Managing opt-in and opt-out permission
Sending information and alerts
Creating text messaging coupons
Delivering interactive surveys, polls, and other campaigns
At first glance, text messaging seems to be a very simple service. I mean, really, what can be accomplished with 160 characters? If that's what you think, you will be surprised to discover just what text messaging can accomplish. You can
Build awareness for your brand and products
Stimulate engagement in your loyalty programs
Sell goods and services and raise money
Inform and entertain
Recruit volunteers and build community
Direct people to your store or events
Provide real-time and asynchronous customer care and support
Stimulate social media engagement
Send last minute alerts and special VIP offers
These benefits are just the tip of the iceberg. You can do even more.
In this chapter, we focus on showing you how to set up text message-based mobile marketing programs, including promotion services, quizzes, polls, surveys, alert services, couponing, and more.
In the following pages, you discover how to manage consumer opt-ins for your text programs as well as howto gracefully handle the opt-outs when your customers tell you they don't want to hear from you via text anymore. You also find out about the common mobile marketing text programs, such as direct response, trivia, polls, surveys, mobile giving, alerts services, and more.
After reading this chapter, you'll have a clear, concise picture of exactly what it takes to run a text messaging program.
So what's an opt-in or an opt-out? An opt-in is the step someone takes to give you permission to proactively send him text messages. An opt-out is the steps someone takes to let you know that he no longer wants to hear from you; that is, the steps he takes to revoke his opt-in permission.
Sometimes, mobile marketing interaction occurs only once, such as when a customer requests some information through a mobile interaction and you send the information in return. In the case of single interactions, you don't need to make your customers formally opt-in because there is no ongoing interaction between you and the customer. In this case, the consumer initiates the interaction, so he is, in effect, opting in to one communication by requesting the information in the first place. If you want to initiate a future interaction (that is, send the consumer messages on an ongoing basis), you must get the consumer's permission with a formal opt-in.
Note
The process of obtaining opt-ins is crucial to your long-term success in mobile marketing, especially with text messaging. Industry self-regulation and government laws alike require that you receive opt-ins from everyone before sending them text messages that you initiate.
The following sections show you how to gain formal opt-in permission and how to provide opt-out for subscribers who no longer want to receive your information.
A request for an opt-in is called an opt-in call to action. You can place an opt-in call to action in anytraditional, new, and mobile media channel, including the following:
Print(including magazines, coupons, package labels, and so on)
Radio
Point-of-sale displays (see Figure 5-1)
Face-to-face encounters
Outdoor advertising
A Web page or advertisement
An advertisement in a voice, text, or multimedia message, application, or mobile Internet site
An e-mail
Acustomer-care call
When you place a call to action in media, you're asking the members of your audience to pull out their phones, respond to your offer (opt-in to the campaign), and receive the benefits of your offer.
A mobile-originated opt-in happens when someone uses her phone to send a text message in order to opt-in to receive future messages in return. The messages are called mobile-originated because they originate from the phone belonging to the person opting in.
When someone sends a mobile-originated (MO) message, your text-messaging application can respond with a mobile-terminated (MT) message that confirms the opt-in and gives additional information. Here's a summary of these two important message flows so you can better understand the information that follows in this section (readeven more about message flow in Chapter 4):
Mobile-originated (MO): A mobile subscriber composes (originates) a message on her phone and sends it to you.
Mobile-terminated (MT): A message goes from an application provider's service to a mobile phone, so the message ends (terminates) on the phone.
When someone opts in to your mobile campaign with an MO message, you return an MT. Here are the three basic methods for collecting opt-ins using MO opt-in:
Single opt-in: In a single opt-in, someone sends an MO in, and you simply send an MT back confirming the opt-in. Mostly, this process is used for one-time interactions; when the initial interaction is done, no future interactions will occur. However, if you want to continue to send messages in the future, youcan use the single opt-in method only for standard rate messages where the opt-in is originated from the phone.(A standard rate message is a message billed to the consumer under the consumer's carrier messaging rate plan.)If the opt-in is originated from the Web or an app, or the like, you must get a double opt-in before you can send messages on an ongoing basis.
