As one of the first mobile marketing innovators BMW has set the bar for manufacturers looking to target a specific demographic on a service level. Like BMW 62% of companies are increasing their mobile marketing budget and in some cases disregarding all other marketing campaigns. Many marketing experts are realising that mobile offers a completely unique way to interact with their customer base and reach full sale potential.

The head of BMW digital media, Marc Mielau, made the call to start channelling marketing campaigns through mobile media channels and hasn't looked back. Most recently BMW promoted their 1 series saying they could "conquer young people through the mobile channel". BMW even launched Nokia mobile phones with preinstalled 1 series content and developed a downloadable racing game with customisable cars showing off the cars fresh rear design during game play. Mielau said "We got 75,000 downloads which - at that time - was an amazing success".



BMW avoided straight forward advertising through mobile marketing saying "advertising in not value!" BMW believe you can save time or kill time; save time when their busy and kill time if they are not. So they target the appropriate demographic and only deliver useful content rather than spamming their entire customer base with every campaign regardless of their current service needs.
One of their campaigns actually converted over 30% of their recipients to sale which is a huge success for any marketing campaign. Other successful BMW initiatives include:

• Texting German customers reminding them to fit winter tyres before the snow season with a call to action leading them to a local dealer
• A downloadable game following on from their Z4 TV adverts with the model spreading colour around a large canvas

BMW have followed a few simple rules to achieve success:

• Accurate targeting
• Viral concepts
• Appeal on a personal level
• Be helpful not annoying
• Optimise content for recipient technologies
• Use mobile as a service channel not advertising

BMW for now are looking to continue servicing their clients through mobile innovations. It will be interesting to see what they come up with next.

Our team of developers have been working to improve our SMS interface and measurement tools. One of the main topics of discussion was making campaign responses more measurable and displaying the data in a meaningful way.

We have added the following features to our statistics engine to meet the aforementioned requirements:

1. Statistics can be restricted to a custom date range
2. Users can view results by type of message, revenue, costs and profits
3. You can view specific trends, for example popular days of the week or popular times
4. Three dimensional graphs for all statistics
5. View and download statistics in spreadsheet format

Click here to see an example of our analytical software in action.

After some research and networking the general assumption seems to be that mobile marketing is simply broadcasting to a group of individuals that are likely to have an interest in a specific product or promotion. For example someone said "Sending offers or advertising through Mobile SMS is known as Mobile Marketing."

Other marketing professionals are saying that mobile marketing requires Bluetooth proximity alerts, picture messaging innovations and market driven mobile applications. Whilst all of this is true to some degree it is a very limited approach to improving brand attention, customer awareness and lead generation. Here are some recommendations to achieve maximum results when mobile marketing:

1. Publish a call to action to your audience with your shortcode and keyword, for example "Send TextWorks to 87474"
2. When customers respond TheTextWorks interface will store their response and in turn send a custom reply
3. Their numbers and messages will be stored in your database
4. Build a list of customers from your interface
5. Develop a viral or promotional message with a free or discounted offer
6. Send your message

Some of the larger companies have spent a lot of resources on building viral mobile marketing campaigns on a grand scale, for example using billboards in times square allowing people to control a persons emotions by texting one or two keywords to a shortcode.

Most SME's are using the 6 steps in conjunction with advice from our team of specialists, but that doesn't mean you have to do the same. If you have an idea and want to sound it out contact us or try our free trial to make sure mobile is right for you.

What is it?

Retail mobile marketing consists of sending SMS text messages to customer mobile handsets to promote products and developing incentives to persuade customers to send messages using your designated shortcode and keyword. Some retailers use the two methods in conjunction and others use our service to simply broadcast a specific group of consumers.

Why do it?

Now more than ever retailers need to diversify their approach to promotional marketing. Mobile marketing is still fresh and allows marketers to:

• Reach thousands of customers in seconds
• Drive customer loyalty through promotions
• Gain insight into customers
• Improve marketing response rates
• Measure responses instantly

Who does it?

