If Users Ask for Text, They Want To Hear From You

A while ago, during one of those years that was supposed to be the “year of mobile”, there was such a fear of mobile spam that the industry set stringent guidelines about sms marketing.  Overall this is a attribute, we don’t want to turn off the consumer and we want to make the customer happy.  Because of the explosion of apps, mobile web sites and other uses of mobile, sms is just a fraction of the marketing effort.  Still, a sharing of best practices is lacking.

Last night, I saw a Target ad on television with a call to action of texting Toyland to TARGET (827438).  Argue the merits of vanity short codes amongst yourselves.  Where I found a flaw was in the message.  It asked me to go to a website, target.com/toyland, but the url was not a click through.  I had to type the link, or copy and paste, into my browser.  A small inconvenience.  Still, a barrier and it runs counter to the reason you do this kind of marketing, to shorten the impulse and make it easier for the customer to get to your e-commerce site.  By the way, Target does have a great mobile site and no, I did not buy any toys, there are no young ones in our house.

But the lack of communication and direct marketing does not stop there.  A few months ago, I saw a call to action at a Baskin Robbins with the promise that every couple of weeks a text would arrive with a special.  Yukon Cornelius.  Nothing.  Not a peep since the initial thanks for joining the mobile club.  Now, there are all sorts of reasons to text ice cream eaters, even in the winter.  About now a number of people might be interested in a holiday dessert or a lovely quart of egg nog.  

Qudoba is another where there has been no mobile follow through.  Saw the call to action.  Joined.  Got a message back thanking me and saying that I should show the register the message for a free order of chips, salsa and chili con queso.  Got the chips, never got a message.  Tis the season to cater the office party and various things around the home.  They are missing a opportunity.

So, who is doing it right?  Every couple of weeks I get a text from Bed, Bath and Beyond for 20% off of this or that.  Coke does a good job texting members of its rewards club.  Arby’s, even though I do not eat there and just wanted to see what they are doing, does great job of sending Buy One Get One Free or mobile combos on a weekly basis.  In the Chicago market, Value City Furniture has done a good job of leveraging a sports sponsorship to gain mobile members and sending specials. 

So the point here is if you are going to go through the trouble of building a mobile database via sms, then communicate with the customer.  While you may not get a immediate sale, if you don’t ask the question the answer is no.  Also, you are spending money on a tactic rather than investing in a strategy.  Think about your consumer, their experience and pay attention to the details as well.  Remember, if they don’t want to hear from you once a week, consumers can always opt out.

The Sun Rises On the Creative Catalyst

Oh, to live in this era of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)!  Old school marketers used to spew that “You need to spend money to make money.”  Now we live in a era where we say “You need to INVEST money to make money.”  Then we have to provide the data, KPIs, to prove that the investment worked.  What this has led to is a group of people more interested in staring at excel sheets and dashboards looking for numbers to move.  They justify their existence with the slightest upward movement of the numbers.

Except in Phoenix.

Last Friday, the Phoenix Suns announced that they were giving a “fun guarantee” for their upcoming game against the Dallas Mavericks.  If the goal is to sell tickets, must have worked.  The game is in three days and there are little more than a thousand tickets available.  For the season, their average is just over 15,000 a game, so they will beat that by a mile.

Of course they wanted to do more than sell tickets.  The Suns wanted to create buzz.  News outlets, such as ESPN, picked up on it and ran news stories.  That is tons of free publicity and thus advertising for the promotion.  They had advertising supporting their promotion and a special webpage suns.com/guaranteed. 

But they also gave their fans something to spread on all of the various social media networks.  They gave their fans, their brand evangelists, something to evangelize.  I am sure that from the time the promotion was started until now, the number of “likes” on Facebook and “follows” on Twitter increased.  Now, will the Suns follow through with unique specials (perhaps tickets with meal combo for a upcoming game) for people who check in on Foursquare and Facebook mobile.  Will they have a Instagram picture of the game of people who are having fun and getting their money’s worth at the Suns game?  Will they be grabbing the data of the people who are in the seats?  Will they be remarketing to them?

They also deserve kudos for getting the branding thing right.  Having fun at the game, being entertained is what any sporting event is about.  All of us take a rooting interest and have a passion, but it is important to not let this get out of control.  Sports is the original mini-staycation.  We go to the game, have a dog and a beer, and forget about our troubles for three hours. 

One more compliment to the marketing team at the Suns, you didn’t burn your money.  All teams, all brands produce marketing in various forms.  But, a lack of creativity can lead to money being burned.  Someone doesn’t click the banner ad, avoids the Facebook tab, clicks the radio button to another station, turns the television channel, ignores the newspaper ad your money just got burned.  You didn’t move one KPI.

Before first tip on Thursday, the Phoenix Suns marketing team already won the game.

All Talk No Action – The Sad State of Mobile Marketing

Over a year ago, prior to the 2011 holiday shopping season, a major advertising agency issued a white paper saying the mobile device was the new point of purchase at retail.  Outstanding insight.  Still, brands and agencies were caught flat-footed during the 2011 holiday shopping season.  A year later, there has been little or no progress.  The disease of ATNA (All Talk No Action) is in full force.