Double opt-in: In the double opt-in scenario, someone sends an MO in, and you send an MT back requesting confirmation for the opt-in. For example, the system might respond with a text message that says, "Thanks, pls reply Yes to 12345. Std Msg & Data rates apply. To opt out, reply stop, or for help reply help."). If the user sends the confirmation, he is opted in to the program and the mobile marketing application processes the request and sends back a welcome message, such as "Thank you. You're now in the group. To opt out reply stop, or for help reply help." Double opt-in is best for standard rate and premium rate text messaging programs, and when the opt-in is initiated from a source other than a text message (such as a Web site or another application).
Multistepopt-in: Use multistep opt-in when you want to challenge consumers with additional questions before they can participate in your program. For example, you may ask users for their ages if you're running a program suitable only for users 17 and older, or you may ask a series of questions to collect additional metadata (data about themselves). After a user responds to the additional challenges, the interaction may end, or you may follow up by triggering a double opt-in as well to get express consent for future marketing.
Another great way to invite someone into your text messaging-based mobile marketing program is to presenther a form on an Internet page, mobile Internet page, or in an installed application, as shown in Figure 5-2. For example, a customer can opt-in to receive text alerts.
Tip
In addition to capturing a mobile phone number on your opt-in form, collect additional consumer information and preferences, such as areas of interest, address, birthday, and so on.
Cameras on mobile phones are wonderful tools for gathering opt-ins. You can instruct audience members to take a picture of an object, a soft-drink can, a magazine ad, a movie poster, or branded icon or almost anything else that has clearly defined edges and then instruct them to e-mail or text (via MMS) the picture to your mobile marketing program; some applications can also recognize the image locally on the phone, thus skipping the step of sending the picture in. When your program receives the picture, or the applicationdecodes it, it processes the picture and then opts the mobile subscriber in to the program (see Figure 5-3). This process is sometimes called image recognition, visual search, or digital watermarking.
Tip
The camera can be used for so much more, including the emerging practice of augmented reality (AR). Augmented reality refers to the effort to enhance a physical real-world image with computer generated imagery. For example, after downloading an application designed for augmented reality to their phones, yourcustomers' camera viewfinders might depict the real world, as it always had — but with directions to your business or with three-dimensional images of your products superimposed over it. Stella Artois, the brewer, has an AR application that points the way to the closest bar to get a Stella Artois beer. Pizza Hut has one you can use to find the nearest Pizza Hut. I-PoP (www.i-pop.net) recently launched an AR dressing room in which an Adidas shirt is superimposed on any person standing in front of an augmented-reality-enhanced display or mirror — andwith the click of a button, the shirt can be changed.
There are a number of companies you can look at to help you with these services, including: Amazon's SnapTell (www.snaptell.com), based in Palo Alto, California, Los Angeles-based SnapNow (www.snapnow.com), The Hyperfactory (www.hyperfactory.com), and Digimarc (www.digimarc.com). Google has also launched Google Goggles (http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/) for visual search. You should also check out Layar (www.layar.com) and i-Pop (www.i-pop.net). Do some online research and you'll find even more options in this expanding field.
Dialing and pressing is all about consumers using their phones' keypads and the voice channel. You can encourage people to call a phone number by asking them to "dial 1-800-XXX-XXXX to experience the sounds of the movie" or "call 408-XXX-XXXX to listen in on the game," for example.
Tip
You don't have to answer the calls yourself; you can use an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system to askthe caller to make selections. Selection options in an IVR session could include "Press 1 to receive a ringtone," "Press 2 to get your last five transactions," or "Press 3 to get the movie listings sent to your phone," or something similar. You can read more about IVR in Chapter 11.
Warning
Mobile marketing programs and any other programs that use text messaging (such as IVR, Internet, or mobileInternet) must use common short codes (CSCs) to address and route the message traffic. For details on CSCs, refer Chapter 4.
You can also collect opt-ins with key touches. Two companies — Zoove (www.zoove.com) and Singletouch (www.singletouch.com) — havedeveloped two alternative opt-in channels.
Zoove's method uses the star (*)key on the mobile phone. A mobile subscriber on the Sprint network, for example, can press **267 — that is, **AOL — and the Send/Talk button on his phone (typically, the green button). In return, an AOL promotional mobile Internet site is sent to the phone. Singletouch's solution works the same way but uses the pound (#) key instead.
Both services are still limited in their deployment across wireless carriers, but you can see the possibilities of these methods of opt-in.
Breaking up is hard to do, butsometimes people just want to leave. They want to opt out and stop interacting with you. Maybe they'll come back, and maybe they won't, but you need to handle their requests with grace. Accept each request, reply politely, and never contact the person again. Otherwise, you'll become a spammer, and you don't want that.
