- DM, The Direct Marketing Magazine,Singapore, November 2004
Mobilising Forces, CRM and the mobile phone
Does mobile technology truly allow brands to make the connection with customers? Claudia Sagripanti reports on Australia 's growing trend towards mobile relationship marketing
Are you a big fan of Grinspoon or jet? If you attended their concerts in Australia recently, you would have noticed a revolution in the delivery of your ticket to attend the event. You could have chosen the option to receive a triple redemption ticket directly to your mobile phone.
The so-called 'mobi-ticket' is promoted by Aura Digital and Sydney concert venue Metro Theatre. According to Aura Digital's sales and marketing director, Adam Dunne, more than half the concert-goers received tickets directly to their mobile phone. As part of the Grinspoon special offers, those who pre-ordered the latest CD at HMV enjoyed discounted beer and received a trucker cap. HMV marketing manager, Damien Devine, says, "We see fantastic potential in partnering with the promoters and record labels to offer concert-goers music related offers through out stores. And we see mobile marketing playing a major role within our marketing strategy."
The mobile ticket is one of a range of new mobile technologies revolutionizing loyalty marketing and customer relationship marketing (CRM). "Mobile coupons will become more relevant as mobile marketing evolves from one-off to multi-offer campaigns," predicts Dunne. Although it is still early days, Dunne sees enormous opportunities, particularly in the travel and entertainment industries, which have been the first to embrace this new technology. "Marketers understand the benefits of replacing plastic membership and loyalty cards with mobile coupons. The key is the significant cost savings," he says.
Savvy brands are less concerned about the technology than getting the best response via the most appropriate channel. Hoyts Cinema is one early adopter of mobile marketing. It gathers information about its customers including mobile number, age group, sex, preferred cinema location and movie genre via its website from competition entries and subscriptions to Hoyts Movie Club. Internet and new media manager, Jacki Morgan says the objective is to extend the Hoyts experience beyond watching the film.
"We were very successful with our 'text trivia' competition. We'd expected that people would play 10 to 15 minutes before the film. But what we found was that the game was played after the film and intermittently over the next few days. Most people played it three times," she says. "We haven't used the preferences to the full extent as yet. We're heading down that path. There's a big opportunity to do more targeted marketing and advertising. Mobile is going to be the key medium of our core demographic of 14- to 24- [years-olds]", she says.
Mobile marketing specialist Trent Telford, MD of SMS Intelligence, part of the STW Group, sys a variety of channels can be incorporated into a mobile messaging campaign. For example, he is about to launch a competition-based campaign for a national women's fashion retailer, which mixes traditional DM with the new channel of mobile.
"The customer is committed to sending out its traditional DM pieces. Rather than fighting the paper-based guys, it's better to work with them and so we used the brochure. Each brochure has a unique code. The customer send the code via SMS and receives a unique barcode. The barcode can then be swiped at the till. The more purchases made the more entries into the competition," says Telford .
His advice on managing the different channels seamlessly? "Whether you have a plan for some customer contact or a full CRM strategy [it's important] to collect extra information and hold it so it doesn't then become lost. Later on you can extract the value out it when you need to. At the very minimum you need to ask for permission for future contact via mobile. We've seen many databases that have disparate permissions for various media channels, " he says.
Digital technology makes tracking of customers' interactions and preferences across any digital interface - web or mobile - possible. Integrated digital communications company MassMedia Studios has worked with several companies in the telecommunications, entertainment and transport sectors to deliver targeted information according to customers' profiles. MD Steve Fanale says: "The objective is to learn about your customer on every interaction, whether by the web or mobile. Over a period of time we can collate this data, learn more about them through their interactions and then market to them more effectively,"
However he does issue a caveat. It is important to ask specific permission for SMS even though you may already have a database of opt-ins via a competition. "Even though there is opt-in permission this does not mean that there is a real desire to receive more information let alone take action on it. It's all about establishing a dialogue across multiple media to collate more information on the needs and wants of your customer so that you can target the communication more effectively [to get] a greater response. SMS can be very effective when you're delivering specific requested information such as news or sport, which also gives you insight into the customers' profile," he says.
If Dunne has anything to do with it, the mobile in the entertainment sector will be used to drive foot traffic to one central kiosk and take the pressure of point-of-sale operators and untrained cashiers. It will be the end of paper vouchers and plastic cards as we know them. And hopefully the end to queues.
Claudia Sagripanti is co-founder and project director of the Mobile Marketing and Advertising Awards in Australia . She sits on the IIA Mobile Content Regulation taskforce and is the convenor of AIMIA's mobile content industry development group.
