ROI on Mobile Marketing Campaign

BMW presented a case study at the Mobile Marketing Forum in London. BMW shared how a MMS campaign in Germany, promoting the use of winter tires sent to 117,000 mobile consumers, generated $45 million in sales – or a return on investment of approximately $750 dollars for every dollar spent.

This makes a strong case for any and every kind of company in product or service space to add mobile to their marketing mix.

 

Areas of mobile marketing that need attention in 2009

On a global perspective, top three areas of focus are :

1. More mobile knowledge experts.
2. Greater case study sharing. &
3. Creation of guidelines around mobile measurement.

Mobile knowledge experts

There is a huge need in the global mobile marketing industry to pass our collective mobile expertise off to new entrants to expand the knowledge base of those able to evangelize.

More case study sharing

Already a strong proponent of information sharing, the MMA encourages all marketers to continue to share their successes and failures regardless of size of campaign, target demographic or results.

Measurement

Yes, mobile has been challenged with creating consistent metrics and reporting in order to drive greater spend in the mobile channel – like all media in its early days.

The MMA has launched its Measurement Committee and hopes to release its guidelines forMobile Web Measurement early in the third quarter of 2009.

Content Stores will be next

Today I was interacting with a mobile media expert and while talking suddenly it struck me that lot’s being talked about User Generated Content (popularly referred to as UGC). However, different people have different opinions on whether UGC will have a profound impact in times to come on when, where and how it is produced.

I think, as there are app stores springing up around the world…the day is not far when operators will start their own content stores as well, where-in people will be able to submit their content for public voting, popularity and downloads. Which ever UGC becomes famous, will be adopted by operator or media companies on revenue share basis with content providers…as I feel ultimately quality UGC provider will definitely dominate and will stand out against all other service providers who provide generic services like voice, text etc.

War on Mobile App Store Front soon…

I was at Nokia Forum yesterday in New Delhi while it was being organised by Nokia parallely in Malaysia too. Nokia has started organising these forums/ code camps regularly now to connect with third party developers who come out with very innovative applications every now and then from around the world.

Mostly present there were talking about how different manufacturers like Research In Motion (RIM), Google Inc., Microsoft and Nokia etc. are all tryting to get a pie of the app store market share, a trend started by Apple. Most of them agreed that Apple actually told the world that phone is not just for talking or sms but a lot more then that, through it’s iPhone and the app store. However in India, iPhone is not as popular in absence of 3G networks.

Now, other companies like RIM and Nokia are going to leverage that customer knowledge (imparted originally by Apple)  to monetise the huge opportunity available now as Nokia and RIM both have far greater market share in India then Apple’s iPhone.

Research in Motion (RIM) in October 2008 announced two major distribution initiatives for smartphone applications for its BlackBerry handheld, including an online store called BlackBerry Application Storefront and an application center. RIM began accepting applications and content from developers for inclusion in the storefront in December and the store is scheduled to launch this month. The storefront will allow developers to set their own prices for applications. RIM is working with PayPal, an online payment service, to provide consumers with a way to pay for applications from BlackBerry smartphones.

Nokia is launching their app store on OVI starting first from western world by end of first quarter and later entering in India by around mid of this year. Nokia is also tying up with various payment platforms including credit card payment gateways online for cutomers to pay for applications.

A key question for technology executives is what value, if any, do these app stores provide to business users? So far, experts say, the usefulness for business appears to be limited. But with the influx of new players in the market, the number of business applications might increase.

Top Trends in Mobile Space

Next 2-3 will see radical changes happening in mobile space, making smartphones, netbooks and yet-to-be introduced devices even more indispensable parts of our lives. Here I am quoting ( from CIO Zone) some of the developments in US and will also try to give my views from India’s persective that will power this next phase of evolution?

Long Term Evolution (LTE)

The so-called fourth generation of mobile (4G) is expected to be rolled out across North America over the next three years, making it possible for corporate users to run business applications on their devices simultaneously with Voice over IP (VoIP) capabilities. Where as in India 3G is yet to roll out for masses. People are eagerly waiting for the same as slowly people are switching on to smart 3G phones.

WiMax

As LTE and WiMax networks are deployed in the U.S. through 2012, expect to see more netbooks and laptops equipped with built-in radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless support. We sometimes get queries in India for development of applications in healthcare etc. but simple are not able to serve these clients due to unavailability of wimax infrastructure India wide.

