Fortumoblog » Mobile marketing

South-east Europe is Buzzing with Business

Alex Covic — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:56:59 +0000

Well, this just might be a bit overdue, but we just felt the need to share some of the positive buzz and enthusiasm we experienced at biZbuZZ conference that took place in Niš, Serbia last month.

biZbuZZ is a annual conference dedicated to internet commerce, and it pretty much gathers most of Serbian internet ‘scene’ – and some of prominent bloggers, entrepreneurs and internet folk from the region. This year, we had the pleasure of participating with a keynote on mobile and micropayment in general, with a special focus on Fortumo’s take on the topic (you can see the English language version of presentation and video footage in Serbian after the brake).

Apart from several very informative & engaging keynotes and presentations that took place during the conference, the main impression we left biZbuZZ with is the general sense of a vibrant, lively and motivated – though relatively small internet community that is emerging in Serbia, and SEE region in general. As we were saying over and over again on these pages in the past 2 or so years – people in South, East and Central Europe just get internet, mobile and related technologies. We can expect many more great things from the region in the near future.

If you aren’t already there, expanding your existing or creating new innovative mobile services – you definitely should be. South-East Europe is the place to be for internet entrepreneurs.

And for ~21 million of you Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian speakers, here’s the video footage, courtesy of live-e.tv. Hope you find it interesting, and feel free to drop us a comment.

History of Mobile Marketing: Textango

Branimir Parashkevov — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:06:29 +0000

You know that Premium SMS services are the best tool for making the payment process as easy as possible. No credit cards or account number is needed, not even any personal information is revealed in this way. That is why it’s only natural that a great service as Textango has been created.

Textango have been founded in 2007 and since then follow one of the most attractive models among all sites selling songs. Their main principle is 1song – 1 SMS. Just by sending 1234 to 5678 you receive a code to redeem the favorite song. It’s so easy.

A good marketing trick of theirs was the decision to promote their services in MySpace, as most people that were interested in the services are myspace users. They were offering promotional albums of Pennywise and other groups. Nowadays their selection is not as good as before, but the model is still attractive and there are a lot of users of the service.

To end up the article, I will mention two facts from their site:

Only 13% of teenagers ranging in age from 12 to 18 have credit cards.

Over 76% of teenagers ranging in age from 12 to 18 have cell phones. Considering that the 12 to 18 age demographic makes up literally half of the music industry’s target audience, that gives you an idea of what Textango’s Affiliate programs earning potential is.

Mobile revenue continues to grow, despite the recession

Alex Covic — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:25:09 +0000

No matter where you live – US, Denmark, Romania or China, you’ll hear words like ‘recession’, ‘global crisis’ and ‘decline’ several times each day. And although most of the industries have felt the harsh bite of the economy winding down, there are some good news, especially for those involved in mobile and web services.

According to a new report released by Magna last week, the market for mobile advertising will grow by 36%, rising from $169 million in 2008 to $229 million during 2009. The numbers represent US market only, but judging by several key factors, such as the extend of recession in the US compared to Europe, and the user’s habits (Europeans tend to use text/SMS and advanced mobile services more than customers in the US), we definitely have something to look forward to.

Mobile Advertising Revenue

Unlike most of the conventional media, like TV and print, revenue from mobile advertising continues to grow on yearly bases, and is expected to reach more than $400 million by 2011. There are several factors that contribute to this.

The advertising budget of most companies is getting tight, so marketing exec’s are forced to look for cost-effective alternatives for traditional (TV, radio, print) media. At the same time, the user base, or the number of mobile subscribers is constantly expanding – some of markets that have, until recently been thought of as technologically under-developed now have mobile penetration rates of well above 100%. But the main driving force behind the growth is the evolving technology – sales of smartphones are increasing steadily (smartphones now account for more than one third of all mobile phones in some markets), witch allows service providers and advertisers to offer advanced services and engage their audiences in new ways. Of course, the sophistication of the devices influences the user’s habits, witch means that they are getting more accustomed to using their phones in new and different ways.

