of course not enough. In order to maximize the potential of the permission base, you need to have a well thought out longer-term strategy on the activities targeted to the permission base. This is something we work on with many of our customers on a daily basis. Seth Godin has a good book on permission marketing that all marketers should read; it applies well on mobile marketing. Most of the mobile-marketing case-studies I’ve seen don’t analyze the longer term benefits of permission marketing, I’m however sure the best results can be found in this category.

If you have any links on good case studies where mobile permission marketing has been used for for a longer time, don’t hesitate to post a comment. I’d also like to hear any opinions you might have on mobility and marketing, post a comment or send e-mail to alindh at flyerone dot com.

We’ve all read over the years many different explanations of what mobile marketing is, what can be done with it, and seen some case studies of cool and successful campaigns. Usually, these explanations follow a pretty similar pattern. The benefits of the media are described (personal, fast, ubiquitous, interactive, etc.), common use-cases are mentioned (customer acquisition&retention, sales promotion, direct marketing, crm, loyalty, etc.), technologies are described and somewhat hyped (mms, streaming video, lbs, etc.), and estimates of the market are given. This should all be familiar, so I won’t talk about these things. Instead I’d like to point out one important area that I think doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

Permission marketing

Gathering a committed audience that is willing to listen to you over time is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable marketing activities you can do. When using mobile technology as the channel for acquiring and activating this permission base, many of benefits of mobile marketing can be reaped. We’ve noticed that when combining an opt-in option as a part of a mobile campaign (i.e. when you’ve already gotten the dialogue going with an end-user), the opt-in percentages can be surprisingly high (of course there is substantial variation between different demographic segments, but when targeted correctly, the results are amazing).

A mobile strategy

But building a permission base is of course not enough. In order to maximize the potential of the permission base, you need to have a well thought out longer-term strategy on the activities targeted to the permission base. This is something we work on with many of our customers on a daily basis. Seth Godin has a good book on permission marketing that all marketers should read; it applies well on mobile marketing. Most of the mobile-marketing case-studies I’ve seen don’t analyze the longer term benefits of permission marketing, I’m however sure the best results can be found in this category.

If you have any links on good case studies where mobile permission marketing has been used for for a longer time, don’t hesitate to post a comment. I’d also like to hear any opinions you might have on mobility and marketing, post a comment or send e-mail to alindh at flyerone dot com.

We’ve all read over the years many different explanations of what mobile marketing is, what can be done with it, and seen some case studies of cool and successful campaigns. Usually, these explanations follow a pretty similar pattern. The benefits of the media are described (personal, fast, ubiquitous, interactive, etc.), common use-cases are mentioned (customer acquisition&retention, sales promotion, direct marketing, crm, loyalty, etc.), technologies are described and somewhat hyped (mms, streaming video, lbs, etc.), and estimates of the market are given. This should all be familiar, so I won’t talk about these things. Instead I’d like to point out one important area that I think doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

Permission marketing

Gathering a committed audience that is willing to listen to you over time is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable marketing activities you can do. When using mobile technology as the channel for acquiring and activating this permission base, many of benefits of mobile marketing can be reaped. We’ve noticed that when combining an opt-in option as a part of a mobile campaign (i.e. when you’ve already gotten the dialogue going with an end-user), the opt-in percentages can be surprisingly high (of course there is substantial variation between different demographic segments, but when targeted correctly, the results are amazing).

A mobile strategy

But building a permission base is of course not enough. In order to maximize the potential of the permission base, you need to have a well thought out longer-term strategy on the activities targeted to the permission base. This is something we work on with many of our customers on a daily basis. Seth Godin has a good book on permission marketing that all marketers should read; it applies well on mobile marketing. Most of the mobile-marketing case-studies I’ve seen don’t analyze the longer term benefits of permission marketing, I’m however sure the best results can be found in this category.

If you have any links on good case studies where mobile permission marketing has been used for for a longer time, don’t hesitate to post a comment. I’d also like to hear any opinions you might have on mobility and marketing, post a comment or send e-mail to alindh at flyerone dot com.

According to local news, the governments in Sweden and Finland have together with local carriers come up with a system so they can send information (whom to contact, meeting points, etc.) to all citizens in the crisis area in Asia. This really is a brilliant idea, as reaching thousands of lost and separated people is otherwise really hard.

I wonder how long it will take before governments start to require this kind of readiness from carriers at all times, as the implications of having a system like this in place are really huge. As networks cover an ever increasing percantage of the whole earth (and an ever increasing percentage of the population carry a phone with them, even in un-developed countries), this must be the fastest and cheapest way reaching almost everybody in any given geographical area. Had a tsunami warning system been in place in the Asia crisis area, many lives would have been saved. Had it been hooked to the GSM network, even more lives would probably have been saved. Hopefully we’ll see a coordinated effort to make this happen throughout the world.

Other examples of cell-phone pin-ponting in the Asia crisis area can be found here.

Hi,

My name is Anders Lindh, I’m the chairman and co-founder of FlyerOne Ltd, a Finland based mobile marketing services company. We’ve been providing consultation and technical implemetation of mobile marketing campaigns for four years; our clientele consists major brands both in Finland and abroad. During these years, we’ve successfully implemented hundreds of campaigns of varying kind. I am going to blog here about marketing and technical issues that we are facing in our day-to-day business. I hope you enjoy your stay even though Russel is away!

