Mobile advertising and consumer engagement
Alex Franks, MD, Blyk, takes a look at the evidence…
Much has been written recently about permission based mobile marketing and the results that Blyk and other players share in terms of engagement. Some of what is written is supportive of what we are trying to do in the mobile messaging space, some more sceptical.
Now, I have nothing against scepticism, I have been known to have my own moments of scepticism in my time that’s for sure – I once questioned the sanity of Arsène Wenger when he spent £11 million on Thierry Henry and also didn’t get into The Wire until about episode 5 and nearly binned it – proved wrong on both counts and happy to hold my hands up.
What is important is to understand what the results are telling us. Here at Blyk we have been clear on what we have been able to achieve in terms of consumer adoption and engagement as an MVNO and what we continue to achieve in partnership with operators.
There’s a pretty simple formula to achieving consumer engagement with mobile advertising –
Permission + Preferences = Engagement
I don’t think this is rocket science, which is why I am sometimes surprised that people doubt that consumers will engage, and yes, enjoy, relevant communication from brands. Prove it! I hear you cry.
OK, some examples that Blyk have recently run with our Bright Stuff audience on Orange in the UK:
As part of the media program that we run on Bright Stuff consumers are profiled by interest group; sport, film, music, fashion, you get the idea. Our brilliant creative and content management teams curate content relevant to consumers that have profiled themselves into these interest groups.
Survival of the Fittest is an in-house content stream that we create as part of our media programming. The in-house messaging and content provided by partners such as Condé Nast sit alongside our commercial campaigns to form a compelling media program for our consumers.
The campaign had a simple objective; to maximise engagement with the Health and Fitness profile group of consumers.
Results – Delivery rates for this profiled campaign were 94%
The message received an incredible 50% response rate, proving that using profiling is a brilliant way of optimising targeting to increase engagement, customer satisfaction and response rates.
Mobile offers the opportunity for brands to engage in real time with consumers. Permission and preference must form the backbone of your mobile marketing strategy and when they do there really shouldn’t be much of a surprise that we see the sort of results we do – saying that, 50% response surprised even me, almost as much as the amount of goals Henry scored for Arsenal (226).
Once you add the possibility to create a marketplace on your mobile phone through mobile coupons and then the ability to purchase products and services instantly through inbuilt payment mechanisms, you start to tap into a genuinely different media channel. Our UK partner Orange today announced the launch of Quick Tap, the UK’s first nationwide contactless mobile payment service. Sceptics beware!
We have a number of case studies to share and I will be back soon to present the evidence…