Archive for March, 2009

Digital Collateral vs. Text to Print

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

A large national company that specializes in direct mail and postcards is making a big push promoting its “text to print” solution. While intuitively it makes sense that businesses would like to communicate with prospects in as many ways as possible, taking the conversation from the real-time (and trackable) digital channel to an old-world postcard is madness.

Digital Collateral

While small amounts of critical information can be communicated via text message, sometimes the content is more suitable for email. In this instance, we provide clients with our Digital Collateral service that combines text messaging with email.
1. Participants send a text message in response to a call-to-action in traditional media.
2. Participants receive a message thanking them for their interest in the product or service and are asked to respond with their email address.
3. Upon receipt of the email address, we immediately send an email that contains the requested information. The email can be text, html, and even contain an attachment.

Now let’s compare this to Text to Print.

Text to Print

This offering aims to solve the same problem as digital collateral, but falls short in the most import areas, immediacy and convenience. First, consumers must provide their entire mailing address (as opposed to just email) and then they are forced to wait for a printed postcard to arrive via USPS. Let’s say you are hosting an event on a Friday night and text to print is used.
• Friday Night: Consumer opts-in to your program
• Saturday: Printer is closed
• Sunday: Printer is closed
• Monday: Postcards are printed
• Tuesday: Postcards are mailed
• Wednesday-Thursday: Postcards are in transit via USPS
• Friday: Consumer receives postcard that they requested one week ago!

In addition to the lack of timeliness, the marketer is also paying for production and postage for postcars, both non-issues with Digital Collateral.

To demo the Digital Collateral solution from Blumo, text BLUMO to 25866.

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5 Basic Questions to Ask Your Prospective Mobile Marketing Agency

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

As a traditional agency or brand marketer, you’ve no doubt been approached by numerous mobile marketing agencies pitching their services. While experience, costs, and capabilities vary greatly from firm to firm, there are a few basic questions that you can ask to help weed out the pretenders from the legitimate agencies. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a starting point.

1. Does the mobile agency own and manage its own platform?
Running mobile marketing campaigns is no trivial matter and working with an “agency” that is simply a reseller of a white label solution is an enormous risk. Should you ever wish to run engaging campaigns that fall outside the scope of the white label offering, it can prove costly, or even be impossible to execute on your vision. In addition, should there ever be a problem with your campaign, it’s comforting to know that your agency can address it immediately and not be at the mercy of their provider.

2. Does the mobile agency have its own short code?
Agencies that don’t have their own short code, most often don’t have their own platform either (see above). If your agency is sharing a short code with numerous other resellers, the number of keywords available to clients is severely limited and results in awkward calls-to-action such as “Text BRAND 1234 to Short Code”, rather than the much easier “Text BRAND to SHORT CODE”. Using a word, or words, with a space in between is confusing for consumers and is certainly not ideal.

3. Does the mobile agency send text messages via SMS or email?
It’s amazing how many companies are selling themselves as SMS marketing agencies but actually send outbound messages via email. Not only is this misleading to the client, but the messages can get caught up in carrier spam filters and they are limited to strictly outbound broadcasts with no level of interaction. Hardly an engaging marketing tool.

4. Do your users need to select their mobile carrier when participating?
This is seen when opting into a mobile campaign online and is a sure sign that your mobile provider doesn’t have its act together. Under no circumstances should the consumer be required to select their carrier, as the mobile agency can easily look that information up on the fly.

5. Does the mobile agency have software to detect mobile vs. tethered traffic when directing website visitors to the appropriately formatted website?
Your mobile agency should be able to provide you with code that when added to your website, directs visitors to the appropriately formatted content. Visitors accessing your website from a PC receive the PC experience and mobile users receive the mobile experience. There is no need to make people type in a mobile-specific url or click on a button for the mobile experience.

Again, these are just a few basics, but can save you time and energy in the long run.

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