MMA Releases Global Mobile Ad Guidelines

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), which represents more than 600 companies across the mobile marketing ecosystem, has released its global Mobile Advertising Guidelines. The first set of global guidelines issued by the association is designed to encourage the uptake of mobile advertising by brands worldwide, whild enhancing and protecting the customer’s experience, by creating a framework for brands and media companies to deliver mobile advertising in a positive and consistent way. The guidelines have received industry endorsements from associations such as IAB UK and Mexico, dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG), ADMA and others.
The Global guidelines capitalise on the progress made in 2007, with the publication of region-specific Mobile Advertising Guidelines for North America, Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa. The regional guidelines have been integrated into a global guideline to ensure a consistent approach to mobile advertising worldwide.
“The creation of ad guidelines by the MMA ensures that the industry is taking a proactive approach to keep subscriber experience, content integrity and simplified execution as the driving forces behind all mobile advertising programs,” says MMA President, Laura Marriott.
The guidelines provide improved formats around mobile web advertising, and include new guidelines for messaging (including SMS and MMS) and downloadable content. The MMA has also introduced a publication called ‘Mobile Advertising Overview’, which aims to educate those new to the mobile advertising space. The guidelines include recommended aspect ratios and banner dimensions, maximum file sizes, file formats and other technical specifications.
“To ensure the best consumer mobile marketing experience, it is essential to have industry-wide accepted advertising guidelines,” says Stephanie Bauer, Marketing Manager for Verizon. “The MMA and its committees continue to update these guidelines, reflecting the most up-to-date practices for marketers across the globe.”
The guidelines have been prepared by the MMA’s Mobile Advertising Committee, which was created to establish a library of format and policy guidelines for advertising within content on mobile devices. The Committee is made up of over 50 MMA member companies.
The MMA Global Mobile Advertising Guidelines can be downloaded here.   

How to go Mobile - Part 4

In the final part of his series on creating mobile marketing campaigns, Anders Hansson, Senior Mobile Marketing Expert at IntelliTech Software AB, looks at alternatives to SMS, and Digital Rights Management   

In this last article, we will finish our exposition of practical mobile marketing by looking at an alternative way to include mobile content in an SMS message. We will also look at  how users unsubscribe from mobile services, and learn how to protect content so that it is not spread in an uncontrolled way. We will also take a short look at multimedia messaging and a promising language called SMIL that is used to create slide shows and presentations in the mobile.
As in the three previous articles, I will describes techniques that work on the largest number of mobile phones and explain how to implement the different mobile marketing ideas we discuss using the open mobile marketing platform InfoNU.

The two flavours of SMS messaging
The normal way to distribute content to mobile phones is to send an SMS message that contains a few words of text and a clickable link. The consumer receives the SMS message, opens it, and if interested, selects the link, which downloads the content to the mobile phone. This type of SMS message (with a text and a selectable link that optionally can be followed) is called a Service Indication message or an SI message.
Sometimes, we want to send content directly, without any text in the SMS message. This is possible with another type of SMS message called a Service Load message or SL message. An SL message only contains the link, and most mobile phones display SL messages just like ordinary SI or plain text SMS messages. When the message is opened, the content pointed to by the link is immediately downloaded and rendered in the mobile.
To send an SL message with InfoNU, leave the text field empty in the SMS message. If any text is written in the SMS message, the message is sent as an SI message.

Mapping the Mobile Market

Strategic marketing and research agency First Partner has produced a mobile marketing market map, which gives an overview of the industry on one page. The company says the map provides a “360 degree view of the mobile marketing industry, covering all the essential facts, figures, players and trends for the UK telecommunications and media sectors.”
In fact, we’re pretty sure we saw the market map at a mobile conference last year, but even so, there’s no reason to suggest it won’t prove useful to anyone trying to get their head round mobile as a marketing channel.
You can download the map for free here.

How to Go Mobile - Part 2

In the second of his four-part series on creating mobile marketing campaigns, Anders Hansson, Senior Mobile Marketing Expert at Swedish mobile software development firm IntelliTech Software AB,  looks at mobile Internet sites and Java-based services

Why are mobile phones and marketing so well suited for each other? A look at promotional slogans for well-known brands such as Coca-Cola: 'Within an arms length of desire' and Yellow Pages: 'Let your fingers do the walking' points to the answer. In this article we will show how to make your brand and your information available within an arms length from your customer. In the previous article we discussed permission marketing, how to persuade people to sign up for a mobile service and how to do simple SMS marketing like personalized alerts and mobile coupons. In this article, we will look at and compare two methods for getting your word across to the mobile: Mobile web sites and mobile services based on Java. We will practice by solving real-world marketing problems. This time by pushing mobile web sites and by creating our very own tailor-made mobile Java service with the help of InfoNU.
One important note: This series does not discuss all technologies and file formats available in modern mobile phones. Instead we are focusing on technologies that are compatible with the biggest possible number of mobile phones regardless of mobile phone manufacturer and model.

