2. Strong analytics always translate to best campaign results: There is little disagreement on the fact that strong subscriber analytics are the key to campaign success, however analytics powered campaigns do not always produce best campaign results. There are two key reasons why this is happening. First, marketers suffer from analysis paralysis and do not give proper attention to timing of the campaign. When lifecycle of the product is too short or when subscriber preferences are dynamically changing, it would not be totally inaccurate to call marketers ‘shortsighted’ to be spending too much time on analytics than on addressing the opportunity at hand. Second, marketers tend to be not so particular about the other aspects of campaign management such as offer design, messaging, measurement, channel preferences etc. While there is nothing wrong in using analytics per se, marketers often tend to ignore other equally important aspects in a campaign design therefore, strong analytics do not always translate to best results.

3. Having DND is enough to ensure subscriber privacy: Some mobile operators tend to use ad-hoc technologies that do not have capabilities to help them keep track of how much they communicate with every subscriber every day. There are cases where some subscribers receive double digit communications every day as there is neither a way to keep track of them, nor a way to control the number of messages a subscriber is communicated per day. In some cases, subscribers are communicated messages at odd times such as middle of the night as there is no means to enforce blackout periods. Therefore, it is necessary to view subscriber privacy not just from DND angle but frequency caps and blackout periods as well that ensure customer experience of marketing communication is top notch. The technology and processes should adequately address these requirements, only then subscriber relationship is nurtured and campaign management is fruitful.

4. Real-time is necessary only for offer communication: The products and services of a mobile operator have an extremely short lifecycle. Therefore, the product has to be marketed to the right subscriber at the right time when the context is still relevant. “Real-time” is a characteristic that is not just limited to offer communication, but campaign management as a whole. Telecom campaign management usually would have a “Call to action” and a “reward/incentive”. Therefore, real-time should apply to offer communication, subscriber response tracking, and also for crediting the reward/incentive before it turns into customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, ‘real-time’ is a characteristic that is applicable to all steps of campaign management and should not be limited to offer communication alone. Having a right perspective about real-time capability is important to understand the impact it can have on customer experience and marketing visibility.

5. Reward management is an offline activity: Many marketers tend to see reward management as an offline activity. If a subscriber is communicated of a campaign with a reward promised, subscriber expects the reward to be credited soon after the call to action is performed, especially if it is a transactional activity. Therefore, if the reward is not credited within a short span of subscriber’s activity, the value of the reward diminishes and it may lead to substantial subscriber dissatisfaction. Managing rewards offline as a file based process may also lead to many errors and revenue leakage. Therefore, reward management should be an integrated campaign management activity, not an offline activity.

6. Conversion is a good enough measure of campaign impact on subscriber behavior: Campaign conversion is seen by majority marketers as a good enough measure of success/impact of the campaign. But how would the marketer ever know if the subscriber has purchased because of the campaign effectiveness or out of regular habit? To identify this, marketer has to employ control groups to see the incremental impact. Good campaign management tools provide integrated control group functionality to measure campaigns. In addition, there will be other means to measure campaign such as pre & post campaign analysis that will add to the accuracy measurement in addition to control group based impact measurement.

7. A technology designed for e-mail can be extended to mobile media: Today we see a deluge of campaign management technology providers who unsuccessfully extend their limited capability of campaign management to cross channel and destroy the value of mobile campaign management. A technology designed for slow architecture such as e-mail cannot be used for mobile as mobile is a real-time channel and therefore, using e-mail campaign technology for mobile is like using cold pill for fever. Slow architecture technologies often tend to involve manual work which leads to revenue leakage because of the inability to contain the campaign benefits to intended subscribers. An extension of such a technology will lead to lot of manual work, increased costs and reduced impact, therefore mobile campaign needs a specialist who is focused on mobile technology alone.

There is a need for marketers to understand the right approach to campaign management and clear these misconceptions to effectively use it as a tool to enhance revenue and manage subscriber challenge today’s competitive telecom markets.

