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Mobile new face of direct marketing: Mobile Marketing Day panel

NEW YORK " Mobile is the new face of direct marketing, according to the "Mobile Marketing: Is it Direct?" panel at the Direct Marketing Association's Mobile Marketing Day in New York.

Mobile marketing encompasses the best of both worlds: Internet marketing's interactivity with traditional direct marketing's accountability and ability to track ROI. While many marketers tap mobile for brand-related advertising, most of them expect to generate leads from click-throughs, registrations, click-to-call and text-message opt-ins for SMS alerts and offers.

"Absolutely, mobile marketing is a direct channel to reach our customers to sell them something," said Jeannette Kocsis, vice president of digital strategy for Harte-Hanks. "We're trying to engage customers at every stage of the life cycle so they're willing to come back again and again and again to continue that relationship.

"Incorporate mobile into other channels to keep communication back and forth, and provide incentives such as getting coupons on their phone," she said. "It's important to understand customers' preferences, and their needs may be changing, so come back and ask about their other needs by driving them back to a mobile Web site and letting them select new preferences.

"Many people are substituting text messaging for email, and we're bringing in mobile Web sites, which you have to experience before you can talk about it and convince your company to use mobile."

Michael Becker of iLoop Mobile moderated the opening panel discussion titled "Mobile Marketing: Is it Right?"

Panelists were eager to distinguish traditional direct marketing -- buying a list and hoping people will reply -- to mobile marketing.

"You can't buy a list in mobile, and that's a good thing, because ultimately it will protect the channel from becoming spam like email, which we block or ignore," said Eric Holmen, president of SmartReply. "Mobile offers mechanisms to draw people to you by creating value and the impetus to participate, so the list is brought to you one customer at a time.

"Putting signs up at stores is one of the easiest ways to drive participation," he said.

For example, Giant Eagle supermarkets ran a mobile campaign with a physical sign in its deli department with a mobile call-to-action: "For special offers, text in keyword DELI to this short code."

The company received 200 opt-in messages a day and sent out one alert a week with an offer of "buy one rotisserie chicken between 5 and 6 pm today, get one free." The campaign achieved an 11 percent response rate.

While some companies experiment with one-off campaigns, most brands are looking to start an on-going conversation with consumers. They can use the first opt-in as a platform to expand the relationship by asking consumers to reply back via SMS with their ZIP code and other information.

Advertising -- both in traditional media and on the mobile Internet -- can be an effective way to drive awareness and participation in marketing campaigns.

"Mobile has hit scale across not just SMS, but the mobile Web as well, and there's a plethora of interesting inventory," said Andy Miller, CEO of Quattro Wireless. "Mobile is a classic direct marketing vehicle, and brands can target to specific customer sets now that we do have scale.

"With banner ads on the mobile Internet, once you click through to the landing page of a campaign, there's branding to drive awareness, but you can also ask consumers to sign up for an SMS club and provide their email address, phone number, lead information capture, reverse look-ups to get home addresses and click-to-call," he said.

The mobile channel can consolidate and enhance many of the interactive strategies first deployed on the wired Web.

Paths to initiate and maintain engagement with consumers include SMS, MMS, email, interactive voice response (IVR), the Internet, mobile Web, Bluetooth and applications.

Marketers can put a short code on a print ad or wired Web site and ask consumers to text in to receive a WAP link.

"Then you've taken consumers from, say, a print magazine to the actual mobile Web site of an advertiser, with the ability to capture data and form a relationship with customers," Mr. Miller said. "There are incredible targeting opportunities available, such as location, the type of handset, how old the handset is, demographic information.

"Mobile Web has a lot of reach in the U.S., and SMS is ubiquitous," he said. "With mobile campaigns, the ROI is great, CTRs are off the charts and engagement is fantastic.

"There are not a lot of ads on each page, just a banner or a text link, you can target and measure to see what's working and not working, and right now it's not a very expensive medium to buy."

As far as reach, there are at least 230 million individuals with mobile phones in the U.S. and more than 4 billion handsets worldwide.

Marketers can attain the most pervasive reach via text messaging, as more than 50 percent of consumers use SMS on a daily basis, according to the panel.

Brands should be asking themselves, "How do I integrate mobile across all paths and channels to achieve my corporate goals?"

Also, brands should seek a holistic integration of mobile across all their customer engagement activities.

"Branding is focused on pull, while most companies are trying to focus on lead generation and sales, which is push-oriented, going directly to the consumer," said Diane Strahan, vice president of mobile services for Neustar. "Mobile offers all of these opportunities, from passive branding to offering a value proposition to customers, pushing offers to customers to drive sales.

"This year, most companies are focused on direct response and push, building databases, selling things via interactive direct push relationships and measuring their return on investment," she said. "Mobile is a great way to track and engage people and measure traditional advertising spend.

"Mobile boosts the ROI of traditional advertising by turning it into an interactive channel with bar codes, WAP links, short codes, downloading video clips, links to the mobile Web -- there are a plethora of great opportunities to enhance traditional marketing spend."