WAP and Mobile Websites
Remember the hysteria around WAP at the beginning of the millennium? WAP was announced as the technology to make internet in mobiles happen. In retrospect, the WAP introduction was a failure with slow download times, problems with lost connections and incompatibilities with the rest of the Internet. From a user perspective, the two main problems with WAP are: 1) It is painful to remember and enter WAP addresses on a mobile phone; and 2) It takes too long for the mobile to download information when the user finally manages to enter the WAP address. Even in a modern 3G network, the phone locks up for many precious seconds before the user can start to interact with a site.
Over the past few years, WAP technology has improved and has also been given a new name: the Mobile Internet. How to create user friendly and well-designed WAP or mobile websites is outside the scope of this article but it is well documented in other sources. In this article, we will focus on how to improve the user experience by making a site easier to access.
The solution to the first problem with WAP (how to make people navigate to your site when entering text on a mobile phone is so painful) is: Push a link to your site instead of forcing people to enter your address. Your user can access your site in a convenient way via the SMS message and can save the link as a bookmark in the mobile. 

How to Go Mobile - Part 1

In the first of a 4-part series, Anders Hansson, Senior Mobile Marketing Expert at Swedish mobile software development firm IntelliTech Software AB, offers practical advice on running mobile marketing campaigns, with fictitious examples based on real-world companies, using the firm's InfoNU free mobile communications platform

Mobile marketing is hot and is gaining rapid acceptance. This article offers practical advice and guidance on what you can do via mobile, and how to do it. In this first article, we are going to describe powerful mobile marketing methods you can implement in just a few minutes. We will investigate what the industry and the technology allow us to do today, how to persuade people to sign up for your service and which file formats to use when you deliver your content. We will also take a sneak peek on what will happen with mobile marketing in the near future.
The article is based on solving marketing problems with the help of InfoNU, a free, web-based mobile mass communication platform that supports the latest trends in mobile marketing. With InfoNU you can:
·    Send SMS messages such as personalized alerts and mobile coupons
·    Push mobile content like banners, mp3-songs, ringtones, video clips, visiting cards and java games
·    Push links to mobile websites
·    Create and schedule mobile campaigns
·    Sign up and manage consumers
·    Get your own icon next to the address book and calendar to publish mobile content without cost
·    View statistics on how mobile marketing efforts are received by users

Mobile Fundamentals, Courtesy of Soapbox

Soapbox Mobile, a full-service mobile marketing agency that has worked with several big brands, including Procter and Gamble, Saab and Guinness, on mobile campaigns, has put together a list of five fundamentals that mobile marketers should keep in mind when working on developing a mobile marketing campaign. So it would be remiss of us not to share them with you. Here then, is the mobile marketing gospel according to Soapbox.
“Use the following rules as guidelines when creating a campaign” says Soapbox President Dan Flanegan, “and you can't go wrong."

Integration
Leverage all of your media and integrate your campaign. Make mobile the common glue that ties your campaign together across all consumer touchpoints.

Clear Call To Action
Make your call to action clear and simple and make it stand out. Interacting with your campaign should be simple with few barriers to entry.

Test
We test every other marketing and advertising method, why not test in mobile? Try different calls to action, create A and B message content to see which generates a greater response. Learn what works and what doesn't.

Measure Media
Where did my mobile subscribers come from? Who participated the longest or opted in for future promotions vs those who opted-out right away. Odds are each media source - print, web, broadcast - might attract a different mobile user. Make sure your calls to action have different keywords associated with them, so you know what media is performing in the short term on response, and what performs long term on loyalty.

List Building
Make sure part of your campaign involves asking the consumer if they wish to opt-in to future promotions. While you have them hooked, give them a good reason to come back or to stay engaged. Customer acquisition requires that you keep them engaged and build a database of loyal mobile subscribers.

Making a Good Connection

Nigel Hollis, Chief Global Analyst at brand media and communications market research company Millward Brown,  offers advice on successfully incorporating mobile into the marketing mix

According to The Shosteck Group, the value of the global mobile advertising market could reach $10 billion by 2010.  While this claim is strongly reminiscent of the overblown estimates made by the Internet advertising start-ups in 1999, advertisers are nonetheless intrigued by the possibilities of this new medium. Mobile offers a new way to cut through in today's cluttered media environment, combining the potential for precise targeting and the ability to extend a physical, tangible brand encounter into a digital and interactive one.  So amidst the hype, major marketers are beginning to commit budgets to mobile marketing. However, they need to weigh the benefits carefully against the potential to seriously harm people’s relationship with a brand. Unless contact is made in an acceptable fashion, the mobile advertiser runs the risk of significant consumer backlash.

