Mobile marketing: A background & some DOs and DON'Ts

Marketing on a mobile phone has very popular ever since SMS became widespread in the early 2000s in Europe and of Asia when businesses started to collect cell phone numbers and send off wanted and less wanted  content.

Over the past few years SMS has become an acceptable advertising channel in some parts of the world. This is because unlike email over the public internet, the carriers who police their own networks have set guidelines and best practices for the mobile media industry (including mobile advertising). Although one must say that mobile SPAM messages (SMS sent to mobile subscribers without a legitimate and explicit opt-in by the subscriber) remain an issue in some parts of the world, partly due to the carriers selling their member databases to third parties.

So what do you do if you want to use mobile marketing for your business and you do not want to 'bother' your clients with things 'they might not want'. One key criterion for provisioning is that the consumer opts in to the service. Make sure that the person you are sending the SMS to has agreed to receive information from you. Ways on how to collect such mobile numbers will be published here in a future article. Secondly if you do not want them to ask you to unsubscribe them from your list make sure that the frequency of SMS adverts sent to their mobile phone is kept within limit. Do not send out an SMS every week if you do not really need to. Thirdly, do not repeat the same message over and over again. If you first message this month was 'Great offers on products at my shop', do not use the same message next month even if the offers are still valid. Apart from seeming desperate, it can get repetitive and irritating to the recipient. People would rather receive an SMS this week saying there is a 20% discount on product A  this week and one the following week saying there is a 30% discount on product B rather than less SMS messages with the same messages. In other words, it is important that you have a new message to communicate when you are using SMS marketing.

Try SMS Marketing here.