A new study from Airwide Solutions has found that the mobile marketing industry is making significant progress, with 28% of companies surveyed having already launched live SMS campaigns and 18% having launched live MMS campaigns.
Growth in the sophistication of mobile marketing campaigns was reflected in the number of brands considering implementing both SMS and MMS mobile marketing in the next 12 months, which doubled to 28% since a similar survey in 2006.
The survey also found that more brands are looking to spend a greater proportion of their marketing budget on mobile campaigns in the near future with 71% of brands projecting to spend up to 10% of their budget on mobile marketing within two years’ time.
The percentage of big brands who said that up to 10% of recipients of mobile marketing campaigns requested more information as a result of receiving a mobile marketing message grew from 32% in 2006 to 58% in 2007.
And the news is even better for financial transactions with 73% of brands stating that up to 10% of recipients subsequently undertook a financial action as a result of the campaign as compared with 28% in 2006. Every responding brand agreed that their most recent mobile marketing campaign was successful in increasing customer familiarity of their brand.
However, more than half of brands not yet employing the use of either text messaging (58%) or multimedia messaging (60%) systems for marketing purposes.
The survey of 50 global brand-name companies found that almost half of big brands (46%) are concerned that mobile marketing is too intrusive, with many feeling that customers will perceive messages as spam.
Of these, 41% are unsure how to rectify the problem by targeting specific audiences. Over a third of brands (36%) would require detailed information on how the user responded to the message, and one in five want proof that the message has been received by the user’s handset (concerns mirrored by recent high profile issues with TV text voting).
Jay Seaton, chief marketing officer at Airwide, said: “The ongoing development of component-based mobile messaging systems has paved the way for a range of valuable new marketing opportunities for brands which, in turn, creates a significant revenue opportunity for mobile operators.
“However, the present take up of mobile marketing is somewhat inhibited by a lack of supporting information to manage and optimise marketing programs. With reliable infrastructure in place and a means to control and measure campaigns, more and more mobile operators will be competing to create and deliver the most effective mobile marketing initiatives to subscribers.”
In September, M:Metrics revealed that text-based mobile advertising is nearly ubiquitous in Europe, with as many as three out of four mobile subscribers reporting they received an ad via SMS in July (see Text Based Ads Nearly Ubiquitous In Europe)
Meanwhile, recent research from first direct found that there are now more mobile phones than people in the UK (see UK Has More Mobile Phones Than People).
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