You can reach me at alindh at flyerone dot com (e-mail and messenger), I’ll do my best to read and reply to any comments.

And for the record, this is my first blog post, ever.

I wrote an article for Net Imperative a few weeks back. It was about the importance that bar codes could have in the future, as real world hyperlinks to virtual world information.

Mobile Weblog reader, Dennis Hettema, is the founder and CEO of OP3 and wrote to tell me that they’ve just launched a Quicktime video illustrating an aspect of the very point I was making. Check it out.

OP3 make barcode scanning software that can be downloaded to your phone. I have no commercial connection with them, just to be clear.

A Chilean psychic has been receiving MMS messages from the Virgin Mary.

Isn’t it great that someone has finally started to use it?

But it’ll be just as much of a miracle if the rest of us work out how to use it successfully.

Via Engadget.

Mobile phones are totally banned in Florida Court Houses leading to a new profession - mobile phone minding.

Local merchants, such as hot dog vendors charge $2 - $10 to look after your phone. Other phone owners, seeking to cut out the middle men, stash them in bushes and things.

Image shows the newly elected member of the Florida judiciary, Jabba the Hutt.

Story spotted on Engadget.

Well, it’s that time of the year again, when people who should know better put their reputations on the line and start making damn fool predictions for the coming year.

Before I do that though, how did I do last year? Not bad actually, with a couple of wrong ‘uns thrown in. I am human! Here’s the full text, with a summary below.

1. 3 fails to make 1,000,000 subscribers (again)

Hmmm. Well I was certainly wrong about this, they easily surpassed the magic million and are the fastest growing UK operator.

BUT, they’ve done this by abandoning their previous strategy of which I was so critical. So I was kind of right in that if they hadn’t slashed their prices across the board, they’d never have made the million.

Any damn fool can sell a $10 note for $5 though. So this is a short term measure at best.

But they are finally starting to launch some innovative services, which is the key to growing 3G, so there’s life in 3 yet.

2. MMS still not going to work

Well, full marks here, Mr Buckley, despite millions invested in marketing.

I’ve written about MMS’s problems before.

As I wrote last year:

the fact is that even if you: ∑ Ignore the technical complexity of setting up your phone ∑ Ignore the complexity of sending an MMS. ∑ Ignore the interoperability. ∑ Ignore pricing (35p ñ get outta hereÖ). You still have problem with what to put in your MMS - sometimes called content around these parts.

If itís going to go mass market, people will need help in composing these things and that means a range of cheap and readily available, easy-to-use content. And that content will need to sit on their phones and be able to be previewed so that they know what theyíre sending their nearest and dearest.

This is all just as valid today as it was last year. As Frank Koehntopp wrote today:

I took my 3 year old to McDonalds today, and the Coke cup had a code for a “The Incredibles Mobile Special” - which is something like a ring tone, a background picture or a game for your phone.

I did just that, and in came a two part SMS which appeared as “service message”. Would you know what to do with it? Do you have any idea about the costs of clicking on that link? I bet you don’t, nor will the kids who try that. In my case, it didn’t even work (some strange server error), and I had to chose between different GPRS access points.

If this happened in other industries, the whole management team would be kicked out on its ear.

And I’ll repeat my mantra: Why can’t the industry make phones that work out of the box? It’s a scandal.

If you work for an operator, it is a genuine question. Why? Please leave a comment.

3. SMS continues to thrive

Round of applause.

4. Local Free Messaging starts to take off.

Well that’s true too. It’s also much bigger than you might think. Watch this space for more growth.

5. Java Takes Off (and not just for gaming).

Yep. And remember all those announcements of media giants creating their own java portals for non-gaming content - what happened to them actually??? Has any actually launched.

6. DRM Rises up the agenda

DRM continues to dominate the conversation and will continue to do so.

However, it’s pretty obvious these days that all DRM is doomed and content owners need to live with that and adjust their business models accordingly.

Every time a foolproof DRM system is launched someone cracks it within 24 hours and tells those that want to know all about it. Some of these fools can be darn clever
7. LBS starts to happen

Yep. Still grass roots, but beginning to move from tech provider “sell” to user “buy”, which is a great sign. Projects like Dodgeball and Yellow Arrow are pretty exciting.

8. TagText launches to great success

This is one my personal projects and sadly we were badly let down by our development partners. I hope 2005 will be our year!

So I’ll give myself 6.5 out of a possible 8 marks (half for the 3 one). Ironically the one that I got completely wrong was the one I was in a position to directly influence
The trouble with this kind of exercise though is that you can’t remember if these were bleedingly obvious when I made them. Well, actually I don’t think they were that obvious and certainly Local Free Messaging is still not on most commentator’s map and MMS was predicted to boom.

Anyway, next I need to think about the coming year. Make your prediction by leaving a comment below or drop me an email russell at mobhappy dot com. I’m off to rub my crystal ball.

I’m going to be away from 26th December until about 10th January, catching some sun in South Africa. Blogging’s going to be difficult down there, so I wondered if anyone would care to Guest Blog on this site while I’m away.

It’s an unpaid post, but you’ll get a fair bit of exposure for you or your company. Just to clarify - I’m not suggesting that you use the blog to blatantly plug something, as my discerning readers won’t buy it. But it will give you a platform to talk to about 25,000 people and share your ideas.

Drop me a line if you’re interested. russell at mobhappy dot com, or leave a comment.

For the rest of you, keep reading! I’ll let you know when I put up my last post before heading off.