Getting approval for your text messaging campaigns
Obtaining and using common short codes
Setting up a text messaging platform and database
Selecting an application provider to enable your campaigns
Text messaging, also referred to as Short Message Service (SMS), or just texting, is an incredibly versatile way to send a message to nearly any mobile phone on the planet. About 95% of all phones are text messaging enabled. An SMS is a 160-character alphanumeric digital message that can be sent to and from a mobile phone. Alphanumeric means that it consists of letters (upper- and lowercase), numbers and symbols (such as 1, 2, 3, 4, !, @, #, or $), and spaces. SMS messages can be exchanged between mobile phones and SMS-enabled devices, digital displays (like a JumboTron at a sports arena or conference), blogs, and social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Text messaging is more than just a person-to-person channel; text messaging is the cornerstone of mobile marketing. You can deliver content, news, and weather; launch voting and polling programs; engage consumers in promotional offers and sweepstakes; recruit volunteers; deliver coupons and customer care alerts; and so much more.
In this chapter, we show you how to get your text messaging program organized and what you need to get started. We review how to select your text messaging partner and set up your database. We also show you how to register common short codes and tell you how to create a user flow and get your text messaging campaigns approved by carriers (U.S. carriers, at least). If you're already a pro at setting up a text messaging platform, flip ahead to Chapter 5, where we show you how to create and launch the most common types of text messaging campaigns.
Launching a text messaging program takes more planning than you might expect. In order to get started launching and running text messaging programs, you need to have the following in place:
A marketing strategy and plan that guides your decisions on what to send out. (You can read more about marketing objectives in Chapter 2.)
A text messaging application platform that manages all the text interactions between you and individual mobile
A common short code, which is a shortened phone number used for addressing commercial text messages (see the section, "Understanding Common Short Codes," later in this chapter).
Carrier approval "certification" for your campaigns (in the United States, all text messaging programs must be approved by the mobile operators; however, this requirement differs by country. You'll want to talk to local application providers in each country for help).
A marketing program to promote your text messaging programs; you can't send text messages to people until they opt-in to receive them, and they won't know about your text messaging programs unless you advertise or promote the program to them through your mobile-enhanced traditional marketing channels.
This section guides you through the process of laying out your text messaging plans and the flow of your messaging to give you a foundation upon which to start building a platform. We show you how to add the other elements to your platform later in this chapter.
Text messaging programs have a very specific flow to them that you must understand to get approval for your campaigns and to adapt the key capabilities of your mobile marketing application provider's platform in a logical way.
Note
Text messaging flows involve four types of text messages:
A mobile originated message (MO) is a text message that comes from your customer, the mobile user.
An application terminated message (AT) is a text message that is received and processed or terminated by a mobile marketing application.
An application originated message (AO) is a text message that is sent by a mobile marketing application to your customer, the mobile user.
A mobile terminated message (MT) is a text message that is receivedby your customer, the mobile user.
Figure 4-1 shows you how text messaging flows between you andthe mobile user. Notice how the message can flow from the consumer (a mobile originated message), through the mobile operator networks, to the application platform (as an application terminated message), and back to the consumer (as an application originated message in response to the mobile originated message).
One of the most important aspects of planning is creating user flows — documents that outline as thoroughly as possible how your users engage in your campaign. User flows are critically important for two reasons:
They help you design and execute your program. You save time and money by planning ahead in the program-development process instead of fixing mistakes later. Moreover, a detailed user flow clarifies any ambiguity about interactions between mobile subscribers and your program. Finally, it helps streamline communication among members of your marketing team and any partners and vendors you may be working with to launch the program.
They're required for certification of your program. As part of the certification process (see Chapter 3 or the next section in this chapter), you're required to submit your program's user flows to your mobile marketing application provider or connection aggregator. Wireless carriers test your program against these user flows. If the program works as described in the user flows, the carrier certifies the program; if not, the carrier rejects it. Also, carriers use submitted user flows for future campaign audits to make sure that your program still meets the original certification criteria.
The best way to plan your text messaging flow is to use a user-flow diagram, as shown in Figure 4-2. A user-flow diagram is an image that outlines the user flow introduced in the preceding section and details all the interactions that may occur between a mobile subscriber and your mobile marketing program.
User-flow diagrams typically are created with word processing software applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Microsoft Visio. Some people use standard flow-charting techniques; others use images of phones to map the user flow. Figure 4-2 shows an example of a flow-chart method. Figure 4-3 shows the phone method. Which method you choose depends on which is more useful for documenting all the possible interactions that a mobile subscriber may have with your program.