DMA Publishes Mobile Guidelines

The Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Mobile Marketing Council has published the first draft of its Best Practice Guidelines. The guidelines have been produced to give practitioners an understanding of how mobile marketing applications can be used in an effective and non-invasive manner.
The Mobile Marketing Council was formed in July, following the creation of a strategy group earlier this year. Chaired by Nick Fuller, the council’s primary objectives are to promote a greater understanding and use of the medium to both members and the wider industry.
Council members include Paul Berney from Response Mobile, Gillian Kennedy from EMAP, Troy Norcross from New Media Edge, Anna Montes of Osborne Clarke Solicitors, Spencer Stafford from Mike Colling & Co, Alan Hughes from  Effective Direct Marketing, Jonathan Bass from Incentivated, and Kevin Kuklinksi from Macmillan Cancer Support.
“Within digital, mobile marketing is probably the newest area, but its staggering growth and potential continues to grab marketers’ attention” says Council Chair Nick Fuller.   “According to the DMA’s Future Trends Survey 2005, interactive media is the fastest growing area of Direct Marketing.  This is why the DMA has established a council – to offer members support and advice, as well as to promote the benefits of mobile marketing.”
You can review the guidelines, and provide feedback here.

Together, We’re Beautiful

Kathryn Stevenson, Commercial Director of rich media company PointRoll, considers the synergies that come from integrating mobile marketing and online in a campaign

In today’s new media environment, one of the most successful ways to communicate with consumers is by using less traditional mediums such as mobile marketing and online. According to recent research*, 57% of 18 to 34 year olds regularly interact with a company or brand via SMS from their mobile phone and 60% access mobile Internet content. Nearly two thirds of the UK population has broadband and 49% are regular users of the Internet. Statistics like these are hard to ignore. Brand marketers are recognising the increasing importance of both mediums and their effectiveness when integrated in a marketing campaign.
Mobile marketing is fast developing as a powerful channel to communicate with your audience. It not only targets the consumer directly, but also achieves a high level of interaction, as people never leave home without their mobile phones and rarely switch them off. The use of mobile marketing is also considered an effective communication tool for advertisers since it creates a personalised, one to one relationship between a brand and a consumer.

If The Clip Fits...

Liora Bram, Segment Manager, Mobile Applications Marketing for NMS Communications,    explains why mobile operators should use their customer’s previous purchases to target them with relevant mobile content offers

It has long been recognised that the mobile phone is viewed as a fashion accessory and a statement of identity, as well as a communications device.  A well-targeted mobile content offering, which enhances personalisation of the device, is likely to grow via viral marketing, as mobile users share the excitement of their latest movie clip or ringtone with their friends. But to tap into the burgeoning mobile content market, operators must develop compelling campaigns that offer the right content to the right audience.
The global market for mobile downloads is expected to top $9 billion (£5.2 billion) within a year, a clear indication that the market is ripe for customer-savvy operators to capitalise on this growing mobile personalisation trend. Whether it’s the latest Eminem ringback tone, or Gorillaz wallpaper, operators are now in a position to offer customers a huge range of content services.  But how can operators take a pro-active approach to offering content, by actively targeting subscribers with content tailored to their personal interests?

Too Many Choices?
Operators are sitting on a potential content goldmine. The next step is to let their customers know about it.  What operators really need is some way of gaining an accurate insight into what content offers their subscribers would like to hear about.
Operators have visibility of a user’s purchasing history, presenting a real opportunity to offer relevant services, which are more likely to trigger additional content purchases. Leaving the customer to navigate the vast array of content on their own is akin to sending them to a shopping mall where none of the stores are labelled.  This haphazard way of delivering content can result in less tenacious customers leaving portals empty-handed.
Using a model similar to that employed by Amazon, where other items are recommended, based on the purchasing profile of the online shopper, operators could undertake targeted marketing campaigns via SMS. Sending offers based on previous content purchases vastly increases the likelihood that the subscriber will firstly open the message and secondly, act upon it. A survey undertaken by IDC  found that 74% of mobile owners would be open to receiving targeted content offers via SMS. The remainder of the survey sample agreed that they would be interested, as long as the service was free and not used too frequently.
Say for example, a subscriber has downloaded football highlights onto their phone.  The operator could follow this up by sending them a bundled offer, which could include a free wallpaper of their team’s coat of arms along with the ringtone of their team’s chant.  These offers could be timed to coincide with a big derby match or cup win. 

