NEW YORK -- Industry experts are now stressing that mobile initiatives are most successful as a leveraged aspect of multichannel campaigns.

This was the topic of discussion yesterday during part one of the Intensive Mobile Marketing Workshop at the Direct Marketing Association's DM Days conference moderated by Michael Becker, vice president of mobile strategies at iLoop Mobile Inc., San Jose, CA. He explained that marketing is no longer a single-channel operation, but has transitioned into a multichannel procedure.

"As marketing makes this shift to multichannel, we're lucky to have the mobile phone, where all types of marketing can converge onto a single device," Mr. Becker said.

Mobile is reaching the same scale of traditional media, with more than 100 percent year-over-year growth of daily users of mobile news and information, Mr. Becker told the audience of direct marketers.

Mr. Becker gave a straightforward, simple overview of what marketing should be in this day and age.

The purpose of marketing is to communicate, deliver and exchange value with consumers.

The objectives of any marketer should be to support the brand's overall business strategy, to support business objectives such as increasing the number of customers in a specific segment, and finally to support one's overall marketing strategy using mobile.

Mr. Becker covered the two forms of mobile marketing, direct mobile marketing and indirect mobile marketing.

Direct mobile marketing comprisesd both push and pull marketing, where some connection is initiated by the marketer. Put simply, it requires consumer consent.

Other connections are initiated by the consumer. So, indirect mobile marketing is the mobile enhancement of traditional media and retail, which requires consumer initiation.

"Mobile marketing is the set of activities, institutions and processes that support marketers in their pursuit to communicate, deliver and exchange offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large by way of the mobile channel," Mr. Becker said.

The next aspect of marketing covered by Mr. Becker was analytics.

Mr. Becker stressed the importance of reporting. He claimed that direct marketers are going to be the best mobile marketers in the industry because they already understand the idea of analytics.

An additional important concept that Mr. Becker discussed was the difference between mobile advertising and mobile commerce.

Mobile advertising is the practice of placing paid-for promotional media within any of the various mobile paths discussed above.

This channel may consist of an insertion of a few characters of text at the bottom of a text message, the appending or pre-pending of a voice or video advertisement to an automated voice or video service, or the insertion of a text or display banner within a mobile Web site or application.

Mobile commerce, on the other hand, refers to the practice of enabling value exchange via any of the mobile channel paths through a variety of billing systems such as premium SMS, credit cards, PayPal, carrier billing and alternative forms of payment.

Another important aspect of mobile marketing is selecting the right path out of the many available sub-channels inside the mobile channel as a whole.

These internal channels include SMS, MMS, email, IVR, carrier portals, mobile Web/WAP, WiFi, Bluetooth and applications.

"Every marketer should remember that not all mobile paths and initiatives are created equal," Mr. Becker said. "Certain considerations should be made."

First on Mr. Becker's list of suggested considerations was interoperability. Marketers must know if their strategy will work across many handsets and platforms.

Next, he recommended that marketers stay up-to-date and informed on industry standards and regulations to avoid any hindrance during the campaign. The Mobile Marketing Association is an excellent resource in this area.

Mr. Becker then said that marketers must understand that despite the current buzz around the iPhone, only 2 percent of U.S. consumers own and use an iPhone.

Awareness of handset adoption and feature adoption on those handsets is crucial to any strategy for a mobile campaign.

"Just because I have a smartphone, it doesn't mean I use all the features," Mr. Becker said. "I probably use 50 to 60 percent of the capabilities on my phone, and I'm an avid mobile user."

Mr. Becker also explained that the mobile channel has introduced marketers to a new idea of geography and location-based marketing.

Two final considerations that Mr. Becker suggested to marketers were maintaining channel health to avoid friction that may hinder the transfer of money and, most importantly, customer profiling.

Marketers need to laser-focus their initiatives based on consumer behavior, personal preferences and device type.

"When thinking about integrating mobile into your marketing practice, these factors will help you to understand if mobile is right for your business," Mr. Becker said.

The executive also made it clear that of the internal channels within mobile, SMS is by far the primary channel for mobile marketing because of the reach it offers.

In total, 57 percent of the population are active texters. In some demographics, such as 18-24-year-olds, that number reaches up to 84 percent.

The mobile Web/WAP comes in second in terms of channel usage within mobile.

Again, understanding the target demographic's device type is crucial when moving past SMS, since smartphones comprise only 10 percent of the market.

Mr. Becker warned that the market will change drastically with the introduction of the $99 iPhone. But until it does, marketers must be aware of feature phones' continued dominance in the market.

Some consumer engagement tactics he revealed were quizzes and trivia games, voting, mobile coupons, text alerts, branded utilities, mobile viral marketing, giveaways and mobile sweepstakes.

In wrapping up, Mr. Becker gave the audience a list of 10 things every mobile marketer should do:

? Understand your audience
? Make sure the objective fits with the overall brand strategy
? Make the campaign relevant
? Leverage and integrate mobile within a multichannel campaign
? Be decisive with the strategy and approach
? Pick the right partners
? Make the campaign measurable
? Be engaging, fun and useful
? Be flexible
? And start now

"There are certain elements of mobile marketing that are familiar, but there are also new skills that make marketers experts in mobile," Mr. Becker said. "Once you get that, you realize that it's all just the same marketing in a new light."