Mobile Marketing Magazine

Zavvi Attracts 10,000 New Customers With Sponge Mobile Campaign

Entertainment retailer Zavvi.com has attracted over 10,000 new customers with a re-launch mobile marketing campaign.
The campaign, created and executed by mobile marketing agency Sponge, encouraged people to text in and enter a draw to win £1,000. All entrants received a unique code sent to their handsets to obtain a £1 discount on any order placed on the Zavvi.com website. Posters throughout the tube network in London promoted the competition.
Over a one-month period in December 2009, 24,000 discount codes were issued, with over 19,000 redeemed, generating over £150,000 of revenue and adding more than 10,000 new customers to Zavvi.com's database.
Zavvi, which folded on the high street last year, re-launched online in November under new owners The Hut Group. The company appointed Sponge to increase consumer interaction with the Zavvi.com brand, and to drive people to the website. Sponge, which specialises in mobile marketing campaigns, high-end mobile websites and apps, also worked closely with Zavvi.com to use social media and offer forums to publicise the campaign.
"Sponge over-delivered in terms of creative planning of the project, and the quality continued throughout the campaign,” says The Hut Group Commercial Director, Richard Chapple. “I'd recommend the company to any retailer looking to penetrate the m-commerce space."
Over 10,000 campaigns by some of the biggest international retailers and brands have run across Sponge’s TG3 platform, resulting in hundreds of millions of interactions with consumers.
“Using a simple mechanic to engage Zavvi.com’s audience was key to the campaign,” says Sponge Chairman, Alex Meisl. “By offering an easy-to-enter promotion, which was quick and cost-effective to set up, Zavvi.com successfully generated a significant number of new customers in a short timescale at a low cost.”

The Bigger Picture

Jeff Hayzlett, Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company, explains why Kodak became more social and mobile, and how (and why) it’s helping other companies to do the same

Kodak knows how to evolve, and we know how to move quickly. It’s why we’ve been successful in transforming to meet the needs of today’s consumers. We’ve turned heads with our All-in-One Inkjet printers and consumer-friendly ink replacement prices, as well as with our line of pocket video cameras. But this approach goes beyond products and into how we engage our consumers as a leader in interacting with them via social media channels and mobile devices.
We knew early on that both platforms represented incredible opportunities to directly reach our consumers on a personal level, and that it also afforded us a better opportunity to not only meet but also understand their needs. And short-term history has already proven that we’re not just experimenting in these spaces - we’re producing tangible ROI and results.

Two-way conversations
As Chief Marketing Officer at Kodak, I’m always looking to engage in meaningful two-way conversations with people invested in our brand and products. I do so every day via Twitter for instance. I’m also consistently challenging my colleagues and partners to look for fresh, innovative ways to reach our customers and give them access to our brand anytime, wherever they are, and via whatever device they’re holding in their hands.
Right now, we’re very focused on the mobile space, because we want to offer customers a variety of ways to use and enjoy their Kodak products through their mobile devices. For instance, we’ve been developing iPhone apps for more than two years. We recognized right away that our customers wanted us to utilize new technologies to allow them to more easily share and manipulate their images - that’s what’s at the core of our three apps.
With the Kodak Pic Flick app, we’ve found our consumers agree that it’s easier to ‘flick’ a newly taken picture from their iPhone to a nearby Kodak frame or printer over a wi-fi signal than to hook it up to their computer first. Our Kodak Gallery iPhone app allows consumers to upload and share photo albums online, and our Kodak Smile Maker app, which has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, allows consumers to add one of more than 20 fun cartoon smiles to a photo. These are tools that not only solve a customer need or create a bit of fun, but also reinforce our value proposition that Kodak makes it easier to share.
All are apps are free because we believe the investment is worth it to offer more choices to our customers. And, to ensure we remain where our customers are, we’re constantly assessing the possibilities with every mobile platform our consumers are using or will use in the future.

Mobile contests
We’ve also used mobile to engage consumers on-site at our trade shows. For instance, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, we used a mobile contest as a great way to drive traffic to our booth. Attendees could text  31400 (Kodak’s booth number) to a Shortcode for a chance to win a Kodak product. Winners were notified via text message and could pick up their prize at the Kodak booth.
We even created a location for the Kodak booth on Foursquare, the location-based mobile app that allows consumers to check-in  to locations to earn virtual badges and potentially, real-world rewards. Our Chief Blogger Jenny Cisney challenged all CES attendees to overtake the ‘mayorship’ of the Kodak booth (by checking into the booth more than she had) away from her in exchange for a prize. Again, it was all about using an app and a device that our consumers were already using and loving, and finding a new, relevant and authentic way for them to interact with Kodak products and initiatives.
We also have used mobile to reengage fans of our Kodak Times Square Gallery billboard. Since December 2009, consumers have been able to use their mobile devices to get their own photos up there. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind experience. All they need to do is email a photo to [email protected] from their mobile device, and, once the photo is approved, they will receive a second email containing a special code. When they’re ready to see their picture, they simply text the code to the number provided, and the photo will appear at the next opportunity.

Online dialogue
The most important investment we have made in the past year is the addition of the Kodak Chief Listening Officer, Beth LaPierre. In 2008, we named  Jenny Cisney the Kodak Chief Blogger, and she has amassed tremendous support (and a fan following) as the voice of Kodak online. With the addition of our new Chief Listening Officer, we’re taking that next step in our online dialogue with customers – getting to know their preferences, needs and ideas in real time and ensuring our business is adapting accordingly.
We’re constantly trying things. And we’re definitely learning a lot as we go. That’s why we published the Kodak Mobile Marketing Tips booklet at CES this year. We wanted to share what we are doing and why and encourage other companies to do the same. We didn’t set out to make a ‘how to’ guide, because mobile marketing is so new and evolving so quickly that the only thing we can be sure of right now is that mobile marketing is rapidly becoming a major channel for reaching our core customers and that we’re encouraged by our current results. We did, however, want to open up a channel to exchange our learnings. Both the Mobile Marketing Tips booklet and our Social Media Tips booklet are available free to download here.
I encourage you to read them and provide us with feedback. We’re committed to using these opportunities to reach our customers, but also to helping our partners and other companies learn how to use them as well.
We are looking forward to aggressively growing our efforts in mobile this year, and we’re also always excited to see what’s going to be the next Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare, and how smart companies are finding new ways to use those channels.

AdMob Campaign Boosts Game's App Store Ranking

Zattikka’s ‘Finger Frenzy’ game has raced up the UK App Store ranking with the help of an ad campaign on mobile ad network AdMob. The iPhone-focused advertising campaign pushed Finger Frenzy’s position from within the 100’s to number 24 in just a few days.
Following the successful launch of the game with an Apple ‘What’s Hot’ co-promotion at Christmas, the number of downloads and popularity level declined sharply. With 140,000 apps currently available in the App Store, Zattikka found it difficult to get its paid-for app noticed. To achieve its objective of breaking into the UK’s top 25 paid games, Zattikka turned to AdMob to help propel Finger Frenzy back into the App Store rankings and increase public interest.
Zattikka used AdMob’s cost-per-click text and tile ads, which send users directly from the ad to the app’s download page. With just one click, consumers were able to buy the game, which challenges them to type the alphabet as quickly as possible.
The campaign concentrated on the 3G and 3Gs iPhone and iPod touch handsets, reaching consumers in the UK across more than 3,000 iPhone apps in AdMob’s network. To provide transparency to the consumer and ensure qualified clicks, the £0.59 game price was highlighted.
 “We turned to AdMob to re-ignite download activity, and our campaign resulted in an immediate increase in downloads, and an even higher ranking impact than the ‘What’s Hot’ placement we previously held in the UK App Store” says Matt Spall, Head of Product Development at Zattikka.
Thomas Schulz, Managing Director at AdMob, EMEA, notes that with nearly 38,000 apps added to Apple’s App Store so far in 2010, and millions downloaded every week, it is becoming increasingly difficult for developers to grasp the attention of consumers.
"The Finger Frenzy campaign is a fantastic example of how developers can employ mobile advertising to improve sales of their applications,” he says. “Mobile advertising benefits both consumers and developers, as the ads help consumers find new apps, and developers can devote more time to creating and updating their apps." 

Case Study: DIY Mobile Social Networking

We Harlem is a social network for residents in the Harlem region of New York City. It was set up just a  few months ago, and has been enthusiastically received by Harlem residents.
We Harlem gives users a very personal and localised experience, with the means to interact and make connections with other people in the neighbourhood, find out about forthcoming events, or up and coming bars, clubs and restaurants.
The site is the brainchild of Sergio Lilavois, who set up We Harlem because he recognised that local residents in the Harlem region of New York needed a more effective way to find out what was happening in the community. At the moment, the site is free, but eventually, Sergio hopes to support the network with advertising revenue from those local firms.
Key to the network’s success is that is so tailored to its niche audience. Lilavois belives that Twitter is “too big”, so wanted to create something far more focused.  However, he also wanted to focus on the content, not the technology, so rather than building the service from scratch, he investigated the market to see if anyone provided white-label microblogging and settle on the DIY social network creation too from Shoutem. “Shoutem stood out from the crowd,” says Lilavois.  
Shoutem enables users to easily and quickly create their own mobile-optimised social networks that are private, location-based and targeted to niche groups. Networks can be created in just minutes. Currently free to download, Shoutem includes mobile apps for the iPhone and Blackberry handsets. 
“Shoutem is the best fit for what we are looking for: good features, reliable technology and the Shoutem team has been very responsive and efficient,” says Lilavois. “I like the flow of Shoutem: it is not complicated and people can easily see what to do. It’s a very user-friendly interface.”
Lilavois is an enthusiastic supporter of the mobile, location-based features included within Shoutem.  “People spend a lot of their time communicating on their mobiles.  50% of the time I’m logged into Shoutem myself it’s from my mobile device. It’s great that there’s a mobile application for Shoutem, not just an API. It’s meant we haven’t needed to develop it ourselves,” he says.
Shoutem says that Lilavois’ experience with We Harlem shows that the marketing potential of mobile social networks is now within reach of anyone with a great idea, regardless of their technology experience or budget.
 

Trade Union Turns to Text, Saves Thousands

The R62 branch of the GMB Trade Union, based at Rotherham Borough Council, has rolled out an  autonomous web-based text messaging solution from Text Messaging Centre (TMC), to communicate quickly and efficiently with union members. Using TMC’s technology, the trade union has moved away from costly and time-consuming paper-based mailings to fast, efficient and cost-effective SMS communication, ensuring members receive the latest trade union information instantly, easily and direct to their mobile phone.
The GMB Trade Union is a campaigning trade union focused on protecting, representing and solving problems for GMB members in their workplaces. The GMB is Britain’s general union, which means anyone can join. It has over 600,000 members working in every part of the UK economy. The GMB Trade Union’s branch, based at Rotherham Borough Council, is the first to implement an SMS solution as part of its strategy to improve communication and attract members to the website for the most recent campaign updates.
“Prior to implementing the web-based text messaging solution from TMC, we were contacting our members via mail to update them on any changes to a particular campaign, a specific pay offer or changes in workplace regulations,” says GMB Rotherham Branch Convener, Lee Simpson. A regular mailing would cost £850 to send individual letters via second class post, not including additional stationery and printing costs. Selecting the TMC solution will save us £675 on the cost of stamps alone. Add that up over the whole year and the savings amount to thousands.”
TMC is a web-based application that can be accessed from any computer within the Rotherham office. All messages are fully auditable and compliant through the TMC interface. “The SMS technology exactly meets our needs, it is so simple to use, and has enabled us to transform our communication strategies without having to change any existing infrastructure or invest time in staff training,” says Simpson. “The functionality within the web-based interface provides us with the flexibility to target specific groups, individuals or everybody at the click of a button. SMS has facilitated immediate communication with target groups, and allows us to engage with our members more frequently.”

TextMagic Rings Franchisee's Bell

Like many business owners, Alan Hopgood, the Southend franchisee of the Kendlebell personal telephone answering service, is constantly seeking new ways to streamline day-to-day operations in order to save time and money. With over 200 clients using his service, Hopgood needed a way to simplify and secure the process by which clients were notified about their incoming calls and messages.
"The majority of our customers like to receive both an email and a text message to ensure that they aren't missing any crucial communication coming through the Kendlebell answering service," he says. "We needed a belt and braces approach that would allow us to send SMS texts and emails simultaneously."
He discovered TextMagic while researching his options on the Internet. "Prior to using TextMagic's Email to SMS service, we had to manually send an email and then re-send the same message by SMS,” he says. TextMagic has simplified this greatly as we can now relay both types of messages with just one click from our screens. We simply added clients' TextMagic to their list of email addresses."
An added benefit is that the TextMagic solution enables clients to reply to his text messages, which was not possible using the company’s pevious, web-based text messaging systems. We have been using the TextMagic service for over 18 months now and we are very pleased with it."

Out There Campaign Goes Down a Storm

In 2009, BlackBerry maker RIM launched the the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm 9500 Smartphone.
RIM and Out There Media teamed up to create and manage a mobile advertising campaign across Austria to target the under-26 year old market with the new device. The campaign ran for two weeks in August 2009 and was delivered to Vodafone subscribers via the Vodafone live! portal. Visitors to the portal were offered a free Justin Timberlake music video as an incentive to watch a short 15-second advertisement.
Over the course of the two-week mobile advertising campaign with Out There Media, the BlackBerry Storm ad was viewed a total of 140,000 times via the Vodafone live! portal. The advertisement as a clickthrough-rate of 5.5% and the Justin Timberlake video was streamed a total of 2,101 times. The conversion rate for the entire campaign was 27.5%.
“This is a great example of targeted mobile advertising in action and the fantastic results that brands can achieve through this medium,” says Out There Media CEO, Kerstin Trikalitis. “We believe very strongly in the power of reaching out to consumers directly and we are very happy to witness through all our campaigns that mobile advertising is an ideal way of doing so. Targeted and appropriate campaigns, such as this one for RIM, prove that this approach can achieve great results.”

