The trouble with mobile marketing

(should it exist, or will we soon get annoyed with it?)

Anyone who has ever worked with me will know this is something I've banged on about at length for years. Most mobile marketers have either disagreed with me or ignored me, which I've taken as a good sign.

One of the primary lessons learned over a decade of interacting with consumers over their mobile devices is what I used to call 'the unique way they interact with their 0-9 keypad'. These days it's as likely to be a QWERTY keyboard or a touchscreen, but the principle is the same. Context is king...

Something which sometimes confounds mobile marketers is that people reply to their campaigns. Odd that, given that the primary purpose of their mobile phone is two-way communication. Often it's a tiny percentage, but they are usually the people who matter (they're the ones likely to switch: angry customers; or the ones likely to be upsold: interested customers).  Consequently, I've found that the best mobile marketing 'campaigns' (and I'll come on to the terminology in a second) quickly turn into mobile CRM. Far from being 'successful' because 99.9% of people blindly followed your instructions, the 'campaigns' that I've worked on that produce the best results have been the ones that have truly engaged large numbers of the target audience. They reply. They call you. They interact with you. They don't just text a code from an on-pack promotion.

The best mobile marketing becomes mobile CRM, whether you want it to or not.

And you should want it to. Because the messages your brand sends to customers are destined to become, once we have spam folders on our phones, spam, unless they're useful. The best 'campaigns' aren't campaigns at all - they're services. Utility is king.

And the good news for mobile marketers is that services save you from wearing out your shoe leather winning campaign after campaign. Services are annuity revenues.