Mobile & Relationship Marketers Unite

Alliances between direct marketing and mobile marketing specialists in the mobile space are becoming more frequent, more strategic and potentially more beneficial to consumers, as the partnering of TEQUILA\ and Enpocket indicates...

Alliances between marketing specialists in the mobile field are becoming more frequent, more strategic and potentially more beneficial to consumers.

[Register and post your own comments on this article below...]

This trend is borne out in the recent announcement (6 September 2005) that TEQUILA\, the global relationship marketing network has joined forces with Enpocket, the mobile marketing solutions provider, to offer brands around the world the ability to integrate mobile into their direct marketing activities.

The alliance, which is thought to be the first of its kind in the industry, means that Enpocket's mobile marketing technology and experience in delivering campaigns for over 400 brands since 2001, is accessible to TEQUILA\'s global network of 48 offices in 34 countries.

The core of the offering is the Enpocket Marketing Engine used by many of industry's leading network operators including Vodafone (UK and Japan), Singtel, Airtel, Sprint/Nextel, Orange, Elisa and Alltel and major brands such as Sky, Snapple and Fox.

Pairing the message with consumer preferences

The Engine enables brands to target SMS, MMS, WAP and Java communications to consumer preferences. With brands capitalising on the growing number of picture-phone handsets with Internet access, audio and video, the Engine is increasingly being used to deliver rich mobile marketing.

Enpocket also has a range of mobile applications for building customer loyalty, including football, astrology and the Enpocket Community Engine, which powers mobile chat and dating on 35 operator networks in 20 countries, including Match.com Mobile, the US market leader.

"Our clients are eager to know how the unrivalled reach and power of mobile as a personal communication tool can strengthen their relationship marketing activities," said Matt Mills, Managing Partner-Digital, TEQUILA\. "In looking for a best-of-breed mobile partner, Enpocket was the obvious choice, not just for their technology and wide international coverage, but for their research-led understanding of the mobile consumer and pioneering creative solutions."

Blend of brand and mobile benefits

"We are delighted to be driving this step change in the industry by joining forces with one of the biggest global agency networks," said Peter Larsen, CEO of Enpocket. "For mobile marketing to succeed it needs to be integrated effectively with traditional customer acquisition and retention activities. Our relationship with TEQUILA\ means global brands can now take full advantage of the benefits mobile can deliver."

TEQUILA\ is the UK's no. 1 direct marketing agency according to Marketing magazine. The Enpocket Marketing Engine is the world's most widely used mobile marketing software. Enpocket was the first company to win a Direct Marketing Association award for a mobile campaign for its CRM work for Orange.

About TEQUILA\ Worldwide:
TEQUILA Worldwide (www.tequila-ww.com) is a leading global relationship marketing network with 48 offices in 34 countries. TEQUILA is dedicated to building and managing customer relationships through direct marketing, interactive, promotion and event marketing strategy. Major global clients include adidas, Beiersdorf, Canon, H�agen-Dazs, Masterfoods, Nissan and Sony PlayStation. TEQUILA is a TBWA Worldwide company, Advertising Age magazine's 2004 Global Agency Network of the Year. www.tequila-ww.com

About Enpocket:
Enpocket is a global mobile media company that provides community and marketing services to build and retain mobile audiences. Enpocket's mobile community applications empower leading operators, brands and media companies to generate new revenues through applications that drive repeat visits. Enpocket's mobile marketing solutions improve the effectiveness of marketing spend and drive mobile content downloads. Ooptimizing consumer experience via an understanding of mobile owners' behaviour, Enpocket clients include Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica, Nokia, Sony, BBC, Fox, Time Warner, Universal Pictures, Time Out, Match.com, Levi's and Nike. Enpocket has offices in Boston, London, Helsinki, Reykjavik and Singapore. www.enpocket.com

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Who Should Do Your Mobile Marketing?

Mobile marketing is muscling in on its counterparts. It can deliver fantastic results. Yet there remains some trepidation about it, which is reflected by the small slice of the marketing budget given to the discipline. So what needs to be done to put marketers at ease; should they outsource or insource their mobile B2B and B2C campaigns and data management?