Myxer Campaign Drives 1.1m Mobile Content Downloads

Mobile entertainment site Myxer has teamed up with urban entertainment artist Quincy Jones III (QD3), for a mobile entertainment campaign that used free mobile content downloads to drive sales of DVDs.
On behalf of QD3, Myxer offered free mobile content from its site to support the  DVD launch of ‘The Carter with Lil Wayne’. Over the course of the four-week campaign, consumers downloaded more than 1 million pieces of mobile content from the documentary, including ringtones, wallpapers, and videos, which led to a 20% increase in DVD sales, helped to drive the DVD to a No.5 position on iTunes.
“While we were expecting several hundred thousand downloads of the free mobile content in the one month period, we were blown away by the fact that there were 1.1 million downloads in such a short time period,” says QD3. “It was great to have so many fans of The Carter ‘broadcasting’ and acting as our ‘DVD ambassadors’, as their phones rang. “We’re thrilled to have worked with Myxer to create such a huge impact on our sales.”
Myxer CEO Myk Willis says the campaign shows that the branding power of mobile personalization content is superior to many other forms of digital advertising. He says:  “The quality and frequency of user engagement with a mobile download, such as a ringtone or wallpaper that users seek out and carry with them for weeks, is clearly differentiated from that offered by traditional digital ads. The sustained brand awareness and viral potential of personal mobile content simply can’t be matched by short-lived banner impressions or clicks in isolation.”
You can see the free content available for download here.

Tipping Service Finds SMS is a Racing Cert

Bloomsbury Racing is a betting service that provides a subscriber-based horse racing tipping service to its members. Subscribers sign up to a monthly service for all the latest news. Bloomsbury Racing is now using an SMS marketing platform from RedSMS as part of its service. The immediacy of text marketing makes it ideal for communicating hot racing tips quickly and easily to a large subscriber base. Initially Bloomsbury Racing used it purely to drive new business, but now it also uses it for retention marketing, once punters have signed up.
“The RedSMS platform and the text marketing medium is very successful for signing up new members,” says Jill McAleer, Office Manager at Bloomsbury Racing. “As we send thousands of texts at a go, we needed a reliable system that offered the flexibility to be automated to work with our sales team during the key weekly sales periods.”
Timing is key for the company – it can specify the time when the message goes out, and when it wants customers to call into the call centre – i.e. when it’s fully resourced. “We’ve already found timing is critical for mobile marketing. We tend to send Friday afternoons as a reminder to call us Saturday morning. This works well, as customers are generally not at work at the weekends and it’s a big racing day,” adds McAleer.
Bloomsbury broadcasts a text campaign to the target prospect database, with an incentive to register. Typically, it sends the first broadcast as a free of charge tip, then a second broadcast to all those who responded – thanking them for their business, and offering them another free tip.
“We receive an excellent response to these incentivised campaigns – normally over a third of those contacted reply, which makes this an extremely cost-effective medium,” says McAleer.
In future the company is planning to exploit the SMS channel further, with more regular campaigns. The Bloomsbury Racing is finding they are getting smarter on how to use it more effectively with every broadcast.

SMS Reminders Reduce No-shows by 70%

Global Hair Limited, trading as Headrush Hair Salon, in Peacehaven, near Brighton, has 4,700 clients. The company was experiencing issues with client missing appointments, creating an increasing amount of spare time for the salon’s stylists and costing the business lots of money in missed revenue.
To address the problem, the salon deployed a text messaging solution from TextMagic, with dramatic results, as Global Hair Director Emma Fulgoney explains. She says:
"TextMagic has improved our amount of no-show clients who may have forgotten the date and time of their appointment, therefore leaving a stylist in the salon with sometimes up to two and a half hours of down time, which is clearly bad for business and profits. We calculate that our number of no-shows has been reduced by approximately 70% since we've been using TextMagic and we expect this number to improve further as we obtain more clients' mobile numbers."

Faith in SMS Pays Off for Fashion Footwear Chain

Fashion footwear retailer Faith required an interactive platform to power mobile marketing campaigns to enable the brand to communicate to its ever-growing database and mobile opt in customers. The purpose of each SMS campaign would be to provide new product information and promotional offers to drive footfall into high street stores and build brand loyalty.
To run the campaigns, it selected Mobile Interactive Technology’s (MIT) MIDAS Communicate platform. All opt in consumers received a text message containing a promotional code, which was redeemed in-store or online to claim their offer. To comply with industry regulations, the platform offers the facility for consumers to unsubscribe from the service at any time.
There were two separate campaigns, both of which ran online and in-store. Firstly, a ‘Friends and Family’ promotion offered 25% off full-price products, over a three-day period. The second promotion, run in conjunction with a high circulation fashion magazine, offered 20% off full-price products over a six-day period. SMS interactivity ran across both campaigns, and delivered impressive return on investment, brand engagement and customer loyalty.
The SMS campaign contributed to 47% of the uplift in revenue delivered by the Friends and Family promotion. It also contributed to 30% of the uplift in revenue delivered by the fashion magazine promotion. Over 70,000 SMS messages were distributed throughout both campaigns, with the redemption of promotional codes higher for the second campaign.
“SMS marketing has proven to be an extremely successful revenue generation tool for Faith,” says Faith’s Head of e-Commerce, Talin Vartevanian. “It is quick to set up, and once launched, the message is instantly communicated to the customer, which is especially beneficial if they are already out shopping. This makes SMS particularly strong at driving footfall in-store, but has also proved to be very effective in increasing online traffic. Licensing Mobile Interactive Technology’s (MIT) MIDAS Communicate platform has enabled Faith to have 100% ownership of all campaign delivery from start to finish, including real-time stats reporting.”

Rackspace Powers Kenyan Mobile Money Solution

Vodafone is at the centre of a financial services revolution in Africa. It’s one that relies on a simple ‘Pay-as-you-go’ model that allows registered users to send and receive cash via their existing mobile phones.
Vodafone Money Transfer has been launched under the brand name M-PESA in Kenya and has revolutionised the business of money transfer in a country where a traditional banking infrastructure does not exist in remote areas, and the only lines of communication are mobile phone networks and the local stores that exist to buy credit for them.
Vodafone saw a huge opportunity to provide a much-needed service to individuals scattered throughout the country. Many of the men work in the cities where jobs are available, but always have the problem of getting cash back to their loved ones in remote villages. The key to success was the mobile phone and an existing network operated by Safaricom. The problem was how to achieve simplicity for the end user, with the addition of the necessary security for any service involving money.
The M-PESA business was developed in conjunction with the DFID (Department for International Development) to make finance more accessible in developing countries. It’s a business based on very high volumes of low-value transactions, which enables money transfer via SMS and does not require a traditional bank account. The system is based on a Pay-as-you-go model that involves no joining fee, no monthly charges or minimum balance and is available to anyone.
According to Vodafone, M-PESA has proved a fantastic success in Kenya from day one. Users are able to transfer money, pay for items in stores, pay bills and pay-in and withdraw cash at registered agent outlets. These main agents are Safaricom airtime dealers, petrol stations, supermarkets, local shops and postal services – all offering basic cash handling services to M-PESA users.
The M-PESA application is hosted by Rackspace and interacts with the Safaricom system in Kenya. Vodafone operates a vast record management system, which maintains real-time records of every transaction and the whereabouts of every item of money. This is critical to the success of the system, as each user has to trust that their transaction will be handled securely and efficiently. In addition Vodafone had to ensure compliance with money launderinglaws, while at the same time taking , but also take into account the inability of some customers to provide ID other than the recognition of their status by a village elder.
One of the key reasons behind the success of M-PESA is that the users have come to trust that it’s always available. As a result, the need to send envelopes of cash via the local bus driver, (which is apparently, surprisingly secure) is no longer the most popular money transfer choice.
Kenya’s Largest Financial Service, M-PESA is now the most popular mobile money transfer and payment service in Kenya, moving billions of shillings annually, and is growing rapidly. Plans are underway to introduce the system to other countries where the traditional banking infrastructure is low and mobile phone penetration is high.
Rackspace is a key factor in the success of the project. It is essential to have guaranteed network uptime, 24/7/365 support and total security, as well as massive flexibility to react to unbelievable growth in a very new and exciting business.
Some of the challenges faced by the Vodafone team were considerable. At Christmas and Easter periods, individual transfers headed towards 2.6 million per day. And these were all small transactions, but vital to the individuals sending and receiving the money, so nothing could go wrong and the whereabouts of the cash had to be known at any given second of the day.
“Rackspace provides a team of dedicated account managers and support technicians whose expertise and dedication has been invaluable in bringing Vodafone Money Transfer to market,” says Vodafone Service Delivery Manager, Neil Dwyer.

SMS for Life Saves Lives in Tanazania

A solution jointly developed by IBM, Novartis and Vodafone, together with the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, is helping to save lives using everyday technology to improve the availability of anti-malarial drugs in remote areas in Tanzania. 
The ‘SMS for Life’ initiative uses a combination of mobile phones, SMS technologies and intuitive web sites to track and manage the supply of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) drugs and Quinine injectables, both of which are key to reducing the number of deaths from malaria.
The mosquito-borne disease causes almost 1 million deaths in Africa each year, mostly among pregnant women and young children, and many people die, simply because they lack quick access to vital medication.
The concept of using text messaging to improve stock management of lifesaving medicines was developed by pharmaceutical company Novartis and a team of international students taking part in IBM's internship programme, Extreme Blue. The team came up with SMS for Life, as it relies on simple technology and fosters self-sufficiency. IBM was tasked with managing the overall project, and Vodafone was invited to develop and manage a system based on SMS messaging that would help ensure dispensaries did not run out of stock.
After visits to clinics, hospitals and dispensaries across Tanzania, IBM, Novartis and Vodafone initiated a five-month pilot of the SMS for Life solution, covering 135 villages and over a million people in different locations across Tanzania. Vodafone, together with its technology partner MatsSoft, developed a system in which healthcare staff at each facility receive automated SMS messages, which prompt them to check the remaining stock of anti-malarial drugs each week. Using toll-free numbers, staff reply with an SMS to a central database system hosted in the United Kingdom, providing details of stock levels, and deliveries can be made before supplies run out at local health centres.
“This is an example of a truly innovative solution helping solve a humanitarian problem,” says SMS for Life Project Manager, Peter Ward of IBM. “After spending time on the ground, we created a project plan, developed the application with Vodafone and Novartis and established the best way to deliver the pilot, working with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health. We expect other countries will also be able to benefit in the future.”
During the first few weeks of the pilot, the number of health facilities with stock-outs in one district alone was reduced by over 75%. The early success of the SMS for Life pilot project has the Tanzanian authorities interested in implementing the solution across the rest of the country. Tanzania has around 5000 clinics, hospitals and dispensaries, but at any one time, as many as half could potentially be out of stock of anti-malarial drugs.
“The SMS for Life program has already had a positive effect in Tanzania,” says Winfred Mwafongo, Senior Health Officer with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. “I've seen district medical officers ordering urgent stock replacements for various health facilities. During a visit to 19 rural health facilities in one district alone, I saw huge improvements in their inventory management systems. I'm very impressed with the results so."

Starhome Solutions Boost Network's Roaming Revenues

Starhome, which provides roaming services for mobile network operators, has revealed that TelCell St. Maarten (TelCell), the mobile services division of the St. Maarten Group of Telephone Companies, has increased its customers’ roaming minutes by more than 47,000 per month since implementing Starhome solutions several months ago. According to Starhome, TellCell expects an annual revenue increase in the range of $1 million (£600,000).
TelCell successfully launched Starhome’s Home Short Code and Intelligent Call Assistant solutions to generate roaming revenue and improve service quality for inbound roamers. Intelligent Call Assistant utilizes roaming intelligence to analyze and correct roamers' misdialled calls. Statistics based on live services show that up to 60% of these calls are never redialled, causing operators to lose potential revenue. By correcting and completing more calls, operators generate lost revenues and visitor traffic while increasing user satisfaction.
“Starhome offers the most complete solution on the market, and based on their expertise and track record in this field, they were the obvious choice,” says TelCell St. Maarten General Manager, Brian Mingo. “The new roaming technology enables us to increase our market share among the large networks and secure our roaming revenues. We are confident that Starhome’s roaming solutions will enhance and enrich the experience of our customers and international travelers.”
TelCell also implemented Home Short Code to enable inbound roamers to continue using familiar, home-based shortcodes to access their Value Added Services (VAS) while roaming in St. Maarten.
With nearly half of the Caribbean island’s telephony revenue derived from inbound roamers, Starhome says that these solutions have played a key part in enabling TelCell to establish the infrastructure needed to maximize revenue from roaming. The solutions have been delivered as a managed service, providing TelCell with the latest technology, Starhome’s expertise, and 24/7 performance monitoring to ensure service levels are high and any issues can be immediately rectified.

Bluetooth Campaign Drives Footfall

Indian mobile marketing firm TELiBrahma has released the results of a two-week campaign it ran to drive traffic into Banglaore-based mobile phone retailer Sangeetha Mobiles stores, during the company’s annual sales period in June.
Customers were segmented based on their phone type, with relevant communications delivered to each customer segment via Bluetooth. Owners of mid-range handsets, for example, were targeted with memory card offers, encouraging them to upgrade their phone’s memory.
Sangeetha used its existing ‘BluFi’ network in shopping malls, youth hangouts, restaurants and busy shopping streets. The message delivered to the phone included the address of the nearest Sangeetha store, and prompted recipient to visit the outlet to receive “more offers and surprises”.
In total, the campaign targeted more than 50,000 users. Over 4,000 consumers visited a Sangeetha store after receiving the promotional message, with footfall increasing by 20 - 150%, with an average 45% increase across all outlets.
There’s more information about the campaign here.