What does this means for you? Well, to sum it up – m-business is pretty much unaffected by the recession. Since the marketing budgets of most advertisers are getting tight, some of the money until recently spent on often cost ineffective ‘conventional’ media is getting invested in previously overlooked means of getting the message through. At the same time, user base is constantly expanding, and there are ever more ways to precisely target your audience.

So, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t start, or continue to evolve your own SMS-services – You certanly can’t use the ‘recession’ as an excuse any more.

The Favourite Magazines Free and Legal

Branimir Parashkevov — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:11:44 +0000

I am a big fan of those them-specific magazines and for years now I have been using Zinio Reader in order to read my favourite ones. A lot of them are not available globally and that’s yet another reason to choose the digital ones.

For those of you who have not used Zinio – this is the digital issues reader used by all larger magazines and newspapers. It allows subscription at far lower price than the one at the cover and the digital issues are created by the publishing houses themselves. The content is the same, as other extras are included, too.

The new initiative of Zinio is called Go Read Green. The reader offers free One year digital subscription for a magazine of choice, as the idea is to save paper ad thus save the nature (by not killing trees). I must admit, that in the offerings list I was not able to find even 1/3 of my favourite magazines, yest I am sure that everyone will find one to his/hers liking. Try them and tell me here if you are pleased by the magazine. Who knows, you may be the next one paying for digital subscriptions.

Fortumo @ MoMo Peer Awards

Martin Koppel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:38:32 +0000

Fortumo in 3GSM and for MoMo Peer Awards

History of Mobile Marketing 5: McDonald’s “Merry Xmas in The Restaurant”

Branimir Parashkevov — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:52:07 +0000

Hi everyone. As today is the 24th of December it’s a perfect time for some Christmas stories from the business world. I will begin with many people’s favourite McDonald’s. I have already told you a story about McDonald’s SoCal and you can read it again if you want in order to compare the strategies.

The name of the campaign that I am telling you about is “Merry Xmas in The Restaurant”. It was created by the well known 12Snap company and with the idea to create a new mass market sweepstake mechanism for McDonald’s Italy, where the clients can win while they are still in the restaurant.

The Motto of the campaign was “McDonald’s makes everyone a winner – Just send a SMS to Santa & get your gift within seconds.” On the cups in the restaurant there were printed numbers. Each customer that have sent SMS with those numbers receives a prize that can vary from mobile content as a phone call with Santa, a picture with him, a post card, to physical prizes as prepaid credit cards with 20 000 Euro, 13 000 free airtime prizes and 150 mobile phones.

According to MMAGlobal the campaign has reached the stunning 25% response rate and more than 1.5m customers in 5 weeks. With this numbers, it is considered to be the best mobile campaign of McDonald’s ever.

History of Mobile Marketing 4: MTS Russia – SMS Game for Millions

Branimir Parashkevov — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:27:57 +0000

Another week – another post on Mobile Marketing. I hope that you’re enjoying these posts and I will appreciate it if you leave your comment below.

This week we’re going to have a look at MTS Russia’s SMS game that brought them a lot of satisfied customers, tons of money and base for future marketing researches. And what exactly have they done?

This year (and more exactly in the period 19th of May – 31st of August) MTS Russia – the largest mobile phone operator in Russia and the CIS, with a total consolidated subscriber base reaching 86.3 million users (not only Russians) – launched a really intensive ad-campaign. It was a text-messaging quiz-like game that consisted of 2000 interactive and more than 300 marketing questions (for future reference). It was targeted at ladies in the range 24-55 years.

The ways of promoting the game were through an interactive site and a mobile page, while also advertised on TV. As a result, more than 24,000,000 SMSs were sent in the short period, leading to increase in the interest in MTS and average number of consumer interactions sky-rocketing at 16.2. The winners, more than 100 people, took very good prizes, and the grand prize was 1 million dollar.

The question that arises in some is, have they won so much money from such campaign. Well, about the money – I do not know, but they have won a lot more. They have grasped the idea that SMS is not always a way of winning money, but a very good marketing tool. MTS have won:
- more loyal customers
- more publicity
- marketing research information (intelligence)
- knowhow

When they have all this new assets, just imagine how much more powerful will be their next ad. We can only wait and examine.