Mobile marketing is muscling in on its counterparts. It can deliver fantastic results. Yet there remains some trepidation about it, which is reflected by the small slice of the marketing budget given to the discipline. So what needs to be done to put marketers at ease; should they outsource or insource their mobile B2B and B2C campaigns and data management?

Data management by the way isn’t just about buying lists from brokers. There’s more to it than that, particularly when outsourcing forms a major part of a campaign’s strategy.

Understand the pros and cons

There are advantages and disadvantages to both strategies. Quite often in the mobile space there is one third party or more working on a particular project with a client. But with mobile marketing dashboards, so long as you have staff with the right knowledge, skills and experience to manage a campaign, it is possible to devise campaigns that develop relationships and interact with customers in-house. The types of skills involved include data, team and customer management, creative design and thought-leadership, an ability to put best practice into action as a result of understanding the technology and its impact. Best practice particularly requires an understanding of legislation.

Where a company doesn’t have the resource or the wherewithal to gain the most out of delivering mobile marketing campaign in-house, it makes absolute sense to work with an agency and a third party service provider which brings with them such expertise as this. There are some cautionary tales though - particularly when it comes to a third party, hired by your firm, using your customer list on your behalf to send out SMS advertising messages or alerts.

How does the customer feel?

Remember, too, that a survey commissioned by the Advertising Standards Authority discovered that consumers disliked the anonymous nature of texts before they were opened. There were also concerns about them being charged for receiving SMS messages. However, this doesn’t sound the death knell of mobile marketing. What the respondents wanted was to feel empowered and more in control. It is a very personal communication medium after all. They suggested they’d like to have more functionality, more control of the advertising that is sent to their mobile handsets.

A couple of years ago one large branded retailer - which will remain anonymous - within the mobile phone, broadband and telephony sectors was taken to task a couple of years ago. A customer alleged, but the firm was later exonerated, that he had been sent one or more unsolicited messages to his mobile phone. A third party marketing services company had been hired to manage the campaign. It sent the SMS message to the complainant, and I believe this was following a survey - the man involved had participated in it. So it was believed that explicit consent had been given to communicate with this customer, and without a further need to ask his permission to be opted in.

Although the Direct Marketing Association’s ‘Mobile Marketing Best Practice Guidelines‘ talk about a soft opt-in, the law and other best practice frameworks require ‘explicit consent’ to have been given. While you can gain significant amounts of knowledge and expertise from working with third parties, this means that you need to ensure that that your partners are well trained, aware of the implication of invading a customer’s privacy, the need for opting in customers, and therefore they should work stringently with best practice data and customer privacy management at the forefront of their thinking. They are your customers after all.

Is McDonald’s ‘Lovin’ it’?

If you can’t oversee how your data is being used by an agency or a service provider, it could be quite damaging to your customer relationships and your brand itself. Good data management includes suppressing the details of those who’ve elected to opt out of the campaign, or any form of communication with your firm. McDonald’s also learnt a valuable lesson recently. Although this probably didn’t involve a third party of one sort or another, it’s still an invaluable case study. McDonald’s sent out SMS messages to customers promoting its new toasted deli sandwich.

But it didn’t include the STOP command within the text message, claiming that an opt-out was provided on its campaign website. Following some heavy criticism from the likes of the DMA, says New Media Age on 25th June 2007, regulators and the mobile industry, it relented and so now the command is now included, allowing customers to opt out without having to go elsewhere.

Customer forgetfulness

Nick Fuller, and the Chair of the DMA’s Mobile Marketing Council, raises an important point too when he says, “I have certainly had experience of consumers complaining about things, only to find out that they had already given permission”; they then say “Oh! I forgot about that!” It’s quite common for the majority of media owners to use third party aggregators in his experience, “as soon as a consumer complains, the media owner go back to the record of that consumer and specify what kind of permission they have and whether it is correct.”

“There should be no question of getting it wrong”, adds Opal Media’s Keith Dibble. So if you decide to outsource your campaigns, the Service Level Agreement (SLA) needs to establish the appropriate procedures and processes for managing both your customers and their personal data. The guidelines and the legal obligations established by UK and the relevant EU directives on electronic communication should be enforced when you manage the campaign internally. It should be easier to manage customer data internally though; compared to when a third party is expected to do so on your behalf. There’s always a greater risks that something could go wrong.

