INSIGHT: Go With The Flow; How To Keep Up The Conversation In Permission Mobile Marketing
Editor’s note: As with all marketing – digital and physical – the approach you chose depends on your target audience and your business objectives. This guest column from Lisa Cianguilli and the Optism team outlines how companies can start the conversation with people and keep the momentum by offering valuable information and assistance they are sure to value. A community health service might link its mobile campaign to useful information and then follow up with messages that help people plan their visits or access services they need and appreciate. A company in the consumer-facing entertainment business might want to deliver customers concert information, tickets and then follow-up by asking what bands individuals are really interested in knowing about. The takeaway here: precision and knowing your customer is the best way to high performance.
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In a mobile marketing service like Optism, there are two different conversations going on: one between the mobile operator and its customers, and one between brands and consumers. In both cases, those initiating the conversation — the operators and brands — need to provide sufficient incentive to their audiences to keep the conversation going. As we talked about in a recent blog, that incentive doesn’t have to be monetary. What is most important is that you focus on providing people content that they want, not content you want them to have.
Your conversations begin with the opting in process, but where you take it from there is up to you. As Jeff Hayzlett tells us in Mobile Marketing Tips, “A marketer’s dream is to engage in meaningful two-way conversations with people who are truly interested in their brand, and mobile gives you that direct line of communication — constantly.” For brands, the challenge is to keep that one-on-one conversation going through creative and compelling interactions that focus on providing useful content. People won’t feel interrupted if what you are providing is valuable to them.
For example, if you’re a community health care center, your mobile campaign could include useful information on flu vaccination clinics and scheduled operating hours. Follow-up messages can advise on wait times or other information that will help people plan how and when they can access your services.
Read the rest of the column here.