As this is my 4th week of writing on Mobile Marketing History, I will be very glad if you share your opinion. Tell me what do you want to read, do you like the ideas and do you think that they are inspiring you? Whatever comes to your mind;)

History of Mobile Marketing 3: SoCal McDonald’s

Branimir Parashkevov — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:34:51 +0000

Hi everyone! Excuse me for being two days late with this post. Here I am with another case study on Mobile Marketing. Today I am going to introduce you the case of SoCal (South California) McDonald’s that were reaching their customers through text messages.

In the second quarter of 2005 SoCal McDonald’s launched a new one-month-long promotion targeted mainly in young adults. They allowed their customers to send a text message “McFlurry” to 73260 and automatically receive a redeemable coupon for a free “McFlurry” dessert. Also, the user was able to get the coupon from http://www.mobilestr33t.com/ and present it again in one of the participating stores from the chain.

The idea was invented by the McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California (more than 600 franchised and company-owned stores in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties) and Gamut Industries LLC (a San Francisco mobile marketing company).

“This promotion is yet another example of how McDonald’s is reaching out to the youth market in a way that is meaningful to them,” said Clayton Paschen, III, president of the McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California (MOASC), in a statement.

As the promotion targeted people in the age-range of 14 to 26, David Moranville, managing director, Gamut Industries, said that the goal was to “create a compelling way to connect with the younger demographic and make McDonald’s a relevant brand in [consumers] lives”. “McDonald’s recognizes that this is a unique target audience. The old tried and true method to communicate with them just doesn’t work anymore.”

The promotion phase of the service was connected with wild posting (sticking posters on different places) in high school, skate parks, and retail areas as well as billboards and buses presenting the text part of the campaign.

“The mobile coupon, as well as the free wallpaper and ringtones, pose great incentives for consumers”, Moranville said. “You get immediate gratification,” he said. “There’s no mail. You just click.”

One more goody from this promotion was that if you download your coupon from http://www.mobilestr33t.com/ you’re allowed to download free wallpapers of famous singers and bands as DJ Nelson, Green Day, Linkin Park and many others.

This case seems similar to the one of Dunkin Donuts, but you can see here one difference – it’s the targeting options and practices. This shows us that mobile services in combination with web-content are a sure way for winning customer’s interest in our services, as soon as we prepare well and have the ideas. Still, every target group is possible and the promotion practices are unlimited!

History of Mobile Marketing 2: SMS in response automation

Branimir Parashkevov — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:15:33 +0000

Hello, hello. Welcome this week for another issue of the History of Marketing postings. Today I am going to introduce another interesting idea that was implemented in Australia.
The Edge 96.ONE is Sydney’s leading hip hop and R&B station. It is an RnB radio that has a lot of new artists presented at the radio air. The radio staff wanted to develop a user-friendly interactive SMS service, allowing the listeners to request the name of the song that is on air and the performing artist by just sending a short message by their phone. This allowed them to reduce the phone call that they were receiving and added one more way for connection with their customers. Back at the radio there was constant work on the update process – the database with songs and artists has to be always up-to-date. Each time a new song is played, the DJ is announcing: “To find out what is playing, just SMS SONG to 1975 7777 and we’ll SMS ya back the name of the song and artist!” Finally, for only 55c the sender receives the requested information.

Did you get new ideas? As this article shows, no matter how simple an idea is, if implemented at the right place it can help you achieve a lot. So be creative, risk but be realistic, too.

History of Mobile Marketing: Dunkin Donuts

Branimir Parashkevov — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:26:46 +0000

As of today we will start a new weekly topic. It’s called “History of Mobile Marketing” and here we will present successful SMS-based campaigns from the first written SMS till now. Some of them are not so creative, and some of them are a real work of a genius but all have contributed greatly to the ones that ordered them. They can help you create your winning idea and take you to the top…who knows?