Note
Every best-practices guideline on calls to action covers opt-outs. You must include opt-out instructions that explain your program in your media and in the legal terms and conditions.
Warning
Industry best practices and regulations require all text messages to contain opt-out instructions, such asa stop keyword. You can read more about the industry best practices and legalities of obtaining permissions in Chapter 3.
You can use any of the opt-in methods discussed earlier in this chapter to capture opt-outs, but the most convenient way to gather an opt-out is simply to have the mobile subscriber send the mobile marketing application a text message that includes the keyword stop (or any other reserved opt-out keyword, such as end, quit, or cancel). When you receive the opt-out request, send a final reply, such as, "Thank you. Your opt-out request has been processed. We'll miss you. If you'd like to join again, reply join to 12345." Figure 5-4 shows an example.
One of the simplest and most effective forms of text messaging is sending text messages on a periodic or regularly scheduled basis. You can send messages once a day, a couple times a week, or just once in a while, depending on the type of information and the frequency your subscriber expects.
You can also send alerts that are triggered as a response to an event, such as a birthday, recent purchase, or the availability of an overstocked item at a discount. The following sections help you understand when and how to send information and alerts via SMS.
You can send your text messaging content to your mobile marketing agency or application provider and ask it to send it out, or if you have licensed access to a mobile marketing application platform, you can do it yourself, as shown in Figure 5-5.
If you're going to do it yourself, you can follow these steps. These are generic steps, and are not specific to one application. Most application providers have a similar process:
Select the alert service feature.
Select the Schedule a Message button.
Fill out the message scheduling form, including your 160 character message, the keyword, and common short code associated with the program.
Select the database lists you want to send the message to and apply any filters (see the sectiontitled "Sending filtered and automated SMS alerts" later in this chapter for more information).
Select the Send Now button to send the message immediately, or the Schedule/Calendar button to schedule the date and time you want the message to be automatically delivered.
Select the Send/Save button.
The above is a generic user flow that is supported by most text messaging application provider solutions. If your messages change frequently, you may want to look for an application provider that lets you manage the content. This gives you more control over the timing of changes made, which is useful, but on the other hand it requires more work from you. Again, most applications offer similar user interfaces, and many providers can write one that is customized for your needs.
Tip
After you've sent your message, be sure to keep an eye on your reports (see Chapter 14 for more on reporting and analytics). Pay special attention to response rates. Did people reply to your call to action, like clicking on a link? Or did many people opt-out immediately upon receiving your message? If so, maybe yourmessage was not targeted well enough and you need to work on the relevance of your content. Paying attention to these reports and adjusting to the results you see is the key to ongoing success with your text alert programs.
Most mobile marketing application providers give you the ability to filter your list of opted-in customers before you send a message. Filtering means you can select only those people in your list that meet a specific set of criteria. For example, say you're a concert promoter and you have a database of 100,000 subscribers, but you only want to send a message to the 15,000 people in the database who like hard rock, arebetween the ages of 25-30, and live in the San Francisco Bay area. All you need to do is log in to your provider's application, select the criteria you are interested in filtering the list for, and then press the filter button (see Figure 5-6).
Tip
In order for filtering to work, your database must contain identifying information about your list. You can read more about building database profiles in Chapter 4.
If your database also contains information that pertains to event dates, you can use your application's filter to automatically send an SMS to a single subscriber or a group of subscribers when a certain date in any database field coincides with the date you specify in your filter. For example, you might want to send a birthday announcement to anyone whose birthday field contains the date July 4.
Filtering by date starts to get really interesting and powerful when you have a content management system or data service that sends information to your SMS application, which is in turn programmed to send an SMS to the customers in your database who are affected by that information. For example, if you subscribe to a weather service, stock quotes, or holidays, your SMS application could be programmed to send alerts to the customers who request alerts related to that information.
You can also use filtering to set parameters for your messages. For example, if you have some customers who only want to hear from you on the weekdays, or between 9 and 5, on their birthday, or only about specific topics in their immediate vicinity (a particular band, promotion, news or event category, for example), you can set your filters to send or withhold a particular message based on those customized options.
Note
If your text messaging application provider does not let you filter your database, or if it can't help you do it, find another provider. This is an incredibly important capability because it's the primary tool at your disposal to help you in sending relevant messages to your subscribers.
When employing alerts services in your marketing programs, keep these things in mind:
Always get permission first by obtaining an opt-in (see "Getting Permission: The Opt-In" section earlier in the chapter).
