Global Brands Plan to Accelerate Mobile Marketing Efforts

Some 28 percent of global brands surveyed have already launched live SMS (text) campaigns and 18 percent have launched live MMS (multimedia) campaigns, according to a mobile-marketing survey of 50 global brands by Vanson Bourne for Airwide Solutions, reports MarketingCharts.

The growing sophistication of mobile marketing campaigns is reflected in the number of brands considering implementing both SMS and MMS mobile marketing in the next 12 months: The proportion has doubled to 28 percent since a similar survey in 2006, Airwide said.

The survey also found that more brands expect to spend a greater proportion of their marketing budget on mobile campaigns in the near future: 71 percent project that they’ll spend up to 10 percent of their budget on mobile marketing within two years.

Among other key findings of the study:

• Brands’ experience with mobile marketing is increasingly positive, as more brands are getting higher response rates from their campaigns:
  • The percentage of big brands who said up to 10 percent of recipients of mobile marketing campaigns requested more information as a result of receiving a mobile marketing message grew from 32 percent in 2006 to 58 percent in 2007.

  

  • Regarding financial transactions, 73 percent of brands said up to 10 percent of recipients of campaigns undertook a financial action as a result of the campaign, compared with 28 percent of brands saying so in 2006.

  

  • Every responding brand agreed that its most recent mobile marketing campaign was successful in increasing customer familiarity of the brand.

• Mobile phone users are expected to benefit from a range of incentives as part of the growth in mobile marketing:
  • Almost 60 percent of brands intend to send special offers via the mobile phone.
  • Over one-third (36 percent) intend to send discount vouchers.
  • Other incentives will include digital loyalty cards, free gifts and preferential terms.

• The experience of brands using mobile marketing demonstrates that the actual campaign response rate is higher than the expectations of those who have not yet implemented mobile marketing:
  • 57 percent of brands not yet using mobile marketing anticipate that customers will request more information, while 83 percent of brands that have already implemented campaigns said they received requests for more information.
  • The numbers for financial transactions are higher, with 38 percent of inexperienced brands stating that they expect consumers to undertake consequent financial actions, whereas 82 percent of experienced brands say recipients completed a financial action as a result of receiving a mobile marketing message.

• As brands have learned about mobile marketing, the perception that SMS is a reliable and measurable medium has increased:
  • Among brands not using SMS in campaigns, the percentage that find SMS too complicated for marketing has dropped significantly, from 24 percent in 2006 to 8 percent in 2007.
  • More brands now know how to measure its effectiveness, with the uncertainty about how to do so dropping from 18 percent in 2006 to 11 percent in 2007.

  

  • Still, among those not using SMS, some 7 of 10 now say it’s not right for their audience.

• Despite considerable enthusiasm for mobile marketing, there are some barriers to even higher growth rates:
  • More than half of brands have not yet employed either text messaging (58 percent) or multimedia messaging (60 percent) systems for marketing.
  • The perception that MMS is difficult to use has grown from 14 percent in 2006 to 29 percent in 2007, and concerns about reliability have grown from 12 percent to 34 percent in the same period.
  • Almost half of big brands (46 percent) are concerned that mobile marketing is too intrusive, with many feeling that customers will perceive messages as spam; and of these, 41 percent are unsure how to rectify the problem by targeting specific audiences.
  • Over one-third of brands (36 percent) would require detailed information on how the user responded to the message - and one in five want proof that the message has been received by the user’s handset.

About the study: Airwide Solutions commissioned Vanson Bourne in January 2006 and July 2007 to survey 50 of Europe’s global brand names about their plans for mobile marketing.