3G & 4G interoperability

Sprint has developed a dual mode card which will enable mobile device users to work on both 3G and 4G networks. Other carriers are expected to follow suit.

Smartphone applications

Third-party software vendors will increasingly make enterprise applications available for smartphones, including inventory management, electronic medical records management, warehousing, distribution and even architectural and building inspection data for the construction industry.

GPS

Global Positioning Systems will increasingly be used to identify end users by their whereabouts and also to analyze route optimization for delivery workers and service technicians.

Security

As new and different types of mobile devices are introduced, corporate IT departments will find it increasingly challenging to identify and authenticate individual end users. As such, expect to see a combination of improvements in both Virtual Private Network (VPN) software and hardware-based VPNs to support multiple device types.

Tody, I was in Nokia Forum and there I came to know that last year, they had selected an pplication in International level competition where in with the use of cell-phone, you can convert your television into a touch screen device. These are the kinds of technologies that will change the world and bring all kinds of functionality of operating virtually anything, right in the hands of the mobile device owner.

Video Streaming on Mobile in India to get a major boost soon…

Yes. You read it right…video streaming on mobile will be a norm soon in India as the latest findings say that Indian internet users are vehemently using their mobiles to keep themselves connected to Internet. Thirty-eight million Indians use their handsets to browse the web as of today. The number of people using their mobile handsets to access the web is now over four times those using a PC.

I was talking to a senior executive recently from USA and he said that opportunities in Indian market are plenty as not even 10 million  people in India have internet access and many businesses are still not on internet. So, they would like to penetrate India fast so as to cash the opportunity in time. And now with the above study, opportunity has gone over board as business are required to be taken from paper to internet and then onto mobile or should I say…directly from offline to wireless. Amazing.

The findings based on a report of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) also stated that even as net connections fell in the year 2007, the number of people accessing the web on their cellphones increased from16 million to cross the 38 million mark. This included both CDMA and GSM users logging on to the Internet to surf, check email etc, among whom the number of ‘active’ Internet users in India currently stands at 32.2 million. The average usage per week on the traditional web stood at 2.4 days. Access using Mobile web surprisingly stood slightly higher at 2.7 days per week.

We have been getting queries as to how we can help companies to stream their online videos to mobile and these company executives are more excited then I am, to access their online videos on mobile any time, any where on the go…If all goes like this, time is not far when all companies, if not all Indians will be having their own mobile videos.

How will netbooks affect mobile marketing?

The growing popularity of netbooks – smaller, lighter and cheaper laptops with almost similar Web capabilities as big-screen versions – is set to change the world of mobile marketing and media.

Brands such as Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Asus have already launched netbooks priced between $300 and $400. Dell is expected to debut its own version, although there is no inkling that Apple may come out with its netbook.

According to Pholop Solis, ABI principal analyst for mobile broadband in Oyster Bay, NY, A netbook is easier to carry out of the home because it is smaller and lighter, and it is also easier to tote around the home. Also, some people are buying them to use for email and presentations when they travel for business so they can travel light. The popularity of netbooks is possible because of their price range – mostly between $300 and $400, so far.

ABI Research expects netbooks’ sales to more than double to about 35 million units in 2009, and for that to continue to climb in 2010. Some of these will be purchased as secondary devices to get on the Internet by consumers who would not have bought a second laptop.  Some of them will be purchased by consumers as a replacement for an older laptop instead of buying a new laptop.  Today’s netbooks resemble small laptops – they practically are except that they have processors that are less powerful. Early movers in netbook space have been Acer and Asus as two main leaders in the market.

Netbooks are increasingly being offered with mobile broadband and increasingly coming with GPS as well, these devices certainly bring opportunities around location-aware services and advertising.  They will used while walking the way smarpthones and mobile Internet devices will be used, but they certainly will be used on-the-go more often than laptops.

Mobile devices, in general, are expanding from just cellular handsets to include laptops, netbooks, mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and even mobile consumer electronics devices – things like game devices, portable media players, cameras and camcorders are gaining mobile broadband connections for data-only to increase their usefulness. 