Still there are a number of players working together within the mobile ecosystem, adding a range of skills to the melting pot. Some outsourcing may form part of an internal campaign too. Even so, a mobile marketing dashboard can make the entire process of managing in-house campaigns and life that much simpler. Anyone can do it with just a few minutes of training. Compliance to best practice is the integral keyword.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

y News | In Practice | The Bigger Picture | Digital Marketing | Your Business Latest Articles What Happens to Radio? NMK’s event on Tuesday 2

With broadcaster Sky strengthening its mobile ambitions with the appointment of Tim Hussein, NMK spoke to Russell Buckley, newly appointed chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association, about what this means for the industry.

The broadcaster’s dedicated advertising sales operative for online and mobile, Sky Digital Media, snapped Hussein up from AOL where he was also head of mobile. This newly created role will see him lead Sky’s foray into expanding its mobile advertising opportunities. Sky’s David Gibbs was also promoted to general manager of mobile.

NMK: What are the implications of a firm such as Sky appointing a head of mobile ad sales?

Russell Buckley: It’s recognition by a major and influential media owner that mobile advertising is beginning to be important and will continue to be even more so in the future.

NMK: Do you expect more media firms to follow suit?

RB: Absolutely. Sky has long been an innovator in media and the appointment will make others carefully re-evaluate how they look at mobile advertising. Some are clearly more advanced than others in their thinking and plans, but this is a major wake-up call for media owners.

NMK: Who else has a head of mobile ad sales?

RB: I’m not aware of anyone else taking this approach. Some organisations do employ mobile specialists, but they tend to focus on strategy or product.

NMK: How does this role differ from other ad sales roles?

RB: Mobile is a close relative of PC-based media in that it’s highly accountable, measurable and cost-effective. Therefore, any experienced digital ad sales person should be able to adapt to a mobile environment relatively smoothly.

However, there are some differences. Firstly, while advertisers do include agencies and brands, a significant number of advertisers are performance-based (often selling mobile content) and looking for demonstrable return on investment. This requires a different approach to sales.

The other major difference is that the sales process often has a wider remit that simply selling the media. For instance, the best way to maximise the effectiveness of a mobile campaign is to think through what happens ‘after the click’ in terms of the customer journey and how the advertiser engages with the consumer to meet their objectives. Many first-time advertisers therefore need help and education around this process and the collateral (such as landing pages) needs to be originated.

So to sum up, the sales process is as much about market education and evangelism as it is about taking an order.

NMK: How do you think consumers respond best to mobile advertising? What’s the growth area at the moment and what doesn’t work?

RB: The best campaigns share a number of common characteristics; great creative execution, are well targeted and relevant as well as demonstrating an understanding of mobile context – in other words, take into account that the ad will be seen on a mobile. In addition, the advertiser will pay a lot of attention to the customer journey that we talked about above. Finally, follow the ABC rule – Always Be Changing. So, monitor your results carefully and in detail, make incremental changes, measure results and make more changes so that you maximise your returns from the mobile channel.

As far as growth areas are concerned, more and more traditional brands are discovering the mobile channel and starting to increase their budgets.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Final Analysis: Measuring Online Marketing Impact

Marketers are constantly looking for increased value from their campaigns and the Web offers them better targeting of customers and improved measurement of impact. May 2009 sees the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit come to London and New Media Knowledge caught up with the summit’s founder.

Jim Sterne is chairman of the Web Analytics Association and founder and chairman of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, a global tradeshow which comes to Covent Garden, London, on 18-19 May, 2009.

The summit is designed for marketing professionals who want more value out of their budgets and contains keynote speeches, breakout sessions and networking opportunities. The summit is in its eighth year and there will be nine eMetrics conferences in 2009. The Web Analytics Association was born because the eMetrics audience demanded it, according to Sterne. He spoke to NMK about the organisation’s objectives.

What are the objectives of the Web Analytics Association?