Case Study: Mobile Campaign is Picture Perfect for Kodak

Objectives
Kodak is a leading global provider of innovative solutions for conventional, digital and blended photo print production environments, with a brand that is recognized worldwide. Kodak Express outlets, located in cities around the world, are a one-stop destination for photo printing, products, and accessories, as well as photo customization and personalization.
Seeking ways to both increase foot traffic to stores in India, and gather and consolidate user profile and preference information from Kodak Express customers, Kodak decided that a mobile advertising campaign would be the best option.
The advantages of mobile for the campaign were clear. Usage of the Internet on mobile phones is huge in India. At the end of last year, there were more than 346 million Indian wireless subscribers, and the market was growing at the rate of approximately 10 million new subscribers per month. Much of the growth of the mobile Internet in India follows a trend seen in many countries throughout the world, where the mobile web is used as a primary Internet connection by people who do not have access to a PC at home. 

Strategy
To execute its mobile campaign, Kodak turned to the BuzzCity Global Mobile Advertising Network. In addition to providing a platform, BuzzCity helped devise a strategy that allowed Kodak to effectively execute the campaign and get the most out of its budget. 
“We brought some specific experience to the table that was particularly important to Kodak,” says BuzzCity CEO, KF Lai. “First of all, and perhaps most significantly, the BuzzCity network is global, and we have extensive experience serving the Indian market. In fact, the Indian market is currently number two in total mobile advertising page views generated though the BuzzCity network. Secondly, our system allowed Kodak to run a highly-targeted campaign. The company had the ability to target ads by geographical area, makes and capabilities of handsets, and more specific demographics like age and interests.”
Kodak decided to target mobile internet users in the ‘Community, Entertainment and Lifestyle’, ‘Information’, ‘Mobile Content (news and related content)’, and ‘Search/Portal Services’ categories. Additionally, the BuzzCity network allowed Kodak to utilize different types of mobile ads and easily implement a mobile survey that would allow it to gather information from users.
Kodak wanted to attract a broad range of potential customers, which was reflected by its tactical approach to the campaign. It decided to run both text and banner ads and target its campaign broadly to men and women between 15 and 40 years-of-age throughout India, with no specific city or regional targeting. For its ads, Kodak went with simple, concise messages, such as: ‘Kodak Express Shoot It Win It!’, and ‘Print them now. Win them now!’
As an incentive to complete the survey, the company devised a contest that required users to make 50 prints at a Kodak Express outlet from a digital camera or cameraphone. Once potential customers completed the survey, they were entered into a draw to win a 2GB iPod Nano or a 1GB memory card. In order to complete their contest entries, they were prompted to enter their name, mobile number, and camera capacity. They were then redirected to the nearest Kodak Express outlet to complete the process by ordering the 50 prints. 

Results
The results of the campaign were impressive. In one month, it generated 11 million visits to the survey landing page, with a clickthrough rate of 1.7%. But beyond the numbers, Kodak also gathered important information for future interaction with its customers through the survey component. The Kodak team also gathered mobile numbers it could use for future SMS marketing, and was able to gather information about its customers’ camera capacities and functionality so it could better serve them in the future.
There were a couple of distinct takeaways from the campaign that advertisers can take to heart.  The first is that engaging potential customers in a multi-faceted mobile marketing experience is essential for strong results. In this case, contact with the Kodak brand started with the ad banner, which redirected customers to a landing page that allowed them to take the survey, enter the contest, prompted them to find the nearest Kodak Express outlet from the ‘store locator’, and finally, encouraged mobile web users to become customers - thus completing the cycle of customer engagement. The second lesson is comparatively simple but no less important: use clear, straight-forward marketing messages - a particularly important piece to mobile marketing campaigns because of the inherent limitations of the screen size.
The success of the mobile campaign was validated Kodak’s choice of mobile for its Kodak Express initiative,” says Lai. “But even more significantly, the results validate the strength of mobile advertising’s value proposition and its potential, if well executed, to help brands achieve an unprecedented level of bang for the advertising buck.

Graphico Takes FAB Award for Pepsi QR Campaign

GraphicoDMG, a Digital Marketing Group company, was honoured at the FAB Awards, the Food and Beverage industry’s annual creative awards, last Friday. Graphico took the ‘plate’ award in the Mobile category, for its Pepsi ‘Kicks’ campaign. The Pepsi campaign beat off competition from rival non-alcoholic drink brands’ Fanta and Coca Cola to pick up the top award.
The Kicks campaign used QR codes as the gateway to a dedicated mobile website by placing the 2D graphic across all 400 million packs of Pepsi variants between December 2008 and April 2009. Pepsi aimed to put the ‘Pep’ back into Pepsi and offered consumers a humorous ‘kick in the right direction’ as the site carried motivational videos from pep-talker ‘Rusty’, stills and out-takes from the shoot of Kelly Brook’s Pepsi video, and a selection of Pepsi’s ‘best bits from the web’ together with free games and downloads – all aimed at inspiring consumers and giving something back in a technologically innovative way.
The campaign was supported with PR imagery of Kelly Brook and QR codes both online and in the national press, while the video in which she starred received 12 million views across social network sites such as YouTube.
There’s more information about the campaign here.

SMS Campaign Delivers Impressive Results

Mobilize, the company behind the award winning M BAR GO® mobile CRM platform, has released the results of a mobile campaign for Approved Food & Drink, the UK's largest online seller of clearance food and drink. 
The campaign was a simple SMS call to action, tied to an online offer, which was sent to 6,000 opted-in Approved Food & Drink customers. According to Mobilizie, it proved very effective. Site visits in the hour immediately after the texts were sent (4pm) were 90% higher than average. Revenue for the day was up by 150% on the previous day. Orders placed in the three hours immediately after the texts were sent out were up by 550% compared to the previous day
“Although this campaign only scratches the surface of what our platform can achieve from a CRM perspective, it shows just how effective the humble SMS can be in persuading consumers to shop,” says Mobilize Managing Director, Stefan Magnusson. “Fortunately, Approved Food's website can accept discount codes, which means we can start building profiles and really leverage the mobile CRM capability of our platform in the future".
Approved Food & Drink Founder and CEO Daniel Cluderay was impressed by the company’s first mobile campaign.
“What would have been a low to average revenue day turned into a very strong revenue day,” he says. “I sold in the order of twice as much as I expected and set against the cost of the campaign it was an outstanding result. Mobilize provide a terrific service which I will definitely use again."
Mobilize operates the SHOP SCAN SAVE mobile savings club, whose mobile coupons can be redeemed securely in over 21,000 convenience outlets in the UK. 

MMA Case Study: FuturLink/SEAT

The brief
Car manufacturer SEAT wanted to create buzz amongst target consumers to mark the launch of the new SEAT IBIZA CUPRA. The company turned to FuturLink to develop and execute a mobile campaign that directly engaged consumers with the new model.

Objectives
SEAT tasked FuturLink with creating a mobile campaign that created excitement and interest around the launch of its new model of car, at the same time as making the user an active participant in its brand values of design, sportsmanship and quality.

Strategy
FuturLink developed a CUPRA RACE CLUB SEAT application for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, which was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2009. Based on an entertainment and communication portal promoting CLUB SEAT, a mobile portal allowing customers to access information about events, news and new brand features of the brand at any time from any place, the application allowed users to experience driving the new SEAT IBIZA CUPRA from their mobile device. Employing a powerful 3D engine, the application enabled the user to access a virtual garage where they could customise the colour of their vehicle and apply exclusive stickers to the design before choosing one of three competition modes:

1. Test Drive – trying out the circuit
2. Time Attack - beating the timer in a frantic race
3. Race Mode - competing against five expert drivers.

After the initial launch in March the contents of the application were updated periodically with new vehicles, circuits, competition modes and other new features so that consumers could use it again and again.The application was available for iPhone and iPod Touch users to download free of charge from the iTunes website from March 16th 2009.

Results
The application achieved 43,670 downloads in three days, with German, Italian and French consumers leading the way. It received glowing reviews on a range of blogs and communities, as well as on iTunes itself.
FuturLink’s application and mobile portal enabled SEAT to position itself as an innovative brand, using a variety of different communication mechanics to establish direct contact with the consumer, taking advantage of the ubiquity of the mobile device.

MMA Viewpoint:
Mobile applications are a rapidly growing area for mobile marketers and provide a great way for brands to establish an interactive relationship with their target consumers that is based on entertainment or utility. Gaming applications have proved to be particularly popular with the arrival of the iPhone App Store and its counterparts which have galvanized the gaming market in Western Europe, according to a recent report by Juniper Research. This development in app stores is likely to lead to further growth in ad-funded or sponsored apps as marketers embrace the fact that consumers want to be in control of the content that goes onto their handsets.

3's Golf Campaign Drives Mobile Opt-in

As official sponsors of the Irish Open, 3 Ireland wanted to develop a marketing campaign to bring the sponsorship to life, drive people into its retail stores, collect consumer data and feedback, and promote 3's Postpay, Prepay and mobile broadband offerings.
The result was the 3 Irish Open Golf Challenge, a national roadshow featuring an outdoor golf simulator game near key retail locations, where players can test their golf skills and win prizes that can be redeemed in store and online via a dedicated website.
Working in partnership with 3's advertising agency Irish International Proximity, mobile marketing firm Púca developed an integrated mobile and web mechanic whereby players' scores are submitted via SMS to receive a response SMS containing a unique prize code. Winning prizes can be redeemed in store and online by entering the SMS prize code into a dedicated campaign website, which captures key customer data and validates the winning codes.
In addition, members of the public can send text GOLF to 50100 for free for the chance to win tickets to the Irish Open Golf Championship. All data is captured, reported and provided to the client daily via a secure log-in. Púca says the campaign has been highly successful to date, creating a huge PR buzz, in store sales promotion and generating a significant database of prospective customers for 3.
“This is a great example of how mobile marketing, when closely integrated with Online and point of sale can support, enhance and reinforce promotional activities” says Púca’s Head of Client Services, Malcolm Fogarty.

MMA Case Study: Golden Gekko/Disney

The brief
Disney wanted to mark the DVD launch of its hit teen film ‘Camp Rock’ in Sweden, principally by driving consumer awareness of the film’s soundtrack stars. Via its pan-EMEA communications agency Carat, Disney turned to Golden Gekko to create and execute a mobile campaign that directly engaged the target audience.

Objectives
The campaign had two key objectives. The first was to capture the attention of the film’s core audience, made up of teenagers and students. The second was to identify a creative means to market the launch via mobile, which would engage the audience on an interactive level and heighten the experience of the film.

Strategy and solution
Taking into account the day-to-day relevance that the mobile channel holds for the target demographic, Golden Gekko looked to employ interactive handset technology to create a fun and entertaining application that users could download to their handset and share with their friends. The application turned the handset into a rock instrument, allowing the user to play music clips and cool guitar riffs from the film. Users were also able to download free images of the cast, including US pop stars, the Jonas Brothers. This concept not only utilised the power of mobile as a direct marketing channel, but also plugged into the trend of sharing and exchanging information via mobile Internet services.
The campaign went live within three weeks of conception, including the development of the Java application, establishment of the mobile website and creation of the SMS Shortcode. The Java application was optimised and tested to work on 95% of all active mobile handsets in Sweden, representing over 400 models.
The launch of the application was marketed via banner advertising on a number of popular online social networks in Sweden, and through the inclusion of the SMS Shortcode on posters, and on the Disney website. The application was also added to top Scandinavian app stores, including Getjar, Nokia Mosh, Mobango and Mobile9.

Results
Golden Gekko leveraged the power of mobile to develop direct engagement between Disney and its target audience. The interactive element was highly effective in meeting Disney’s main objective of raising consumer awareness of the film launch. The ability to access music and images from the film resonated effectively with the target demographic,  and was a particular success with teenagers and students. It also demonstrated how mobile can be used as a quick and effective marketing tool within a short timeframe.
The success was evident in the results the campaign garnered. During the first two months, 79,378 people downloaded the application from Sweden alone, and over 150,000 people downloaded the application from other regions - despite a clear text stating that it was only available in Swedish. Disney and Carat considered the launch a huge success.

MMA Viewpoint:
The Golden Gekko campaign for Disney clearly demonstrates the power of mobile to drive brand awareness, engaging different demographics with the interactive use of compelling and relevant content. The interesting element here is also the way in which the campaign leverages the social aspect of mobile, especially amongst teenagers, as users share the application and images. Branded applications such as this provide marketers with a rich immersive platform with which to target customers, and create a deeper level of emotional engagement and interactivity for the user, producing strong results.

MMA Case Study: Ogilvy/IBM

The brief
IBM wanted to engage IT professionals with Rational, its brand of software development products. Traditionally, IBM has promoted the Rational brand every six months through a flagship event, the Rational Software Development Conference. In September 2007, IBM turned to Ogilvy to implement a mobile marketing campaign to directly target registered attendees for the event.

Objectives
The campaign had two key objectives. The first was to directly target registered participants and ensure that all of them attended the event on the day. The other core objective of the campaign was to market the event using direct content via the mobile, engaging attendees with the conference themes prior to the event.

Strategy and solution
Ogilvy looked to the targeted power of mobile to market the event content and engage attendees in a direct conversation with the Rational brand. Ogilvy needed to ensure that all mobile communication with attendees was not perceived as spam; rather it needed to deliver clear, concise messaging in an easy-to-access, absorbable format.  
The first stage of the activity involved asking all participants upon registration if they would like to provide their mobile number to participate in the pre-event mobile service. Through Ogilvy’s mobile partner, Response Mobile, all registered opted-in attendees were contacted via a staggered mobile content feed sent directly to their handsets. Ogilvy used this staggered content feed to converse with conference attendees, ultimately to increase attendance and to heighten the impact of the Rational brand offering.
All those who registered were sent a series of messages direct to their handsets in the days leading up to the conference, reminding them about the event and promoting the concepts and content behind it. For example, two weeks and one week before the event, attendees were sent SMS messages reminding them of the event date and the website details. Two days before the event, attendees received a WAP push message. Clicking on this sent them to a mobile Internet site where they could watch a 30-second video clip from the keynote speaker, welcoming them to the conference.