Think about how often you send someone a message. Send too few and your relationship gets stale; send too many and you run the risk of annoying your customer. Make sure your content is relevant to thefrequency you choose. For example, weather is a daily event, so a daily weather alert is appropriate.
Keep the content fresh. No one wants to get the same discount or coupon code every single time he hears from you. Keep your content informative and entertaining with current events and news about your business, the industry, trivia, sweepstakes, and related promotional incentives and programs.
Keep your content relevant to your audience by targeting and filtering your list as described in the previous section.
Remember the character limits and formats. Text messages only support alphanumeric characters (such as A, B C...; 1, 2, 3...; !, @, #, and so on).
Make sure you include the required industry language, like Std Msg&Data rates apply.(See the Mobile Marketing Association Consumer Best Practices guidelines at
www.mmaglobal.com/bestpractices.pdffor more details.)
Text messaging is a great way to get offers, coupons, rebates, samples, vouchers, and gift cards into the hands of your customers. The concept is simple. The user sends a text message to request an offer or opts in to an alert service group to receive offers and similar content from you on a periodic basis.
There are two types of mobile coupon types you need to know about:
Closed systems: Closed system offers refer to offers that are issued and redeemed by thesame organization, for example, when your local pizza chain issues a coupon and redeems the coupon at one of its stores.
Open systems: Open system offers refer to the situation when the issuer of the offer (such as your favorite soft drink brand) and the redeemer of the offer (such as a grocery store selling that soft drink) are different. For example, the soft drink brand issues a 2 for 1 coupon or offer and your grocer honors the coupon. You grocer takes your money, less the discount. The grocer must then work with an open system intermediary, like Inmar (
www.inmar.com) or Valassis (www.valassis.com) to coordinate with the soft drink brand to receive reimbursement for having honored the coupon.
In the following sections, we explain how to set up the two types of mobile coupon systems and provide tips for getting the best results from your mobile coupon program.
To set up a closed system coupon program, you have two choices:
You can manage the program yourself. This is done by using a general text application provider's direct response or alert service applications. In order to send coupons, you need only send text messages that contain the offer you want your audience to redeem. The offer can be all text with instructions on how to redeem the coupons, and you can also include offer codes and other information that give the coupons specialized features.
You can work with a specialized mobile couponing firm. Companies that enable mobile coupons include lots of specialized features such as offer codes, personalization, and database integrations. Some of the best mobile coupons companies are iLoop Mobile (
www.iloopmobile.com), Hipcricket (www.hipcricket.com), Money Mailer (www.moneymailer.com), Where (www.where.com), eKwipper (www.eKwipper.com), and 8coupons (www.8coupons.com).
Setting up an open system coupon program is a bit more complicated because you need to work with solution providers that can tie all the pieces together. You'll need to work with your solution provider to make sure all of the following participants in your program can work together:
The issuer of the coupon: If that's you, your coupon needs to have all the features that the rest of your participants need to use. For example, if your coupon is redeemable at a point of sale, the point-of-sale computer has to be able to use the information you put in the coupon.
The redeemer of the coupon: Your customer has to be able to receive, view, and interact with the coupon. This requires making sure the coupon works on the customer's phone and incorporates the capabilities of the phone such as touchscreen or Internet browser.
The point-of-sales solution: The coupon has to be redeemed by someone and usually entered into a database to track the coupon and record the sale at the same time. Some coupons are redeemable online and others at a register in a store, so your coupon needs to be able to accommodate whatever form of entry is required. (We discuss redemption methods in the next section.)
When someone receives a text coupon from you, you're going to have to tell him how to redeem the coupon. Several methods are available for point-of-sale redemption, including
Asking the customer to show her coupon to a clerk in the store. With this method, the store clerk simply reduces the price of the purchase and maybe records the coupon in the system or on a less formal record-keeping tool, like a clipboard with a place to write down the details of the transaction.
Giving the customer an offer ID to share with the person in the store (see Figure 5-7). Use your coupon system to generate a randomly assigned code that is unique to each customer, and then record each redemption code to prevent people from redeeming a coupon more than once.
Sending a special mobile bar code that can be scanned at the counter. This is the most automated method, but it's also the method with the most technical challenges (we discuss these challenges in theremainder of this section).