Tesco joined forces with Marie Curie Cancer Care to "raise money on the move" linking to a mobile website for Marie Curie donations and news. Sainsbury's have started an in store viral marketing campaign to promote latest wine offers. Many other large and small retailers are adopting the mobile advertising initiative.

How it's done

Build a strategy to encourage customers to text a shortcode to subscribe to news, events and special offers. Make sure you publish the shortcode and any other details clearly across all the usual channels, just like you would with emails and web addresses. You could even train staff to collect numbers at Point Of Sale by offering rewards or loyalty schemes. Make sure any participants know that they will be receiving promotional messages and allow them to unsubscribe at any time. Consider all of the above carefully when training retail staff.

Once you have an audience you can begin broadcasting strategic and even viral messages. Use as much information about your customers to determine if your messages are appropriate and avoid over messaging; spam will result in customers removing themselves from your database.

Contact us for any further queries or marketing advice, our UK support team will respond to your email within 1 working day. Real time demonstrations are available on request.

If you are an SME or sole trader then you probably already know that customer service is essential to repeat business. Larger companies such as Google or Amazon envy your relationship between you and your customer. They are too busy handling the volume of new customers to afford the time and care you can offer.

It is highly likely that a relatively large number of customers have received poor customer service from large companies and a smaller company with the personal touch is exactly what they need. In fact you may find that a lot of burned customers will stay longer because of the personal support even if your products are not as beneficial. UK based businesses are increasingly appreciating being able to pick up a phone and speak to a UK specialist, they are turned off by non UK call centres who don't understand the product.

This is where text comes into its own. When used correctly it can be a powerful tool for customer service. It can help you gather and store information about your customers and their preferences, so that you can keep them informed about new developments and offers you know they will be interested in. It can also be used for 'live chat' giving your customers a direct link to support wherever and whenever they need it.

Here are some tips to improve your customer service:

• Low paid support staff will not perform well
• Staff will treat customers as they are treated
• Understand your customers on a personal level
• Let your customer get to know you - for instance have a more personal blog and photos on about pages
• Go that extra mile
• Welcome your customers when they sign up
• Give customers the benefit of the doubt
• Do as much as you can to say yes
• Make sure your support staff are well trained and up to date
• If in doubt ask your customers - via text, email or online survey

A lot of SMEs are already taking customers away from large companies and some are beginning to work with other smaller companies within the same industry to oppose the larger corporations effectively.

Don't get left behind - network with other SMEs and be prepared to share information and resources to harden each other against those who could otherwise monopolise your market.

Telemedicine is the process of communicating medical information through mobile phones or email. It can be used for consultations and examinations; for example photos of ailments sent via mobile phones or web cams. If geography is a problem then one or more consultants can review a case remotely without expenditure of precious funds or time spent travelling.

Another effective application of telemedicine is video conferencing. Time sensitive and complex cases require a detailed conversation, video conferencing is more appropriate than email or text messages as it allows for a real time conversation, as opposed to turn based questions and answers.

Absentia care, or care from a distance, has existed for decades. In some cases medical communications and prescriptions have been sent via post. As technology has evolved so have the medical professionals.

Mobile marketing in the form of SMS is perfect for telemedicine for the following reasons:

1. Surgery registrants can be added to the gateway on mass
2. Patient details can be attached to phone numbers within the interface
3. Text messages are quick and easy to compose
4. Messaging is cost effective and instant
5. Automated messages can be set up for regular check ups and feedback

Direct marketing to patients is frowned upon so if you decide to set up a campaign make sure all of the recipients are aware that they will receive promotional messages and avoid sending to many messages. Allow people to unsubscribe from marketing messages without being excluded from telemedicine subscriptions.

If in doubt do surveys and research on the internet, look at successful case studies and avoid repeating other companies marketing faux pas.

Back in 2007 Coca Cola stormed into the mobile advertising marketplace with click-to-video mobile ad technology. "Coke is eager to reach its customers on the mobile phone as it is a highly personal device." said Tom Daly, group manager for strategy and planning at Coca Cola. Around the same time Coke produced a WAP only social network called the Sprite yard. Subscribers text a short code and receive a link to register, they can follow the link, login and begin socialising through the WAP site. The idea was to offer free wallpaper, ringtones and multimedia promoting their recent brands alongside advertising their latest offers and products.