Tip
Your application provider or connection aggregator typically has the most common user flows already designed — as well as the not-so-common ones. Rather than start with a blank piece of paper, ask the provider to give you a few examples. Then you can tailor an existing user flow.
To customize a user-flow diagram for your mobile marketing campaign, start with the user flow provided by your application provider and envision all possible scenarios and interactions between mobile subscribers and your mobile marketing program. Then write down what you envision, using the following two steps as a guide.
Start by imagining what you want to have happen when everything works flawlessly. Picture what you want the perfect consumer experience to be. How do you want the opt-in flow to work, for example? What will the content-download experience look like?
List the steps that a mobile subscriber must take to opt in to your program. Single opt-in is appropriate for programs that don't charge the consumer a premium for participation or programs.
If you're going to have ongoing interactions with mobile subscribers, however, or plan to charge them a premium for participation, the industry's consumer best practices and regulations require you to get a double opt-in from all subscribers, meaning you have them send a second confirmation message and allow them to confirm their interest after their initial opt-in request, so you need to include that requirement in your user flow. (See Figure 4-4 for an example.) You can read more about managing opt-ins in Chapter 5. For more information about industry best practices and regulations, see Chapter 3.
In addition to the standard flow of messaging, you also may want to consider several common optional user flows that don't apply to all mobile communication campaigns and include them in your diagram:
Age verification: To augment the opt-in process, you may provide the mobile subscriber an age-verification challenge — that is, require him to reply with his birth date before he can move to the next step of the program. If you're promoting content that's not suitable for children, you may want to make sure that you have the mobile subscriber's proffered birth date in your campaign's customer database. Figure 4-5 shows a typical age-verification challenge that you can send to a mobile phone.
Instant win: You may want to award loyalty points, free content, a coupon, or some other form of incentive to participants. You could configure your mobile marketing application to award an instant prize to every third participant in the program, for example, or set it so that one in three participants wins. Ask your application provider how to configure this user flow in your system.
Grand prize: A grand-prize winner is selected from the pool of participants at the end of the campaign. The mobile marketing application can be set up to draw the specified number of grand-prize winners automatically at the end of the campaign, or you can make the drawing manually from the list of participants, based on whatever selection criteria you choose.
Couponing: Couponing is a very powerful incentive for participation in mobile programs. You may consider adding coupons within any message in your user flow to encourage continued participation in your programs as well as to encourage users to purchase your offerings.
When you send out a message, a coupon — either generated by the mobile marketing application or supplied by you to the application — can be appended to or inserted into the message.
Personalization: If your mobile marketing program is integrated with an internal or external customer relationship management (CRM) system, you may be able to pull data from this system to personalize the messages in the program. You could insert a participant's first name in a message, such as "Hi, Mike. Pls reply yes to confirm."
Tip
In addition to mapping out the best-case interaction scenarios for your program, you want to map out the worst-case scenarios and edge cases for your program. Try to think through all the things that could go wrong with your program, even the most outlandish possibilities (the edge cases), and then map them in your user-flow diagram.
Tip
Document how both you and your mobile marketing application will react if one or more of these scenarios comes to pass. What if some of your potential customers speak French instead of English, for example? Your mobile subscriber may respond to your program's opt-in call to action by sending oui instead of yes as instructed. To prepare for that possibility, you need to configure your mobile marketing application to accept oui, si, yup, ok, yse, yes, y, and so on, as synonyms for yes.
In the United States, all text messaging programs must be preapproved, or certified, by the mobile operator networks (this practice varies by country; check with your local application provider for assistance with certification requirements in different countries). The carriers require certification because they are ultimately liable for the traffic run over their networks and they want to ensure that their customers are receiving the highest quality service. Moreover, if one of their subscribers files a complaint or has a customer-care issue about a particular program, they want to make sure that they have on record the owner of the program and the appropriate customer support information to re-direct the customer to thecampaign owner.
This section shows you what information you need to provide to the carriers in order to get approval, and how to walk through the approval and certification process.
If you're planning to run a text messaging campaign for the first time, you need carrier approval for your campaign's message flow and for your common short code (CSC) so that your CSC is activated on all the carrier platforms. If you have already run a campaign and you have a working CSC, you only need to get approval for any new message flows.
