By Gib Bassett

The Common Short Code Administration Web site lists a number of application providers that offer software and technology services geared around text messaging. 

While not exactly a formal guide, certainly a good many mobile marketing technology buyers navigate to this directory where they face the challenge of differentiating among various providers.

If that were not enough, established companies in other marketing technology and services segments are entering the fray, laying claim to dollars increasingly flowing into mobile marketing programs ? and away from others such as print advertising and direct mail.

It has reached a point where buyers now face what appears to be a number of best-of-breed providers against a landscape of generalists that have added mobile capabilities to their portfolios. 

Traditionally, this distinction found specialist firms aligned with the small to midsized market, where scale and integration is often less an issue than with larger businesses that typically embraced a ?suite? approach to technology acquisition strategy.

Mobile is different
I would like to suggest the distinction does not hold for firms focused on enabling mobile channel interactions, especially providers pushing the boundaries of what is possible with SMS text messaging. 

More visionary application providers enable sophisticated bi-directional conversations with customers geared toward driving sales, distributing offers and coupons, collecting preferences and demographic data and implementing or extending loyalty programs. 

Moreover, they are usually available as a service ? software as a service ? and advancements in this model of software licensing and development have broken down old barriers around integration, security and scale.

Building an opt-in database of mobile subscribers is now simply table stakes for providers and customers alike. The challenge has moved to taking advantage of mobile relationships in line with business strategy.

Buyers being wooed by players on the periphery would be wise to consider the implication of hiring firms without track records in mobile channel marketing. 

Lack of experience combined with an orientation toward other mediums and technologies can mean a lost opportunity, at best. Consumers give businesses few chances to get it right with mobile.

The next generation
For many businesses, be they in the retail, consumer packaged goods or broadcast communications segments, mobile is as much about engaging customers while on the go to achieve business objectives ? sales, loyalty or brand affinity ? as it is about any one technology. 

For this reason, ?active customer engagement? is as appropriate a label as any to describe the capabilities used to target customers in the mobile channel.

It is also in the crosshairs of companies in the email marketing, marketing services, CRM platform and creative services segments, as illustrated in the accompanying diagram.

Mobile on the periphery
The following are the ways firms in these other segments are building mobile into their offerings:

Email services providers: Mobile as text messaging complement to email delivery and an additional channel for communications.

Marketing services companies: Mobile for text message delivery and additional channel of communication as part of diversified marketing services utility.

CRM platforms: For business to business, mobile means field sales enablement, for business to consumer it is about text messaging complement to email.

Agencies and creative services: Basis around which advertising, branding and marketing campaigns are built.

Each of these touch on an attribute of active customer engagement, but none fully meets the requirements of catering to the mobile customer experience ? inclusive of messaging, email, Web, applications and social media. 

Marketers with pre-existing relationships with firms in these segments owe it to themselves to evaluate them as options when approaching the mobile medium ? and in some cases may elect to use them. Just be aware of probable limitations beyond the basics.

As marketers orient themselves around targeting increasingly active, on-the-go customers, they best align themselves with firms focused from their inception on the mobile customer experience. 

Retrofitting mobile interaction techniques to products and service created without a focus on active customer engagement will not likely serve a marketer?s objectives very well.

Gib Bassett is director of sales and marketing for Interactive Mediums, Chicago. Reach him at .