SnapTell Blog

SnapTell at The New York Mobile Marketing Forum

SnapTell will be at the New York Mobile Marketing Forum on June 10th & 11th, 2008, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square Hotel.

The Mobile Marketing Forum is the place to learn about all things mobile; how to launch a mobile marketing campaign, how to define strategic objectives to ensure optimal engagement with the consumer and how to leverage all of the options in mobile effectively.

If you are interested in mobile marketing, this is the conference for you. And if you'd like to meet with SnapTell at the Forum, please contact us.  We look forward to seeing you in New York City!

Best Practices For Mobile Marketing Paper

New Media is offering a free paper (registration required) on Best Practices for Mobile Marketing.

The paper's central idea that “the results of traditional marketing methods are rapidly dwindling” and brand owners need to get into mobile marketing now to keep their message front and center.

"Regardless of whether your audience fits into the B2B or B2C category, or both, we as a global audience are becoming numb to the outpouring of pithy broadcasts, online intrusions, inundation of email spam and barrage of generation-specific print advertising campaigns. It has also become obvious that there is one thing that we all – Baby Boomers, Generation Y, Generation X and Generation Z’ers alike – have in common. We don’t leave home without our mobile phone! It’s become our identity. The type of phone people carry, the carrier they subscribe to and the services they use – reflect who they are.

A 2006 Nielson study showed that over 144 million people in the U.S. (85%) ages 13-54 own cell phones. It’s over 230 million today ... I don’t think there’s any argument that “mobile” has become today’s pervasive form of communications."

The paper explores how mobile marketing can enhance advertising response rates, increase buying traffic and build an opt-in community.

Get a Clue

We’ve seen a couple of reports on our Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing solution that bring up that bizarre little gadget from the late ‘90’s -- the late and unlamented CueCat. We aren’t really offended, because it’s such an obviously wrong and silly analogy. But we thought we’d set the record straight anyway.

The CueCat was an annoying extra device with limited functionality and extremely limited information-offering capabilities. Snap.Send.Get works on any camera phone (Over 70% of phones sold in the U.S. have cameras on them, and the camera is already rated by consumers as the most important feature on a cell phone after voice and text) and lets users request and receive information about a wide variety of products, services and entertainment. Some brand owners also provide unique content to Snap.Send.Get such as ring tones, wallpapers, games, and movie trailers.

Wikipedia, in its article on the CueCat, quotes reporter Debbie Barham of the Evening Standard as saying that the CueCat "fails to solve a problem which never existed." That about sums it up, we think.

When we first began developing Snap.Send.Get we wanted to create a service that would solve problems for its users. Something that would be both useful and fun to use, something that would make life a little more friction-free. We think we’ve achieved that with Snap.Send.Get, and as we push the image-recognition technology frontier we will provide more solutions that help consumers with their day-to-day decisions.

One example is our newly launched Mobile Entertainment Explorer which now offers access to information on over a million movies, music CDs and video games right from your camera phone. Just Snap a picture of any DVD, CD or video game cover with your camera phone, Send the picture to SnapTell ([email protected]) using MMS messaging and instantly Get back information including reviews, prices, run times, descriptions of the content and links about that DVD, CD or video game on your cell phone.

 

Mobile Marketing Dos and Don'ts

SearchEngineWatch’s Gregg Stewart wrote an outstanding piece on avoiding the potential pitfalls of Mobile Marketing, covering issues such as the importance of giving consumers what they want when they want it and noting that “just because it worked online doesn't mean it will work in mobile.”

Advertisers must understand and respect the similarities as well as the distinct differences between the different kinds of media, Stewart says, and his article provides ways to ensure brands don’t stumble when they make the move to mobile marketing.

For more mobile marketing guidance; New Media is offering a free paper (registration required) on Best Practices for Mobile Marketing, with the central idea that “the results of traditional marketing methods are rapidly dwindling” and brand owners need to get into mobile marketing now to keep their message front and center. The paper explores how mobile marketing can enhance advertising response rates, increase buying traffic and build an opt-in community. 

Marketing to the Moving Target

In an article entitled "The Moving Target" destinationCRM presents a comprehensive overview of the mobile marketing space, (including comments from SnapTell co-founder and CTO G.D. Ramkumar).

We especially liked the Do and Don't mobile marketing tips in the sidebar, read article for the "Dos", here are the "Don'ts"

Don't get enamored with the technology -- stay focused on the marketing goal.

In other words, just because Bluetooth is the hottest new technology doesn't mean you should create a campaign that involves Bluetooth. Instead, think, "What is my problem and how can I help solve this problem?"

Don't treat mobile as a standalone operation.

Mobile is another channel of marketing. To get the most out of the campaign, mobile should be combined with other media, such as television or print. Experts and marketers agree that mobile will not and should not take away from any existing campaigns; rather, it will act as a supplement to enhance the overall experience.

Don't spam the consumer.

Bluetooth and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies make it possible to ping individual consumers based on their location. So far, it seems that consumers and carriers will not tolerate such activity; to prevent these behaviors, carriers are trying to make it difficult for companies to obtain a short code and send messages, according to MarketTools' Kirk Hendrickson.