The Web Analytics Association leads and supports its members by providing quality education, developing standards and best practices, conducting research and advocating for issues that advance the industry. Starting with education, we're trying to get the word out about the value of Web analytics, and then help people learn how it's done and how to do it better. We have a very active standards group that is rolling out industry definitions so ensure a common vocabulary about this area of business intelligence. All of us want to learn from each other and that's where best practices come in. The research delves into who we are as an industry and the advocacy is important as many legislators are worried about privacy, and rightly so, but are uninformed about the technology and the value of marketers measuring their success.
What’s your preferred formula for measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns on the Web?

“Measuring a marketing campaign” can mean tracking the results of a banner ad placement, a pay-per-click (PPC) search campaign, an email effort, an ad in somebody else's email, and so forth. The finally formula for measuring any investment in online marketing is found in business results. For e-commerce sites, that might be sales. For all of us, it might be registrations, subscriptions, participation, “contact us” forms completed, etc. Did that particular spend on a particular medium result in a measurable number of business outcomes? That's the ticket.

BT and Virgin Media are set to deploy the controversial Phorm behavioural targeting technology - do you think the surfing public has just cause for concern?

No. The shoe-shine man does not ask me if I want a shine if I walk by in trainers, but does if I am wearing black, shiny shoes. The clerk at the till in McDonald’s asks, “Do you want fries with that?” While the shoe-shine and burger-flipping professionals might recognise my face day-to-day, the Phorm organisation is going out of its way to keep that from happening. I think the petition is a result of insufficient understanding of the technology and a complete mistrust of major corporations. This is an attempt to blame the technology for being evil rather than go after those who misuse it.

Is there any way surfers can ‘opt out’ of behavioural targeting?

Do not accept cookies. It takes about five clicks in Internet Explorer.

What does 2009 hold for all formats of online advertising, where do you think much sought-after ad money will go?

Pay-per-click search will continue to be the big money magnet as it is so straight forward, so measurable and so controllable. Those who understand the value of testing will move more of their spend into behavioural targeting as their results numbers prove it to be valuable.

What’s your advice to firms looking to utilise the Web more for their business in 2009?

How about “The Five Most Important Things to Know About Online Marketing”?

1. You must have clearly articulated business goals. Do not compensate your team for getting more people to your website. You want them to generate more valuable business outcomes.

2. Understand it the Internet is not a broadcast medium. Your website is “interactive” and that means a visit to your site is as impactful as a visit to your high street shop or a presentation by a sales representative. If isn't successful for whatever reason, your entire brand gets a black eye.

3. Customer expectation inflation is rampant. They are not comparing your website to your competitors, they are comparing it to Amazon and a dozen other favourite sites that do everything.

4. You must join the conversation on the Web. Social media is not something that can be safely ignored. Public Relations has become Reputation Management and you must dedicate resources to participate in that online discussion in the most genuine way possible.

5. Test, measure. Test, measure. Repeat. As it is so easy to make changes to your website or your banner ad or your email, you must embrace the idea of exploration. Your newly remade marketplace moves at a dizzying speed and you must continuously try new things and measure the results. Never stop trying things and assessing their value.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Mobile Advertising for Newbies White Paper

I just posted a link and some comments on a white paper released today written by Peggy Anne Salz from mSearchGroove on our mobile web analytics blog.

If you want to skip the registration needed to download it, the link is here.

As of today it’s available for free download here, and already the congratulatory emails are pouring in. As Glenn Roland, who is active on the dotMobi Advisory Group, writes: “I just got done reading your white paper on Mobile Advertising. Nice job! I thought it very insightful and a good read on an emerging space.”

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Marriot.com Is Mobile

I’m in Boston for Mobile Internet World. This morning as I left my hotel room and picked up my free USA today, I was greeted by a red sticker that said “Marriot.com is mobile. Make hotel reservations, access Marriot rewards.”

What a great way to promote the mobile site in the real world. I can’t imagine how many different eyeballs see that sticker per day across the world.

So thanks to mobile technology, I am blogging about it in the taxi on the way to the Convention Center from my phone.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Discover A New Mobile Website Each Day!

How do you discover new web site on the mobile web?

There are so many great sites out there, but they are lost in that tiny screen you carry around. As the mobile search engines mature, it should get easier, but for now it’s very fragmented and difficult to explore.

There are some great directories of sites like: http://yeswap.com/ and http://dir.mobi/ that I visit often.