For majority of African consumers, life revolves around a mobile device. Innovative services are built around mobile phone across Africa for information dissemination, local yellow page services, mobile banking & payment services, media & entertainment services, social networking services, healthcare services, tourism related services etc. The ways in which mobile is transforming everyday lives of Africans is astounding and is well on its way to have its own impact in alleviating poverty and improving the quality of life. For example, operators such as NetOne in Zimbabwe are distributing pension funds on mobile phone for customers thereby cutting down their travel expenses, Duetsche Welle – A German news Distribution Company is disseminating news via SMS for subscribers who do not have access to a radio or a news paper. Innovative m-payment services by operators are bringing accessibility of mobile banking services to a large section of Africans who do not have access to basic banking service. Mobile users not having data enabled handsets are accessing social network services such as Google Chat via SMS, Twitter via SMS etc. are becoming increasingly popular. The affordability of a mobile phone for an average African consumer is changing their lives more ways than one can imagine.

Mobile Operator’s Role

Mobile operator plays a key role in not just building innovative services around mobile phones, but also in understanding subscriber diversity and catering to their specific needs. Operator needs to quickly build capability to understand subscriber needs and preferences and market relevant services to them in an efficient and timely manner. For marketing services such as music services, social networking via SMS, news content via SMS, data packages for data enabled handsets, m-payment services etc., and advertising 3rd party services such as directory services with click to call or financial services advertising etc., mobile operator needs to understand subscriber’s dynamically changing preferences. Operator also needs to create an efficient marketing and advertising ecosystem to enable reaching right subscriber at right time with right content.

According to Google, about 5.2 billion Ad impressions were served to African consumers in 2010. These impressions were from the internet Ad networks who could reach the data enabled handset users which is very small share of the mobile population of 649 million. Only entity which could reach all of them is the mobile operator and all that is needed is to create a successful mobile advertising ecosystem supported and enabled by operator. Below are the key steps operator needs to do to enable mobile advertising ecosystem with unmatched reach

Step1:

Create a centralized data repository of all the customer interaction on their network. make data available to be able to create insights

Step 2:

Have the right set of tools and technology to derive actionable insights required by the marketers, without compromising on subscriber privacy

Step3:

Create a self service Ad campaign management ecosystem where any advertisers can come and run multi channel campaigns on highly targeted segments and have visibility on the performance of campaigns in terms of responses/conversions etc.

It is essential for operators not just to build innovative products and services around mobile devices but also to create an advertising ecosystem that enables not just promoting their own services, but also connects brand advertisers directly with the largest consumer segment that could be reached via any medium. Operator has a critical role to play in providing consumer access to every service, including advertising that that has been made impossible to provide for lack of traditional infrastructure.

Enabling African Mobile Advertising Growth

Flytxt has extensive expertise in providing technology solutions, services and campaign innovation in mobile advertising space across Europe and APAC region. Flytxt is now closely working with some of the largest operators in highly competitive African markets such as Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Congo. With an expertise of managing over 50,000 campaigns for 150 million subscribers across the world, Flytxt is well placed to well-positioned to work with mobile operators in creating a successful mobile advertising ecosystem.

Mobile operator provides 100’s of products and services to their subscribers such as VAS products, Voice Calling Packs, Internet/GPRS packs, 3G service packs, SMS packs etc., which can be purchased either from retailers or via mobile enabled subscriptions where product is enabled and the charges are deducted from pre-paid balance. In mobile operator’s scenario, especially in developing countries like India where majority of subscribers are pre-paid, the easiest means for purchasing products and services is via subscription from mobile handset via SMS or IVR. Because of its ease, majority of subscribers attempt to subscribe for various services from their mobile handset itself.

