[1] Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas.
[3] Marketing through cellphones SMS (Short Message Service) became increasingly popular in the early 2000s in Europe and some parts of Asia when businesses started to collect mobile phone numbers and send off wanted (or unwanted) content.
On average, SMS messages have a 98% open rate and are read within 3 minutes, making them highly effective at reaching recipients quickly.
While this has been fruitful in developed regions such as North America, Western Europe and some other countries, mobile SPAM messages (SMS sent to mobile subscribers without a legitimate and explicit opt-in by the subscriber) remain an issue in many other parts of the world, partly due to the carriers selling their member databases to third parties.
[5] Mobile marketing approaches through SMS have expanded rapidly in Europe and Asia as a new channel to reach the consumer.
For commercial purposes, virtual numbers, short codes, SIM hosting, and custom names are most commonly used and can be leased through bulk SMS providers.
For mass messaging, shortcodes are preferred over a dedicated virtual number because of their higher throughput and are great for time-sensitive campaigns and emergencies.
[9] In Europe the first cross-carrier SMS shortcode campaign was run by Txtbomb in 2001 for an Island Records release, In North America, it was the Labatt Brewing Company in 2002.
Physical and virtual SIM hosting allows a mobile number sourced from a carrier to be used for receiving SMS as part of a marketing campaign.
They can also activate different functions, which include entering a contest, forwarding to an email or mobile number, group chat, and sending an auto-response.
[13] In most countries, SMS senders need to identify themselves as their business name inside their initial text message.
When a user sends messages through a bulk SMS provider, it gets delivered to the recipient's carrier via an ON-NET connection or the International SS7 Network.
It's used to exchange information related to phone calls, number translations, prepaid billing systems, and is the backbone of SMS.
Some bulk SMS providers have the option to combine more reliable grey routing on lower value carriers with their ON-NET offerings.
Enterprise-grade SMS providers will usually allow new customers the option to sign-up for a free trial account before committing to their platform.
Reputable companies also offer free spam compliance, real-time reporting, link tracking, SMS API,[16] multiple integration options, and a 100% delivery guarantee.
This memorization increases virality of the content so that the users tend to recommend them to their friends and acquaintances, and share them via social networks.
[citation needed] SMS-CB allows messages (such as advertising or public information) to be broadcast to all mobile users in a specified geographical area.
For example, a retailer could send a mobile text message to those customers in their database who have opted-in, who happen to be walking in a mall.
Snacks company, Mondelez International, makers of Cadbury and Oreo products has committed to exploring proximity-based messaging citing significant gains in point-of-purchase influence.
[31] Location-based services (LBS) are offered by some cell phone networks as a way to send custom advertising and other information to cell-phone subscribers based on their current location.
In the United Kingdom, which launched location-based services in 2003, networks do not use trilateration; LBS uses a single base station, with a "radius" of inaccuracy, to determine a phone's location.
Location-based services can provide actual time information for the smartphones, such as traffic condition and weather forecast, then the customers can make the plan.
In the event of sudden traffic accidents, the roadside assistance company can develop an app to track the customer's real-time location without navigation.
[33] CPL expanded on the existing technology to allow for a completely automated process including the replacement of live operators with pre recorded messages.
It should be understood that irrespective of how well advertising messages are designed and how many additional possibilities they provide, if consumers do not have confidence that their privacy will be protected, this will hinder their widespread deployment.
[37] But if the messages originate from a source where the user is enrolled in a relationship/loyalty program, privacy is not considered violated and even interruptions can generate goodwill.
[41] Kaplan categorizes mobile marketing along the degree of consumer knowledge and the trigger of communication into four groups: strangers, groupies, victims, and patrons.
Consumer knowledge can be high or low and according to its degree organizations can customize their messages to each individual user, similar to the idea of one-to-one marketing.
The last group (high knowledge/pull), the "patrons" covers situations where customers actively give permission to be contacted and provide personal information about themselves, which allows for one-to-one communication without running the risk of annoying them.