Results
Ogilvy leveraged mobile messaging as a practical solution that sat perfectly with the style of messages that IBM wanted to deliver. The mobile marketing strategy for The Rational Software Development Conference proved to be extremely effective in delivering the two key objectives.
Attendees were effectively engaged with the event prior to attending. 75% of all attendees opted to provide their mobile number when registering, and during the course of the pre-event outreach, over 50% of attendees accessed the WAP site, with over 20% downloading the video clip. In utilising mobile as a means for direct outreach between the brand and participants, overall attendance at the September 2007 event was 25% up on the previous event.

MMA Viewpoint: The mobile marketing industry needs to build faith among consumers that mobile marketing is a positive way to engage with their brands of choice. Brands using mobile as a marketing channel need to project and deliver a message that consumers believe is positive, welcome, and of benefit to them. Case studies such as this one from Ogilvy show that the mobile channel is an ideal way in which to engage with a group of individuals such as event attendees in this manner, and can be done in a positive and useful way.The initial registration for the event provided a great way to build a database of people who were willing to receive communications on their mobile device and had opted in, meeting with the MMA’s Code of Conduct. The communications sent were also timely and relevant, providing attendees with information that was of true value to them ahead of the conference they were joining. When a customer knows that the messages they are receiving are trustworthy and of genuine relevance to them, that’s when a true conversation between brand and customer can really begin to develop.  

I’ve Seen the Future

I’m at the Technology for Marketing show in London, where I’ve just spent 10 minutes talking to mobile marketing firm Piri. We’ve written about the company before, focusing on its work with radio stations. Piri provides an interface designed to enable DJs them to handle incoming texts from listeners and to send out advertising messages in return texts.
Today though, Managing Director Lee Bowden told me about the company’s work with Future Publishing, and it’s a great example of how consumers can be convinced to opt in to third party marketing messages on their mobile phone, something that many marketers are sceptical about.
Here’s how it works. Future has a raft of magazine titles, covering everything from home cinema systems to mountain bikes. By definition, subscribers to these magazines are a self-selecting group, with an avowed interest in the subject matter of the magazine they subscribe to.
Over the past few years, Future has asked subscribers to opt in to receive relevant third party offers and advertising messages on their mobile phone, and many have agreed to do so.
“The key word when all this was being put in place was ‘relevance’” Bowden told me. “We made sure that the mountain bike magazines would not be able to target subscribers to one of the knitting magazines just because they were opted in, even if they wanted to.”
Future uses the Piri platform to target these subscribers in various ways. Every other week, the games retailer GAME targets opted in subscribers to Future’s console gaming magazines with offers on the latest game due in store that weekend.
“For every big game release, every retailer wants a bigger slice of the pie,” said Bowden. “This allows them to target known gaming enthusiasts and get them into their store rather than the competition’s. They can even time the message to go out on a Saturday morning if they wish.”
In the weeks when GAME is not targeting the gaming enthusiasts, a rival games retailer uses the Piri platform via Future, and between them, Bowden estimates that the two firms are sending out around 65,000 messages each month.
In another campaign, Future ran a telemarketing exercise to pitch consumers with the idea of subscribing to T3 magazine via their mobile for £5 per issue, at a time when the cost of buying the magazine on the newsstand was £3.99. So that’s a £1 premium for the convenience of paying by mobile, rather than the usual discount you get when you sign up for a 12-month subscription.
Out of 10,000 people called, 6,000 allowed Future to pitch them with the idea. Of these, 1,600 went on to subscribe, with 283 of these agreeing to take the mobile subscription, for which they are charged £5 every month on their mobile, until such time as they text ‘STOP’. All of which is, of course, spelled out to them at the time of subscription, and in each of the monthly messages they receive.
I was very impressed by what Piri had to say. The concept being deployed by Future is “Blikesque” in its targeting. Even better, in fact, because the people being targeted don’t just say they have an interest in mountain bikes or cross-stitching or whatever it is. They put their money where their mouth is and subscribe to a magazine on the subject. Who said third party offers on the mobile couldn’t work?

David Murphy
Editor

Case Study: How Yakult Mobilised the Sales Force

Yakult is the original probiotic. The company operates in 31 countries and territories, across five continents, and every day, around 25 million people drink Yakult. In the UK and Ireland, Yakult is sold throughout all major supermarkets and in many convenience store outlets.

Background
Prior to 2006, Yakult’s field sales team consisted of around 20 sales executives, each of whom had responsibility for a fixed territory. Store visits were scheduled and undertaken on a routine basis, rather than in response to flagged problems.   
Following every store visit, sales executives downloaded paper-based reports incorporating EPOS data on past sales. These reports were re-keyed into a central database in order to facilitate analysis of Yakult’s sales patterns across all retailers. 
Typically, this analysis showed that sales were impacted by problems such as poor availability of stock, slow stock turnaround, shelf-life wastage and stock being positioned in the wrong place, outside of agreed merchandising guidelines. As the problems could not be detected and reported in real-time, however, they could not be rectified immediately.   

Taking stock
In order to increase visibility, optimise productivity and drive efficiencies, Yakult took a decision in 2006 to review its field sales operations across the UK and Ireland. The primary aim of the review was to ensure that the field sales team was deployed effectively, in order to ensure that all time was spent adding value to the business and driving improvements to the bottom line. It was clear that Yakult’s fixed territory model lacked flexibility and allowed undetected problems such as stock wastage and poor merchandising to persist for too long. This, combined with a lack of real-time information hampered visibility, analysis and planning, and harboured inefficiencies.      

A new approach  
At this stage Yakult introduced two key initiatives to streamline and improve field sales operations. The first stage was to restructure the field sales model. The traditional territory model became obsolete and virtual territories were created to enable a more flexible, responsive approach to account management. This model meant that stores could be visited as and when an issue was flagged. Problems could therefore be resolved quickly, and inefficiencies minimised.  
The second stage was to source a solution which would streamline all sales information, and equip the sales team with handheld devices which could be used to download and upload vital sales information.      
Having extensively researched the market, Yakult selected solutions from O4 and CACI. CACI’s Insite & Callsmart solution was selected to enable Yakult to optimise field resources and create territory structures and call schedules for each sales executive. O4 was selected as a complete mobile execution solution which disseminates information to sales executives, and enables sales executives to report information back to a central management suite. Yakult Project Manager, Reshma Patel, explains: 
“Having already completed stage one of our project, Yakult already had aims, objectives and processes established, therefore we required a solution which would be flexible enough to facilitate our goals rather than dictate new ones. O4 adapted and integrated very easily with Yakult’s existing systems and the CACI solution, which made for a quick implementation and a successful go-live.”
Both solutions went live in July 2008 following a five month implementation.   

Reaping the benefits
Using the combined O4 and CACI solutions Yakult is now able to identify stores which require attention, rather than waiting for a routine visit which might previously have been scheduled several months’ down the line. The solutions also enable Yakult to review available resources and split workload appropriately. For example, if a problem is flagged at a particular store, the system can identify the nearest sales executive according to their location or schedule, and allocate them, saving valuable time and resources. 
The O4 solution comprises a real-time customer database, including sales history and analysis; promotions and sales updates; sales executives’ detailed schedule for the week ahead, including what time a meeting is, how long it should take, how long it will take to get there, and what route would be best. It can also run vehicle check surveys where necessary. The handheld device’s built-in camera also means that sales executives can take and file photographs to accompany reports. 
“Through using O4 and CACI, we have saved approximately 40% in field sales force time, which means 40% more resources which can be channelled back into strategy, development and marketing,” says Reshma. “Feedback from the team is great. The sales executives love the solution, as it looks after time-consuming administration and paperwork, saving valuable time. It also enables them to have information to hand at all times when visiting a store, therefore they feel more proactive and well informed when on visits. By being better prepared, they get so much more out of each visit.
“We are delighted with the return on our investment in O4 and CACI. The speed and accuracy of information we now have access to helps to drive the business forward, and a happier, more productive field sales force is driving immeasurable benefits to our bottom line.” 

E.ON Enjoys Success with Blyk Recruitment Campaign

UK energy company E.ON has used a mobile campaign as part of an apprentice recruitment drive. Recruitment communications consultancy TMP Worldwide devised the campaign, in partnership with E.ON.
E.ON apprenticeships offer training for jobs such as electrical and mechanical fitters, overhead linespeople and cable jointers. The scheme attracts mostly male applicants, but E.ON was keen to promote its schemes to wider social groups that reflect the community in which it operates, especially a female demographic.
To meet this need, TMP Worldwide approached ad-funded mobile network Blyk. Blyk’s network offers free texts and minutes to 16-24 year olds. In exchange, users receive appropriate advertising based on collected lifestyle information.
On 23 December, E.ON sent a targeted Christmas message to young women through Blyk. The message read: “Turn on more than fairy lights this winter. And earn good money while you’re at it. Interested? Yes or No.”
Anyone who answered “Yes” received an animated picture message, encouraging them to join an E.ON Apprenticeship. Further information was available by scrolling down, with an option to visit E.ON’s Apprentice website. A follow up HTML email was sent as a reminder, once the application period started. The campaign achieved a 23% positive response rate.
Alan Davies, Employer Brand and Attraction Specialist at E.ON, says:
“This campaign has got 2009 off to a great start, and demonstrates how we are looking to use technology to target a specific demographic, as part of a wider campaign. TMP’s campaign has already attracted interest from an under-represented group in this area while keeping response costs to a minimum.”

SFR Gets Personal with Pontis Platform

SFR is a Vodafone subsidiary, and the second largest mobile operator in France. It is also a major player in the French economy, with 10,000 staff, 18.8 million subscribers and revenues in excess of €9 billion (£8.1 billion). The company prides itself on its innovative approach and places a strong emphasis on developing new services and high speed networks to keep it at the forefront of technological innovation.
Today, the French mobile marketplace is as competitive as ever and the challenge to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction from mobile content is significant. At the 2005 GSM World Congress in Barcelona, a chance meeting with Pontis, which offers a personalised approach to the marketing of mobile services, set SFR on the path towards a new level of personalization of mobile content offers via its WAP portal. 

The challenge
The marketing team at SFR had been searching for a way to create more personalised, targeted marketing offers to boost the selling of a variety of mobile content via the company’s WAP portal and to increase customer satisfaction. Following a competitive tendering process and technical evaluation phase in 2006, Pontis, in partnership with Capgemini, was tasked with creating and implementing a solution that would enable targeted marketing activities to be planned, launched and evaluated, based on actual subscriber behaviour and known preferences and interests. 
For SFR’s marketing team, the fact that Pontis was able to provide marketing templates like ‘Buy One Get One Free’ (BOGOF) and ‘Happy Hour’ - familiar retail-type marketing paradigms, which made it easy to understand and apply - was especially appealing, especially with the capability to deliver real-time online banners. Another key factor which swung opinion towards the Pontis solution was its ability to monitor and track usage on content partners’ sites. Since all  the content links on the portal redirect the user away from the SFR portal, this was a mandatory requirement, and one which Pontis was able to accommodate. 
In April 2007, the Pontis Marketing Delivery Platform (MDP) went live to SFR’s entire WAP browser population (apart from a 10% control group for comparison purposes). Its introduction meant that the SFR product management team was able to develop a series of marketing campaigns based on a subscriber’s actual usage patterns.  For example, it can now segment non-users, low-users and high-users of a service such as ringtones, and develop a series of targeted offers to entice users to download more ringtones. 
Since April 2007, the results of the new, personalised approach to promoting a variety of different services, including ringtones, games, music, video and adult content, enabled SFR to launch and manage a large portfolio of marketing offers. Using the MDP desktop improved the workflow process and time to market.

Results 
According to Nicolas Oyarbide, CRM Product Manager in charge of the WAP portal:
“The improvement in the take-up of various offers has been as high as 20% for some campaigns, with improved usage giving more than 10% revenue increase. Revenue improvement has been most pronounced on new services like video clips, where awareness is particularly key to improved market penetration. For services like these, we have seen a doubling in usage. For more mature products like ringtones, the impact has been to maintain demand which would otherwise tend to tail off as they reach the end of their lifecycle.” 
Another area in which the Pontis MDP has made a dramatic difference is in the area of banner ads.  Being able to deliver personalized, relevant banner ads on the portal was one of the key elements that drove the success of the WAP marketing initiative. According to Oyarbide:
“The WAP portal is really our shop window, and it’s important that we are able to use the space efficiently to deliver the most relevant offers to each subscriber. If a customer is a high consumer of games, but has shown no interest in ringtones, it’s more sensible to give gaming promotions a higher profile on the portal for that user.”
The Pontis solution is able to determine the most relevant offers based on usage patterns, and position a banner advert that is most likely to appeal to the customer, and place it in a prominent position on their individual portal. For Oyarbide, who is keen to gain the maximum traction from banner ads, the Pontis solution helps him to prioritise the different services and also have the ability to monitor and change banner ads on a daily basis, based on real-time statistical analysis of clickthrough rates. 
Since deploying the service over a year ago, the Pontis MDP has become a central component of the marketing activities of the WAP team. The MDP supports SFR’s marketing activities and goals to increase ARPU, as well as giving the product marketing team the flexibility and freedom to launch a multitude of different marketing campaigns quickly and cost effectively, and to react swiftly to competitive offers or new opportunities as they present themselves.

Future plans
Plans for the future include providing an upgraded platform, which will increase the capacity of the system and enable it to monitor additional off-portal traffic such as sports, videos, chat and logos and MMS via the portal.
Plans are also afoot to deploy Pontis across other SFR sites, and to use it to deploy SMS campaigns and promote SFRs own messaging services to its users. Says Oyarbide:
“The Pontis MDP give us real-time CRM, which offers us the insight to see what works and what doesn’t and (to) be able to respond speedily to different marketing conditions. Prior to deploying Pontis it would take us weeks to be able to plan and deploy a new marketing offer, now we can do it in a few hours. The system is a real winner for SFR - as we can see from the increased ARPU and customer’s loyalty. But it also works for our customers, who only receive relevant offers and – since the mobile phone is such as personal device – this means that they get to hear about promotions that are most likely to be of interest to them.”

