Mobile marketers react to economic slowdown: Part V

By Staff reports

November 19, 2008

Is mobile recession-proof?

This is the fifth part of a series that looks into how mobile marketers and their clients are reacting to the economic slowdown. For some the next year looks bleak and for others, the economy may be an opportunity for the industry.

Mobile Marketer's reporters got in touch with the various companies that make up the mobile ecosystem and asked them one question: How are you and your clients reacting to the ongoing economic slowdown? Here is what some respondents had to say.

Steven Rosenblatt, vice president of advertising sales, Quattro Wireless, New York
Smart marketers take advantage of economic downturns to increase their share of voice.

While marketers are now more than ever scrutinizing their spend, mobile has the opportunity to shine as a truly measurable medium.

It is our turn as an industry to standardize the buying and measurement process and step to the front of a media buyer's thought process achieving for ROI in a tough economic climate.

Shira Simmonds, president of Ping Mobile, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Due to the current state of the economy, a great deal of pressure has been put on our clients to only spend ad dollars on media that will directly increase their ROI.

In order to achieve this goal, more and more clients have been cutting traditional advertising budgets and are turning to cutting-edge marketing tools, such as mobile marketing.

Mobile campaigns have been proven to produce extremely targeted, trackable and ROI focused results.

Many brands are misinformed regarding the actual costs of mobile marketing, fearing it is too pricey, when, in truth, it is one of the least expensive ways of directly targeting their customer base.

Bill Dudley, group director and product management for Sybase 365, Dublin, CA
The economic downturn is not posing an issue to mobile messaging as it continues to be embraced and utilized at a growing rate.

Sybase 365 has seen such a natural progression among companies and consumers using SMS and MMS to communicate that it is almost immune to an economic downturn.

If anything, it will continue to grow because it is extremely cost-effective.

Sybase 365's technology was responsible for delivering some 100 billion such messages in 2008 -- a figure that is only expected to increase over the next few years as more and more enterprises adopt mobile solutions.

Nick Taylor, president of Usablenet, New York
Companies are more focused on supporting their customers using mobile phones to access their Web sites and services than ever before.

The technology for the mobile Web has already been invested in, proven by the rapid growth in mobile Web usage, increasing mobile phone sales and higher data speeds available.

Companies have realized this, and launching a mobile Web offering is a huge priority for them in order to allow customers to access the Web site fully via mobile, providing the company a vital new channel - the mobile phone - for revenue, customer service and marketing.

Importantly, mobile is a simple and natural extension of their regular Web sites that they have already made a huge investment in.

While companies may be cutting back on general spending, revenue and customer satisfaction are critical, and mobile Web has proven to be a low-cost and high-impact solution.

Mobile Marketer's Giselle Abramovich, Dan Butcher and Mickey Alam Khan did the reporting for the "Mobile marketers react to the economy" series.

If you are interested in providing your thoughts on the economic slowdown, email .