Today’s case will be about Dunkin Donuts.
In 2002 Dunkin Donuts, Italy started an SMS campaign that was based on interaction with their customers and aimed at increase of the revenue of 7 of their retail stores and finding new local employees. They wanted something different that will attract people’s attention as they were new to the market in Italy where Sweet & Co was already the local ruler there. The results were stunning – 9% increase in sales for Dunkin Donuts and a lot of interested customers. But what have they done?

The promotion was a combination of print, outdoor, and broadcast advertisements which allowed the customer to participate by entering five-digit short codes into their Web-enabled mobile phones. After sending it, a coupon for purchase of a donut was sent back to the customer. But the good things continue – if you use the coupon at any Roman store of Dunkin Donuts you’re automatically entered into a drawing to win a free Piaggio scooter.

“Young people between 18 and 30 are the largest users of SMS in Italy, and are also a target market for Dunkin’ Donuts,” says Michael Correletti, international business manager for Dunkin’ Donut’s worldwide franchise network. “This was an opportunity to communicate directly to our core customers.”

The success of the campaign is undisputed. The overall sales also increased with 20% even during the first week. Many of the customers have heard about the SMS-coupons by radio-ads or by some of the many promotional leaflets and posters. The combination of print, outdoor, or broadcast advertising proved to be working again.

GianLuigi Contin, Dunkin Donuts franchisee, says, “We are directly reaching our targets with a message they can understand. Cellular coupons are not cute promotions, rather they are serious marketing tools that not only extend the brand but are also directed towards the people we want to reach.”

As a conclusion, SMS, if used in an ethical way as in the case above, is one of the best ways to get to your prospective customers without being annoying and still offering them a glimpse in your offers, while allowing interaction. So what are you waiting for?

(the creator of the Dunkin Donuts SMs-campaign was AdreAct)

Pepsi Cola’s Bluetooth Fever

Branimir Parashkevov — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:42:31 +0000

In April the giant Pepsi Cola started a viral marketing campaign that went on for 2 months and is considered to be their largest bluetooth event ever. It run on public places like bus shelters in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Denver and Orange County, and pay phone kiosks in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Each of these media networks has integrated Qwikker’s Bluetooth content distribution technology. Pepsi was offering wide clips on posters, with a particular code for access. The five offered clips were called “Pass The Mic” – hip-hop freestyle music provided by Yahoo Music.

In the first week of the Pepsi campaign, opt-in rates to download content were reported to be 27% across the network.

Have you ever thought of using such a campaign ever? Why not!

Media Grand Prix award for a MMS campaign

Branimir Parashkevov — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:30:51 +0000

Everybody likes to see/experience ads, which are not very annoying and still very easy to remember. It’s even better when they are requesting a certain level of interaction that gives us, as targeted people, the feeling of participation or even collaboration. Such innovative ideas are the main target of The International Advertising Festival.

The 55th International Advertising Festival has passed recently and it pronounced this year’s winners of the prestigeous golden lion statuette. The Media Grand Prix award went to Forsman & Bodenfors Gothenburg for their innovative and interactive MMS campaign, created for AMF’s pension plan.

AMF Sweden let consumer take a picture of himself and send it to AMF through MMS. Then, the sender was returned an MMS with a picture of himself, but 30 years older. As a result, the consumer is more attracted to adopting a pension plan. This was a brand building exercise for AMF resulting in 300.000 uses(Sweden has 9,1 million inhabitants) within the month of the campaign, while the target was 50.000. Isn’t this a really successful campaign?

Mobile marketing in 2008

Martin Koppel — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:58:47 +0000

I have written about pros and cons of mobile marketing, bluetooth marketing and gphone, but what is the future of mobile marketing now where Skype, Google, Yahoo! etc are trying to push the limits and bring it to the new level? It seems that 2008 may be a breakthrough for mobile marketing, but experts are in other opinion. David Verklin, CEO of Aegis Media Americas, has said that 2008 isn’t the year of mobile, 2009 will be. I think it is partly because things in mobile field have developed rapidly and people/companies just have to get use to that. At the same time majority of companies and people still don’t have a clear understanding, that is why we would need a year to digest all this information. Here are some key points why 2008 won’t be a mobile’s year.

