Foreign Perspectives

It’s hard to believe but we’re just into the 21st year of GSM technology.

Over the previous 20 years the face of the mobile phone has changed enormously of course. Not only has the size shrunk from the brick type apparatus of 20 years back but along the way we’ve added games, MP3 players, cameras and even video capability to them. Even the cheapest phones these days far outperform their antiquated elders of vintage 1987 and with all that the price has dropped like a stone each year.

More recently, major brands are starting to recognise and use the technology to target customers through premium SMS services providing stock quotes, weather forecasts and the like and are gradually edging into location based services as the technology advances. By way of mobile billing you can even purchase a growing range of products using only your phone (ie no credit card). What’s perhaps most striking is that the response rates from mobile campaigns are around 10 times that of normal marketing channels ie they are getting a response rate of up to 10%.

However, it’s not all downhill for mobile marketing as many major brands worry about the intrusive nature of this type of marketing and that their sms marketing messages will be considered as spam. To combat this, opt-in technology is starting to be used and to encourage take-up of that they plan to distribute discount vouchers and the like by way of this channel.

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