The interest or the intent to purchase/subscribe to a service may be need based, driven by an advertisement or may be because of a recommended by a friend or a family member to the mobile user. The subscriber intent to purchase is instantaneous and once transaction fails it will remain dormant till it is revived by the operator. Unfortunately, there is neither a process, nor an efficient technology with the mobile operator to revive the intent. Therefore, mobile operators need to invest in Intent Marketing – the process to track subscriber’s product purchase intent from a failed purchase transaction and market the same service when the subscriber has enough prepaid balance. Every failed transaction expresses intent on part of the subscriber to purchase a product or use a service. The value of these 60% failed product purchase transactions are so large that it makes it imperative on part of the operators to address.

Mobile Operators can address this lost revenue in two ways – either with negative balance or Intent Marketing. In case of negative balance, the transaction will not fail, but the subscriber balance will be reduced by the value of the product. Next time when subscriber recharges the value of recharge will be adjusted. However this poses a high revenue risk for operator as this would still be a unrealized revenue. It may also lead to subscriber dissatisfaction when recharge amount is deducted for previously subscribed services.

Next option for operator is Intent Marketing in which every failed transaction from subscriber is captured as purchase intent. Operator revives the purchase intent by sending a communication to the subscriber when the context is right i.e when subscriber has enough pre-paid balance. This communication may even be embedded with the recharge notification sent to subscriber’s mobile .

Originally appeared in Telecom Tiger

It would not be exaggeration to say that SMS is the most prolific applications a mobile phone user has ever seen. Since the adoption of SMS messaging in early 90’s, it has come a long way. In 2010 alone, around 6.1 trillion SMS messages were sent across the world – about 2 Lakh messages every second[i]. We are yet to see the actual numbers of 2011, but it was estimated to be around 8 trillion. The astounding growth of the medium can be attributed to its simplicity and the fact that it is supported by majority of handsets.

With it stupendous growth notwithstanding, there is an argument that the growth of SMS in near future will be dented by the rapid advancement of smart phone enabled communication methods. According a recent survey of Telecom executives from Middle East and Europe at Telco2.0 summit, OTT players are going to burn 40% of SMS revenue by 2015[ii]! A case in point is the recent announcement by Jaxtr, an Indian Start up that enables SMS communication from a Jaxtr application installed on a smart phone can send SMS to any mobile phone, anywhere in the world with or without the same application installed. For this application to work, all that the consumer needs is a handset capable of installing application and an operator enabled data connection.  With these applications providing service free of cost and at the same time trying to emulate the simplicity of SMS, the concerns about the future of P2P SMS’s growth in are not totally unfounded.

The threat to growth of SMS seems to be coming from multiple angles with already existing handset applications such as Viber, Whats App, Haywire and mobile platform enabled applications such as Apple’s iMessage and RIM’s blackberry messenger. While Jaxtr doesn’t need application installed on the receiver’s handset, others require same application installed. iMessage and Blackberry messenger enable communication between users of Apple devices and Blackberry devices respectively. These applications completely bypass mobile operator’s SMS connectivity and use data networks for communication. Though there is little proof to show that these applications are having any impact on SMS usage, consumers have always adopted services that enriched their user experience while remaining simple and engaging to use. When it is simpler to poke a friend, like a message, write a comment or ask a question on a social networking website or Ping on a mobile messenger, user might certainly like to consider it over sending an SMS to a friend, provided the simplicity of service matches that of SMS, if not exceeding it.

Though SMS prices have reached rock bottom levels, what works in favor of OTT applications is that these are free of cost. So how does the application provider make money? By monetizing the application with advertising and consumer sends messages free of cost. Currently, this service is limited to smart phones, but the number is fast growing and is a huge market for these kinds of applications.  While it is easy to overlook these applications now, it will have a certain impact on mobile operator’s SMS revenue which currently stands anywhere between 3%-4% in India.

While the impact on the rise of over the top (OTT) applications on SMS growth is certainly arguable, the growth of SMS in near future may come from 3 distinct areas.