In this context, smartphones with better browsers, netbooks, and MIDs are filling the need to be able to access the Internet from anywhere on just the right device, depending on the person’s preferences and needs. This means Internet will be consumed, via the smartphone and netbook channels in the longrun. On-the-go, various devices will fill the need to get on the Internet. However at home, nothing can fully replace the PC.

How should marketers and advertisers react to this phenomenon?
The fact that Internet access is being done more and more from anywhere means that advertisers have to take this into account. 

Location-based advertising is one part of this.  Properly done, mobile advertising can be very useful to people who are already searching for places and using services in the context of their current location and next destination.

(Excerpts from Mobile Marketer)

IPhone – an operator’s friend or a foe…

Strand Consult laid out, why having the Apple iPhone on your network might not be the best thing in the world. In their own words:

Strand Consult is not in the business of creating hype around technology, our business is to explain to mobile operators how the future market will evolve and how to make money for their shareholders.

…so their ten points on the iPhone are well worth reading in this article. You can read the details here, but their main topics are given below, with little notes of my own thoughts on each area.

1. The iPhone attracts a limited market segment, Apple’s goal was a global market share of 1%. But despite this, the iPhone is not a mass-market product; it is a product that attracts a niche segment. In India too, there are not many serious takers of iPhone. Many just carry the same just as their style statement while carrying a second phone to make or recieve calls. I have personally come across many who are out of reach when somebody sitting next to them tries to call them.
 
2. Marketing the iPhone takes away staff from more profitable sectors.

3. Customers not interested in iphone have been the neglected lot.  Could some of those customers that are not interested in an iPhone feel more welcome with operators that do not carry the iPhone and is not it likely that focusing on a niche product will result in neglecting customers that are the actual foundation of an operator’s existence?

4. While the data usage of the iPhone is promoted, most people are switching to the iphone from other data handsets, not coming into the network specifically for that, so the actual educational effect of the iPhone is minimal. Perhaps operators should take a closer look at these customers voice ARPU rather than their data consumption?
 
5. Having iPhone customers using large data volumes sounds good, but when data is being sold at a flat rate, a high data consumption results in high production costs without the corresponding increased revenue. You could compare the operators’ attitude towards the iPhone’s data consumption with a restaurant owner that has a “all you can eat for 10 Euro” buffet and that is proudest of the customers that eat the most! In this business the idea is to generate revenue for the shareholders, not to increase the production volume and costs, while at the same time minimising revenue.
 
6. When you examine the iPhone data consumption, you will see that iPhone customers use their browser to view ordinary websites and that they often choose not to view the websites in XHTML – optimised for low bandwidth and mobile phone sized screens. In practice this results in that when an iPhone user browses a typical news site, an ordinary web page will be around 1 MB, while the mobile version of the same page will often be less than 100 Kb. It is significantly cheaper for an operator to produce 100 Kb data than it is to produce 1 MB data and it is much more fun to deliver 100 KB rather than 1 MB when you are selling data at a flat rate.
 
7. Apple’s App store gives no fees to the operator (in the same way as Nokia share revenue via the N-Gage on device store), and has a kickback from the data tariffs. In short they regard networks as dumb bit pipes.

8. Strand’s research shows that there is not one single Apple partner in the world among the mobile operators that has increased their overall turnover due to the iPhone. So apart from the press coverage, what value has the iPhone actually created for the shareholders of the operators that have chosen to become Apple iPhone partners?
 
9. The unlocking handset market worldwide is huge for unofficial handsets. These phones are most often used on other non-Apple partner networks thus depriving the apple partner networks off the revenue.
 
10. Other Operators and MVNO’s are directly benefiting from (9) without having to invest in all the other iPhone structure requested by Cupertino.

The conclusion is simple. This is not good business for shareholders of operators that are Apple and iPhone partners – on the contrary it is far better business not been an Apple and iPhone partner. Operators that choose not to carry iPhone products have an increased probability of serving their shareholders interests over those that move their management’s focus, subsidies, marketing and distribution power on a product that is as beautiful as Paris Hilton, but increases production costs and where there may not be a relationship between revenue and costs.

Mobile Coupons

Mobile phone is the most economic and ideal medium for communicating promotions to targeted consumers these days in wake of global melt-down and continually increasing cuts in expense by companies world wide.