Two great blogs I like are WAP Review, and Mobile Mammoth. They both have great reviews and info on sites they find.Mobile Mammoth also has an email list. Each day I get an email with a review, and link to a new site.

In addition to these resoources, we are excited to announce the launch of our Mobile Site of the day SMS list. Each day we will text you a link to a great mobile web site that you can simply click on and visit. We are finding some great sites since we launched Mobilytics, and we want to share some with the world.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Mobile SEO

There’s a lot of talk in the industry about Mobile Search Engine Optimization lately. While this deserves a much longer post, I wanted to get a few resources out there to you all.

We are currently testing our new Mobile Search Engine position reports that will show you how you rank in the mobile specific search engines, and hope to have it live late next week. While these reports can show you where you rank, you still need to make the changes to your site that will help improve your position.

I read a great post this morning on Digital Fire on this topic. Give it a read.

Also, I have been in discussions with Bena fro GoMo News who also has a Mobile SEO Blog.

She is also leading a new initiative through her new mobile SEO company, Visibility Mobile that will hopefully become a standard for mobile SEO. It’s called MetaTXT. You can download a whitepaper on this on their site, or by clicking here.

This is an interesting topic that we will definitely be hearing more about.

Bryson Meunier also has a Mobile SEO blog that you should add to your reader. He is also involved with the Mobile SEO Google Group that is definitely worth joining.

We’ll be talking much more about this going forward. In the meantime, I wanted to get some info out there to get everyone thinking.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Redundancy Shmundancy - GoDaddy Takes Down Entire Mobilytics Platform

This is a first!

When I owned a web hosting company many years ago, I used GoDaddy’s private label reseller plan for domain registrations. Thousands of my customer registered their domains through us, which was processed by GoDaddy.

Although I have had minor issues before, I have never had anything like this happen. This morning GoDaddy automatically changed the name servers for Mobilytics.net, and took down the entire infrastructure in an instant! We immediately knew and took care of it, but there was still downtime.

Now getting back to the title of this post, I want to point out how all the redundancy in the world means nothing when there is a single point of failure that can’t be avoided.

We have built redundant systems on everything:

• Our DNS is served from 9 servers all over the world, and is dynamic.
• Every server is behind load balancers on the Amazon EC2 cloud in different data centers.
• We have physical servers in case Amazon goes down.
• Our Database Servers replicate and ship logs to backups
• Even our office is in 2 locations!

But all this is for NOTHING when your domain name is suddenly taken from you and pointed to a “Coming Soon” page!

Think about it. The entire Yahoo network can be taken down by someone at their registrar simply changing the name servers assigned to the domain.

Just Like That!

So how can you avoid it? I don’t think you can.

Yesterday was the renewal date for the domain Mobilytics.net. We have it set on AutoRenewal so it charges automatically. Well apparently GoDaddy attempted to charge it and there was a problem. What’s odd is that I went in this morning when I found out, clicked the button that charges it to the “on-file” payment method, and it went through just fine. I made sure to renew for 7 years so I have no problems like this again.

So what do they do when there is a problem yesterday? They send an email (which is sitting in the “GoDaddy” spam box), and change my name servers to their parking page.

Bye, Bye Mobilytics…. Down you go!

So I guess since I spent $7 with them to register the domain, they can take down our entire business just like that. There is something very wrong with this. How can they have so much power? How does paying them $7 per year give them the right to take down 27 servers like that? Well we’re going to find out!

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Verizon Installs Novarra Transcoder - Mobilytics Has You Covered!

Well according to Dennis at Wap Review, and a Bango newsletter I got today, Verizon has installed the Novarra Transcoder on their network.

The largest US mobile carrier, Verizon Wireless has started funneling traffic between Verizon feature phones and the web through a transcoder from Novarra. Verizon calls the service “Optimized View” and has added promotional information and a FAQ to their customer website There is also a page on the carrier’s developer site which has links to a opt-out form and to a PDF document detailing the rules that the transcoder uses to determine which sites to transcode.

Essentially what this means for mobile analytics is that you are not getting the correct phone information. Rather than seeing “SonyEricsson K770” in your reports, you might see “Novarra-Vision/7.3”.

While this may be a problem for some mobile analytics vendors (see http://bangoserviceblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/verizon-transcodes-mobile-websites/), it is not an issue for us.

