Adventures in Mobile Marketing

Move over Goliath! SMBs are getting into the mobile game

The SMB/Mobile Connection
Often, cutting-edge marketing technologies can be difficult for a small to medium-size business (SMB) to adopt—especially while in its infancy. But even more so than with social media, mobile marketing doesn't require a marketer to amass a huge following to be successful. The focus is on quality connections with prospects and customers to drive incremental new and repeat sales.

"Mobile does an exceptional job of driving incremental ROI during periods [when foot traffic is slower]," says Steve Gray, COO of Money Mailer, a direct marketing services provider in Garden Grove, Calif.

For example, Family Dry Cleaners, near Chattanooga, Tenn., uses mobile marketing to increase weekly traffic as well as cross-sell its customers on cleaning services for items beyond its mainstays of shirts and pants. Via Money Mailer's mobile marketing services, powered by iLoop Mobile, the dry cleaner has been running weekly promotions since April 2009. A $5 discount on any cleaning service is offered to entice customers and prospects to opt in to the mobile program and gets promoted through the store's Money Mailer shared mail insert, 
in-store fliers, messaging on the bottom of the store's sales receipts and window signs. The first mobile coupon to drop after the first week of database sign-ups garnered a 20 percent redemption rate, and Family Dry Cleaners has been pleased with an uptick in weekly business from customers.

One of the biggest misconceptions for SMBs to hurdle, Gray notes, is that the up-front offer won't be worth the return. But that's not proven to be the case so far, he says, pointing to average response rates for Money Mailer clients between 10 percent and 14 percent for mobile coupons.

A big advantage mobile marketing has up its sleeve for all users is its ability to be shared. Certainly, mobile couponing, contests and other promotions can be "addressed to an already somewhat loyal patron. But they can increase that loyalty … and create viral buzz about events and promotions, such as $4 pitchers and a free medium pizza on 'Monday Night Football' nights," says Ahearn.

Another plus is the medium's ability to be measured and refined on the fly. "Say I'm doing a poll or a quiz or a coupon or whatever, and I'm not getting good response. The beauty is that instantly I can say, 'This offer's been up for two weeks, and I'm not nuts about the results—maybe the coupon isn't the right offer.' I then can log in to the platform, change the offer, press save and now my coupon's changed," explains Ahearn.

Being able to tweak offers to improve results definitely holds appeal for Rosati's Pizza in Overland Park, Kan. The restaurant, which sets itself apart by serving a higher-end pizza product than the national chains, made its mobile marketing maiden voyage in May 2009, offering a free medium pizza to grow its database. The offer was promoted via the restaurant's Money Mailer insert as well as in-store signage, which was a blowup of the insert creative for the store's front window.

The first two promotions pulled in more than 400 opt-ins to Rosati's mobile program, a result that met Owner Scott Fender's expectations, who notes "just to try new media is really great." But since the aggressive front-end offer did pull in far more teenagers who might not convert to paying customers, Fender revised his mobile sign-up promotion to a large, one-topping pizza for $5.99.

While he hasn't been tracking response closely, Fender says he has noticed certain customers who came in for the mobile sign-up offer coming back as repeat business. And as he gets a feel for what resonates best with his audience, he's considering reducing the frequency of his mobile coupons; weekly expiration dates might not be large enough response windows for his family-oriented clientele.

Gray notes that it's become a best practice to send no more than four text messages a month per customer. Such restraint has led to an average opt-out rate of less than 5 percent for Money Mailer clients.

Integration, Integration, Integration
On the bricks-and-mortar front, the success mantra is location, location, location. When it comes to mobile marketing, it's integration, 
integration, integration.

"There's no such thing as mobile marketing," says Ahearn. "There's only mobile-enabled marketing. So the first thing that anyone coming to mobile marketing [should understand], especially a small to medium-size business, is they should not look at mobile marketing as a silo. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It is something that you integrate with what you're already doing—everything you're doing in print, radio, TV, outdoor … all the other traditional media, including Web, can be mobile-enabled."

Aberdeen Group research supports this assertion, with Zabin emphasizing that 71 percent of marketers surveyed reported their mobile marketing activities are integrated with their other marketing efforts either somewhat (53 percent) or extensively (18 percent).

Gray agrees, adding that some Money Mailer clients that have followed this channel integration approach have culled mobile databases of a thousand or more. And integration, he explains, also includes training your staff on how to encourage and facilitate sign-ups.

TCBY's Salisbury, Md., franchise uses mobile marketing to attract students from nearby Salisbury University as well as keep up the patronage of family households in its area. In addition to integrating its mobile sign-up offer into its Money Mailer insert, in-store table tent cards, fliers and window clings, the frozen yogurt shop created promotion stickers to affix to its cups and merged the mobile program into its point-of-sale system to better track campaign results.

In the first two months of the campaign, more than 300 people opted in to the TCBY franchise's mobile program, including the coveted student segment. In addition, nearly 20 percent of these mobile participants have redeemed mobile coupons. The shop collects opt-ins and sends out mobile coupons on a weekly basis.

Gray points to a strong offer as a big factor driving the ability to grow a mobile database quickly. But he does caution marketers to think carefully about their sign-up offers and their ability to handle the flurry of response that could ensue. "If you're a yogurt shop," he says, "and you're giving out a free scoop for sign-up, put some parameters around that free scoop to ensure you're minimizing your liability in terms of what your exposure is."

Tips for Mobile Success
"You don't have to jump in to mobile marketing full force," says Ahearn. "It works well enough from a simple text-messaging option. For direct marketing for local businesses, mobile is there as a meat-and-potatoes, no-brainer channel. The majority of the successful mobile marketing out there is no-brainer stuff."

Of course, it helps to remember that this marketing channel is highly personal and thus carefully guarded by people. "There's a degree of trust you have to maintain with your customers, or they'll walk away," Ahearn reminds.

As with any other direct marketing channel, segmentation is a key best practice that can help a marketer deliver the relevant communications expected by mobile program participants.

According to Zabin's research on mobile marketing for Aberdeen Group, the three activities leveraged by best-in-class performers in the mobile marketing space are:

• segmenting target audiences by behavioral data rather than phone type;

• ensuring the target audiences have the type of handsets required to support the tech or app and that the campaign is compatible across carriers and networks; and

• including unique short codes on billboards and other media to enable location-based messaging and precision marketing effectiveness.

Ahearn explains that the first two of these requirements can be accomplished with a preferences page on a Web site or a mobile Web site. "Smart marketers are designing the mobile Internet experience for the consumer so that it's available to the legacy feature phone users as well as the most advanced smartphones," he adds.

Whether you opt to create a mobile Web site or not, mobile CRM conducted via a preference page allows you to capture data useful for segmentation—frequency and content types, as well as some basic demographics like age and gender. When you compare behaviors and interests of certain segments, this information helps you determine which offers and messages will perform best to them, Ahearn says. What's more, this insight can be translated to efforts in other channels. "The beauty about mobile is that it is accessible anytime anywhere. My customer base doesn't have to be logged in to a laptop for a brand to gain this information. This kind of opt-in and interaction is available at any time," Ahearn states.

Circling back to perhaps the most enticing reason for marketers to opt in to mobile marketing, ROMI, Gray points out: "It's worth the investment to get your audience to opt in … because long term, you probably can increase their lifetime value by 10, 20 and maybe even 30 percent."