Advertising: SMS advertising is the simplest form of advertising any medium has ever seen. It is affordable for all advertisers, big and small, easy to understand and effective in communicating the message and can be highly targeted. While the concerns about misuse of the medium have long existed, regulation of advertising would certainly enhance the value of SMS as a key advertising medium.

Information Dissemination: SMS as a source of information has become ubiquitous these days with it being treated as perfect medium for information communication on Travel related alerts such as change in timings, bookings, Traffic information, Banking transaction information, weather alerts, stock quotes etc. The volume of this message has become so large that it has slowly overtaken the promotional SMS messages. The key advantage with SMS is the possibility of communicating message in real-time. In future, the breadth of SMS use for information dissemination would increase.

Interactivity: SMS has long been seen by consumer as a simplified means of interacting with applications of media companies for voting, participating in contests, of financial service companies to know details of their accounts, of subscription systems in Telecom companies to subscribe for VAS services etc. Simplicity of consumer to interact via SMS ensures that growth of SMS will be driven by this segment as well.

Although there is no indication anywhere in the world with regards to the impact OTT messaging services have on P2P SMS growth, the threat is very real and the same sentiment was espoused by executives at Telco 2.0 summit. Being the custodians of SMS medium, operators have a critical role to transform SMS into a valuable A2P communication medium to deal with the possibility of OTT encroaching on P2P SMS space. Mobile operators have to innovate with new business models with services such as Ad Funded Advertising models, local Information & search services, Directory services, Alerts & Content etc. The growth in SMS services would come from communication between Applications and Individual users where the possibility of it being dented by OTT applications doesn’t seem like a possibility.  Therefore there is a need for operators to expand the scope of SMS and transforming it into a tool for organizations to communicate and interact with mobile subscribers. On OTT front, applications have be designed with user experience in mind to ensure it matches the simplicity of SMS in order to compete with P2P SMS pace in any meaningful way. With competition intensifying to capture consumer communication space, it would be interesting to see how use of SMS would evolve in near future and what role mobile operator would play in it.

Before I start comparing Internet and Mobile advertising lets analyze how these two advertising mediums are similar

• Evolution: Internet and mobile internet are similar in the evolution pattern since the early days of struggle in the land garb mode. From real estate like buying to Conversion based buying of inventory, basic to advanced targeting capability, advance tracking technologies, confused to focus spend by advertisers, digital media has enabled good conversion tracking for the benefit of the advertisers.

• Adoption: Both mediums were slow to get adopted by marketers. Advertisers always took conservational approach while dedicating any budget to mobile and internet medium. Reason was simple; advertisers were ignorant about the immense possibilities of targeting and conversion tracking mechanisms which existed in the virtual world.

• Struggle: Internet and mobile isn’t considered as a serious advertising medium though it has highest performance measurability, focused targeting, advance planning and serving tools. The aspect which was missing was ‘reach’. Let’s not zero down on mobile, considering its ubiquitous reach. Here we need to consider how many of customers can be targeted using current state mobile advertising ecosystem.

• Stuck in ROI: Both the mediums are always looked as ROI advertising mediums. Although ROI based payout models were bought to attract advertiser’s, the CPC (Cost per click) and CPA(Cost per impression) stayed and further evolved and acting as root cause for not allowing the medium as a whole to grow.

Last 10 years saw Internet advertising maturing as an advertising channel and slowly holding its place consistently in the media plans for most marketing managers. Eruption of social media also fueled the imagination of media planners and internet which further became strong reason for presence of bigger brands. With the investment of king sized budget in the advertisement spends by the marketers for social media management and digital media monitoring, all these investments are basic spends towards internet as a medium.

Now with the world having shrunk to the touch screen on the mobile, it’s more like carrying the world with you. Mobile internet is following a similar pattern of evolution synonymous to that of the digital world. The only difference would be, mobile would evolve at faster rate with lot of trigger points that will cause change in approach by mobile advertising technology providers. Having said so, let’s dwell deeper into the trigger points with my next post which will be on the right ingredient mix required for creating mobile marketing revolution.