Mobile Coupon Marketing
Mobile marketing is the next big thing as far as the majority of contemporary marketing experts are concerned. Even unlike the Internet, nothing has been as powerful as the mobile phone, spreading far and wide across the globe into the hands of most of the world’s population.
Even in impoverished, 3rd world countries such as Kenya, as many as 1 in 3 adults own a mobile phone, and with over 950 million handsets sold last year worldwide, it’s no wonder mobile marketing is on the rise.
Marketing through mobile coupons is a particularly effective way of reaching your audience. People are used to email marketing, and as such are less responsive to it – particularly given the volumes of email we receive. It’s often a difficult task for a marketer to break through the noise and get their message heard above all others, let alone to induce a response from the prospect (even where the prospect has opted-in to receive the emails in the first place).
The Smartphone Effect on SMS Marketing
Mobile marketing is still a relatively new method that is slowly becoming more and more acceptable in the United States. As it is still relatively unknown, many businesses remain cautious in adopting this practice. However, those that have are beginning to show great returns. The enormous potential of this method is only beginning to be realized.
The recent surge of interest in mobile marketing has been partially due to the increased popularity of multimedia devices such as the iPhone and Android. The functionality that these smartphones offer have increased the number of options for mobile marketers and offered an even higher level of personalization to their messages. What once could only be a text-only message can now contain images, video, and other multimedia options.
Since new smartphones are constantly being introduced and existing ones being updated, more and more features are becoming available. These new features make them absolutely perfect for a business that is considering adding mobile marketing to their overall marketing mix.
USA is Catching Up in the SMS Marketing Race
Mobile marketing is marketing directly to consumers through SMS messaging, leveraging the growing number of mobile phone owners and users. Mobile (or text) marketing is predicted to be the next major global technology phenomenon, and to a certain extent it is already used across Europe and Asia by businesses of all sizes to deliver targeted marketing messages on a wholesale scale.
Mobile marketing business consultants and service providers already have access to the framework for dealing with SMS text marketing, yet still the US market remains behind much of the rest of the world in mobile SMS marketing.
The US is surprisingly far behind when it comes to utilizing available mobile technologies. While the Internet is very much the domain of US business, in mobile communications the US seems to lag some way behind the rest of the world. There are 36 countries in the world that have over 100% per-capita usage of mobile phones, including many otherwise poor and indebted nations. The US, for whatever reason, isn’t one of these countries.
Benefits of Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing SMS is a great example of a new technology providing marketing opportunities. The growth in the mobile consumer market over the last ten years worldwide has been explosive, leading to a massive target market which has proven to be responsive to marketing messages. There are twice as many active SMS users than active email users, reflecting the full extent of the marketing opportunity presented by mobile communications.
But as a business owner, how can you capitalize on this growing technology with a mobile marketing SMS marketing campaign?
The Future is Mobile & Email Marketing
According to recent data from ABI Research, consumers are increasingly demanding smartphones. It’s only a matter of time before most consumers have a smartphone, especially since by 2014 45% of the smartphones shipped that year will be priced below $200.
This of course offers opportunities for mobile marketing, makes it more and more interesting to create a mobile version of your website but it also has important consequences for mobile email. According to the ‘European email marketing consumer report 2009’ from contactlab, email accounts are more often checked on smartphones, although there are important differences per country.