What leads me to this observation?  The hernia educing size of the Thanksgiving newspaper (it is an anachronism, I receive a daily newspaper) most of it was filled with advertising inserts.  They were neatly packaged in two plastic wrappers.

None of the ads had a special url, sms, qr calls to action.  Forget the fact that you might be able to gain the name and phone number of someone who might buy your product, you marketers just lost an opportunity to track the effectiveness of your spending.  On top of that, with bonded mobile couponing solutions available, such as Koupon Media, there was no way for the consumer to download the coupon on their mobile devices.

According to many sources, over a quarter of the billion dollars spent during the “Gray Thursday, Black Friday” shopping period was spent online.  Several large chains reported that consumers were comparing prices on mobile devices the wares on the shelves.  This happened last year.  Yet, I did not see anyone with a display saying got to “ourstore.com” or “Text ourstore to 1245” or “scan this code” to get a unique in store special.

By the way, you have to do all three.  The consumer makes the choice on where and how they use their mobile devices and you as a marketer need to have this redundancy.  It is something many in the mobile field have preached for years.  Start doing it.

As for all of the money and time you spent going over and vetting the editorial and artwork of these inserts, publishing them and paying for them to be included in the newspaper, wouldn’t it be wise to invest some of that money into a mechanism that gives you data and a direct relationship with the consumer – mobile?

Brands and agencies have to stop talking about how mobile is the future.  They have to stop talking about embracing mobile.  They have to start investing in the infrastructure and bake it into their overall strategies. 

This morning a study came out that was done by Forrester and paid for by Velti (full disclosure, a former employer) that showed that most marketers are being tactical in their use of mobile and that they are looking for customer acquisition.  The conclusion of the article states “The report takes this as further evidence that too many mobile advertisers are using desktop marketing tactics and haven’t yet adapted to the opportunities presented by mobile.  It recommends that marketers use mobile to deliver highly contextual, relevant information that directly engage individual consumers.”

Marketers it is time to kill ATNA.  Now, before you lose the 2013 holiday season.

  http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/11198-mobile-marketing-mainly-used-for-customer-acquisition-report?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Now that we have had an election...

Yesterday, within fifteen minutes, two people demonstrated exactly what is wrong with political discourse in this country.  Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, who has lost all of his post-9/11 statesman aura, stated that the U.S. and New York government combined response to Hurricane Sandy was worse than Hurricane Katrina.  Then, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean decided to aver that if Barack Obama lost re-election it was due to incidents that were anecdotal at best and gossip at worst.  These two guys are supposed to be leaders but they were doing their best to divide this country. 

We have now re-elected a President, selected a Senate and a House and now it is time to heal the rifts in this country.  Since most of you who read this are opinion leaders, as my friends, I ask you to do your best to raise the level of civic discourse.  We cannot look to others, such as current and former elected leaders do it, we have to take the initiative.

How do we do this?  Let’s not continue the time honored legacy of “if it comes from my side, it is o.k.”  The above stated case shows where there should be concern from the left and the right about what their spokespeople say and how they say it.  Yes, I do believe that there was a effort on the part of conservative office holders to have a more favorable electorate.   But, nobody is complaining about the process here in Illinois where we have to show picture identification (as President Obama did when he voted) and the relatively short amount of time we had to vote early.    But somehow, the same rules were greeted with hue and cry around the country.  Could it be that Illinois was not a swing state and had a Democrat as Governor and Secretary of State?

Part of this defending of one’s side is behavior that is disrespectful of our government and our process.  No President since the start of the 20^th century has been heckled from the floor of Congress, had his birth called into question despite overwhelming evidence that he was legally born in the United States and had a statement interrupted by a member of the U.S. media.  This President also had to deal with people questioning what he was spending on state trips.  This is the leader of the free world and there are several people, both foreign and domestic, that would do harm if they could.  Regardless of party, the President of the United States must be protected.  This isn’t fair politics. This is ginning up support for your view, it is libel.

Meantime, because those on the President’s side of the aisle, because he did reach out to Senators and Representatives across the aisle and had, of all horrors, Republicans in his cabinet he was derided as spineless.  Since there was not going to be a single payer health system, he was seen as a sell out.  Immigration reform didn’t happen, the prison at Guantanamo Bay is still open.  He was a fraud.  Then you sat on your hands during the mid-term elections.  This isn’t politics, it is bratty, I didn’t get my way so I will pout antics. 

I respect that fact that conservatives believe in less government, more local control of resources, bubble down economics and laizez-faire policy.  Also, I know that on the left there is a philosophy that we need a centralized government to oversee  and guard against corporate excess, protect the environment, guarantee human rights and a tax structure that demands more of the wealthy.   But, neither side has a corner on the market of patriotism.  Neither side is un-American.  Putting a flag on your lapel or on your front porch is the easy part.  Respecting your opponents view is the difficult part of our democracy.

Today, as you read this, regardless of who you voted for or backed, you did not lose.  We all won.  A election  selected a government in process that had integrity.  What we need to do now is stop our media from hyperventilating, stop throwing mud at our neighbor and start demanding a higher level of discourse from all of our elected officials.