Compliance is King

Last week, this court ruling reminded me of a great decision Waterfall Mobile made in its early days.

It was February 24, 2006. Waterfall’s product team was sitting in our just-built conference room discussing consumer privacy. The conversation hinged on this critical point: that the mobile phone is one of the most personal effects a person has. As a point of ethics we knew we needed to respect that fact, so we unanimously decided to do whatever we could to build a product with built-in privacy protections.

Back then mobile companies were popping up left and right – and many of them weren’t bothering to follow the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)’s strict campaign guidelines (pdf). Also at around that time, Waterfall had received some suspect requests from would-be clients.

After getting a few of these fishy new business opportunities, we opted to form a compliance team, one that still exists to this day. At least one member of each department (Product, Client Services, Sales & Engineering) sits on the committee.

Waterfall’s compliance committee reviews all major campaigns and collateral, approving all the items on this checklist:

• Message content
• Number of messages sent to the consumer
• Carrier-mandated language in the messages (i.e. “Standard message rates apply”)
• Terms
• Unsubscribe options
• Support and help information clearly displayed on all call-to-action materials and collaterals

In addition, we’ve created a very strict list upload policy, which ensures that the client has obtained its list of user numbers legally, and takes responsibility for same.

The result of all this? In a handful of cases, the committee has made decisions that resulted in Waterfall asking the client to take their business elsewhere. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but I wouldn’t have it any other way – because Waterfall has built a hard-earned reputation as a company that follows the rules.

The MMA, CTIA, mobile carriers and aggregators have made excellent progress coming together with simple and unified campaign regulations, and now take the step of routinely auditing active campaigns. These auditors check the message flow and the marketing collateral, and both are scored.

It’s always a pleasure when Waterfall receives an audit from a carrier or our aggregators. Why? Because most of the time we get perfect scores.

It is my distinct honor to send these high scores along to the rest of the Waterfall team, and a personal source of pride for me – because I know we’re doing our part to maintain the integrity of the mobile ecosystem.

I’m glad we made the right call on February 24, 2006.

Mobile Marketing Will Work Here

I just read MediaPost’s Engage:GenY article “Mobile Marketing Won’t Work Here” and wanted to respond. The author of this post has taken a rather uneducated (some would define it as simply clueless trolling) view of mobile marketing that stands in contrast to a growing number of reports and case studies that reflect the health of the mobile marketing industry, particularly among Generation Y.

The statistics are there: just last fall, Nielsen reported that the average mobile phone user sent more text messages than phone calls in a month, and this is particularly true among younger demographics. Creative opt-in marketing campaigns by way of couponing, sweepstakes and audience interaction all have proven track records, and teens are the most likely to engage with short code marketing. Mainstream examples of mobile engagement with today’s youth include:

• American Idol’s ongoing incorporation of audience engagement by way of SMS text-messaging voting
• President Obama announcing his VP candidate via SMS to 3 million subscribers
• Text-2-screen campaigns at concerts and sports games

However, those statistics and success stories don’t address the author’s most egregious statement, his definition of mobile marketing:

Essentially, a marketer will gain access to a list of private cell phone numbers, unbeknownst to the owners of the devices, and will send them a text message with advertisement copy.

The cell phone is an extremely personal device and any reputable marketer is mindful of a heightened sensitivity surrounding the medium. Frantic urban legend e-mail forwards about telemarketers invading the mobile space have been popular for years but the Mobile Marketing Association works hand-in-hand with both mobile marketing companies and the carriers to ensure the sanctity of the personal device is not encroached by overzealous marketing clients. Each of us in the industry supports (or should support) this effort by offering built-in MMA and carrier compliant message flow policies into each campaign our clients run.

The possibilities for the mobile channel marketer are extensive – messaging, polling, ringtones and wallpapers, mobile websites, store locators, coupons, last-minute announcements and deals – but they, as always, need to apply standard marketing principles to ensure that their campaign or brand message not only reaches their targeted pool of potential customers in a creative and compelling way, but that it’s done in a manner that is beneficial to all involved: customer, client, mobile marketing platform providers as well as the carriers themselves.

Advances in MMS Add Interactive Tools for Mobile Marketing

Mobile Marketer

Improvements in application-to-peer MMS (MM7) interoperability announced by the Mobile Marketing Association, will offer cross-carrier, interactive multimedia marketing opportunities for engaging consumers through their mobile devices.

MMS platform providers have correspondingly added advanced features for the deployment of A2P MMS technology in the marketing space, improving the creative presentation and interactivity of the service, including:

• Multiple slides of content or marketing “events” in a single MMS message
• MMS delivery receipts
• MMS device discovery and content adaptation of images, audio and video
• MMS hyperlink adaptation, shortened and click-through instructions based on device
• Multiple click-to-call links in a single MMS message
• Multiple click-to-web links in a single MMS message
• Optional terms and conditions slide, with text or spoken audio
• Incoming MMS keyword matching
• MMS bar code and NFC (Near Field Communication) object delivery
• DRM technology to manage the right to share and forward content

MMS is not a stand-alone technology but actually complementary to SMS.

“More importantly, MMS is likely to stand apart as a messaging technology offering marketers rich media opportunities, the immediacy of a user’s inbox, interactivity, the viral component of content sharing and an audience already familiar with and using messaging.”

View article.

Mobile Marketing Association Annual Study: Increase in Mobile Marketing Receptiveness and Adoption

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) released its Annual Mobile Attitude and Usage Study, conducted with research partner Synovate. The objective of the study is to help brands and advertisers better understand the habits of mobile users, provide insight into overall consumer mobile usage by demographic group and awareness for the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America markets.

Studies have clearly indicated text messaging levels have increased in the past three years, 4 out of 5 users text and 3 out of 5 users text daily or weekly. In an economy with decreasing advertising spend, marketers will focus on traditional media outlets. Can traditional media provide measurable usage data and metrics like mobile marketing campaigns can?

View Article.

MMA Revises Consumer Best Practices Guidelines

The Mobile Marketing Association released the latest version of its bi-annual U.S. Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services. Version 3.3 was released July 9. The MMA’s guidelines oversee cross-carrier mobile content services, including text and multimedia messaging, short codes, interactive voice response (IVR) and the mobile Web.

About MMA
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit association that strives to stimulate the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. The MMA is a global organization with over 650 members representing over forty countries. MMA members include agencies, advertisers, hand held device manufacturers, carriers and operators, retailers, software providers and service providers, as well as any company focused on the potential of marketing via mobile devices.

mmaglobal.com

Mobile Marketing Association

“The MMA, and the mobile marketing industry as a whole, have an extensive variety of information and resources available for use. From the basics, such as the Mobile Marketing Industry Overview, to the more advanced MMA International Journal of Mobile Marketing, resources containing information on mobile marketing abound.”

A great resource, jump on over to the MMA Information & Resources page and take a look around.

Industry Stats: Mobile End-user Behavior

End-user behavior:

50% of all U.S. users who can access WAP services now also browse outside of the carrier’s deck (Source: MMA Off Portal Committee phone survey of U.S. carriers, November 2006)

IDC has predicted that around 24 million US mobile users will be paying for some form of TV/Video content and services on their mobile devices by 2010 (Source: IDC)