We built Mobilytics knowing that transcoders and other exceptions exist. As long as the vendor adheres to some basic guidelines (which almost all do), we are able to still report the correct information. We simply add some info to our exception engine, and all is well.

A similar issue exists for Blackberry Phones, the Google Transcoder, the Opera Mini browser, and other various sites and transcoders. This is why Mobile is different. Regular web analytics can’t account for these exceptions and provide incorrect information.

I want to thank Bango for pointing out this issue so we could update our exceptions engine. Nothing needs to be done by the Mobilytics customer for continued accurate reporting. While you will be seeing a lot of “Mozilla’s” and “Novarra’s” at Bango, expect to see less of them here in the coming days.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Free Mobile Marketing Teleseminar - 7 Ways to Build Your Business with Mobile Marketing

I got a note from Kim Dushinski of Mobile Marketing Profits the other day about an interesting teleseminar she is doing this week.

Kim is also the author of the soon to be released Mobile Marketing Handbook.

According to Kim, this one hour call will help business owners, marketing professionals and internet marketers understand why mobile marketing is important to put into your marketing plans NOW. She will give attendees some smart do’s and don’ts about mobile and point you in the right direction to get going. It will be information-packed.

Make sure to have your phone handy during the call. She will be doing some live demos.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS POWER-PACKED ONE HOUR CALL:

• What the heck IS mobile marketing anyway and why does it matter to me?
• Examples of companies, large and small, that are already using mobile marketing successfully
• How to know if your customers are even receptive to mobile marketing and what to do to ensure that they become receptive if they aren’t already
• Three things you must do in mobile marketing (Hint: It may not be what you think)
• Four costly mistakes in mobile marketing – how many are you making right now? How many would you inadvertently make if you don’t attend this seminar?
• The terrible consequences of doing mobile marketing wrong (FYI: “terrible” is not an exaggeration. Really.)
• How to get your mobile marketing action plan pulled together

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Top 5 Mobile Advertising Bad Practices

I came across a post this morning on the ZestAd Mobile Advertising Blog that clearly lays out 5 serious problems with mobile advertising. They put together this list as a follow-up to an earlier post that has some other great info worth reading as well.

1. Misleading (mostly porn) ads leading to innecessary clicks.
2. Advertisers getting charged for fraud clicks?
3. Taking user clicks directly to those pages which charge the user
4. Auto Redirection to Landing Page
5. Expired Ads

With Mobilytics, we address #2 by providing advertisers with details not shown by the ad networks in their reports. The ad networks must be help accountable, and I agree with Zest Ads assertion that the MMS code of conduct needs to be updated.

Time to update the Mobile Marketing Association Code of Conduct?

I think it is high time that MMA take notice of such bad practices, updates its Code of Conduct, and inform all stakeholders in this ecosystem to avoid such practices.

Players in the mobile advertising ecosystem must behave responsibly otherwise the medium will loose its credibility with advertisers. Given the tough economic climate and recession in several countries, advertisers might start expecting the rates to be further commoditised or might just stop using this medium until credibility is re-established.

Head over to the post and read through. They go into some detail and show examples.

Zest Ads is a performanced based mobile ad marketplace I had not heard of before. I’ll look deeper and do a followup post in the near future.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Mobile Web Design, Mobile Marketing & More Mobile For Small Business

Feeling mobile? You need to be. The mobile web is continuing to grow, fueled by iPhones, Treos and Blackberrys in the hands of users that need the Internet in the palm of their hand. I’m sure you need no convincing that with over 3 Billion cell/mobile phones in the world, we are only moving forward with what we access on them and how. Here is just a glimpse on the mobile web design and marketing front. I’m sure I’ll be diving further into these on their own in the future.