More recently Coca Cola positioned point of sale promotions encouraging consumers to text a keyword to a short code and in turn receive a free drink. A text based voucher code allowed them to claim a bottle of Dr Pepper, Sprite or Fanta through Paypoint technology. Coca Cola received great feedback from retailers and customers, and the campaign was said to be a complete success.



Somewhat predictably Coke further promoted the aforementioned brands in July 2009 by offering 50 pence credit with each purchase. All shoppers had to do was text a keyword to a short code from the drinks packaging and their phones contract or balance received credit within 48 hours. Once again sales peaked and their strategies proved to be sound.

Many other brands including Uniliver are already experimenting with coupon based promotions. Could mobile marketing work for you?

Record label Geffen recently developed a mobile marketing strategy to promote the girl band Mini Viva. The debut single, "Left My Heart in Tokyo" was released on the 7th September and sales are on the up. The marketing strategy was specifically designed for iPhone and iPod touch and targets the 13 to 24 age range. Using CPC advert links and CPM banner adverts distributed across Admob's social networks, mobile websites and applications the marketing campaign is set to appeal to young people more dynamically than previous promotions.

Colin Barrow, the Geffen UK President, says "Technology now enables acts to raise their profile and start a dialogue with their fans in many new and exciting ways. The mobile channel provided an ideal opportunity to reach Mini Viva's prospective fan base. By working with AdMob and promoting the single on iPhone and iPod touch devices, we're hitting a digital generation of music lovers that are becoming increasingly used to interacting with their favourite artists via technology."

As the music industry becomes increasingly saturated with new artists of all genres, top record labels are finding fresh and inventive ways of building accurate demographics of their target population and appealing to their consumerism on a personal level. Whether or not they decide that mobile is appropriate, marketers need to diversify their broadcasting medium to maintain high impact marketing and ROI.

Here are some useful guides for potential mobile marketers:

• How to build an accurate list of subscribers
• Marketing dos and don'ts
• Trying mobile marketing for free

Japanese car manufacturer Nissan and Internet giant Yahoo have joined forces through a mobile marketing exercise. The theme of the campaign is simplicity; using Nissan Micra, Pixo and Note models to illustrate the theme. Yahoo has created an application enabling their users to publish reviews of places to stay and city breaks on a global scale. Yahoo will promote its guides through mobile phones and online networks with the main focus being on Nissan's simplistic car design. Other car manufactures that have used mobile marketing include Ford, Jaguar and Volvo. What separates this campaign from previous efforts is that it is promoting two brands at once. It will be interesting to see how successful this joint venture is.



Ford marketed their new Flex model successfully in Dallas targeting a culturally broad spectrum of consumers in the barber shop and beauty salon trade using uVIP and bCODE technologies. Jaguar promoted its XF model advertising on mobile sites such as admob.com, Yahoo Mobile, cars.mobi and MSN.mobi.

Volvo set up a Switzerland based mobile marketing competition giving away a V50. To enter the competition entrants had to text "V50" followed by their postal codes to a dedicated short code. In response they received a special code and details of their nearest Volvo dealership. By visiting the dealership and presenting the code they were given respective prizes. In addition visitors were also entered into the Christmas draw for the V50 model.

Small to Medium Enterprises still have the opportunity to reanimate their marketing strategies through mobile for a reasonable price. The amount of companies using mobile based marketing is increasing and consumers are discovering new brands through these campaigns. Contact us for more information on mobile marketing and other initiatives to put your products in your target audience's hands.

Predictive text is an input technology built into the majority of modern mobile handsets. It attempts to predict or offer a list of possible words within a few key presses. Traditional text messaging required multiple key presses to achieve certain letters, for instance pressing the "2" key 3 times would write the letter "c" but pressing it only once produced "a". Predictive text requires only 1 key stroke per letter, so the letters "c" and "a" would only require a single press of the key "2", the letter is only determined as part of a word when enough keys are pressed - for example pressing the keys "26868" produces the word "count", the following image shows mobile phone keys and their respective letters.