In the west, advertisers are increasingly launching campaigns that include mobile coupons, driving retail traffic and increasing sales. Mobile phones are always with the consumer at checkout.

For that reason, mobile coupon redemption rates today exceed print coupon redemption – on average 5 to 6 percent versus paper’s 2 percent.

Effective approaches to mobile coupons

Mobile couponing is evolving in many forms, each with its own strengths and limitations. Some of the are:

• Landing page coupons : In many cases, a mobile coupon itself is not an actual coupon, but rather a promotional communication displayed on the consumer’s mobile device.
• A simple text message alert offering discounts and promotions. For example, “Flat 10 percent off on all goodies. This weekend only.” A major advantage of text-alert campaigns: They reach a mass-market audience across virtually all phones, and are relatively easy to execute.
• A uniquely coded offer that requires validation at point of sale. Advertisers often want to offer unique promotions to select customers through a conventional coupon.In this case, only consumers who opt-in to receive mobile promotions get the offer. Consumers simply display the offer on their phones at the point of sale, validating their discount or promotion.
• An alert containing a link to an advertiser’s promotional offer. A mobile text message can be sent with a link that, when selected, opens to a page with a coupon image (for example, “$100 off on first 100 earlybird registrations”).
• A mobile coupon tied to a retailer’s loyalty program
• MMS-based mobile coupons. Mobile alerts can be delivered to consumers via an MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), which can contain multimedia objects such as images, audio, video and rich text. They are good and attractive, however, they are much costlier to send then simple text messages.
• Coupons within branded mobile applications. A mobile coupon can be packaged as a feature within a retailer’s mobile Internet (WAP) site or downloadable handset-resident application. The coupon appears as one of several menu choices. For example, WAP sites and applets might display a menu item such as “Alerts and Coupons.” Consumers who click on “Alerts and Coupons” can opt in to receive periodic text messages for store specials, promotions and discount offers. Coupons delivered within a mobile application give advertisers the ability to track and capture the behavior of consumers. They understand, for example, how often particular offers are viewed and how many are forwarded to friends. 
• Coupons within branded mobile games. This one comes as an extension to the above. In this consumers play the games like car races etc. where racig track is surrounded by various brand banners inside the game. Incentive for the consumers winning various stages of the game are given discounts on various purchases or sometimes even free goodies for crossing all stages.

[Excerpts from Mobile Marketer]

My Interaction with Mr. Anssi Vanjoki (EVP of Nokia)

Yesterday evening, I attended the CEO forum organized by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). Whole event was very well organized and most experts from the telecom and mobile field in general were there among the attendees. Mr. Anssi Vanjoki (EVP of Nokia) was the key speaker for the event.

 

He presented Nokia, from where it started, what it is today and where the whole company is heading to. It was a great presentation and I am giving in the following few lines, the summary of what I got out of the whole presentation and interaction with him.

 

Nokia when it started had launched a big mobile phone which people used to keep as a status symbol as every single piece used to cost around Euro 9000. Whereas today, the size is much smaller with better features and comes in merely Euro 20 each. Earlier, the mobile device was used only for calling and recieving. But today Nokia’s business revolves around much more than just voice. In fact voice is just an add-on feature on top of everything else. Today Nokia’s business revolves around internet, navigation, videos, photos, applications, games, music etc.

 

Vision of Nokia and also their promise is - A World Where Everybody can be Connected.

 

Key trends in todays world are:

 

1. Social Networking – driving new communications behavior.
2. Context – creating next generation web (connecting place, people, time).
3. Context – webNG (sharing – contacts, locations, time, online or mobile status etc.).
4. Point&find – search the world around you – matching real and virtual info to share and transact.

Consumers drive Nokia’s thinking. Context is at the heart of Nokia and thus they have launched OVI. People expect complete solutions like synchronization in between mobile, web and desktop. Here OVI comes in. Eg. Maps from the world can be downloaded on ovi on desktop to mobile free of cost. Nokia comes with music, download all that u can consume in an year into OVI and onto your mobile, all free of cost. People will be able to browse the photos in 3D environment inside OVI. OVI is the next major innovation platform where developers and operators are invited to make applications.

 

Qt – environment is yest another innovative platform being developed by Nokia where any application that runs on symbian will also work in any other platform entertaining Qt – environment.