1. Data prices are too high
2. To use newer products you can target only to people with new devices
3. Engagement post-click. Lack of ecosystem partners and campaign integration
4. Buyers still say it’s hard to make a deal
5. 2.5G isn’t fast enough
6. We still need to use mass media to drive people to concentrated places, i.e. from TV to web

But these are just a few aspects. Manish Jha the CEO of Vantrix said that his company deals with interoperability issues – they have a database of 13,000 phone types. Think about it. You may have enough of a headache building your website for PC and Mac. Or just on PC, for IE and Firefox. Or just in IE, 6 vs. 7. Think that’s bad? Try 13,000 phones.

It seems that 2008 will show us will mobile marketing stay in puberty or do a breakthrough in marketing field.

Yahoo!- Mobile Internet Advertising?

Martin Koppel — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:39:48 +0000

In the beginning of this week Yahoo! announced that they will offer graphical ads on T-Mobile’s Internet service, Web’n'walk.
Yahoo! has partnered with T-Mobile to offer exclusive graphical advertising on T-Mobile’s open Internet service Web’n'walk in the UK. They intend to launch the first mobile advertisements during the first half of 2008.

Phil Chapman, director, marketing, T-Mobile, said, “With conventional mobile marketing tools limiting the levels of interaction, banner advertising through the Internet on your mobile creates many opportunities for potential advertisers to adopt innovative marketing campaigns. We regard Yahoo! as a leader in display advertising, and with its deep understanding of the mobile space and the potential that mobile advertising can offer clients, we’re glad they are on board as our partners.”

Why is this announcement good? Well mobile Internet advertising seems to have a great potential in the future, since “Mobile Advertising in Europe” report by JupiterResearch revealed these facts:
* 64 per cent of marketers have planned to use banner advertising on mobile portals
* 68 per cent of marketers have planned to use banner ads on off-portal mobile Internet pages during the next 12 months.
* 58 per cent of marketers consider the mobile Internet to be the most service enabling future growth of mobile advertising

Great news for British marketers is that Yahoo! has also signed a similar deal with Vodafone, so soon Yahoo! can access to UK’s top two mobile operators.

Marketing campaign – internet or mobile?

Martin Koppel — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:10:53 +0000

Several times i have wrote that there are twice as much cell-phones than PC-s. Some brighter heads are also predicting that in the future mobile advertising will take a big share from internet advertising. It seems obvious – the number of cell-phones will increase faster, people have it all the time, easy to use device, well targeted target groups. It all seems so simple and beautiful, but what is the situation at the moment?
European research firm Vanson Bourne made a report on 50 global brands’ attitudes toward mobile marketing and these numbers don’t give any reasons to smile. It seems that companies have still some doubts and the main issue is how the potential customer will react, is it invading to peoples personal lives or not. Here are some key points:

* more than two-thirds of companies expected to spend up to 10% of their marketing budget on mobile messaging campaigns within two years
* 28% of brands were considering implementing SMS or MMS campaigns during the next 12 months
* 58% said that their mobile marketing campaign would use up to 15% of their total ad budget by 2012, 32% said this would happen in the next two years
* One third of all respondents said that they expected up to 10% of recipients of mobile marketing messages to undertake a financial transaction
* 52% said that they expected up to 10% of recipients of mobile marketing messages to request more information or a product sample
* 46% are concerned that mobile marketing is too intrusive
* 41% respondents were unsure that they could target campaigns specifically enough to avoid spamming problem
* 36% would require detailed information on how the user responded to the message
* 20% would want definite confirmation that the user’s handset had actually received the message

If we are looking what people are looking from google then it also describes the situation quite clearly. I can’t see any progress in past 3 years. According to the fact “twice as many cell-phones than computer” i would picture that the blue line should rise continuously, but in fact it has staid quite stagnant. So it seems to me that mobile marketing will stay as supportive action in marketing for some time, maybe Android will change something but we will see.