Marketers should be cognizant of the rise of the QWERTY keyboard found on both Smart and Feature phones as the keyboard’s layout negates the practice of using only word-based mnemonics to represent shortcodes and phone numbers in marketing materials.
WHY? With QWERTY, the standard 12-button keypad and its corresponding letters that have long dominated both landline and mobile phones is displaced with a new layout and thus QWERTY users are unable to tap out mnemonic call-to-actions if the numbers are not displayed as well. TRANSLATION - QWERTY users are precluding from participating in campaigns. Now it may not seem like a big deal, but I have seen some examples where major U.S. companies have made this mistake in their advertising (e.g. Text CHASE - Another example would be just displaying 1-800-FLOWERS without the corresponding numbers).
BEST PRACTICE: marketers should always display the numbers near their mnemonics. For example, Text CHASE becomes Text CHASE (24273) and Call 1-800-FLOWERS features (1-800-356-9377) next to it.
Interesting Side Notes:
- The NPD Group in Q3 noted, “Mobile phones with a QWERTY keyboard experienced the greatest year-over-year rise in sales; 30 percent of handsets were sold with this feature in Q3 2008, versus just 11 percent the year prior.”
- Nicholas Covey, director of insights for Nielsen Mobile, attributed the spike in messaging to the spread of QWERTY-style keypads, whose users send 54 percent more text messages than those with ordinary keypads.
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