+ Mobile Web Design
As a small business, maybe you have given little or no thought to this point on your website on a mobile device. Just as you might have eased into this whole Internet thing, you should probably start dipping your toe in the water here. It is very easy to start small with mobile web design. I recommend putting together just one “mobile friendly” page on your website that delivers the type of information a user might be most interested in when accessing your info from their mobile phone. Consider these areas:

Mobile Devices

• Many different devices, features
• Mostly small screens, no room for big graphics
• Code with standards of W3C, xHTML

Mobile Content

• Little or no graphics
• Consider users want specifics, they are not browsing
• Display content like location, directions, hours, main services/products

My Mobile Web Recommendations

• Build a mobile friendly page at yourdomain.com/m
• Examples of using a /m directory or sub domain:
  Google.com/m or m.bestbuy.com
• Make your customers/users aware your mobile page exists
• Start small, track and make adjustments

Yes, there is a lot to consider in the mobile web design arena, but there is a better grasp on it now then 2 years ago and it will only improve. At Five, we are working on getting a /m page up to show as an example, so stay tuned. I also think we are not far off from designing a mobile page or section as a standard when creating new web projects.

+ Mobile Marketing
The ability for users to search on their mobile phone will also expand. With search engines refining their display, content and offering in the mobile web, there will be new and different opportunities. The same way Google Maps or Yahoo Local change up their algorithm for local search, mobile search has it’s own formula. The search engine results for Google mobile display only 6 results on page one. You also have to consider Google 411 and other local mobile search services.

The limitation of visual banners and ads on mobile devices will make search and link advertising the mobile marketing methods of choice for now, but who know what the future will hold … but speaking of the future, this next service is attacking it.

+ Nabbit.com, A Mobile Marketing & Tagging Service
Have you ever heard an ad on the radio and wanted to remember to call that company, or wanted a reminder buy that new song on iTunes when you returned home? Nabbit is a service that enables radio, Internet and mobile to connect to give you the ability to tag content.

Bringing Media Together
For me the beauty of Nabbit is the connection of various mediums, all for the benefit of the user. Signing up for Nabbit is quick and easy, you then set the stations you listen to, then you use your phone after a quick download to tag songs or ads. When you “nabb” a favorite song or an advertisement, it pushes the details back to your web account for you to review later and can send you a reminder to your email that you added to your playlist.

Marketers have to love the features Nabbit offers from coupons and callback features to significantly add to their radio ads. The songs you nabb give you options to buy and download from your favorite online store/service. Very cool.

As you can read above, there is a lot going on and advancing in mobile web. The good news is there are many small ways you can start to explore your capabilities and options. The worst thing to do at this point is to ignore it.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Mobile marketing - it's here to stay

Direct marketing techniques range from simple direct mail campaigns to more sophisticated relationship-based web promotions. In US & Europe, total expenditure on direct marketing as part of advertising expenditure can be significantly higher as compared to that of Middle East. A key impediment to direct marketing in the region is lack of efficient postal service delivery. Also, comparatively low internet penetration rates (especially broadband) limits advertisers to go for online advertising.

The potential for this new marketing channel (mobile marketing) is enormous - the rapid spread of the mobile phone in the last 5 years is proof of that. The market penetration of the mobile phone is particularly strong in ME - over 100% penetrations in, UAE (120% - highest in the world), Bahrain (105%) and Kuwait (100%).

TNS Global Technology Insights (GTI) survey reveals that the convergence of the telecom and media industries is leading to new opportunities in infotainment-related value added services, including mobile marketing. This development could prove to be an effective way to invigorate the historically underdeveloped direct marketing industry in the region and open an attractive new option for advertisers.

ALWAYS WITH IT:

American Express gained fame with the slogan, 'don't leave home without it'. While this may have been ringing true 20 years ago, the sentiment now applies more to mobile phones than to credit cards - or even wallets.

Consumers are more likely to feel discomfort and inconvenience if they lost their mobile phone, than if they lost their wallet. In this region, mobile phones users regard their phones as extensions of their own body, and therefore subject to the rules of personal space that might govern face-to-face contact. Brand marketers are welcome for a conversation, but they did better pay close attention to the rules. 'Marketers must recognize the role that mobile phones play in the lives of consumers and recognize the need for permission to engage the consumers through this medium'.

Mobile Consumer's interaction with their messages can happen in different ways: First - 'Personal - just for me'. Second - majority may feel the need to act on a message right away & Finally, mobile marketing allows consumers to interact with a marketing campaign instantly.