The process for CSC activation and carrier approval is straightforward, but it does take time — about 8 to12 weeks from the submission of a completed campaign approval request form (Figure 4-6). The reality today is that most aggregators use an online tool rather than a form. You will more than likely never need to complete this form or have access to the online aggregator campaign certification tools — that is, unless you have your own applications and commercial agreements directly with an aggregator. Instead, your application provider will obtain the needed information from you and complete all the necessary forms and use the aggregator supplied tools on your behalf.
Note
You can't submit an approval request form directly to the carriers; instead, you need to submit the necessary information to your application provider, who in turn completes the forms and submits the information to the aggregator, who then works with each individual carrier to get your program approved. Because so many people and steps are involved, you'll want to make sure that the information you provide is complete and accurate at the time of submission. If it's not, you'll have to fix any errors and you may need to start the approval process over.
You need to submit the following information to your application provider, who then uses it to complete the approval form that is submitted to the aggregator:
Sales contact: This is your primary contact at the application provider.
Common short code (CSC) owner: Specify who will own/owns the CSC — you or the application provider. (You can read more about CSCs in the next section.)
Type: Specify whether you're using a random or vanity code. (Discover more about random and vanity codes in the section "Deciding what type of CSC to use" later in this chapter.)
Billing: Specify whether the code will be used for standard rate orpremium rate messaging.
Migration: Specify whether you're moving the CSC from another application provider, or whether this is a new code.
Campaign duration: How long will your campaign be running (for a few months, or forever)?
Type of campaign: What type of campaign will you be running on the CSC; for example, alerts, couponing, polling/voting, sweepstakes, or other?
Which carriers the code will be run on: Here's a word to the wise: Say all. It doesn't cost you any more money than picking just a couple, and you want to go through this process as few times as possible.
All the details of your campaign: What is it intended for? What are its objectives and dates? How will you promote it? How much traffic do you intend for it to generate? What will the program user flows look like? and so on.
Up and running: Prior to submitting your program for approval, all aspects of the program will need to be live and running (all user flows, all support, all marketing material, and so on) so that the carrier can run end-to-end testing of the program before approving it.
Every single user flow and campaign on your CSC must go through the approval process. Whenever the current campaign user flows change or when you want to add additional consumer interactions (that is, new user flows) on the CSC, you have to go through the previously discussed certification process again. Although all the same information is still needed for new programs on an active short code, the approval process tends to be faster, above six to twelve weeks, compared to the eight to fifteen weeks. (These are U.S. estimates; every region varies.)
All text messaging traffic going through U.S. carrier networks is regularly audited by the carriers, meaning that it is compared to the information you supplied during your initial campaign certification. If the carriers find any discrepancies between your approved program and the actual live program you're running, they may choose to flag your program as being out of compliance. If they do, they will notify you of any infractions they find and give you a grace period to fix them. If you don't, the carriers may shut off your CSC temporarily or permanently, depending on the nature of the infraction.
Tip
Many campaign infractions are easy to fix and the carriers may show some leniency. For example, if your opt-in language needs adjustments, you just need to change a few words. Of course, fraud, improper disclosures, or any programs inappropriately delivering adult-, tobacco-, or alcohol-related content will get your CSC terminated. Read Chapter 3 for more information about regulations and rules governing text messaging campaigns to make sure you're in compliance.
When it comes to commercially addressing text messages, your common short code means everything. In the United States, all commercial text messages (text messages for the purpose of mobile marketing) must be addressed and sent via common short codes.
A common short code (CSC) is simply a short (five or six digits) phone number used to address and route commercial text or multimedia messages through wireless operator networks (see Figure 4-7). CSCs are critical because nearly all effective mobile marketing programs leverage text messaging in one way or another.
Common short codes are effective for mobile marketing because they're all of the following things:
Bidirectional messaging: Messaging traffic can be addressed both ways with CSCs, both to and from the mobile subscriber and you.
Cross-carrier enabled: After they're activated on a carrier network, CSCs work across most of the leading U.S. carriers, extending a marketer's reach to more than 235 million mobile subscribers in the United States.
Note
CSCs are country-specific, unlike Internet domains, which work worldwide. You need to lease a CSC in each country where you want to run your mobile marketing (see "Acquiring a common short code," laterin this chapter).
Billing engines: You can use premium Short Message Service (SMS) messages and charge people for participation in your programs. (For more information about premium SMS, also called PSMS, see Chapter 13.)
