NEW YORK - Integrating mobile into traditional media campaigns is essential for marketers, whether they use banner ads, mobile Web sites, SMS, search, applications or coupons.

Such was the consensus of a panel at the Direct Marketing Association's Mobile Marketing for Agencies and Media Buyers event. Panelists discussed what they deemed to be the essentials of mobile marketing strategy.

"The key is to communicate, deliver and exchange value with your audience, to interact with the audience on their handset," said Michael Becker, executive vice president of business development for iLoop Mobile. "Choose the tactic that is appropriate for the overall campaign strategy.

"Voice, SMS and the mobile Internet are the mass-market paths -- 99 percent of mobile phones are SMS-capable -- and each of those paths can ingest interactive advertising into a traditional media property," he said.

Mobile coupons were a hot topic.

"Coupons can take many forms, but today the primary form is an alpha-numeric code within a text message, so consumers can to walk up to retail point of sale and show their phone to redeem the coupon," Mr. Becker said.

"Money Mailer has incredible business going on right now -- they mail you a shared mail pack, an envelope with coupons, and by adding mobile calls-to-action to their print coupons, they're increasing the redemption rate 300 to 400 percent, because people appreciate not having to carry a piece of paper with them," he said.

The biggest challenge facing mobile coupons is POS redemption, because many retailers cannot scan the coupon on the phone or recognize 2D bar code images.

"Over the next 6 months or so retailers will modify their POS to address that, and companies like mDot are putting out solutions like that to address the POS, the last mile of mobile commerce," Mr. Becker said.

"The precursor is rebate fulfillment sweepstakes, engaging and incentivizing consumers driving them to the POS using a mobile Web site, having consumers submit information to get a rebate back using their handset, which does not require POS integration," he said.

"Mobile applications and 2D bar codes are still a niche play -- there's no doubt the capability will happen, but it might take a couple of years to make it mass-market applicable."

Another popular topic was integrating SMS into traditional media.

"A limited number of messages can generate huge ROI for your business," Mr. Becker said. "Use traditional media channels to build your mobile list, and once they're on your list you can start marketing to them, engaging them with promotions and incentives and establishing brand affinity and a value proposition."

President Obama had over 50,000 keywords that his campaign used over the course of two-to-three years, enabling his campaign to send targeted, personalized text messages to people in specific locations.

"You don't need to be a Fortune 500 company to do this, it's such an approachable channel, so don't have to be frightened," Mr. Becker said. "Mobile was one of the reasons that Obama won -- he used these mobile channels to engage his audience.

"American Idol is a classic case of mobile activating traditional media," he said. "It's a massive missed opportunity if you don't add a keyword and short code call-to-action to all media to make your advertising interactive.

"Use mobile advertising as both a brand awareness tool and a revenue generator."

Common short codes work across all carriers, and SMS has the highest adoption rate and reach of any mobile channel.

"There are many forms of media available on mobile device, and one of the most ubiquitous is via SMS," said Matthew Valleskey, marketing communications of mobile services for Neustar. "Almost every device comes enabled with SMS capabilities, and even feature phones that don't have data plan or access to Internet can use SMS."

Short codes can be used in text-to-win or voting/polling initiatives. Mobile calls-to-action can be issued via outdoor advertising, TV, radio, print, direct mail pieces and even in some cases email marketing to make those traditional channels more interactive.

Using different SMS keywords in different calls-to-action can help advertisers target consumers' location and figure out which types of traditional advertising are most effective.

For example, BMW put a short code on billboards in front of major airports. Each location had a different keyword in the call-to-action, such as LAX. The automaker was able to target to people in a specific area and push back location-specific information and offers to consumers that opted in.

"Once you know a person likes a specific product or genre, you can go right back to people who responded to a particular ad or campaign and build a targeted database," Mr. Vallesky said. "You can run as many keywords as you want with the same short code and divide them by geography, say, if a brand just wants to market to franchises in San Diego.

"There's no where you can't put a short code in traditional media to take a dead piece and make it live, such as magazines and news articles," he said. "You can now make a regular article interactive to get more information via your mobile phone."

Marketers are excited by the rise in popularity of smartphones, which enable rich-media ads.

"Mobile advertising is very much centered on banners ads, but engagement is 80 percent of the effort, so you have to think about what's the engager, what gets presented when they click on the ad," said Dean Macri, CEO of Cielo Mobile "Rich media is akin to Internet, there are engagement opportunities inside the ad, many types of things you can do to improve engagement.

"Brands are providing something you can't buy, because you can go out and buy a list of email address, but you can't go out and buy a list of cell phones numbers," he said. "SMS fits the value of direct marketing by building lists of new opt-in customers, and it doesn't have to be a coupon, it can be new product annoucnements.

"Movie studios have embraced SMS heavily, because they want to build a mobile database of people interested in movies, and they can't buy that asset, so they need to build it themselves."

It is important to follow MMA standards and abide by the double-opt-in so that messages are not perceived as annoyances, but rather add value to the consumer.

"The ultimate essential of mobile: it is a permission-based opt-in channel," Mr. Becker said. "If you mess with that, you're done.

"Respect consumers' privacy, get their permission and focus on relevancy," he said. "A person's mobile number is more important than their social security number, and you have to respect that."