This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Text Dominating College Mobile Communication, But... -- Sometimes I run across a story that points to a predecessor, and when I do, I often try to dig back to the original. I guess it's a matter of editorial decision-making, but in more than a few cases, the original story is, if not distorted in the latter report, occasionally quoted without the full context. Here we've got a case of a text-oriented blog (textually.org: Text Overtakes IM, Email, Voice Among College Mobile Users) quoting a voice/VOIP-based original (Text Overtakes IM, Email, Voice Among College Mobile Users):
"...99.7 percent of students have a mobile communications device and the rates of sending text messages, e-mail, photos and videos are increasing.
"Text messaging has overtaken email and instant messaging as the main form of communication for college students, 94 percent of whom send and receive text messages.
"When using their mobiles to keep in touch with family and friends with 59 percent text, 17 percent call, nine percent send IMs and seven percent use email."
Sounds real promising for mobile marketing firms; a ready-made audience comfortable with text as a regular communication channel. However, as we at Again Mobile are careful to educate our clients and prospects, considerable care must still be taken in addressing this or any other group via mobile methods like text, as is pointed out by the rest of the Business VOIP piece. Benefiting from reaching these frequent texters may not be the slam dunk that the raw numbers suggest...
"As lucrative as many believe mobile marketing will be, there are warning signs. The study indicates 52 percent of respondents received ads on their cell phone in the last few months, up from 24 percent in 2005. But a backlash might be building.
"'In 2005, we found that 30 percent of students said they were annoyed at getting an advertisement, and that has grown to 48 percent in the most recent survey,' says researcher Michael Hanley, Ball State journalism assistant professor.
"'What good is an ad if nearly half of your target market is not happy about receiving it?' he asks."
A couple lessons here. One - and this should not really be a new one given our recent passage through a long political silly season - is that you can't always take at face value what someone says or writes, despite how much you want it to be true and relevant. (duh...)
Another - more specific to the subject of mobile marketing - is that, as in the realm of email communication and other "social marketing", the idea of "permission marketing" is paramount if you don't want your message to be dismissed or vilified as spam.
And going beyond the recommended double opt-in and frequently offered options to opt out, for the text portion of your campaign to be "sticky" and appreciated, it needs to be designed with benefit for the recipient in mind. It needs to provide what they want or need in the mobile context. Location-specific, timely, incentivized, connective (social), or entertaining content are the primary appreciated uses of mobile marketing. To be valuable for you, it needs to be valuable for your target audience as well.
" is paramount if you don't want your message to be dismissed or vilified as spam.
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