Recent studies have shown that more than 9 out of 10 sixteen year olds now own a handset and as much as 40% of school children own a mobile phone. Professor Michael Abramson performed various tests and found that a quarter of 11 to 14 years olds send more than 20 text messages per week. IQ type tests revealed that using mobile phones during early years actually altered the way young people think.

Hitting a few keys and seeing the desired result is said to cause young people to not think things through and become more impulsive. Abramson says that "The kids who used their phones a lot were faster on some of the tests, but were less accurate. The use of mobile phones is changing the way children learn and pushing them to become more impulsive in the way they behave."

Abramson assures us that texting does not produce enough radiation to affect their behaviour; it is predictive text that is to blame. Other similar research suggest that predictive text messaging as a whole actually improves young people's spelling, forcing them to use real English words instead of slang or abbreviations.

QR codes are open format two dimensional bar codes developed by Denso-Wave in 1994. QR or Quick Response allows mobile phones with QR readers to access websites and messages simply by photographing a QR barcode. Most Japanese mobile handsets already have a QR reader installed by default. If you do not have a QR reader installed and your mobile handset is modern it's likely you can search for a QR reader application and install it for free.
The codes can be decoded at speed and are extremely reliable. Take a picture of the following QR code to see our website home page.

How have QR codes been used?

There have been literally hundreds of ways that businesses and individuals have promoted products and concepts through QR code marketing. Here are just a few ways that QR codes have been displayed:

• Business cards
• Electronic billboards
• Fliers
• Websites
• Email marketing
• Confectionary decoration
• DVD covers
• CD covers

In fact the Pet Shop Boys clearly display a QR code on their CD covers. Companies of all sizes are using the QR barcode technology from local decorators to electronic billboards in Times Square.

Future application of QR codes

There are a tremendous amount of applications for this technology - it could be placed on designer clothing, public transport vehicles, television advertisements, search engine results and even restaurant crockery. The trick is to react quickly and be innovative.
Like all other technology this will evolve and become increasingly compact and accessible. But for the time being it still has the wow factor for consumers.

The British love of mobile phones is set to grow with 1 in 5 people in the UK spending a quarter of their day on their mobile phones. Despite handset sales declining mobile phone use is at an all time high. The British Empire loves their mobiles so much that next to nothing can stop their compulsion to open a text message or answer an incoming call. A large number of handset owners obsess over the latest mobile phone peripherals, upgrades and applications.

There is said to be 200 million calls a day in the UK on mobile phones showing that information exchange on a personal and business level is centred on mobile phones. People seem to fear they will lose out if their mobile phone is off or if they don't have it with them wherever they go. The need to have a mobile phone at any time is so great that clothing manufacturers are adding mobile phone pockets to bags, trousers and jackets. Some mobile phone pouches even have a hole for handset headphones.

Mobile phones are a fashion commodity and with the aggressive competition between the mobile networks; they are forced to offer higher priced complementary handsets with lower priced tariffs. Access to the latest handsets on contract will only strengthen the bond between the average Brit and their phone.

Text messaging is on the up and recent studies suggest that mobile phone subscriptions will increase by one billion over the next few years. Current mobile phones are already more powerful than some desktop computers. Some of the handset features include a clock, thermometer, light meter, GPS, accelerometer and in some cases a compass. The kit packed into these tiny devices is more complex than some of NASA's lunar modules.

Mobile phones are future safe because the technology is open for developers to produce software and solutions for most handsets. Google blog suggests the following could be available to handset owners:

Smart alerts

Dynamically notifies you when something requires your attention, for example if you have passed your usual stop on a train.

Augmented reality

Making full use of the mobile phones devices to automatically predict relevant information without the users input. For example a phone might use the camera and GPS to scan the local environment, recognise a restaurant sign and proximity then preload its menu, price list and recent reviews.

Work tool

Mobile phones could become the one-stop-shop for your working day. They could replace your PC, Blackberry and Global Positioning Systems.

The future of mobile is secure with businesses discovering innovative ways to communicate with their current customers and win new business too. Long live the mobile phone.