Note
Any of the aforementioned methods of point-of-sale redemption require some type of system for recording the details of the coupon. Methods for recording the coupon can get pretty sophisticated, and you should get sophisticated if you want to track interactions with your customers. Any information about coupon redemption can tell you a lot about what your customers are buying and how they are buying.
The most sophisticated way to redeem and record mobile coupons is by delivering a bar code to a user's phone (Figure 5-8). Mobile bar codes are a bit different from the bar codes you typically see on packaging or paper coupons, and scanning them requires a special POS scanner. (Traditional in-store scanners can't read a mobile phone's screen reliably, and phone screens are very small, so bar code data footprints are limited.) Mobile bar codes are often referred to as 2D or 3D codes. As of this writing, Target and Starbucks are the only two companies that formally accept these codes.
One challenge with this method is that the 2D and 3D scanners can be quite expensive. Although they're common in some countries, such as Japan, they're not yet widely deployed in the United States. Another challenge isthat mobile phones and networks must be configured to support 2D and 3D bar codes.
Tip
One mobile couponing company, bCODE (www.bcode.com), combines text and scanning. You should also check out Scanbuy (www.scanbuy.com), NeoMedia (www.neom.com), and Neustar (www.neustar.com) for more on the latest in 2D barcodes. These companies send the coupon via text, MMS, Web sites, and applications, and they can provide you with a scanner that you can put in your store to scan phones and redeem coupons.
Note
Keep in mind, however, that just having the scanner isn't enough to enable your mobile coupon codes to work effectively. Your coupons and scanners also need to be incorporated into other POS systems features such as computing taxes, generating a receipt, and communicating with various other software modules or applications for things like inventory management, loyalty applications, and forecasting. Your mobile coupon scanning system also needs to integrate with your POS system's traditional bar code readers, credit card readers, and other external devices for recording items purchased, identifying customers, and collecting electronic payments.
The mobile marketing industry has made great strides in delivering mobile POS technology and gaining consumer acceptance of mobile coupons. The companies that are leading the way include mDot Network (www.mdotnetwork.com), Hipcricket (www.hipcricket.com), iLoop Mobile (www.iloopmobile.com), and Infinian (www.infinian.com).
These companies are working with numerous POS vendors to create an Internet-enabled network that allows mobile marketers to execute seamlessly and securely at the POS without requiring the retailers to replace POS hardware and software. Companies like Microsoft are working on the next generation of POS systems which will run on the Internet as opposed to being installed on proprietary hardware in the store. These companies will provide connectors (called APIs or Application Programming Interfaces) so that mobile marketers can integrate directly with the POS software.
In the next few years, you will see mobile marketing at POS take off as the technologies for connecting mobile devices to the POS systems in real time become mature and widely accepted. Just like with ATM machines in the 1970s and 1980s, adoption and maturity of these technologies will take time, but eventually will become second nature to us.
In addition to point-of-sale redemption, mobile coupons can also be redeemed on a mobile Internet site or through a mobile application. Companies such as Cellfire (www.cellfire.com) can enable coupons through the download of their applications. The application maintains all the coupons locally on the phone and continuously reaches out to the coupon server via an Internet connection on the phone to update itself automatically. Companies like mDot Network enable coupon redemption at the point of sale. (See Figure 5-9.)
Redeeming coupons through a mobile Internet site requires the customer to enter a code contained in the coupon or click a link with the code embedded. This method of coupon delivery can be very effective, but it isn't as universally applicable as text messaging for delivering coupons, for several reasons:
The mobile subscriber has to have a phone that supports applications.
The subscriber has to want to install the application.
The subscriber has to know how to use the application.
The subscriber has to be on a data services (Internet) plan with the mobile operator.
These limitations are disappearing fast, however, as mobile subscribers continue to adopt more advanced phones and services.
It should come as no surprise to you that people respond to incentives. Offer them something of value, and they'll be more inclined to participate in your program and initiate communication with you. Continue offering them value, and they may become customers. Keep offering them value, and they'll become loyal customers. Keep offering them value after that, and you'll turn them into evangelists who'll start doing your marketing for you. This process starts with the first engagement, and an incentive is a great way to kick-start the interaction.
The most common forms of incentives are
Money: Coupons, discounts on services, or even hard cash
Content: Free ringtones, wallpapers, images, and so on
Free stuff and experiences: Tickets for trial and sample products, free movie admission, a chance to go backstage and meet the star, and so on
Warning
In the United States, wireless carriers tend to frown on your offering free content such as ringtones and wallpapers, especially if they're selling the same content via their branded content storefronts on the phone. Free content programs must be preapproved and certified with the wireless carriers, and your best shot at getting approval is offering content that isn't available anywhere else.