This combination of attitudes and factors means marketers are presented with a powerful tool, if the content is relevant to the consumer. This is the key element and so far it seems that marketers have failed to capitalise on this. 'Marketers appear to be resorting to 'old world' broadcast approaches to mobile marketing. It seems many marketers have yet to make the mental shift from mobile phones as a one way channel to mobile phones as a device for dialogue that creates deeper, richer brand experiences'.

However, consumers can have irritation with unsolicited and unwanted messages - and dissatisfaction with companies that send them. This doesn't mean that consumers want to avoid all contact with brands and companies. In fact, most of the consumers welcome messages that are informative and useful.

ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR BRAND:

Consumer understanding among mobile phone users indicate that consumers want mobile marketing to be a form of brand interaction. Discounts, coupons, information on products and savings, and downloads are all examples of mobile marketing that involve the customer with a brand in ways that are interactive.

Consumers also exhibit desire to engage in a more personal way with their favored brands. Creating the effect of exclusivity tends to encourage opt-in behaviour by consumers and lessen the impression of spam.

Establishing the 2 way dialogue is critical. 'Mobile marketing' has the potential to build better brand experiences than are available in other media. It is also safe to say that the more engaging experience consumers have with a brand the greater the probability that consumers will remain loyal to the brand.

TOUCH EVERYONE:

Consumer research in this region indicates that ME's mobile phone users are turning to higher end features more readily than ever, indicating high acceptance of new mobile technology and potential opportunities for mobile marketing campaigns.

Consider Downloading - TNS Global Technology Insight (GTI) survey reveals that 42% of the UAE consumers are currently downloading songs and 58% are downloading ring tones.

TNS GTI study also reveals that most popular types of downloads are ring tones, wallpaper/pictures, songs and games. Tying a marketing campaign into these areas could provide intrepid marketers with the means of getting consumers to invite a brand into his or her personal space. Such upward trend of mobile phone use in terms of features and applications is unlikely to fade out.

The marketing potential of the mobile phone will do more than simply provide a new medium for messages. Many mobile phone users don't even regard their phone as a medium, but as a communications tool, which yields interesting possibilities. 'Media-rich viral marketing will be another opportunity'. 'Consumer expect to be able to receive and distribute entertaining multi-media content by mobile phone in much the same way as they do email today.

The message for Mobile marketers is loud and clear, don't broadcast your message. Engage your consumers.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/

Bluetooth Advertising Derails Binge Drinking - Bluetooth Advertising and Proximity Marketing Blog

Bluetooth advertising continues to be used in new and exciting ways, including serving the public good. Check out this article below on efforts to use Bluetooth marketing to limit binge drinking in the U.K. Think of all the uses for Bluetooth proximity marketing in your neck of the woods.

Gencia is using Bluetooth technology to try and combat some of the problems associated with binge drinking on the streets of Liverpool.
In a campaign that has run throughout the festive season, and continues until the end of the month, the Manchester-based agency has utilised mobile projectors to display the current Home Office drink awareness TV ads (‘would you start a night like this?’) onto walls and buildings around the city’s social hotspots.
The projections ask revellers to turn on their Bluetooth settings on their mobiles, which then enables each sex to receive GIF images warning them of the dangers of excessive drinking.
Gender specific messages are also sent, asking girls if they’d get into cars with men they’ve only just met and boys if they’d smash a pint over someone’s head.
Gencia has used Bloowire units to deliver the information – claimed to be the world’s most powerful technology of its kind,

Bluetooth and the bingersboasting an ability to reach any phone within a 100-metre radius.
Agency director Christina Nicolaides said of the project: “This is an exciting campaign for us to deliver as we don’t believe any agency outside of London has used this new technology yet.
“The projections have so much more visual impact than leaflets and create immediate talkability. Clients also benefit as it’s cheaper and more effective, plus we are able to track the delivery of the message on the system to report back effectively.” She also stated that the firm has “more big plans in the coming months” to utilise the technology to help other clients meet their marketing needs.
Gencia was appointed to the current task by Liverpool Trading Standards in association with Merseyside Police.
In a second burst of activity later this month the agency will be sending out a free alcohol units calculator to drinkers, allowing them to keep a track of their night’s consumption.
Gencia also works with the Co-Op, Carphone Warehouse and Norwich Union.

http://bluespotmedia.ning.com/