Improving Customer Service Via Mobile Banking

Oman Arab Bank is a leading bank in Oman, partly owned by Arab Bank PLC. It has achieved significant efficiencies in customer service and the opening of new revenue streams from SMS-based mobile banking. Oman Arab Bank implemented BANKSMART from Acette Technologies, which is powered by Derdack’s message master xsp.
The bank’s new ‘Tawasul’ SMS-based mobile banking service is a key tool for customer acquisition and retention, and increasing market share in Oman. 
“We are committed to offering superior services to the Omani market. Our use of BANKSMART and the SMS platform provided by message master xsp has enabled the bank to develop a competitive advantage in terms of services that we offer our customers,” says Hassan Abdul Ali Al-Lawati, the bank's Deputy General Manager and IT-Head.

Core functionality allied to SMS
The bank needed a secure, reliable and efficient SMS-based mobile banking service that could maintain its highly personalised and responsive customer service standards. This led the bank to look for a system that could combine banking functionality and SMS messaging capabilities.
“We selected BANKSMART as it has the flexibility to be configured to meet our sophisticated requirements and to address growing demand for new banking services that are being launched continuously,” says Al-Lawati. “We now have a system that uniquely delivers both English and Arabic mobile banking functionality and has powerful features for exploiting SMS as a two-way communication channel.”

Exploiting Push and Pull SMS
Oman Arab Bank’s mobile banking service allows customers to access their accounts using any standard mobile device. Customers can carry out a range of banking tasks, such as viewing account balances and transactions, paying utility bills,or topping up pre-paid mobile phones, by sending a ‘Pull’ SMS message request to the bank.
Customers are also notified of account activity, and other confirmations and notifications are sent automatically by SMS. Alerts are generated on pre-defined events such as salary credits, account transactions or ATM withdrawals, and a choice of other banking events. This provides an effective safeguard against suspicious activities, which can be immediately queried by the customer.
SMS has now become a channel for the bank to communicate with customers, to inform them that a new cheque book, ATM or credit card is ready for collection. Customer service agents also have the ability to send free format SMS messages directly to the customer.
The bank has also found message master xsp’s ability to support Push and Pull marketing campaigns to be invaluable. Marketing and other bulk messages are sent via a high-speed interface to multiple mobile operators via SMSC links, while inbound SMS requests are automatically processed. This gives the bank a highly cost effective, responsive and targeted customer communication channel.

A secure, differentiated service
Oman Arab Bank has differentiated itself from competitors in its use of SMS as a key enabler of banking and payment services. It says it is the only bank in Oman that offers a range of options that can be accessed using SMS. An additional differentiator is that it can offer these service capabilities with a choice of Arabic or English language messages.
The customer reaction to the bank’s SMS banking service has been extremely positive. A key requirement for the service is security and reliability. Oman Arab Bank has devised a unique strategy for using BANKSMART and message master xsp to validate customer SMS requests using secure authentication tokens. This ensures that only genuine transactions are processed, and enhances the overall security of the service.

Building revenue from third-party collections
Another service that Oman Arab Bank offers is bill payment via SMS. The bank has generated additional revenue streams through transactions and collections for third parties such as mobile operators and utility companies. When a customer pays a bill using the mobile banking channel, Oman Arab Bank retains a fee for this service that is recovered from the recipient of the payment. With smartcards and top-ups growing at a rapid rate, this has proved to be a popular and increasingly valuable service for the bank. The ability to offer these services in Arabic has allowed a much wider usage amongst the largely Arabic-speaking population in Oman.
Oman Arab Bank has also simplified the process of transferring mobile prepaid credits. Top-up credit can be purchased through a retailer, who can then securely transfer the credit, in real-time directly to the customer via SMS. 
“Oman Arab Bank has shown what can be achieved by combining expert local knowledge, an innovative vision of how to exploit the SMS channel and the latest technology for mobile banking, to achieve revenue and customer growth," says Derdack Managing Director, Matthes Derdack.

College Fights Truancy with Text

Avanquest has revealed that Crestwood College in Eastleigh, Hampshire is using its Text Message Server solution to support its anti-truancy initiatives.
Crestwood has over 500 students, and did have a truancy problem, with unauthorised absence growing. The college recognised that the best way to tackle truancy was to work with parents to reduce truancy numbers.
Contacting the parent or guardian by phone each time their child failed to turn up for morning registration was becoming harder. Crestwood Attendance Officer, Theresa Holman, was spending more and more time making calls, and leaving messages when she could not get through. The college realised that the number of calls needing to be made would probably only increase as the initiative gathered momentum, so it has turned to text as a quicker and more reliable way of communicating with parents.
Avanquest notes that using text to relay messages is an unobtrusive method of communication. Information and support from the school can be given discretely to parents, who might be in an office or situation where a phone call cannot be taken or will be overheard.
Electronic registration carried out through SIMS (the Schools Information Management System which holds a database of pupil and parent information, including the mobile numbers of parents) is able to verify pupil names against non-attendance. A list of target mobile numbers is collated and a text message immediately sent to the parent's mobile phone to notify them that their child has failed to turn up at school, all automatically.
“Because text messaging is instant, it has cut down the time I used to spend making phone calls and delivers better results,” says Holman. “It has helped me get students into school and makes it easier for us to keep in regular touch with students and parents in ongoing situations concerning absence.”

Pure Garage Campaign Generates Double-digit Clickthroughs

Mobile marketing agency Phonevalley and Warner Music collaborated on an engaging mobile campaign for the release of Warner Music’s ‘Very Best of Pure Garage’ album towards the end of 2008. The campaign was run in partnership with Zenith Optimedia.
From 29 November to 7 December, Phonevalley broadcast a ‘Pure Garage’ MMS to a targeted group of over 32,000 16-24 year old Blyk subscribers who had expressed an interest in dance music. The message encouraged them to enter a competition to win a Nokia mobile phone. They could also click on the MMS to download a ‘Pure Garage’ wallpaper for their phone. The campaign generated a clickthrough rate of 12.85%. 

MMA Case Study: Kraft Foods/YOC Sampling Campaign

The Brief
Kraft Foods tasked YOC with the creation of a mobile campaign to promote the launch of its new instant coffee products, Jacobs 3in1 and Jacobs 2in1. The campaign was to be integrated with traditional media and was intended to provide consumers with an uncomplicated way of ordering product samples via mobile, whilst minimising usual sampling wastage levels and associated costs through accurate targeting and tester self-selection. The target group was defined as young coffee lovers.

Objectives
The main objective of the Kraft Jacobs 3in1/2in1 mobile sampling campaign was to place product samples among the early adopters, who are considered to be the most innovation savvy, and the opinion leaders, amongst the target group.
Additional objectives that defined the campaign development were to maximise the reach of the target group, and to increase the conversion rate of the sample requests, while at the same time decreasing product distribution costs. The success of the campaign needed to be transparent and easy to measure. Kraft also wanted to gather data from the mobile campaign to develop a customer database for CRM purposes.

Strategy and solution
YOC created a mobile advertising and sampling campaign, integrating a mobile call to action with online and traditional TV and print media. Shortcodes and keywords were promoted across traditional print and TV ads, inviting consumers to send an SMS with the media-specific keyword to the campaign Shortcode, allowing them to directly respond and request a product sample, simply by sending a one-word text message. Participants were then sent a WAP push link to the mobile sampling portal, where users were invited to enter their personal details, so that they could receive a sample product.
Alongside promotion across traditional media channels, banner ads for the sampling campaign were also placed on the Vodafone portal, on the Nokia, Sat1, Pro7 Mobil MTV, Viva and YOC.mobi sites. 
The campaign placed control directly with the consumer, inviting them to send an SMS to request a sample once they had seen a print or TV advert. Promoting the mobile campaign through traditional media provided users with a direct opportunity to interact with the brand and request a sample via their mobile, only if they were interested in the product. 
YOC also provided a community of selected and profiled individuals as part of the target group. This group of targeted, opted-in mobile users received push text messages inviting them to text their details to a Shortcode to receive a product sample in the post. Text messages were only sent directly to YOC Community members who had already opted to receive targeted messages and were part of the defined target group. Following MMA guidelines, the campaign placed choice and control in the hands of the consumer.

Results
The ‘3in1/2in1’ campaign across TV, print and mobile advertising channels enabled almost 500,000 samples to be placed directly among the target group. Over 450,000 customers registered with Jacobs throughout the duration of the campaign. More than 80,000 users registered their details to be used for permission-based marketing in the future. 
0.4% of users who saw the TV advert ordered a product sample via the mobile. The campaign saw high responses from users of mobile portals that were led directly from mobile banner advertising to the mobile registration portal. Almost 650 banners were placed on selected portals relevant to the target group, and these achieved a clickthough rate of more than 3%. 250,000 text messages were sent to the profiled opted-in YOC community members who were part of the defined target group. Thanks to the detailed profiling and selection of community members, 10.6% responded and YOC distributed more than 26,000 samples to these respondents.
“The success of the campaign, especially in the mobile sector, exceeded our expectations,” says Kraft Marketing Manager, Marco Gottschalk. “The mobile phone has hereby established itself as promotional tool.”

MMA Viewpoint: Initiatives which leverage cross-media integration effectively, such as the campaign discussed in this study, often see success in using mobile to drive consumer adoption and achieving excellent results for their brands. The use of SMS as a call to action is a great way of encouraging consumer involvement in mobile marketing, and engaging them with a particular brand. MMA’s latest Global Attitude and Usage Study of more than 2,500 mobile phone users in Western Europe found that 68% of respondents already use their mobile phone to text, indicating widespread comfort with SMS as an application, making it a broad avenue to participation in mobile marketing campaigns.
The mobile channel creates an exciting opportunity to build a dialogue with the consumer, and an opportunity to build an ongoing relationship with the consumer, which is clearly demonstrated in the YOC case study. Leveraging the mobile channel allowed Kraft to create a database of relevant and interested consumers to contact in future campaigns. The free coffee sample offer in this mobile campaign demonstrates that marketers increasingly understand the importance of providing value to the consumer, in exchange for the opportunity to communicate with them on their mobile device - and adding sampling via mobile definitely creates this value.

SMS as a CRM and Internal Comms Tool

Ocado, the web-based grocer, prides itself on delivering high quality goods, along with a high quality service. In the competitive retail environment, Ocado turned to Esendex to help it stay one step ahead of the game and become the UK’s first online grocer to implement enhanced text messaging services. Since implementing SMS services from Esendex, Ocado has sent a total of 2.7 million customer and staff text messages and seen numerous benefits, including increased communication with staff, and enhanced levels of customer service.

Resource planning
Due to the nature of the home grocery delivery industry, Ocado has to run a tight ship in terms of resource planning. With a large team of employees working a variety of shift-based patterns in its warehouse and delivery operations, Ocado must be able to contact staff quickly and easily to determine availability for overtime, holiday and shift changes.
“Our Customer Service Team Members, who are involved in deliveries, and our Personal Shoppers, who are involved in warehouse operations, are vital to the success of Ocado,” says Ocado Head of Business Planning, Mark Watson. “To deliver the best possible service for our customers, we need to be able to draw on our operatives’ skills effectively, sometimes at short notice, especially at peak season, such as Christmas.”
Traditionally, managers and resource planners at Ocado had to call each employee individually, explain the details of what was on offer, and take appropriate action depending on the response. This system was both timely and costly to implement and also hard to provide a fair and equal opportunity for employees to respond.
Communicating with customers is equally as important as talking with staff. Ocado was eager to adopt a communications tool that would enable it to engage with its customers, informing them quickly of delivery details and updates.

The SMS solution
In order for the online grocer to communicate effectively with its two key audiences, Ocado sought an SMS-based service, which would fit with its existing processes. Ocado selected SMS communications company Esendex for its experience and its application platform.
The Esendex Application Programming Interface (API) enables automated texts to be sent and received with ease.
“The Esendex API is very impressive and was an immediate draw for us,” says Watson. “It was hassle free to set up and integrated seamlessly with our existing business applications, fitting in easily with our processes. This was an important criteria mark that we set when choosing an SMS service, so it was imperative that Esendex met this. The API works well with our existing time and attendance system, so minimal staff training was required on the system and it is also very intuitive to use on an ongoing basis – a real added bonus with Esendex.”
Ocado has two different Esendex business SMS services. For customer services, Esendex provides an automated service, which involves a one-way text messaging service. At the appropriate time, the customer is sent a text with a delivery notification, update, or an  opportunity to change their grocery order. The customer is informed in a direct and timely fashion.
Internally at Ocado, the Esendex service guarantees managers can keep a large number of staff well informed of updates quickly and easily and vice-versa. Using a two-way SMS service, resource planners at Ocado have direct access to the application to plan shifts, overtime and holiday cover. For example, planners can text large groups of staff members to ask who wants overtime and staff can then reply on a first-come, first-served basis.

Customer service
Since using the Esendex service, Ocado has propelled its customer service onto a new level by using Esendex’s enhanced messaging services. With the power of text, Ocado is able to talk to its customers and deliver the reassurance that their goods will be delivered in time as promised.
Ocado has also seen improvements in internal communications and operational planning. Resource planners can now communicate with warehouse and delivery department staff effectively and directly, channelling important messages involving staffing changes or cover.
“By using the Esendex text messaging system, we can communicate…with speed and ease,” says Watson. We’ve been able to reduce calling times considerably since implementing the service, which has been a real improvement for day to day operations. Previously, resource planners spent hours calling staff about cover notifications, now it can be done in a matter of minutes.”

