M3 Mobile Marketing e-Newsletter (May 2010)

 

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SMS Marketing Reaches Users of All Ages

Posted by MarketingProfs      

Mobile behavior varies dramatically across demographics: 70% of consumers age 18-29 say they send text messages using their mobile phone, compared with 49% of those age 40-49 and 11% of those age 65+, according to a Merkle Inc. study of mobile adoption and use.

However, despite those differences, SMS (short message service) texting is no longer the exclusive domain of younger demographics: 26% of all consumers who use text messaging say they have opted in to receive mobile marketing communications via SMS.

Mobile Web

One-half of online consumers (50%) now have a mobile phone that can access the Internet. Among that population, 56% say they access the Web via mobile device and roughly 40% access the Web at least once a day.

Consumers with an Internet-enabled phone are also one-third more likely to be active on top social networks. 

Mobile users under age 40 are more likely than older users to access the Web via mobile device, with the highest penetration among consumers age 30-39 (66%).

Email via Mobile Device

Over four in ten online adults (44%) say they check their personal email on their mobile at least occasionally, while 25% check it at least once a day.

Among those who check email on their mobile, roughly 82% of permission email time is reportedly spent on a computer, while 18% is spent on a mobile phone, up 3 percentage points from 15% last year—and signaling the importance of email campaigns that render correctly across multiple devices.

Some 14% of those with a Web-enabled phone use it primarily for work.

Mobile Phone Behavior by Gender

Though women are more likely than men to text (51% vs. 46%), men are more likely to have an Internet-enabled mobile phone (53% vs. 47%)—likely because men are 3.3 times more likely than women to have an Internet-enabled phone for work purposes.

 

Mobile App or Mobile Website?

Before you invest in mobile marketing consider your audience and the startup costs.

By John Arnold

NBC reported 58.2 million page views of its Winter Olympics programming on the mobile web and iPhone app through the first 11 days of coverage.

If the thought of your prospects fixing their attention on your company anytime and anywhere through their mobile phones sounds appealing, you'll be happy to know that the options for reaching consumers on mobile devices are growing broader and less expensive.

Two of the most engaging options in the mobile marketing bag of tricks are mobile apps and mobile websites. A year ago, the two options were very different, and choosing the right one for your business might have been a bit of a no-brainer. Now mobile apps and mobile websites are more similar in the features and user experience they provide to marketers and consumers, and the decision to build an app or a mobile website--or both--involves more thoughtful consideration.

Mass Market or Niche Appeal?

Apps only work on the phones they are designed for. Mobile websites, on the other hand, can be designed to work on any device with a web browser. In fact, the iPhone, the Palm, the new BlackBerry, and Google's Android phones all support an open source framework. If you're interested in mass market appeal for your content, mobile websites are the way to go. If you're only interested in reaching a niche market represented by usage of a particular device and operating system, a mobile app is a good choice.

What User Experience Do You Want to Provide?

The next thing to consider when choosing between an app and a mobile website is your desired end-user experience. Mobile apps can provide more feature-rich functionality--at least for now--because apps can work seamlessly with a device's native applications in more complex ways, and apps don't necessarily require a connection to the internet to function. This means that apps are better for utilities and games. For example, a banking application that allows users to find ATMs via GPS data native to the phone offers a better user experience than asking the same users to go to a mobile website, type in a zip code and navigate through one or more pages.

Mobile websites are better choices for delivering content, catalogs and shopping functions since that content is accessible by search engines. It's also easier to drive advertising traffic to a mobile landing page than it is to drive traffic to an app store to complete a download before visitors are able to interact with your content.

Since the number of mobile phone browsers that support richer versions of HTML is increasing rapidly, expect mobile website functionality to rival app functionality in the near future.

Starting Costs and ROI

Mobile apps and mobile websites can both be expensive to develop from scratch, and aside from the DIY options, there's another key difference in startup costs. With mobile apps, you need to develop a new app for every type of device you want to reach, while just one mobile website can reach anyone with a device that has web browsing. So if you have mass marketing goals, developing an app could be the more expensive choice.

Lastly, mobile websites tend to cost less to maintain over time. That's because to change an app you (probably) have to hire a programmer, and you need approval from the app store. Plus, every time a particular device is updated, you'll need to change your app accordingly.

If you're just beginning to create your mobile marketing footprint, most experts agree that it's better to start with a mobile website. That's because well-designed mobile sites can easily be turned into apps later. If you just have to reach iPhone users, find a programmer with a good reputation, multiple deployments and good ratings from users.

 

Statistic of the Month

According to a semi-annual survey conducted by The Wireless Association (CTIA), text messaging (SMS) continues to grow at an unprecedented rate: more than 822 billion text messages sent and received on carriers’ networks during the last half of 2009—amounting to almost 5 billion messages per day at the end of the year. During the 2009 calendar year, there were more than 1.5 trillion text messages reported on carriers’ networks.