1 in every 7 minutes of media consumption today is done through the mobile device!
Posted by jen | Comments (0)
The UK public have donated £1.75m via
SMS to the BBC’s Children in Need appeal!
Text donations were launched on
Monday 26th October 2009, with viewers of BBC’s the One Show being asked to
text in to support the presenter they wanted to participate in the latest
children in need challenge. Each SMS donated £5 with donations capped at seven
maximum per day.
The SMS drive was bolstered
further, as the mobile networks kindly waived their usual fees and the Treasury
confirmed that no VAT would be charged. Gift Aid was also available meaning an
additional £1.40 for every eligible £5 donation – creating a potential extra
income of over £500k.
"This is the first time BBC
Children in Need has used SMS to interact with our supporters" said Anna
Bennett, Director of Operations and Finance, BBC Children in Need. "The
donation mechanic has made it easy for our supporters to donate and has helped
us to reach a wider audience."
Text lines stay open till
midnight tonight – so hopefully SMS can help raise even more money for such a
great cause!
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Nearly three-quarters (73%) of
marketers believe mobile will be the medium to see most growth over the next 5
years, according to new research conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau.
The survey, conducted amongst
a panel of over 100 senior-level UK agency representatives,
investigated their knowledge and understanding of mobile advertising, as well
as general attitudes towards the medium.
The research also revealed that currently some 95% of digital budgets include
spend on mobile, with only 5% of UK marketers not yet investing in
the medium.
Posted by jen | Comments (0)
Enough said.
You can read more here but this quote about sums it up: "Mobile is the future and
always will be".
www.admob.com/google
Posted by donald | Comments (0)
This year, despite the
downturn, everything is coming together very well for the mobile marketing
industry. Smarter phones, faster network speeds, and the halo effect of the
iphone have all made 2009 a break through year. The recent Comreg/ Lansdowne
Millward Brown study also revealed that 57 per cent of Ireland’s tech savvy
15-34 year olds now browse the mobile internet on sites such as Facebook
mobile, BEBO, RTE, Google, Yahoo, BBC as well as Vodafone, 3 , O2 and Meteor.
So, if you’re planning for 2010 the common sense advice from Donald Douglas of
RETURN2SENDER is “despite a bewildering array of powerful new technologies it’s
still all about brand building, customer retention and customer acquisition so
step one is to understand the role mobile can play within each activity”.
1. Brand
building: Mobile is a great place for brands to be. With
a lot of the focus around price and getting shelf space, there are still plenty
of consumer segments out there looking to spend their money with ‘relevant’
brands that are offering unique experiences, entertainment and value added
services. If your consumers are mobile, then, put simply your brand needs
to be mobile too. Mobile
is also great way of differentiating your brand and getting it talked about.
You only have to look at all of the attention that iphone applications are
getting. A recent mobile application that RETURN2SENDER did for The Carlsberg
Kilkenny Comedy Festival made it onto the RTE 6 O Clock news!
Creative: There are two ways to present your
brand either by creating an SMS service (e.g. check your bank balance), a
mobile website or more commonly creating a mobile application (‘app’ - apps are
like condensed websites that are downloaded to the phone and update themselves
when you re-open them). You also need to adapt your mobile offering to be
‘contextually’ relevant to consumers who are on the move and more interestingly
near the point of purchase. My favorite example of this is the ‘Sit or squat’
loo finder that P&G/Charmin did. More integrated examples include Lynx’s
weapons of mass (a mobile take on ‘spray more get more’). The application
provided you with all of the tools to help get a girls attention such as
videos, jokes, sound effects (hilariously a fake Porsche key fob was one of
them!). It recently won a lion at Cannes Lion Silver plus a D&AD pencil.
Creatives take note, peer praise, pool parties and awards await you in mobile!
Retention: Holding on to what you’ve got is
certainly one of the watch outs for this year so although customer acquisition
is a big target, right now, holding on to what you’ve got cannot be
ignored. There are lots of efficiencies with mobile: everyone has one
with them at all times; it’s accountable, over 99% of mobile communication gets
opened; it’s cheaper than post, and the lead times are much shorter. With
better phones out there mobile is also now, a credible alternative or
complement to paper and email. However, in the words of Spiderman ‘with great
power comes responsibility’ and although you may have obtained permission to
communicate on an ongoing basis over mobile (usually opted in via your existing
channels) once you get people’s trust you have to really keep things
interesting both in terms of what content, offer, or service you’re delivering
but more importantly when you are communicating. You can’t just harvest a load
of numbers in the summer and then blast out a sales message in January when
sales are low – it’s a relationship after all! A great example of this ‘value
exchange’ in mobile RM is the Orange
Wednesday’s campaign where you get a 2 for 1 offer every Wednesday by texting
FILM or PIZZA to 241. Closer to home Permanent TSB’s ‘we’ll text you your
balance’ is another great (‘RM as service’) example of a brand that is speaking
the mind of its consumers. Historically services like 24-hour banking have been
also great differentiators for often homogenised financial offerings so well
done to the Permanent TSB Marketing Manager who fought off layers of
bureaucracy and security fears to deliver something innovative and genuinely
useful. Looking at consumption occasions to communicate around is also a great
one for mobile and at RETURN2SENDER every Christmas and Valentine’s Day we put
significant finance and creative resource into making a short video mobile
greeting card that we send to our clients. This makes them feel valued, and in
return we get talked about and remain top of mind. It’s the same principle say
for example a €3,000 budget as it is for a €3 million budget. So, build a
dialogue, build a platform for news but make sure it’s of value. The final word
on this goes to Russell Buckley of Admob (the world biggest mobile ad network):
“advertising will have to rethink its role in relation to consumers and will
have to really add value in a meaningful way to their lives. Most of what
passes as advertising today will be seen as archaic as cigarette TV advertising
from the 1950’s”.