Tip
Not surprisingly, offering free content (like a ringtone, wallpaper, game, application and so on) is also often your best shot at getting mobile subscriber participation; many subscribers value unique or personalized content.
It's common practice in marketing to offer prize promotions, run contests, and give stuff away as incentives to encourage people to participate in marketing programs. You could run a program that gives out small prizes instantly throughout the campaign period and ends by awarding one lucky participant a grand prize, such as a new car or a vacation. This format works well in traditional marketing programs, and it works well in mobile marketing programs too.
You can enhance any of your mobile marketing promotions — text-based communication programs, voice programs, mobile Internet programs, and so on — with incentives. The process is simple:
Promote the incentive along with the call to action to participate.
Set the odds of winning (often a configurable element) in the mobile marketing application.
If you're going to have an instant-win component or a grand prize, configure the odds for that too.
Coordinate with your prize fulfillment house if you're going to be giving away physical goods or services, or configure your mobile marketing application to award content to be consumed on a mobile phone (such as a ringtone).
Warning
When you run any type of contest, sweepstakes, or giveaway program, you absolutely must work with your legal team to document the rules and the related terms and conditions of your program. The law requires you to provide this documentation, such as start and end date of the program, alternative forms of entry, value of price, who is eligible, and so on. Every state has its own laws about these types of programs, so if you're running a campaign, make sure that you're compliant with all the individual state laws. You can read more about legalities of mobile campaigns in Chapter 3. Also, you can contact ePrize (www.eprize.com), one of the leading sweepstakes providers in the United States.
Mobile subscribers interact with quizzes and trivia programs by responding to questions sent to their phones. You can use text messaging in quiz programs to gather feedback, consumer opinions, or votes, as well as to inform and entertain. Your customers can have a great time with trivia programs, for example.
A closed-ended quiz is a program that gives mobile subscribers a fixed set of response options, such as a, b, c, and d or true and false. (See Figure 5-10 for a sample quiz.) If a user gets the answer right, you can send a response message saying "You're correct" or "You win." But if the user sends an answer that doesn't match any of the predefined answers, you should send back an error-response message with instructions for answering the question correctly. If the user tries to answer a question twice, you could send a reply like "I'm sorry, you've already answered that question," or "We did not understand your answer."
In addition to the typical user flow (see Chapter 4 for more on user flows), your mobile marketing application provider should be able to provide the following configurable options for a quiz program:
Question-response format: Decide which format you want to use for user responses, such as alphanumeric selection (a, b, c, and d or 1, 2, 3, and 4), binary choice (true and false or yes and no), or individual items (red, green, blue, and so on).
Question order: Decide whether questions should be delivered in fixed linear order or pulled randomly from a pool of questions. You may want your audience to answer the same five questions in a specific order, or you may have the service pull five questions randomly from a pool of 500, generating a random set of questions for each participant.
Question count: Decide how many questions a user must answer to complete the program. If the quiz is configured so that the user has to answer five questions, for example, the mobile marketing application will send the next question in the sequence or pull one randomly (see the preceding item) until all the questions in the campaign sequence are sent or the user opts out of the service.
Auto-response format: Decide whether each question has a correct answer or is simply being used to collect user input (see the next section, "Setting quiz response options"). In either case, you also need to decide when to send an individual text message to the mobile subscriber: after each answer (correct or incorrect) or upon completion of the quiz, for example.
Note
Along the way, include opt-in and opt-out options and a reminder about how standard messages and data rates may apply if you plan to ask a lot of questions. Refresh your memory of this in Chapters 3 and 4.
Tip
You may run a quiz that doesn't have correct or incorrect answers; you just want a response. In this case, you don't have to specify the response options as being correct or incorrect. All responses are simply accepted and recorded. Following are a few examples of response options you can set (see Figure 5-11):
Clue: If your program supports a clue element, users can request a clue to answer a question. Suppose that a user is stuck on the third question. If he texts clue or hint to the mobile marketing application, the application sends back a clue for the question.
Action on incorrect response: Decide what happens when users give incorrect responses. If a user gets the third question wrong, for example, does she simply start over or move on to the next question until the campaign question count is reached? (For more information about question count, refer to "Setting up quiz options," earlier in this chapter.)
