Mobile Database Marketing: OLD NEWS?
April 16, 2002 Mobile marketing has attracted attention from marketers around the globe for the past 5 years, and a number of pilot studies have shown that the success rate is far higher than conventional direct marketing, provided that the messages are customised and highly targeted. Response rates reach up to 90%, as the magic mixture of permission and sponsorship is searched for by new-media propagators. The only difficulty seems to lie in defining the audience, and in soliciting permission to receive marketing messages that are relevant and requested by the recipient. Very few databases exist that offer consent for messages, and the few campaigns that have to date been done have had little support from sponsors as the targets are mostly receiving irrelevant information at the wrong time. It has become quite apparent that the following three requirements remain the key to designing a proper mobile communications tool for businesses and marketers: The first is to have a secure, up-to-date, dynamic database. The second is to use set of pre-selected criteria associated with the individual and the marketing message (in short a profiling tool). A final requirement is to have access to a stable, robust, PC to Mobile delivery mechanism, getting the message to the recipient fast, reliably, and above all, personalised. This is exactly what has inspired Clickatell to develop Community Builder. According to Danie du Toit, Marketing Director of Clickatell, the market for targeted mobile messaging is increasing daily, and Clickatell has entered this space at a critical time: “We believe that any business with information that may be relevant to an audience and who has even a limited web presence, can benefit greatly from building an opt-in community and sending messages to a profiled grouping of prospects. We have seen this with our first Community Builder client, Cell C, who as a new mobile network required a way of rapidly building a database and communicating to it.” And that is exactly what Community Builder allows: any business can define the criteria and profiled information, alerts or product news that they would like to send to segments of their community. A branded web page is then created within minutes, based on a free template-style link, and site visitors can immediately subscribe for information. The true power of the product, however, lies in its profiling and campaign management features. The business can at any stage send a personalised message to recipients, based on the defined fields in the template. This way, a retailer can for instance send a message to married females, between 20 and 30, who live in South London and requested specific information on home improvement ideas and products. Clickatell Community Builder, in line with Clickatell’s product and technology philosophy, is a product anyone can use and try at absolutely no risk. A secure database can be built at will with no initial cost, and no programming skill is required to do a full implementation. Messages are sent at market-related prices through a simple campaign selection process, and all deliveries are handled by Clickatell’s powerful SMS and e-mail engine. Clickatell’s solutions can be found at: http://www.clickatell.com/central/campaigns/redir.php?cid=368
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