70% Versus 3-6%

From Media Post's Media Daily News SMS poised to spur mobile marketing market.

Frost & Sullivan, a software industry market research firm, Tuesday released the results of a study touting the potential and effectiveness of mobile marketing as a method of reaching and engaging consumers.

The study, entitled "An Insight into the United States Mobile Marketing & Short Code SMS Markets," predicts dramatic growth in the number of short messaging service (SMS) subscribers and the number of subscribers participating in SMS campaigns, as well as touting the high response rates to SMS-based campaigns.

Frost & Sullivan predicted that the number of U.S. SMS subscribers was expected to increase to 75.5 million by the end of 2007, from 26.4 million in 2003.

The number of those subscribers participating in short-code SMS campaigns--which allow mobile marketers to use shorter, easier-to-remember numbers, rather than full 10-digit numbers as the contact numbers for their campaigns--is likely to increase from 9 million to 35.9 million over the same period, the study predicted.

Short code SMS campaigns are commonly used for online votes, quizzes, sweepstakes, and mobile coupons.

The study also found that opt-in SMS-based interactive campaigns have a much higher response rate than other channels.

The study stated that those campaigns might see response rates as high as 70 percent, compared to the average click-through rate of Internet ads of about 3 to 6 percent on average.

WOW..advertisers do you see how big this will be? Hey search engines, do you realize you MUST be a part of this? 70% versus 3-6%

Burgess agreed that mobile advertising was a quickly growing field. "What I am seeing is a lot of marketers who are starting to initiate some form of direct response campaigns that include mobile," he said.

"There's no doubt that the media world is climbing on to the mobile bandwagon." JupiterResearch Analyst Niki Scevak agreed that mobile devices are a good method for getting customers to respond and interact with ad campaigns, but warned against using them as a method to deliver advertisements.

The way to get permission to market via the phone is the toughest part of this industry. Games, quizzes, sweepstakes, coupons are some ideas, but have you ever considered that when you click on a barcode you are giving the brand the permission to market to you?

It's obvious you wouldnt be holding a can of tomato soup or an Elton John CD and clicking on it for more info if you weren't interested in the product.

Brands heres the easiest way to get permission, and create some great marketing campaigns for the next advertising industry space.

Now think what happens after you just clicked on that Elton John CD. You just created data. Who makes use of that data? What does that data include? Your cell phone number, your location, the product (Elton John CD) and the time you showed interest.

Will this info be valuable for the advertiser?

What if you had the server(s) that saw the traffic and could analyze all this data?

This is web analytics turbo charged. Who will get this first?


I have a piece coming out called "After The Click" that explains how big this will really be.