Take These Two & Text Me In The Morning
Being on the front line of the battle field for new media, I am privy to many conversations and viewpoints regarding mobile marketing. I think the CMA blog is a perfect forum for me to discuss the two biggest mobile myths/misconceptions.
Consumers are charged premium rates ($0.25 +) to interact in shortcode campaigns. There’s a distinction that should be made clear regarding mobile revenue driven campaigns (Deal or no Deal, Canadian/American Idol and those useless and annoying ‘joke of the day’ commercials) versus brand interaction driven campaigns. Revenue oriented campaigns are usually associated with T.V. properties and have come under scrutiny for duping audiences by not being explicit about the premium fees associated with the interaction. In addition, a class action lawsuit has been filed against several T.V. properties for running pseudo lotteries. Mobile applications like these have led some people in the marcom world to believe that by extension all mobile campaigns are going to charge consumers to interact. Our best practice ties the mobile campaign to a standard rated shortcode - where interaction costs the same as texting a friend.
Mobile is the new spamming tool. No brand should even consider the idea of sending unsolicited messages to consumers, so don’t even think about buying a mobile database. You’ll do much more harm than good. Privacy laws in Canada force our industry to communicate with only those who have given us permission to do so. In addition, any mobile alert campaign that is sent to a consumer must have an opt-out method. These opt out tags look something like “to opt out reply STOP”. If this action is taken by the mobile user, he/she will no longer receive mobile communication.
The fact that these issues keep coming up is a good sign that we're thinking seriously about the implications of using mobile as a marketing tool. But let's be clear - just like in other marketing disciplines there are best practices and then there are examples that give the rest of us a massive headache.
