As more marketers move from one-off mobile campaigns focused on brand awareness to delivering ongoing campaigns aimed at driving customer engagement and loyalty, there is more emphasis on permission-based marketing as a way to kick off and continue a conversation with consumers — on their terms.
The timing of this shift in strategy is interesting, and no doubt driven by two factors: the concern of individuals about their personal privacy and the desire of brands to conduct an ongoing dialogue with people who — because they opted in — are likely to appreciate the advertising they receive.
How might the privacy discussion and the rise of permission-based marketing impact advertising strategies moving forward? Where does opt-in fit in the mobile marketing mix? And how should marketers approach social media marketing on mobile?
These are just a few of the questions I put to Jeff Hasen, a brave voice in the mobile marketing industry who just last week joined the Mobile Marketing Association’s Consumer Best Practices committee, where he will focus on outlining global best practices as they relate to protecting the consumer’s private information.
Jeff is also the CMO of Hipcricket, a mobile marketing and advertising company that has implemented some 80,000 mobile campaigns centered on opt-in. The company then supports this dialogue (and a call to action) with traditional media such as print, outdoor billboards, online, email and radio/TV.
An example of this the recent campaign (with results) for Simon Malls, part of the Simon Property Group, an S&P 500 company and the largest real estate company in the U.S. The use of opt-in (to kick off the conversation) and the sharp focus on building customer loyalty (as opposed to a one-off promotion) resulted in a 34 percent conversion of consumers joining the mobile shopper club. In addition, the campaign achieved a 68 percent opt-in response off a traditional radio campaign, proving that integrating mobile in a cross-media campaign drives positive results.
As Jeff explains: “We’re big proponents at Hipcricket of a pyramid strategy… where you start with reach and that’s SMS. SMS is a beautiful bridge to the next engagement. You might be able to embed a link in an SMS campaign that would provide a richer experience, it might take them to an app or it might take them to a mobile website…Respectfully, marketers should listen to what consumers are telling us….[they] are saying that they want to be involved in permission-based campaigns.”
Listen to the podcast here. [14:48]
[audio:https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/mobilegroove/2011/03/Jeff_Hasen_Hipcricket_3-31-11.mp3]