Targeting Pre-Pay Customers
When one considers that the majority of pre-pay customers are in the pre-teen to early twenties age range - and that mobile content such as games, wall papers and ringtones find most appeal with this youth market - it is clear that operators need to find a way to adequately profile these users’ preferences in order to deliver the same targeted content marketing campaigns to them.  However, because prepaid mobile users have no contract, the operators have little in the way of personal data to help manage the customer relationship and enable them to target this group with tailored content that will boost ARPU. 
Analyst firm Yankee Group predicts that by 2008 prepaid mobile users will make up 57 percent of all mobile subscribers worldwide.  This represents approximately 1.1 billion prepaid users - a huge segment of the market for mobile operators that are rolling out new content services. Therefore, developing a customer content relationship management strategy for prepaid customers is vital if prepaid numbers continue to rise.
While many operators still concentrate their marketing efforts on their contract customers, some European operators have tackled this problem by initiating campaigns to persuade prepaid customers to part with some personal data in return for an incentive - such as free MMS or entry into a prize draw. This boosts the information that they hold on their non-contract customer base.
Analysis of customer purchases of mobile content, along with other channels of communications with the operator - such as opt-in platforms - can also help marketers gauge which mobile content offerings are attractive to particular customer segments, enabling operators to rapidly analyse and respond with offers tailored to their customers’ real preferences.

Mining the Network
If purchased content was stored on the network rather than the handset, in principle, the operator would only need a number to be able to target future offers, so that pre-pay customers could benefit from the same targeted incentives. As users share the excitement of their new content, this tends to bolster the operator’s marketing effort with viral marketing among the user group.
This was recently demonstrated by a Korean operator, SK Telecom, which in 2002 introduced ‘ringback’ tones – whereby the user pays the operator to play their favourite music to their friends when they call. Within nine months of launching this novel service, SK Telecom had attracted six million users. Now, 25 Asian operators and a growing number of European operators offer ringback tones, with more than 75 million customers paying for the service. 
Customers of SK telecom receive a targeted SMS with details of ringback tones that would be of particular interest. Once purchased, the piece of content is stored within the operator’s network, so should the subscriber’s phone be lost or stolen, the pieces of content are not lost with the phone. Instead, the content is accessible via the phone’s portal, or online. This not only offers a value-added service to the customer, but also takes control of content away from the handset manufacturers, who are not privy to the same customer information as the operator.

Conclusion
If operators are to take advantage of this particularly lucrative market, they need to begin thinking like retailers, and concentrate on getting to know exactly what their customers’ preferences are, and how best to offer content tailored to them. Amazon.com, which suggests books, music and games based on what readers have purchased in the past, has shown this to be a hugely successful strategy that has helped it to corner the online bookshop market. The future is promising for mobile operators that can emulate this strategy with truly personalised content campaigns.

NMS Communications

Participation TV Explained

In the third part of her ongoing series looking at the 20 key mobile marketing applications,  Helen Keegan, MD and founder of mobile marketing agency, Beepmarketing, looks at Participation TV...

Unless you never watch television in the UK, then you must have seen programmes incorporating text messaging as an intrinsic part of the television programme. That might be for voting, such as Big Brother, X Factor and even the recent British Comedy Awards. This has been a nice money-spinner for the broadcasters and network operators alike, as the figures below show. If you imagine that each vote costs a minimum of 25p + your standard text charge, and that the broadcaster is probably getting a return of around 11p on each text, the numbers soon add up.

Programme                       Votes Cast by Text

Big Brother                                5 -10m+
I'm a Celebrity...                       10m+
X-Factor                                    5.4m
Big Brother 3                             5.3m
Big Brother 4                             3.1m
Fame Academy 2                       1.6m
Eurosong 2002                          700,000

Source: Text.it/Mobile Data Association  

Text ‘n’ Win Explained

Last week, Helen Keegan, MD and founder of mobile marketing agency, Beepmarketing, outlined the 20 key mobile marketing applications, and promised to look at each in more detail over the coming weeks. Here, then is the first part of this mammoth masterclass – Text ‘n’ Win…

I've had a really good response to my previous posting on the Top 20 Mobile Marketing Applications, so as promised, it’s time to start looking at each in a little more detail. First up, it's text ‘n’ win, or is that text ‘n’ lose?
For the uninitiated, a text 'n’ win promotion is one which is usually advertised on a pack of something or other, like crisps or a drink, and the customer is invited to text in to a shortcode for a chance to win a prize.
This is a very convenient way to manage a competition or prize draw, and popular with consumers. The recent on-pack promotion by Walkers to text to win an iPod offered a prize draw every five minutes, and claims to be the biggest ever text ‘n’ win promotion to date. Not only that, thought went into the reply (or ‘lose’) messages, to encourage repeat entry - these messages varied from music trivia, to free content, to details of the previous day's winners. This avoided the campaign becoming a 'text ‘n’ lose' campaign. This successful campaign was run by Big Kick and Sponge.