Effective mechanisms for permissions marketing: CSCs are the primary means of obtaining opt-ins in mobile marketing.
Useful: CSCs are useful for a wide range of marketing campaigns and services.
The following sections show you how to acquire and use CSCs for your text messaging campaigns. We show you how to launch and run those campaigns in Chapter 5.
Note
Although you may have heard of them, we highly encourage you not to consider using either long codes or SMTP messaging methods for your text messaging. Long code is the term used for a full 10+ digit phone number. It is technically possible to connect a mobile phone modem with its own mobile phone number to a device like a PC to send text messages to another phone number. Although this is technically possible, it is not commercially prudent. This solution can only support very low volumes (some hundreds of text messages), and moreover it circumvents all the commercial regulations, like the mobile Marketing Association's Consumer Best Practices Guidelines. SMTP messaging refers to addressing text messages with an e-mail format such as [email protected] and sending those messages from a PC or similar platform. Like long codes, SMTP messaging is technically possible, but does not provide a sustainable quality service in terms of volume support or delivery reliability, nor does the practice adhere to industry best practices guidelines and regulations.
You have two ways to gain access to a CSC for your mobile marketing program:
You can lease a CSC directly. Choose this option when you want to run lots of different campaigns with no limit to the complexity of the campaigns.
You can rent access to an existing CSC. Choose this option when you're on a budget or you need to run a minimum number of simple campaigns.
If you'd like to lease your own CSC directly, you can obtain it from one of the few short code administration bodies:
United States: Common Short Code Administration (
www.usshortcodes.comsee Figure 4-8).Canada: Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association Common Codes Administration (
www.txt.ca/)Latin America: Administracion de Codigos (
www.latinshortcodes.com)United Kingdom: U.K. Mobile Network Operators (
www.short-codes.com)France: SMS+ (
www.smsplus.org/index.php)China: Ministry of Information Industry Short Code Administration Group (
www.miit.gov.cn)
Tip
To lease a short code or obtain access to one in other countries, you need to go through your application provider or a local aggregator. Ask your mobile marketing provider or local aggregator for assistance.
If you do decide to lease a short code, it's a pretty easy process. The following are the steps for doing so in the U.S. Remember that every registry may have a slightly different process:
Go to the Common Short Code Administration Web site at
www.usshortcodes.com.Click on the Get an Account Now button, complete the form that appears (create a user ID, password, enter your address, and so on), and register your account.
If you're the marketer (as opposed to the application provider), select the role of content provider from the drop-down list and click Create Account.
After you've created the account, you are asked to log in. After you log in with your user ID and password, click on the Apply for a New CSC link (on the left) and fill out the form that appears. ClickSubmit.
Tip
If you're having your application provider do this for you, be sure it puts your contact info in as the content provider. That way, if you leave your application provider, you will own the common short code, as opposed to the provider. In addition, you need to specify whether you want to lease the code for 3, 6, or 12 months, as well as the type of code (random or vanity) that you'd like. (See the following section for an explanation of random and vanity codes.)
Read the terms and conditions and click the I Agree check box.
After you've accepted the terms and conditions, you are invited to confirm your purchase.
If you do not complete the payment for the common short code immediately, they hold it for 60 days. If you do not pay within 60 days, the code goes back into the pool of available codes.
Note
Leasing your CSC is just the first step. After you've leased your CSC, you then need to have it activated on the mobile operator networks and bound to an aggregator who in turn binds it to a mobile marketing application. After this binding is complete and your CSC is registered in the carrier networks, all messaging traffic addressed to the CSC must be routed through a carrier network, who hands it to the registered aggregator, who in turn will route it to your specified application provider's text messaging platform. (The process for doing this is called the carrier approval process, which we detail in the section, "Getting Approval for Your Text Messaging Campaigns," earlier in this chapter.)
Leasing your own CSC can cost anywhere from $500-$1,000 per month, and it takes many months to get a new CSC approved. If you're not prepared to get your own short code — due to the expense or due to the time it takes to activate one — you can ask an application provider or connection aggregator to rent you access to one of their CSCs.
Warning
Many countries don't have a centralized short-code administration body, in which case you must rent access to a short code. Although this approach may get you up and running faster, at less expense, you want to take care with using this model. Depending on the relationship you forge with the application provider, the application provider may end up owning all your customers (all the opt-ins) on the code. Also, if the application provider does not pay the short-code lease or if a program on the code in a shared model runs afoul of the carrier requirement, the carriers may turn off the code and your programs along with all the other programs running on the code. If you're going to be doing any mobile marketing beyond one-off campaigns here and there, take it from us: Make the investment and get your own CSC.