Acquisition:Acquisition (data, lead generation)
works in a couple of ways on mobile: either by putting an SMS response
number or mobile URL on an existing piece of media, by running a search or
banner campaign on the mobile internet, by using Bluetooth, or by getting
people to give you their details for free mobile applications on app stores.
SMS direct responseOne area in which mobile scores really
well is convenience of interaction. By adding an SMS number to your existing
media you can ‘intercept’ consumers by giving consumers them the most
convenient way to interact with your brand there and then. Another handy tip is
to embed a mobile web link in the reply text message where they can browse the
mobile web, download a mobile application, request paper or email information
or even click to call. This is also a good place to build your mobile
list and to ask people who’ve texted in do they want to receive ongoing mobile
communication such (SMS, mobile web, etc). We’re constantly amazed at how many ads,
particularly outdoor don’t have some form of mobile response and as I recently
read, ‘in the attention economy’ you can’t dictate to increasingly lazy
consumers how to interact with your brand. So, to make your advertising work
harder put a text number on the ad and you’ll get more bang for your buck.
Mobile banners and
search Mobile banner advertising offers advertisers incredible value for
money and at RETURN2SENDER we’re seeing click through rates between 1 and 6%.
We ran a great campaign last year with one of the bigger international hotel
groups, on the Vodafone Live! Portal. It prompted people to enter a competition
but also announced 2 for 1 deals on their various hotel offers available.
This campaign generated over €20,000 worth of sales for this group, not bad for
a mobile campaign that cost approximately €4,000. Over 1 million versions of
Facebook mobile are now being downloaded on GETJAR the mobile app store. Other
app stores include Nokia Ovi or Apple’s App store/itunes.
The future:The future is bright for mobile
marketing, there’s an awful lot happening and yes its still early days but
managed correctly mobile can really help you win customers, keep the ones you
have and get your brand talked about. The starting point is defining what
success looks like from the outset, assigning it a role and like online the
rewards are there for those who stake their claim early on.
October 2009Donald Douglas is Managing Director of RETURN2SENDER, The Mobile
Advertising Agency.
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A consumer survey conducted by mobile marketing firm
HipCricket found that 37 percent of consumers would be interested in
participating in a mobile customer loyalty program, while 83 percent say their
favorite brand has yet to market to them via their mobile phone. In addition,
the firm found that of those consumers who have received mobile marketing
offers, 47 percent have brand recall and 94 percent of those remember the
specific call to action. The survey was conducted in September via e-mail and
is based on 511 respondents.
Posted by jen | Comments (0)
That was the total global count of mobile
subscribers on the planet at the start of the year 2009.
To put that number into context:
· There are 480 Million Newspapers printed daily
· 800 Million automobiles registered on the plane
· 1.1 Billion personal computers including all
desktops, laptops, notebooks & netbooks
· 1.2 Billion fixed landline phones
· 1.4 Billion internet users
· 1.5 Billion TV sets
· 1.7 Billion unique holders of a credit card of any
type
· 2.1 Billion unique holders of a banking account of any
kind.
BUT there are 4 Billion
mobile phone subscriptions. This really puts the power of mobile into context…
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On the 25th September, the
Irish Youth Foundation held its annual Denim Day appeal. Now in its fourteenth
year, the IYF wanted everyone to prove that they have generosity in their genes
by wearing denim for the day. R2S showed it support by creating a free denim
themed, interactive SMS and mobile advertising campaign.
With the help of O2, Three & Vodafone,
mobile banners were place across the portals which allowed consumers to click
through to a Denim Day WAP site where they could personalise their mobile
in ‘denim’, view information on the charity and click to donate. There was also
a chance for consumers to enter into the Denim Day draw and win fantastic
Hilfiger prizes, all involving denim!
In 2008, Denim Day raised over €40,000
which was distributed among a number of youth focused projects in Ireland to include Drug and Alcohol Awareness
Programmes, After School and Homework Clubs, Sporting and Recreational
Equipment, Arts, Drama and Creative Activities and Personal Development and Confidence Building. The Irish youth foundation
does excellent work to help the less fortunate children in our society and R2S
was proud to help this worthy cause.
Although Denim day is over the IYF is
always happy to receive donations. Go to www.iyf.ie to bring a
smile to a less fortunate child
Posted by jen | Comments (0)
Here's a snap from Today's Irish
Times showing a developer playing around with Facebook on Google's Android
platform. There are now 65 million mobile users of FACEBOOK ( who have
used it in the last 30 days) making it one of the most popular mobile services
around. So, like SMS, IM and email what drives the web (or mobile web) is still
friends and personal connections...
Posted by donald | Comments (0)
Here are some stats from
Comreg/ Lansdowne
70% of Irelands
Tech Savvy
segment are aged 15-34 with a male bias.(54%).Tech savvy accounts for 30% of
the population. Tech savvy is also 16% AB, 35% C1 and 23% C2…
Of tech savvy (above) 57% browse the mobile Internet
compared to the national average which is 19%.
Here's a link to the
original doc ( id link to Comreg but cant re-find it on the site)
ComReg ICT Report July 2009.pdf (1.12 mb)
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