Operator Recoups Jinny Ringback Tone Outlay in 10 Days

Jinny Software, which supplies personalised messaging and media processing platforms to mobile network operators, has revealed that its Ringback Tone Server solution has driven a tremendous 10-day return-on-investment (ROI) for a Zain Group operator in Africa. The initial 8% uptake by the 4.5-million subscriber base meant the operator was able to re-coup its initial capital outlay within a 10-day period, through additional revenues generated from Ringback Tone subscriptions and tones purchased.
The service allows mobile subscribers to reflect their personality by setting a preferred Ringback Tone for callers to hear before their call is answered. It replaces the normal ringtone heard when placing a call to someone, with a popular ringtone, a sound-clip, or a self-recorded message. Navigation through the system is guided by a free-to-access IVR system, which allows subscribers to subscribe, unsubscribe, dedicate, replace, record, personalise and manage their music box and assign different ringtones to different caller IDs. Ringback Tones can also be personalised using SMS.
One year after the service launch, the Zain Group operator currently has 450,000 active subscribers to the Ringback Tone service, representing 10% of its total subscriber base. Subscription to the service is charged on a monthly basis and costs approximately $0.45 (£0.30) per month. Each song or tone purchased costs US$0.45 and lasts for 60 days and renewal cost per song/tone is US$0.45.
Content is organised into eight different categories of Ringback Tones, including top ten, local language tones, Middle East-specific tones such as Islamic, Arabic and Khaliji tones, English tones, plus a variety of other content. The availability of local language and Arabic content is of crucial importance to the success of this service, says Jinny, and drives Ringback Tone content sales. The operator sells, on average, 300,000 tones each month.
The Ringback Tone solution was initially set up to support a small subscriber base, but quickly grew to support rapidly-increased service demand. The modular structure of Jinny’s Ringback Tone solution means that any additional capacity requirement can be supported by adding additional media gateways, as and when required.
Jinny Software signed a framework agreement earlier in 2008 to become the preferred supplier of Ringback Tone Servers to the Zain Group in Africa and across the Middle East, following a detailed technical and commercial evaluation.

AdMob Celebrates 'Knots' Success

Mobile ad network AdMob has released the results of a recent case study with its homegrown iPhone application, 'Knots'. The game is a simple ‘touch and release’ game created by AdMob employee and developer, Josh Snyder. AdMob used the Knots application as a controlled case study to learn how developers could drive downloads of their iPhone apps with an advertising campaign through AdMob’s Advertising Marketplace.
The application was admitted to the App Store on 11 September, 2008 and in the first three days, did not have a single download and was not ranked in the top 100 free applications in the Apple Apps store. Starting on 17 September, Knots began running ads within AdMob’s iPhone Network,  driving consumers to download the game for free. It also started to serve ads within the application in order to monetize itself.
The Knots campaign delivered strong results. As soon as the campaign started, consumers began to download the Knots application and it began to rise in the rankings in the Apple Apps store, eventually reaching the top 10 free apps. Knots also began to generate a significant daily profit through in-application advertising as part of AdMob’s iPhone Network.
At peak, the game had more than 7,000 downloads a day. In addition to being ranked in the ‘Top 10 Free Apps’ in the Apple Apps store, Knots was also included in the ‘Featured Apps’ section on 7 October. The average cost-per-click for the campaign was $0.50, and by the end of the campaign, Knots had earned an average of $600-$700 a day in advertising.
AdMob says the Knots campaign clearly demonstrates the value of advertising a mobile application, as well as the ability to generate ad revenue from free iPhone applications.
AdMob launched its iPhone Advertising Network in August 2008. It designed the iPhone ad formats to take advantage of the unique context and capabilities of the device to blend graphical display ads with one of eight iPhone-specific actions, such as one-touch access to the Apple Apps Store; maps to view relevant locations; audio to listen to content; or the ability to view video. The ads were designed to function in either the browser environment or native applications built for the iPhone and come in both brand and performance formats.
Following the launch of its iPhone Ad Network, AdMob launched a $1 million developer program to fuel growth of a new wave of mobile publishers. In September, AdMob announced the first members of the developer program: Loopt, Stitcher, Tapulous, Pandora, iRovr, Avantar, Trism, Wixi, AppCubby, and TinyPictures. Each developer received $5,000 in AdMob advertising credit to acquire traffic for their mobile website or application.
Developers who wish to apply to be included in the program should click here.

MMA Case Study: Adidas Euro 2008

The brief
Adidas wanted to engage supporters in the Euro 2008 Football Championship. The tournament began on 7 June and concluded with the final in Vienna on 29 June. Adidas wanted to increase awareness of its sponsorship during Euro 2008, and reinforce its existing brand message on mobile. It was the first ever Euro Mobile Campaign for Adidas. Football fans could have Adidas content delivered direct to their handsets.

Strategy
The first part of the mobile activity was a large display advertising campaign which supported the mobile activity created by Marvellous, using Adidas football endorsers such as Djibril Cissé and Patrick Vieira. The ads were invitations for people to participate in the Euro 2008 mobile campaign.
Users were encouraged to personalize their mobiles with exclusive downloaded content, including logos, ringtones, screensavers and national team kits. A large section of the mobile site was dedicated to free video content available to download, based on the overarching campaign theme of: ‘Dream Big, The world’s biggest footballers, The world’s smallest team’. Adidas also created a Java game designed for the tournament, called ‘3on3’.
Interactivity was another important factor. Each supporter could leave a dedication to the French team (‘Les Bleus’) which could then be shared with their friends and posted on a wall directly on the mobile site. 
The mobile site was also used to build purchase intent, by providing pages dedicated to apparel such as the F50, Predator and adipur football shoes and sportswear collections.

Solution
To maximize the potential of the advertising campaign, Adidas engaged Microsoft Advertising to provide a selection of channels to reach the Adidas target audience of sport-aware 18-24 year-old males. This included banner mobile ads on MSN Mobile, Windows Live Hotmail Mobile, Windows Live Messenger Mobile and L’Equipe.fr Mobile.
Adidas leveraged consumers’ enthusiasm for mobile in a number of different ways: brand awareness and engagement via the content downloads; viral engagement via the ‘text to a friend’ option; and brand engagement via a data capture element, inviting consumers to register their details to receive updates when new products become available.

Results
The Adidas campaign benefited from the popularity of the competition, one of the most entertaining in recent memory, which in turn improved the clickthrough rate. The mobile campaign outperformed expectations from day one. In fact, on 6 June, the day before Euro 2008 started, the global clickthrough rate on L’Equipe.fr. reached 12.6%.

MMA Viewpoint: Consumers want to interact with their favourite brands based on affinity, but also on entertainment, fun, personalization and increasingly, around productivity. A key benefit of the mobile channel for marketers is that it allows them to create this interaction and dialogue with the consumer. A conversation based on engagement, using exclusive content such as the Euro 2008 game cited here and the messaging tool used to leave dedications to ‘les Bleus’ is a great way to drive response rates without being intrusive.
Relevance is also a key component for a successful marketing campaign over mobile, contributing to a positive consumer experience and adhering to MMA recommendations on trust. As we’ve seen recently with the Beijing Olympics and the number of mobile campaigns launched by brands such as Coca-Cola and Yahoo!, using topical events can be a great way to capitalise on consumer interest, whilst the ability to use mobile to successfully target a specific consumer segment is also evident here; using particular Microsoft channels to reach the target audience of sport-aware 18-24 year old men around the football tournament theme.
Mobile has in the past been seen as presenting a challenge for brands to understand the effectiveness of a campaign across operator networks or technology enablers, or to define mobile’s reach, but case studies such as this, with tangible results and solid proof points, can only help our industry to grow.

Using Mobile to Create a Buzz

Showcase Live was set for the grand opening of its live entertainment venue located at Patriot Place, near Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. As a way to draw attention and get the word out quickly, Showcase Live partnered with 211(me), a mobile media company, to launch a contest offering wannabe stand-up comedians the chance to be the support act for comedian Dave Attell at the grand opening of the venue.

Problem
With just one week before the show, 211(me) was faced with the challenge of developing a program to rapidly engage the community. 

Solution
To get the word out, 211(me) provided each aspiring comedian with the tools to engage people, and inspire voters to support them, sparking what would become an explosive viral marketing/social networking campaign. When each comedian registered for the contest online, they were assigned an auto-generated mobile keyword, mobile flyer and social networking widget to share their information with anyone and everyone they could. Not only could people vote online through the website or social network widget, but voters could also text in their choice using the keyword. Additionally, the contest generated a viral buzz as promotional mobile flyers rapidly spread the word both online and via mobile. 

Results
The benchmark for the program was to attract 20 comedians and 2,000 voters. Using 211(me)’s technology, results for Showcase Live vastly exceeded expectations, attracting more than 100 comedians and 23,000 voters. Within nine minutes of the contest going live, the first comedian had signed up and posted his social network widget. 
211(me) says that the campaign’s success was largely due to the digital bridge that it was able to create between the online and mobile spheres, enabling the company to quickly engage the community.

Using Mobile to Raise Brand Awareness

In-game mobile ad network operator Greystripe has revealed the results of a recent mobile advertising campaign with electronics retail chain RadioShack. Greystripe developed the campaign RadioShack to drive key brand and persuasion metrics in order to increase awareness of and purchase consideration for the RadioShack brand.

Methodology
Greystripe teamed up with marke research firm, InsightExpress, to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign using the mobile-focused research tool, Mobile AdInsights.  The research solution measured the attitudinal effect of mobile advertising via a test/control methodology. InsightExpress studied RadioShack’s ad campaign on the Greystripe network from 5 – 19 February 2008, with a total of 516 mobile respondents participating in the study. 285 respondents were exposed to RadioShack’s mobile ads and 231 were unexposed. Respondentswere gathered from the Greystripe mobile network and syndicated partner sites.

Results
Results from RadioShack’s mobile ad campaign indicated a significant statistical increase in unaided brand awareness from exposed respondents. Awareness levels rose from 15.8% to 24.2%, an increase of 8.4%. Additionally, there was a 5.9% increase in the number of respondents who agreed that RadioShack is a “Top Wireless Store.”
Interestingly, a closer look at the brand metrics by gender revealed that the ad campaign resonated best with the female audience, as several significant metric increases were observed within this segment, The campaign also performed well with respondents aged 25-34. Among this group, unaided brand awareness increased by 10.9%, while the “Top Wireless Store” metric jumped 16.7%.
Finally, according to the study, the campaign outperformed mobile norms for unaided brand awareness by 2.2%. Compared to online campaign statistics, the mobile campaign came in 3.8% higher for brand awareness and 1.6% higher for purchase consideration.

Conclusions
The RadioShack campaign delivered through Greystripe’s network was able to significantly increase awareness of brand and purchase consideration amongst consumers.
“Based on our Mobile AdInsights analysis, the campaign that Greystripe developed for RadioShack was clearly a winner on many fronts,” says Joy Liuzzo, Director of Mobile Research and Marketing at InsightExpress. “Once again, we’ve seen that the mobile channel is not only effective, but can be instrumental in driving key brand metrics among important target audiences.”
Using Mobile AdInsights, Radio Shack was able to learn exactly which campaign elements were most successful and which audiences were most affected, such as 25-34 year-old women. The data also highlighted opportunities for both creative development and target market selection in support of RadioShack’s future mobile advertising initiatives.
“Mobile AdInsights has provided the feedback we need to continue to develop highly effective mobile campaigns for RadioShack and other advertiser clients,” says Jenny Burrington, Director of Advertising Sales at Greystripe. “This type of validating information has not only illustrated the success of this specific campaign, but also underscored the viability of mobile as a key marketing channel.”

Case Study: Mobile Voting to Raise Money for Good Causes

The Better Ireland Program is part of Irish bank, AIB’s Corporate and Social Responsibility strategy. AIB introduced the Better Ireland Programme six years ago in order to tackle the issue of social exclusion at an early stage and focuses its resources into key concerns affecting children in Ireland.
In May of this year, AIB was looking to re-fresh the Better Ireland Programme, and asked Dublin-based mobile marketing agency Púca to handle a text voting campaign. 275 AIB branches were each invited to nominate three children’s charities to receive a donation from the bank.
The three charities nominated by each branch were then put to a public vote to win a prize of €10,000 (£8,000) per branch. To vote, members of the public simply had to text the Branch name e.g. DUBLIN followed by shortlisted charity A, B or C to the shortcode, 53099.
In total, 308,011 text votes were received and 185 deserving charities received a total of €1.85 million (£1.5 million) in funding.
“This was Ireland’s biggest ever text voting campaign and really shows the power of the mobile medium,” says Púca Marketing and Communications Manager, Gráinne Ryan.

Case Study: Honda Civic R - Wake The Beast

As part of its launch of the new Civic R series in Ireland, Honda wanted to engage with a young, male audience and make a brand statement of innovation with its prospective future customers. To do so, it mounted an interactive, large format billboard in Dublin’s Wexford street, a popular venue for young adults who flock to the area each evening to soak up the atmosphere in the many bars and music venues nearby. The campaign was delivered by Irish agency Púca Mobile Marketing in partnership with GT Media. It launched on 15 June and ran for four weeks, though Honda plans to replicate it at other venues in the city. 
The campaign incorporated a large billboard poster featuring the tagline: ‘Wake the Beast’, and inviting passers-by to Text START to the shortcode 51500. This call to action signalled the lights on the car to light up and smoke to billow from the exhaust on the poster. Consumers could, in effect, interact with the poster and engage with the Honda brand, creating a memorable and unique experience.
In response to the text message the user also received a link to a Honda mobile site. Developed and hosted by Púca, the www.hondaireland.mobi mobile site enabled the passer-by to find out more about the car, request a brochure and contact their nearest dealer to take the Beast for a test drive. 
The third element of the campaign incorporated Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth-enabled handsets within close proximity to the poster were polled to ask if they would like to receive information from Honda. All those interested received a ringtone of the engine roar and instructions on how to access the mobile site.
As the campaign is ongoing, with more sites planned, Púca says there are no campaign statistics available at this stage.