When you lease or rent access for your CSC, you have some other choices to make — namely, choosing the type of CSC to use. Here are the options you have and some tips for making the right choice:
Choosing random or vanity codes: You'll need to choose between two short-code schemas:
Random short code: A short code is considered to be random when the code-administration body assigns a random number sequence to the company leasing the code.
Vanity short code: A short code is considered to be vanity when the code-administration body allows the company leasing the code to pick the numbers. An example of a vanity short code would be 46445, purchased specifically to spell googl. A company may choose to lease a vanity code to facilitate easy recall (77777) or to build its brand (57238 = kraft).
Deciding on five or six digits: In addition to choosing a random or vanity short-code schema, you need to pick how many digits you want to use in your code: five or six. In the United States, you can lease five-digit codes as either random or vanity short codes, but six-digit codes can be leased only as vanity codes.
Note
You may see four-digit short codes, but these codes tend to be reserved for the sole use of wireless carriers. Codes greater than six digits are called long codes and they're primarily used for running cross-border international programs.
You can choose to run multiple mobile initiatives on a single short code simultaneously or to run only one at any given time. When multiple mobile marketing campaigns are run on a single short code, the code is referred to as shared. When only one service is running on the code at any given time, the code is referred to as dedicated.
Note
In short-code terms, dedicated and shared have nothing to do with who owns or leases the short code; they apply solely to how the short code is being used. Therefore, you can use your own dedicated code, rent a dedicated code, use your own short code in a shared model, or rent access to a shared code.
Both dedicated and shared short-code models have pros and cons, as you see in Table 4-1.
Table 4-1. Short-Code Models
Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
Shared | Multiple initiatives can be run under one short code for a lower cost per initiative. | You need to include keywords in SMS messages to identify the initiative. User flow and instructions for initiatives are more complex. One noncertified "outlaw" initiative could shut down all other initiatives on a shared short code. |
Dedicated | End-user task flow is easy. End users can text without having to include keywords to identify the initiative. You have more flexibility in initiative tactics. Reporting is easier. | The company is not amortizing short-code costs over multiple initiatives. All metric data can belong only to the initiative on the dedicated short code. |
Note
The shared and dedicated models are not cast in stone. As part of a company's CSC strategy, a short code can be used as dedicated for a certain period and then used as shared with multiple initiatives running on it. Consult your application or connection-aggregator partner for details.
The heart of your text messaging endeavors is your text messaging application (also often referred to as a text messaging platform). There are three approaches to gaining access to a text messaging platform:
Agency: You work with a marketing agency and they handle everything for you.
Do-it-yourself: You pay for, develop, and maintain your own solution yourself (this is a fairly expensive and risky endeavor given the fact that the technology and industry standards are often changing).
Platform: You license access to a mobile marketing platform and either use this platform yourself or contract with the platform provider to manage it on your behalf.
Regardless of the approach you take, you should understand how text messaging platforms work and what they can and cannot do for you. That way, whether you license a platform, build it yourself, or contract with an agency, you know what to ask for, what features to consider, and what to evaluate your partnerships on. This section explains what to look for in a text messaging application platform, no matter which approach you take.
Note
Building your own text messaging platform is beyond the scope of this book. If you're up for that challenge, get to know a venture capitalist and start your own mobile marketing business.
The text messaging application platform manages all the interactions between you and your customers. Regardless of what your specific text messaging campaign is about, your text messaging platform performs two primary functions:
Manages the connection between the application and the mobile operator's networks. This is typically done through a message aggregator, but sometimes the application provider may have one or more direct connections to a mobile carrier.
Provides an Internet-accessible administration interface so that you can manage all your text messaging campaigns, common shortcodes, keywords, or reporting. See Figure 4-9 as an example.
Has a database that stores all the transactions you've had with your customers through text messaging (the datawill include time of day, type of program, and customer response). It will also have application interfaces that can be used to exportand or achieve (manually, periodically, or in real time) the customer transaction data to third-party databases, like your company customer relationship management systems.
In addition, providers of text messaging applications tend to provide the following consulting services as well:
Platform training: To theextent that you want to learn, they can teach you how to use their platform.
