Getting the Messaging Message

I spent most of the back end of yesterday afternoon and half the evening at an Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Direct Marketing Association (DMA) event in London, at which the two industry bodies presented the results of research into global messaging.

They commissioned research firm Brand Driver to carry out three phases of research. The first was an online survey of 1,000 people about attitudes to mobile messaging. Phase two looked at the effectiveness of mobile messaging, across 1,000 people on Marks & Spencer’s opted-in database, and 1,000 on the O2 More and Orange Shots opted-in subscriber databases. In this phase, one group was sent SMS messages; a second received MMS messages; and a third, control group, received nothing. Phase three consisted of qualitative, focus group research among two groups, one who were opted in to a mobile marketing database, the other not.

Positive impact
The results of the research reveal two things about mobile messaging. Firstly, there’s more of it about than you probably realise. And secondly, it can have a real, positive impact. Perhaps the best thing I can do is simply share some of the key findings with you.

12 per cent of respondents had opted in to receive SMS or MMS messages from a mobile operator; 15 per cent from a company or brand. 74 per cent of people who had not yet opted in to a mobile marketing database said they would do so if given the right incentive. 62 per cent said they read a message that come to their phone within five minutes, even if it is from someone they don’t know.

Asked whether they agreed with a statement saying that messaging is the best medium for grabbing attention and making you want to know more about a brand, company, product or service, only six per cent of people not opted in to a mobile marketing database agreed, compared to 19 per cent of people who were opted in to such a database.

A similar statement about messaging being good for receiving relevant and personal information about companies got 7 per cent agreement from the first group, rising to 24 per cent among opted-in respondents.

Advertising awareness
In the effectiveness study, Brand Driver measured prompted advertising awareness among the three groups (control, SMS recipients and MMS recipients). The control and SMS groups scored 79 per cent; the MMS group scored 86 per cent.

Asked about their likelihood of visiting an M&S store, the control cell scored 83 per cent, the SMS cell 80 per cent and the MMS group 80 per cent, which seems to go against the idea of using mobile to drive retail footfall.

Asked about their likelihood of visiting the M&S mobile site, the control group scored 4 per cent, the SMS group 3 per cent and the MMS group 10 per cent.
For the next stage of the research, SMS and MMs messages were sent to M&S customers who were also on either the Orange Shots or O2 database. Here, prompted ad awareness was 55 per cent in the control group, 59 per cent in the SMS group, and 70 per cent in the MMS group.

When it came to recall of receiving a message, the control group scored 4 per cent (presumably recalling a messages they had received from M&S at some point in the past), the SMS group scored 21 per cent, and the MMS group scored 70 per cent.

Take control
The final stage of the research looked at attitudes towards mobile messaging – what people liked about it and what they either didn’t like or were concerned about. On the positive side, 41 per cent said they would be more likely to opt in if they could control the kind of advertising that came to their mobile, and 39 per cent if they could control which types of brands contacted them, while 33 per cent said they would be more likely to opt in if they would get messages from good brands offering attractive offers.

On the negative side, 32 per cent said they had no idea this type of service existed, and 71 per cent said they were wary of the costs of receiving this type of message. Other major barriers were receiving spam or untargeted offers (both 71 per cent); having no control over what is sent (70 per cent); having to give personal information (64 per cent); not being able to opt out once they were opted in (61 per cent); and having their privacy invaded (45 per cent).

It also emerged from the research that consumers actively want communications both from certain, mostly desirable or trusted brands and from particular categories of business. The brands named by respondents included Apple, Sony, Tiffany, Odeon, M&S and Morrisons, while the categories included restaurants, pubs and bars; leisure and entertainment; food and groceries; holiday and travel; clothing; department stores; and beauty.

In a panel discussion afterwards, the IAB’s Jon Mew, the DMA’s Mark Brill, Sienne Veit from M&S, Nick Buckley from Orange, and Jonathan Bass from Incentivated offered some advice on getting it right.
“Don’t bury the good stuff in the small print,” Bass advised. If you are not going to charge people to respond to your messages, or to click on a link to go to your mobile website, tell them.”

Big opportunity
It’s clear that there is a big opportunity here for mobile messaging for brands who haven’t started doing it yet, on the basis that they don’t know how to go about it, or it’s just not sexy enough for them in a mobile world dominated by iPhone apps.

At the present time, it benefits from the novelty value; I suspect that most people who are opted in to a mobile marketing database are opted in to one or two at most. In 12 months’ time, when many more brands have started communicating with their customers in this way, it will probably be harder to cut through the noise, and to get someone who is now opted in to four or five such databases to opt into another one.

Some, even on the mobile agency side, believe that this type of activity is old hat, behind the times and does not have much of a future, in a world where smartphone ownership is growing rapidly by the week. More about that in a Guest Column coming soon. Given the ubiquity of text, however, and the fact that the majority of brands are yet to embrace it, I suspect that mobile messaging is going to be with us as a marketing and CRM tool for some time yet.