MMA Case Study: Guinness St. Pat’s

The brief

Guinness asked Marvellous to develop a campaign to engage drinkers in the lead up to St. Patrick’s Day 2008, one of the biggest party days of the year for Guinness consumption. The campaign had to have credibility and longevity beyond 17 March to justify investment, and therefore had to be flexible enough to work across several of Guinness’s marketing programmes.

Objectives
Guinness wanted to connect with its customers, and get them involved with the brand on a deeper level than straightforward consumption. By providing them with innovative on-brand planning tools and entertainment, the mobile campaign created “talkability” and encouraged fun, interaction and banter in the pub and beyond. Guinness also wanted to use the campaign to promote its new product, Guinness Red, and introduce it to traditional Guinness drinkers and the wider market.

Strategy
The Guinness target audience of sport- and style-aware 18-40 year olds is completely at home with mobile technology, and relaxed about sophisticated digital interaction. Their handsets are always on, always with them, and tend to be high end. Consequently, Marvellous proposed a range of Java downloads to deliver cutting edge brand engagement which would live on the phone and be returned to many times.

Solution
Marvellous created a mobile destination site, accessed via calls to action in press, radio, online and mobile media. The site was designed to reflect and enhance the brand values of Guinness, and bring these to a new and always-available medium. 
Apart from basic information about Guinness and its products, the site housed several applications, including:

Pubfinder – this enables users to identify pubs via LBS, postcode or area look-up. It can also find the nearest St. Pat’s party pub, the nearest one with sports TV, or the nearest one serving Guinness Red. Many pubs are independently reviewed and photographed and this database is being extended all the time. Because the Pubfinder is a java download, the data can be dynamically refreshed on the handset, keeping it up to date and relevant. 

119.5 Pub Quiz – a selection of four java quizzes where consumers answer as many questions as possible in 119.5 seconds, the time it takes to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. They could then submit their scores to a national leaderboard, also accessible via Facebook, with great Irish prizes for the top scorer.

Picture Gallery – St. Pat’s party-goers were asked to send in their photos of the celebrations to the special shortcode, 81703.  There they could view their own, their friends’ and a random selection of all photos submitted. Again, the photographs could also be viewed on the Guinness Facebook pages.

Results
The results were spectacular for a short-term (2-week) campaign, and far exceeded the KPIs set by the client. More than 30% of the 35,000+ unique users downloaded at least one of the Java applications, with the quizzes proving particularly popular.
The results also proved the effectiveness of clickthrough ads on mobile portals, which delivered fantastic ROI compared to more traditional channels. Research into the effectiveness of the mobile media banners conducted for Vodafone live! by Dynamic Logic showed a 25% lift in mobile ad awareness, 12% lift in brand favourability, and a 9% rise in purchase intent, with a 3% clickthrough rate in certain areas. 

Next Steps
Working with Marvellous, Guinness has updated the St. Pat's campaign site into a permanent mobile presence. The site is now promoted in much of their above the line media and Guinness has committed to include mobile in future campaigns.

MMA Viewpoint:
The ubiquity of the mobile phone presents marketers with a new opportunity to interact with consumers anytime, anywhere. Mobile provides the ability to provide relevant and contextual information to target consumers, whenever and wherever they are. This relevance, and ensuring consumer pull, are the critical elements for a positive consumer experience, repeat users and therefore successful mobile campaigns; generating an environment of interaction and engagement between the brand and consumer, rather than the interruption-based advertising model of the past.
This Marvellous strategy for Guinness demonstrates a number of key themes for a successful mobile campaign:
·   Mobile is best leveraged when integrated into a cross media campaign, with the call to action embedded in traditional and digital media elements that you would already be using to reach the consumer.
·   Lead with the strategic objectives, then follow with the ideas where mobile might fit, not the technology. Start with the consumer and ask what you are trying to do - how are you trying to reach that consumer? Then, the role of mobile media can enhance the strategic objectives.   
·    Mobile should provide value to the user, in the form of product and service enhancements, reminders, sweepstakes, contests, requested information, entertainment, or discounts. The Pubfinder application, quizzes and picture gallery are great examples of this.

As we can see from the results of this campaign, mobile marketing enables brands to implement highly-targeted, measurable marketing initiatives, and provides them with a unique opportunity to engage and interact with consumers like never before.

Camden Crawl: Using Mobile to Promote a Live Event

The Red Stripe Camden Crawl is a well-established and successful live music event, playing host to some 130 artists across 25 venues, with around 10,000 music fans attending. This year, the event took place on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 April. As expected, the event sold out well in advance. However, the organisers were looking to improve the gig-goers’ experience, generate a higher level of interaction with them, and raise awareness of the event among a wider audience.
Mobile agency Que Pasa planned, created and delivered a mobile strategy for the event. Mobile was deemed to be the ideal medium with which to communicate with gig-goers and deliver to them the very latest news, information and content from the event.
The objectives of the campaign were to build awareness and buzz before the event; to give something back to punters with exclusive mobile content and competitions, and use these to extend the life of the event; to act as a source of practical information and advice, especially during the event; to offer a mobile vehicle for the placement of event branding sponsorship or affiliate messages; and to capture data for mobile promotion of future Camden Crawl events.
Que Pasa planned, created and delivered a mobile strategy which involved two elements. The first was a Red Stripe Camden Crawl 2008 mobile Internet site which spanned three stages, which was built and hosted in Mobrool, the Que Pasa mobile Internet platform. The second element was an SMS alert service which informed participants of line-up changes and queuing times at all venues.
Within the event guide given out on each day of the festival, participants were able to sign up to the service and receive a link to the mobile site by texting the keyword ‘CRAWL’ to 82100. The call-to-action was displayed on all above-the-line marketing material.
The mobile site went live a week before the event with teaser content including breaking news, featured artist interviews, event and transport information, and the Camden Crawl survival guide. During the event, there was a daily competition, with prizes included a signed Epiphone guitar and after-show passes. SMS queue update alerts were broadcast as venues filled up, and gig reviews.
The campaign achieved a 24% opt-in rate. 17.5% of mobile subscribers took part in one of the competitions. 31,771 text alerts were sent to gig-goers in Camden, and there were 7,000 mobile Internet site page views during the week of the event, with an average of 16 page views per user.

Phonevalley Celebrates Lacoste Campaign Success

Mobile marketing agency Phonevalley has released details of a successful recent mobile campaign for the relaunch of ‘Lacoste Touch of Pink’, the fragrance for women from Procter & Gamble brand, Lacoste, run in conjunction with Starcom and Mediacom.
To raise consumer awareness of Lacoste Touch of Pink, Phonevalley created a mobile campaign featuring a bespoke mobile Internet site decked out in the colours of the fragrance. Visitors to the site could request a free sample, enter a competition to win a Lacoste Touch of Pink boxed set, send a love message by MMS, download the TV ad and wallpaper, and discover more about the fragrance.
Phonevalley also designed a media plan to drive high levels of traffic to the site in the run-up to Valentine's Day. The schedule included banners on major women's anchor sites and WAP Push messages containing a  link to the site, focused on a target group of women aged between 18 and 25.
Phonevalley says the media campaign produced excellent results. Over 55,000 people visited the site in the space of a month. 10,000 ordered the free sample or entered the competition (including 68% of opt-in contacts), representing a conversion rate of 18%. The banner campaign produced an average click rate of over 6%. And the WAP Push messages generated a clickthrough rate of almost 12%.
Phonevalley also ran a post-campaign trial among 10,000 contacts from the campaign, and found that 94% were in favour of receiving perfume advertisements over their mobile phone. 74% said they were considering buying the fragrance in the weeks following the campaign.
“We are very proud to have lent our mobile marketing expertise to the teams at Procter & Gamble,” says Alexandre Mars, CEO of Phonevalley and Head of Mobile at parent company Publicis Groupe. “We have always maintained that mobile-based communication was all the more powerful, since it was well targeted and delivered a real service to mobile users. We are pursuing this particular approach and offering major brand names targeted mobile marketing strategies, always geared towards the media.”
Raphaël Roy, Media Manager at Procter & Gamble, adds:
“This campaign confirms the idea that users see mobile phones as a means of exchanging and forging close relations with their brands. It also teaches us that mobile phones should be considered as a way of involving consumers and getting them to play along.”

Power to the People

US mobile marketing company HipCricket has revealed that more than four million mobile messages were received by Miami, radio station Power 96 FM (WPOW) in a ‘High School Spirit’ contest it designed and executed. The promotion also enabled the Beasley Broadcast Group station to nearly double its mobile database.
The competition was open to high schools in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, with the winning school hosting a concert by Plies, Colby O’Donis, and Pleasure P. Each participating school was assigned a keyword for the 25-day contest that ended in late April. Students and others could text as many times as they wanted to the station’s shortcode. In just over four weeks, Power 96 received 4,161,644 votes via text message. The station also nearly doubled its mobile marketing database, with listeners opting in to receive future promotions from the station. Coral Reef Senior High won the performance by Plies, Colby O’Donis, and Pleasure P.
“Talk about listener involvement,” says Power 96 Program Director, Tom Calococci. “This campaign really shows the power of mobile marketing and our partnership with HipCricket. This is a perfect case of us engaging our audience and creating an opted-in relationship for interaction with our listeners moving forward.”

Jaguar Celebrates Mobile Campaign Success

Jaguar Cars has announced results from its mobile advertising campaign in the US. The campaign drives traffic to its mobile Internet site, created by Global Beach and built by Incentivated, which promotes the new luxury Jaguar XF.
The mobile advertising campaign appears on mobile Internet sites including MSN.mobi, cars.mobi, Yahoo Mobile and admob.com. Since its launch in November to coincide with the unveiling of the XF at the Los Angeles motor show, the campaign has delivered over 15 million ad impressions across the mobile Internet, delivering over 85,000 unique visitors to the Jaguar XF WAP site, representing a clickthrough rate of 0.6%. Mobile banner ads are the only medium used to promote the WAPsite.
Global Beach, Jaguar’s world-wide digital agency, designed the WAP site for the US market, partnering with mobile specialist Incentivated for the build. The site (www.jaguarxf.mobi) provides a gallery of high quality images to promote the car’s design, innovation and performance, including high- and low-resolution versions of XF videos.
The site allows visitors to input their ZIP code in order to locate their nearest dealer and book a test drive, or to order a brochure. Visitors can also submit their email address in order to request a branded email newsletter, and can download wallpapers to their handsets.
The site uses detection software to ensure the content served to visitors’ mobile browsers is dynamically optimized for each handset. As a result, the service automatically resizes the WAP site for viewing on iPhones, Smartphones, BlackBerrys, PDAs and over 2,000 other mobile devices in use across the US. The campaign was  large enough to warrant a dedicated iPhone mobile Internet site, despite the views of some who claim regular websites look good enough for the small screen of an iPhone.
Since the campaign launch, there have been over 12,000 videos and more than 16,000 wallpapers downloaded. For users who ventured beyond the home-page, the average dwell time was 2 minutes, 12 seconds. 1.2% of users requested an email brochure by entering their email address into the WAPsite. 2.6% located their nearest dealer to arrange a test drive.
“Jaguar is proud to translate our positive digital experiences with mobile marketing, and to deliver an engaging and rich brand experience for our technologically advanced customer base,” says Rome Murphy, Interactive Marketing Manager for Jaguar North America. “We are particularly impressed with the user experience across a broad range of handset types.”
Robert Thurner, Commercial Director at Incentivated adds: “We applaud Jaguar for running a campaign which harnesses the mobile medium’s unique strengths in combining exceptional rich content with a response mechanic and location-based services. Yielding a healthy ROI, the campaign demonstrates the exceptional value mobile marketing can deliver.”

News from Brazil

Brazilian mobile marketing agency pontomobi interactive has been bombarding our inbox with details of recent campaigns, not to mention some, frankly, rather saucy promotional imagery. The information the company has sent through is short and to the point, so rather than pad it out for the sake of it, we present, instead, a round-up of what the company has been up to lately. If nothing else, it shows that mobile marketing is alive and kicking in S. America.

AXE Girl Contest
For AXE, pontomobi is running a mobile marketing campaign to promote the new fragrance, ‘Dark Temptation’.
In conjunction with Playboy Magazine, Axe is looking to find the next AXE Girl. Member sof the public can vote for their favourite by texting their name to the shortcode, 27114. AXE then sends a return SMS with a WAP push link to access the mobile site (wap.axe.com.br), where consumers can see pictures of all the candidates, download them for free, and send on to their friends.

FIAT Bluetooth Campaign
For car maker FIAT, pontimobi is running a Bluetooth campaign to promote the launch of the Stilo Dualogic. The campaign targets consumers in 21 coffee bars in six Brazilian cities. Point of sale material within each venue encourages consumers to activate Bluetooth on their handsets in order to receive wallpapers, ringtones and videos.

Boteco Mobile Bars Guide
Late last year, pontimobi ran its first mobile campaign for beer brand AMBEV. The ‘Boteco Bohemia’ campaign ran in 31 bars in Sao Paulo, inciting the city’s inhabitants to vote for Sao Paolo’s best snack.
pontomobi developed a mobile guide for the event, available via a mobile Internet site (www.botecobohemia.com.br/mobile), and via a downloadable J2ME application.
Traffic was driven to the mobile site via a call to action encouraging consumers to text the word BOTECO to the shortcode, 27114. In return, the consumer received a WAP Push message with a link to the site. Consumers could also get the link by entering their name and mobile number on a dedicated website.
The mobile guide included general information about the event; a list of nominated snacks complete with photos; and a list of participating bars, including history and location details. Other features included click-to-call and incite-a-friend functionality.
During the four week duration of the campaign, more than 55,000 people visited the mobile site, while the Java mobile guide was downloaded 15.000 times.