Common short code registration services: They'll help you rent or lease your codes, and get them activated and approved on carrier networks.
Campaign approval processes: They'll help you get your campaigns approved by the carriers and assist you with navigating the myriad industry best practices and regulations, and help you respond to carrier audits.
Campaign consulting: Although most leading technology providers do not make the best campaign consultants — use your agency for that instead — they can provide you with insights around what type of programs will be most effective to help you deliver value to your customer and to achieve your company objectives.
A tremendous amount of expertise goes into developing and maintaining a text messaging platform. When you're looking for a provider, be sure to ask about or consider the following:
Experience: Does the provider have extensive mobile experience and relationships within the mobile marketing industry? Ask for references; review campaigns that they've run before. Don't take their word for it. Also, it seems like everyone has done something with one of the largest brands at some time in their past, like Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble. Make sure their references are current.
Industry leadership: Make sure the provider is a member of the Mobile Marketing Association, or at least is following the MMA best practices and standards of care. You should also check whether it is a member of the related trade associations that are pertinent to your business, like the Direct Marketing Association for direct marketers, the Internet Advertising Bureau for Internet adversities,
Shop.orgfor retailer, Online Publishers Association for publishers, and so on. Being members of one or more of these organizations demonstrates that the provider is continually learning and adapts to the changes in the industry.Area of expertise: Confirm which areas of mobile marketing the provider is an expert in. Some only provide SMS services and others offer a range of mobile marketing services including platform, analytics, strategy, creative, or execution. If the provider representative says that they are experts in all of these areas, make sure you drill down and find out who they work with or who they've recently bought. Be skeptical when one firm says they are an expert in everything.
Capabilities: Does the provider have the capabilities you need to deliver or will they have to custom develop something special for you? If they have it on-hand, they can show you immediately.
The throughput/messaging capacity of the platform: Ask how many text messages per second/per hour the platform can handle before it crashes and floats up to the top of the fish bowl. For example, if you're a successful national brand running a national television ad, you better make sure that your platform can handle millions of messages an hour. Even if you're a small company running a program, you still may run into capacity problems if the platform has a thousand other small companies each running a message. Don't be shy: Ask about throughput/capacity, ask to see reports, and have your provider prove that they can support your messaging traffic. Also, don't just ask about total volume, but peak spikes too. You want them to test for the maximum number of messages that may come in or go out at a specific period of time, not just the average.
Failover and disaster recovery plans: Ask your provider representative if they're prepared for a catastrophe; for example, ask them what they'll do if their data center (where their servers are hosted)loses power or if a server or database fails? Ask them how quickly they can get back in service. If they are industry leaders, they'llhave a redundant data center and can be back up in minutes with no loss of data. If they're not, your programs may be running on a computer under someone's desk, and you could risk losing everything and being down for a very long time.
Pricing: Pricing should be one of the last criteria you consider. Keep in mind that you get what you pay for. If you pay a little for your platform, don't expect a lot of service or support.
With the popularity of text messaging the mobile marketing increasing, both niche-market point solution providers and multi-capable platform providers are popping up all over the place. At the time of this writing, the leading text messaging providers include iLoop Mobile (www.iloopmobile.com), Hipcricket (www.hipcricket.com), Waterfall Mobile (www.waterfallmobile.com), Vibes Media (www.vibesmedia.com), Velti (www.velti.com) 2Ergo (www.2ergo.com), Telescope (www.telescope.tv), BookIt (www.bookit.net), and SMaSh (www.smashcode.com). There are also some very good smaller players, like mobileStorm (www.mobilestorm.com), Cellit (www.cellit.com), and Mobile Card Cast (www.mobilecardcast.com).
If you want to do some additional research on SMS providers, we recommend that you start by contacting the Mobile Marketing Association (www.mmaglobal.com) and getting a list of their members specializing in SMS. You should also check out the partners page at U.S. Short Codes.com (www.usshortcodes.com/csc_applicators.html) or simply conduct some Google searches.
SMS campaigns have the ability to collect all kinds of valuable data on the people who interact with your campaigns. For example, a simple SMS campaign can tell you
Your customer's mobile phone number
Your customer's carrier
Your customer's phone model (if a Web URL is in the message and is clicked on by the consumer)
Your customer's interests
Any data you collect by asking your customers during a campaign
Tip
Be sure you confirm that your own database or your application provider's database can capture and store all that data so you can use it to target your marketing campaigns and follow up with customers. In addition to capturing and storing it, you also need to be able to manage your data.
