There is a lot of expectation around mobile marketing. The ability to reach all those people on the move and interrupt them with our messages is oh so alluring. Yet there are some brutal realities that we need to face. Friday, eMarketer featured a story, Mobile Marketing Ready for Takeoff, that adds to the expectation. They did include some wise caveats stating that “delivering something of value to the user is just as important as how a mobile campaign looks”. But, this is permission marketing 101 and mobile marketing is no different. Just because the majority of people in industrialized countries own a cell phone… and the capability of pushing messages to these devices exists, does not mean that it is a great idea. If anything, mobile marketers may be embarking on the toughest direct marketing channel yet.
The challenges with this channel were highlighted in another eMarketer story released yesterday Mobile Users Easy To Annoy? According to recent research by Web Visible and Nielsen//NetRatings, 92% of respondents say that local business ads sent to their mobile phones would irritate them. Surprise, surprise. Mobile marketing, at least when used as push technologies such as SMS and MMS are incredibly invasive. This study highlights a critical point—there will be significant lashback against companies that invade the personal space of their customers. Ill-timed SMS messages will be as welcome as a close-talking college professor with bad breath!
I realize that this is not the extent of mobile marketing. There are opportunities in search, in branded applications, in location-based advertising when leveraging GPS, but the reality is that we are not there yet. As Jordan Bitterman of Digitas stated at OMMA East last month in New York, “It doesn’t have the scale, our marketers are looking for scale.”
The critical point here is that we are heading for a collision course. Email marketing continues to struggle with SPAM related issues, and mobile marketing may be heading down a path that could be much worse. Invade my inbox and I may ignore you. Invade my phone, and well… remember what happened to telemarketing? Tread carefully, don’t buy into the hype without knowing the pitfalls. I say this on the heals of our recent announcement that ExactTarget is launching the ability to send SMS messages as part of our upcoming 119 release. Yes, I do think SMS will have its place as a direct marketing channel, but not as we have ever known it before. Before embarking on this new frontier, make sure there is an incredibly valid mobile strategy in place to ensure that messages are not perceived as annoying.