Data issues
Text ‘n’ win has been embraced enthusiastically by sales promotion agencies, as it means that not only do you not have to deal with sackloads of post, you also don't have the post-campaign data entry issues. Customers, by entering the competition, are giving you some of their data - i.e. their mobile number. It's up to you to collect any more data from the consumer if you need it.
It's also up to you as the marketer to make the lose messages engaging too, otherwise your campaign will end up being ‘text ‘n’ lose’ rather than ‘text ‘n’ win’. This might be achieved by offering mobile content for lower-tier prizes, or by varying the replies, so that each time you enter, you get something slightly different, as shown in the Walkers case study. This makes it feel more personal and about you. Personal is a key concept in all things mobile. BeepMarketing has done this in the past for the likes of Foster's lager, Butt Ugly Martians and Tropicana ice lollies.
As a marketer, I think it's also fascinating to identify repeat entries to competitions, as well as peak times, and down times, to help you work out more about your customers and plan your next campaign. And not only that, you can then use the data (subject to keeping within the EU Data Privacy regulations) to communicate with willing customers - something we do for brands like Tabasco. The data is collected via on-pack promotions, we keep it clean against the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) and then use text messaging to promote future campaigns to drive sales. We offer an opt-out as part of every campaign.
Now, that has to be better than delving into a sackload of mail to pick a winner doesn't it?
Helen Keegan

Copyright Helen Keegan 2005. All rights reserved.

Next time out, Helen will look at Voting and participation TV. To read more of Helen’s thoughts on mobile marketing, visit her blog.

Mobile Marketing Defined Overview. Read

Mobile Marketing Defined

When we launched Mobile Marketing magazine, one of the first pieces we commissioned was a piece that sought to define what mobile marketing is.
Now, we are delighted to say, industry veteran Helen Keegan, (pictured) MD and founder of mobile marketing agency, Beepmarketing, has agreed to provide us with her own personal view of what mobile marketing is.
Helen specialises in mobile marketing, She was in at the birth of the mobile marketing industry in 2000, as head of customer experience at ZagMe, the precision wireless marketing pioneer. There, she recruited more than 85,000 customers in Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls (two of the largest in Europe) and ran more than 1,500 SMS (text message) marketing campaigns for over 150 leading retail clients, agencies and brands, including Esprit, Nike, TopShop, HMV and Waterstone’s.
Before that, she had a varied career covering retail, marketing and consultancy during which time she created and produced a live stage show and training seminar roadshow to drive change within a major UK public transport company, involving 30,000 staff. More recently, Helen created the world’s first mobile marketing course, in conjunction with the Institute of Direct Marketing in 2002.
Today, Helen runs her own mobile marketing consultancy, BeepMarketing, developing mobile strategies and implementing mobile marketing campaigns, using a range of mobile technologies for many blue-chip and agency clients, including Scottish Courage, UIP, Vivendi Universal, Sony Ericsson, Emap, Samsung and Danone.
She is a regular on the mobile marketing conference circuit and runs mobile marketing courses at the Institute of Direct Marketing, Academy Internet and New Media Knowledge. She is also a guest lecturer in marketing at the Universities of Westminster, Newcastle and Hertfordshire and a founder member of Women in Mobile Data, a global association for women working in mobile and runs Swedish Beers, an ad-hoc mobile networking event in London with Steve Flaherty from Keitai Culture.
In this first article, Helen lists out what she sees as the 20 key mobile marketing applications. In the weeks to come, she will take each in turn and look at it in more detail. Over to you Helen…

What is Mobile Marketing?

It's a good question. Isn't it? How do you define mobile marketing? What does it embrace? And what does it not?  Rather than giving you our spin on the subject, we thought it would make more sense to ask some people at the sharp end. We invited half a dozen, four came through.
First up, Jonathan Bass, managing director of mobile marketing agency Incentivated, then Andrew Jones, who runs another mobile agency, Aerodeon. Next up is Troy Norcross, a Senior Telecoms Messaging Consultant, and co-founder of Pocket Reach and, more recently, Mobile Soul. And finally, the open mic. passes to Emma Coss, Managing Director of 12snap UK. Over to you guys...