This section shows you how to capture, store, and manage the data you collect from your SMS campaigns.
Tip
Read this section with care. Concern over personal information and privacy is at the forefront of many consumers' minds. Be careful with how you use information collected and be sure to stay current with local and federal laws regarding consumer privacy. Also, stay true to your mobile marketing code of conduct we discussed in Chapter 3.
An important aspect of marketing is developing profiles of the members of your audience so that you can target different audiences. When setting up your database, make sure it is set up to collect enough information to build a profile of each type of person or group you want to target. You can develop these profiles by amassing several types of data from a wide range of sources, including
Demographic data: Age, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, marital status, number of children, level of education, occupation, income, nationality, and location/place of residence.
Psychographic data: Lifestyle/activity, attitudes, interests, purchasing motives, and products and services used frequently.
Preference data: Consumer preferences for when and how many times they want to be communicated with, preferred modes of communication (SMS, print, e-mail, and so on).
Behavioral data: Purchasing history, criteria for choosing products, effect of the environment (location, culture, family, media exposure, and so on) on their choices, Internet sites visited, ads and links clicked, customer-support interactions, and so on.
Situational data: Situational data about the consumer; for example, where the consumer is, what the weather is, what the stocks are doing, and so on.
Syndicated data: Consumer purchasing data compiled from individually scanned consumer transactions at thousands of locations.
Note
In tech speak, all this data is commonly called metadata — data about something. If a database engineer asks, "What kind of metadata do you want to capture?", you can answer, "I need demographic metadata: age, geography, psychographic data, and so on." You can use that to impress people at cocktail parties, too!
Amassing all these data types helps you develop a clear picture of the needs, wants, and desires of your target audience; thus, you have a better chance of giving your customers excellent service and providing them value.
When a consumer opts in to your campaign via SMS, the mobile marketing application captures her mobile phone number. From this mobile phone number, your application provider captures the following data points, all of which you need to support the interaction with the subscriber and analyze your programs:
Previous participation in other programs you've run: You can match the number to see whether it has been used in other campaigns.
Wireless carrier: The number can identify the wireless carrier that the subscriber is using.
Crude location: From the number's country and area codes, you can make a crude estimate of the subscriber's location: country, state, city, time zone, and so on.
Note
You can't use this method for real-time location detection, however, because it doesn't tell you where the person is at any given time — just where his phone is registered.
Porting status: You can find out whether the number has ever been moved from one wireless carrier to another.
Technical information: You can find out whether the subscriber's phone supports binary data (such as pictures and video).
You can ask campaign participants to submit any number of data points via SMS, including demographic, physiographic, and preference data. For example, you may ask a user to submit her birth date as an opt-in challenge. You simply need to make sure that your text messaging application allows you to collect the data appropriately. To collect data this way, your message flow has to allow for participants to text the information you want to collect to your short code in reply to a message. For example, your text message might say, "What's your first name? Reply with your first name."
For basic reporting purposes (such as number of votes, opt-ins, opt-outs, purchases, content downloads, or mobile Internet page views), you can access this information in the mobile marketing application's database via standard reporting tools in the application provider's software, as shown in Figure 4-10.
Tip
For advanced reporting and data analysis, and to build your marketing database, most mobile application service providers allow you to export the information from your account in their systems.
After you've exported all the information from the mobile marketing application, you can combine it with other data you've collected on individual members of your audience or on your audience in general (see the following section). In other words, you can use your mobile marketing data to enhance the profile of your audience as a whole as well as profiles of individual members of your audience.
Someday — maybe even today — you'll want to merge your mobile campaign data with the data stored in your company's customer relationship management (CRM) system. That way, you can follow up on the data you collect within the context of your normal sales or marketing operations. This process is easy enough and typically can be handled in any of three ways:
Manually: You can ask your mobile marketing application provider togive you a report (in an Excel worksheet or an XML data structure, for example) so that you can combine your data with that of the CRMdatabase manually.
Via data feed: Your mobile marketing application provider should beable to give you access to an XML data feed. Then you can pull data from this feed on a regular basis (such as once a day or every five minutes) so that you can combine your data with that of the CRM database automatically on a set schedule.
In real time: You can ask your mobile marking application provider to send you real-time data as your participants interact with the system. (For example, maybe you need to know immediately if someone opts out of your campaign so that you can update permission marketing management systems in other parts of your company.)