Response timing: You can choose to run a speed quiz that measures the speed of user responses. The fastest responder may win, for example.
Participation cap: You may want to set a participation cap to limit how many times userscan participate in the program during a given period — one to ten timesa day, once a week, once a month, one time only, or unlimited times through the entire program, for example.
Repeat questions: Decide whether to configure the service so that users receive some questions more than once or whether they always get different questions.
Premium billing: Decide whether to bill mobile subscribers for participation in the program. (For details on making money with your mobile marketing programs, see Chapter 13.)
Tip
You can also use the application for quizzes to direct mobile subscribers to a particular next step in an application user flow, such as a product offering (a content storefront, for example) or another text messaging campaign or service. You can use the response to a question to initiate a mobile subscriber into a horoscope program, for example. When the subscriber answers the question, his response is used to configure the next questionto be sent to his phone.
Ratings by the pint: An interactive Guinness program
The Great Guinness Pint contest is an example of an interactive program. The program, which ran in 2008, allowed consumers to rate their pints of Guinness directly via mobile phone. Each time a consumer rated a pint, she was entered for a chance to win a trip to the Guinness brewery in Dublin, Ireland, for the company's 250th anniversary celebration. Participating accounts received recognition for the quality of pints they served. Each account owner, along with the Guinness team, tracked ratings in real time directly on a mobile phone as well as online. In addition to tracking progress, the Guinness team added or edited an account on the fly. When a new account was added, a keyword was generated automatically, allowing consumers to participate immediately.
Here's how the program worked: Throughout a participating account's bar, various point-of-sale (POS) materials, such as coasters, table tents, posters, and custom pint-rating cards, were displayed. These POS materials encouraged customers to help Guinness find the greatest pint in America. Consumers were directed to text the word great (or a unique keyword assigned to each account) to 88500; when they did, they were prompted to rate the pint of Guinness that they were just served. Each POS material educated consumers on what makes a pint great, above and beyond taste.
In developing this program, John Lim, chief executive officer of Mobile Card Cast, knew that its success would be driven by the competitive nature of Guinness accounts and by high participation levels among consumers. Therefore, he used simple Short Message Service (SMS) technology to create ease of use for consumers and to allow account owners to access rankings through a simple mobile landing page. The following figure shows an example of the marketing materials used to promote the program within an establishment.
In polls (also referred to as votes), as opposed to quizzes and surveys, the questions you want your audience members to answer are placed in traditional or new media: billboards, in-store end caps, newspapers, television, e-mail and radio programs, and so on. Like quizzes and surveys, however, polling allows you to gather audience members' opinions and feedback as well as to inform and entertain.
In mobile marketing, a poll poses questions not in a text message but in traditional media. Mobile subscribers see or hear the call to action (such as "Text a or b to cast your vote"), and when they respond, the mobilemarketing application sends a reply (such as "Thanks. You voted a. Total tally: a 35%, b 6%, c 59%"). See Figure 5-12 for a sample poll user flow.
In planning a survey program, you need to consider the following points:
How many questions to ask: Don't go overboard. If you ask too many questions, people will simply drop out without completing their participation in your program.
The order in which questions will be asked: Think about the order in which you ask the questions. Does some flow make particular sense?
The required length of answers: Remember that most people don't have mobile phones with full keyboards, and pecking out long messages can be tedious for them. Try to limit the information you need to short responses.
You can use open-ended text messaging survey programs to gather information such as consumer, candidate, or employee feedback. After a job interview, for example, you could send the candidate a text message like this: "Please give us your feedback on the interview process. Reply to this message with your feedback."
Unlike questions in quizzes (refer to the section, "Offering Quizzes and Trivia," earlier in this chapter), survey questions sent to mobile subscribers' phones don't have preconfigured response options, such as multiple choice or true and false. Rather, subscriber are asked a question and invited to send free-form responses. You may ask a mobile subscriber "What's your e-mail address?", for example. When he answers this question, the mobile marketing application automatically sends out the next question, and the process repeats until all the required questions have been sent and answered.
Tip
Ask your mobile marketing application provider whether you can chain your survey program, or even your quiz programs, with any other mobile marketing programs you're running. When you chain one program to another, you can do really cool things. Suppose that a user is opting in to your couponing program. If you chain a survey template to the coupon service, you can collect the user's preferences and other personal information before you allow her to opt-in and get the coupon.