Sprite MSN Campaign
For Sprite, pontomobi devised a mobile campaign for MSN Messenger users that enabled them to send free voice and text messages direct from the MSN Tab to friends’ phones. The message content was based on the campaign slogan: ‘Things as they are’ and could be sent either as a humorous SMS, or as a SAM (Short Audio Message), with voice messages recorded by musician and MTV presenter, João Gordo.
For the SMS messages, the name of the sender appeared within the SMS. For the SAM messages, after receiving the call, the recipient received an SMS informing them who has sent the message. 
In less than three weeks, 150,000 messages were sent.

NHS Turns To SMS for Appointment Reminders

Mobile messaging company Mediaburst has revealed the results of a pilot programme at Hull and East Yorkshire Woman and Children's Hospital, of an SMS-based patient appointments system. According to Mediaburst, NHS Trusts nationwide are now looking to adopt the reminder service that helps reduce missed patient appointments and resulting losses in hospital revenues.
The Managed Appointment Reminder Service (MARS), aims to help NHS Trusts slash an estimated £614 million out of their operating costs each year due to patient no-shows. The service was developed by wirless application developer Island Communications, in association with the NHS and Mediaburst.
The service is a fully managed solution, which sends out a text message reminder to all patients or customers nominated mobile phone at an agreed date ahead of the forthcoming appointment. On receipt of their Appointment Reminder, patients or customers are able to note the reminder, and then have the opportunity to reply, should they be unable to attend their appointment. Patients who do not have a mobile may nominate the mobile number of a relative, carer or friend to pass on reminders on their behalf.
Hull and East Yorkshire Woman and Children's Hospital’s Paediatric Outpatients Unit was the first to test the system. Providing specialist and general care to children who have been referred to its consultants, around 15,000 outpatient appointments are scheduled by the unit each year. Over 20% of these are missed, however, because outpatients simply forget to attend.
“Clearly, missed outpatient appointments are a prime concern to the unit for a number of reasons, the most important being the health and well-being of the child,” says Paediatric Services Manager, Jackie Timson. “First and foremost, we want to ensure that children under our medical care are receiving the attention and treatment they need to recover fully from any health problems they have experienced. A further concern is the financial impact of missed appointments as PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) do not fund missed appointments. This represents a significant loss to the potential income to the Trust.” 
Like all areas of the NHS, the Unit is constantly striving to maximise its resources so that it can improve the service it offers to the community.  One of its principal aims is to reduce the length of time between a patient being referred into the service to receiving treatment, in line with the Government's 2008 18 week referral-to-treatment target. Because missed appointments usually need to be rescheduled, the end result is delays for other patients, which makes it harder to achieve this aim.
The Paediatric Services Unit uses the MARS service to send a text message to the parents of outpatients several days before their appointment to remind them to attend. Of a sample of patients who were asked whether or not they would be happy to receive this type of reminder, over 90% said they would like to.
Timson says that reminding patients of appointments via the messaging service is playing a valuable part in reducing the number of missed appointments at the unit. “During the last three months, we’ve experienced a noticeable drop in the number of patients who haven’t attended appointments," she says. “In some cases, it’s unavoidable that an appointment will be missed, but because we provide an option to reply within the reminder we send, patients can let us know through the MARS management system if they’re not able to attend and in many cases we can allocate their slot to another patient, which is a further advantage of the system.”
Since the Trust started to use the MARS application, its bank of patient mobile holdings has grown from below 3% to around 30% and senior management have now approved the extended roll out of the MARS application. Since the introduction of MARS, DNA (did not attend) rates have fallen, with good results achieved in all participating departments.
The MARS service has been adopted by Cable & Wireless as their recommended Managed Reminder Service for NHS Trusts, and Island Communications, in Partnership with Cable and Wireless, has recently won a major contract to role the service out to Trusts throughout the UK.

Using Mobile as a Store-finding Tool

Paint manufacturer Crown Paints has turned to mobile technology to help solve a problem that was potentially costing the company money in lost sales. The company’s main customer base consists of professional painters and decorators. As these tradesmen tend to cover a wide area, they may not know where their nearest Crown Decorator Centre is located. Crown needed an easy and convenient way of allowing the customer to find their nearest Centre while they are out and about. The answer lay in Radius, a mobile technology platform designed by mobile agency Wapfly for exactly this type of situation.
To find their nearest Crown Decorator Centre, the customer texts the word CROWN to the shortcode, 87766. The Radius platform detects the mobile user’s location and responds with a text message telling the customer the location of the nearest Centre. An option is also available for the customer to then phone the branch directly in order to check or pre-order stock.
“This type of technology has the potential to drastically alter the way that we communicate with customers, allowing businesses to reach the customer directly and fine tune any marketing specifically to them,” says Wapfly Technical Director, David Hague. “There is also the opportunity to generate extra revenue from this form of marketing, though Crown chose to charge their customers nothing for the service. The only cost to the customer is the price of the text message.”

Using Mobile in the Retail Environment

Brazilian mobile marketing agency pontomobi interactive has released details of a campaign staged for Center Norte in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest shopping centre, in the run up to Christmas last year. There were four elements to the campaign: Bluetooth marketing, SMS interaction, a mobile Internet site, and voice calls.
The campaign began with a teaser using Bluetooth technology to communicate with the public, informing them that something new coming to the shopping centre. Six Bluetooth devices were installed in the mall’s central square to broadcast the teaser messages.
The second element was an interactive SMS campaign that enabled shoppers to decorate an interactive Christmas tree in the centre. To take part, shoppers sent a free text to a shortcode, 27114, containing the name of a gift. There were 100 gifts to choose from, with each one lighting the corresponding gift on the Christmas tree. More than 450,000 people interacted with the decoration during the four weeks of the campaign.
In addition, everyone who texted in received a return text message inviting them to visit the shopping centre’s mobile site at: www.natalcn.mobi to find out more about the campaign, and download free content.
Finally, inside the shopping centre, there were booths where shoppers could send Christmas voice messages recorded by Santa Claus. More than 150,000 voice messages were sent in just two weeks.

Trinty Mobile and GCap - Mobile Ticketing

Trinity Mobile and GCap Media have worked together over the past three months to bring mobile ticketing to XFM and Capital Radio listeners across the capital.
As part of XFM’s 10th Birthday celebrations, the station has put on a series of 10 concerts, featuring some of the biggest names in music. Tickets for the concerts have been, and still are, available to winners of competitions run on air. Winners simply give their mobile phone number to the DJ and are then sent a pair of mobile tickets directly to their mobile phone on the day of the concert. Winners then turn up at the venue - venues have included London Astoria, The Scala, Barfly, Buffalo Bar and 229 - and have their ticket scanned by a portable handheld scanner, linked via a wireless network into a live ticket database. Once tickets are redeemed, winners can enter the venue and enjoy a great night in front of some of the best known bands in the world in a small, private, exclusive venue.
To date, over 1,000 winners and thousands of VIP and Guest List invitees have attended these exclusive events using mobile tickets. A 100% scan rate has been recorded at every event, with a complete elimination of touting or fraudulent use of any ticket. VIP and Guest List management has become a simple and efficient process using the system, with all the usual paper lists and manual checking a thing of the past.
The final two birthday events will feature The Klaxons at The Scala on 8 November, and another major band at an event yet to be announced shortly after. Capital FM has also used the mobile ticketing system for a number of CapitaLive events, including concerts by David Gray, Hard-Fi and Rhianna. It will also be used for a James Blunt gig on 5 November at The Park Club.
GCap says it now intended to offer mobile ticketing for all its events across the group’s radio stations, both the distribution of free and competition winner tickets for in house and promotional events, and also for purchased tickets for some of the bigger events the group runs.
“This service has completely changed the way we run ticketed events internally,” says GCap Head of Mobile, Beth Wilderspin. “I am able to set up, launch, manage and report on events in minutes using the Easy Ticket software provided by Trinity Mobile. It makes it so easy. I then have event teams out on site running the ticket redemption using the FoneScan barcode scanners, reading barcodes directly off the phones screen, enabling us to redeem hundreds of tickets in minutes, making for efficient and reliable entry in to a venue.
“It has been a pleasure working with Trinity, who have helped us every step of the way with advice, help and support so that I am now at a point where I can run all our ticketing events in-house without any external support or providers, other than the software sitting on my PC and the scanners we keep for events.”
Trinity Mobile Commercial Director Rob Clegg adds:
“Working with GCAP has been a great experience as they have adopted this market-leading service with such enthusiasm – hopefully that has been based on the ease of use, reliability and quality of the services we have supplied. The mobile ticketing service is ideally suited to radio, as it allows tickets to be won or purchased with a very simple call to action and no need for PC’s, the Internet, paper or the post -  a true anywhere, anytime service just like radio”. 

Pitch - Using Mobile as a Cold Acquisition Tool

Pitch Entertainment Group  is a global mobile entertainment company, headquartered in London, providing mobile phone content and mobile community solutions. In November 2006, it launched Pitch, a UK mobile social network, (www.pitch.mobi)  which has consistently doubled its membership every month. Pitch members have access to unlimited free mobile content including ringtones and wallpapers and can upload their own photos, blogs and other content. In return for this members agree to accept up to three targeted advertising messages per week.
Pitch sees the market advancing towards a point where a multichannel approach to reaching consumers will be essential for the existence of consumer brands. Mobile is still a new medium, but is going to be key and Pitch predicts that it will eventually overtake the web as the most effective direct marketing channel as it is so accessible and personal; consumers have developed a personal relationship with their phones, using them not just as a tool but an extension of their social network.
Also in 2006, the company expanded its international operations to five new countries. Pitch asked Come & Stay for support in launching its Splash Mobile brand internationally, and generating subscribers to the service. Germany and Spain are now Pitch’s largest markets. Worldwide, the company has over 250,000 subscribers.
Pitch uses a number of channels to market, including the Internet, TV, email and direct marketing to consumers’ handsets. Currently 90% of the company’s marketing budget is spent on WAP pushes, with one week’s free content as the call to action/incentive, though in the next few years, Pitch expects the marketing mix to change to about 40% WAP pushes/banners, 30% TV and 30% email and other media. WAP push campaigns were chosen initially as the most obvious marketing tool to sign up subscribers, as users who are interested in mobile content are more likely to respond to mobile marketing messages. But now Pitch has reached a threshold of users, and believes it needs to make itself more accessible to the later adopters of mobile content who are less likely to respond to mobile calls to action.
Pitch engaged Come & Stay to devise the SMS and WAP mobile campaigns to a key target audience of 16-35 year old male and female mobile phone owners in Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway and Belgium. Pitch used the Come & Stay mobile marketing platform and gateway to broadcast the messages, and Come & Stay’s opted-in consumer mobile database to select the lists. In most countries the full database of young consumers was targeted for a test campaign. WAP campaigns can easily go wrong, which is why rigorous testing was carried out to test the WAP links and download times. The test campaigns took anywhere between one day and one week to plan, execute and analyze.
The campaigns were targeted during certain times of the year when response was expected to be higher, including Valentines Day, Christmas and Easter, with the incentive of one week’s worth of free mobile content. Pitch and Come & Stay opted to use SMS and WAP, as opposed to MMS, due to the budget constraints, and the lack of brand uplift that it was felt would be achieved by using imagery. A simple message read: ‘Get 3 free ring-tones from Splash' together with a WAP link and the Unsubscribe instructions.
The international marketing team at Pitch worked with Come & Stay to target the right audience, to write the messages in the local language, to tailor the messages per country, and to test and analyze the response per country.
The campaigns have generated between 5-15% response to the call to action, with a 1% conversion to new members. The Swedish campaign alone generated 9,500 new members and what Come & Stay describes as: “a pleasing ROI.”
“The response from the initial tests have persuaded us of the benefit of undertaking a Europe wide campaign with Come & Stay, and they have proved to us they can deliver a consistently good response across all countries,” says Pitch Data Acquisition Specialist, Harry Dewhirst. “The test campaign in Sweden was an amazing success, with 9,500 new subscribers. The list was of top quality and permission of users guaranteed. With Come & Stay, we can gain a worldwide deal and at the same time have one point of contact with our global account manager. Promises have been kept and the staff are very efficient and trustworthy.”

Shortcode Generates 15% Direct Mail Response

Mobile solutions provider Interlinked Media  reports that it recently joined forces with the Sunderland Empire theatre to generate a targeted, opted-in mobile marketing database of 23,000 potential customers in just six weeks.
A direct mail campaign initiated by the theatre and its advertising agency, Mike Lynch Advertising, went to almost 150,000 addresses in the Sunderland area. The mailer invited recipients to text EMPIRE and their postcode to 60777 to see if they had won a prize from a list including free tickets to shows at the theatre, discounts on ticket prices and free refreshments or ice cream.
“We asked Interlinked Media to construct and run the entire mobile campaign for the Sunderland Empire” says Clare Lee from Mike Lynch Advertising. “In the space of six weeks, over 23,000 unique people responded to the campaign, a response rate in excess of 15%. On several days, over 3,500 people entered the promotion, resulting in queues down the street to redeem free or discounted tickets.”
Chris Newell, CEO of Interlinked Media adds:
“This shows how powerful mobile can be when used in the right way. The Empire were looking to generate a database they could use for six to 12 months. Now we have the data, we will work together to put it to good use with targeted campaigns and boost their already excellent ROI. Mobile marketing is direct, interactive, spontaneous and above all targeted. Business can save over 80% of their normal direct marketing budget by utilizing this device, which nearly 100% of your potential customers carry, 24x7”
Interlinked Media, formerly trading as Text You, is located in Newcastle upon Tyne. Founded in 2002, the company has recently re-branded following the successful launch of its American office, which in turn has led to several recent successes with high profile clients in the commercial, advocacy and political markets.
The company is a strategy developer and solutions provider for marketing agencies and brand managers. Using mobile phone technology to pull data in and push relevant and context-rich messages out, companies can increase the effectiveness of their marketing and advertising campaigns, PR and customer relationship management. Interlinked’s current clients include English Heritage, Ultimate Leisure, Yates, Different and Newcastle Eagles.