Your mobile marketing application provider should be able to provide the following configurable options for your survey program:
Number of questions: Decide how many questions a user must answer to complete the program.
Question order: Decide whether questions are always delivered in fixed linear order or pulled randomly from a pool of questions.
Question labels: Make sure that your mobile marketingapplication allows you to use a configuration tool to label your survey questions. Later, when you data-mine andreport on the survey responses, the labels will help you sort and organize the data. (For details on reporting on your programs, see Chapter 14.)
Following are some of the most common uses of mobile polling and voting:
Television voting/polling: During the 2008 season of American Idol season, the show's exclusive mobile-carrier sponsor, AT & T, reported that more than 78 million votes were submitted over its network. Another popular show, Deal or No Deal, uses voting for mobile sweepstakes campaigns. Sports and news shows use polls to discern the opinions of audience members.
Live-event polling and voting: Increasingly, polling and voting are being used in live events such as sporting events, keynote speeches, and radio broadcasts. The call to action for the poll is placed in traditional media, and people respond. Then the results of the poll are displayed on the stadium's in-venue display screens, on a screen behind the speaker, or on the radio station's Web site.
Tip
If you expect high-volume interactions — hundreds of thousands or even millions of messages in just a few hours — be sure to consult your mobile marketing application provider and connection aggregator. They can fine-tune their systems to ensure that high-volume traffic is processed efficiently. Often, in the case of high-volume programs, the marketer opts to turn off the poll's immediate message-response feature so that the mobile marketing application can spend all its time processing poll responses. Responses can be sent after all the poll responses are processed.
Your mobile marketing application provider should be able to provide the following configurable options for your poll program:
Question-response format: Decide which format you'll use for user responses, such as alphanumeric selection (a, b, c, and d or 1, 2, 3, and 4), binary choice (true and false or yes and no), or individual items (red, green, blue, and so on).
Response message: Decide whether you want to include poll statistics in your response message (such as "Thank you. You voted a, and so did 60% of the other participants"). Ask your mobile marketing application provider whether it can support real-time results in your response messages.
Another popular form of consumer interaction via text is text-to-screen, a simple idea that can create a lot of interaction with live audiences at sporting events, concerts, television broadcasts, and the like. In a text-to-screen program, you place a call to action in traditional media (the giant video screens at a sporting event, a public-address announcement at a concert, or a ticker at the bottom of the TV screen, for example), inviting mobile subscribers to send a text message (such as encouragement for the team or a shout-out to a friend), a photo (such as a picture of a group of friends watching the event), or some other content. When it receives a message of this type, the mobile marketing application places the message in a moderation queue. Then, after the message has been moderated by an automated system or a live person, it's displayed onscreen at the event for a few seconds.
Examples of text-to-screen services go as far back as 2005 in the U.S. When U2 toured the United States in2005, for example, the band used text-to-screen during shows to support the Live 8 antipoverty initiative. U2 asked audience members to text their names to a short code. The mobile subscribers' names, along with thousands ofother participants' names, were displayed onscreen at the concerts. Later, U2 added up all the names and total participants recorded at all its events and used these figures to show the world that people care about poverty issues.
Another useful application of text-to-screen is to poll audience members during live presentations. For example, an organization out of Chicago, Jarbyco (www.jarbyco.com), enables parishioners to text their pastor during sermons. Unlike mobile polls, in which mobile subscribers answer questions, in text-to-screen programs, mobile subscribers ask the questions. You present the call to action during the event, and subscribers text in their questions, which you moderate and display onscreen. Then the presenter can look at the screen and provide answers to the audience. This same capability has been used in live events to provide real-time feedback to speakers, but as you might expect, feedback sometimes distracts the speaker, especially if the feedback is negative. Leading text-to-screen applications providers include Aerva (www.aerva.com), iLoop Mobile (www.iloopmobile.com), Vibes (www.vibes.com), and so on.
Tip
Text-to-screen programs can support interactions with almost anyone. During its annual conference in 2008, for example, the Direct Marketing Association offered a mobile concierge service. Attendees could text in their questions (such as "When will the exhibits close?"), and a person in the information booth would text back the answers via a Web browser.
Note
This chapter just scratches the surface of what is possible with SMS. There are so many topics we haven't covered, including customer relationship management loyalty programs, customer support and care programs, or more advanced secure SMS programs, or "intelligent" programs like those offered by iLoop Mobile and its Smart SMS solution (www.iloopmobile.com.