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It’s become clear to me that those who are closest to their customers have the best chance of success. Research backs up this experience, showing time and again that long-term customer relationships directly impact current and probable future sales. For most businesses, getting customers is important, but keeping them is what generating long-term value and profitability.
Mobile has revolutionized the ability for business to build relationships with their customers. Nothing gets a marketer closer to their customer than mobile does, and the personal nature of the mobile experience makes it possible to create relationships with immediacy. The key to maintaining these relationships is revealed in what it means to have a customer’s permission.
Permission-based marketing is no longer a simple binary of opt-in/opt-out. As marketers, we need to be sensitive to nuances of the customer relationship. We need to understand the context of engagement, what it means to respond to customer needs and preferences, and how to be there at the time of expressed need.
A feeling of give and take is at the heart of both emotional and transactional relationships, and permission-based marketing creates a cooperative exchange. Permission-based marketing puts consumers in control of establishing the parameters of that exchange, enabling them to overtly identify the branded communications they consider valuable. The ultimate objective is to build a one-to-one relationship via continuing engagement on a mobile device. Permission-based marketing helps achieve that by protecting the consumer experience.
When mobile users trust brands to deliver timely, relevant promotions, information and other content, they’re far more likely to pay attention to those messages rather than dismiss them as irrelevant or, worse, as spam. As a result, permission-based mobile marketing helps deliver a strong return on investment by increasing the likelihood that consumers will trust those messages and then act on them.
When Alcatel-Lucent surveyed 2,223 mobile-using young people in 11 countries, 63% said they would be more likely to purchase products and services from preferred brands that use permission-based mobile marketing. Fully 76% felt that ads should be interest- and preference-based, and nearly half of all respondents said they were more likely to remain loyal to their operator if it offered a permission-based mobile marketing service.
When consumers benefit, brands benefit
Relevance and complete control over the marketing and advertising messages they receive aren’t the only ways that permission-based mobile marketing benefits consumers, and this is where we start to see the context of long-term engagement established:
–Permission-based marketing enables two-way communications across the mobile channel. Consumers now have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with a brand of their choice, at a time and in a format of their choosing.
–Customers develop deeper connections with their favorite brands, something that many say they want. For example, fans of a particular hockey team could choose to receive exclusive ticket discounts and other promotions, effectively rewarding their trust in the team’s brand.
–Consumers can determine when and how often they receive messages from their favorite brands. This ability minimizes both interruptions and a deluge of messages that might cause some consumers to opt out because of marketing fatigue.
When consumers benefit, brands benefit. For example, Out There Media’s recent study of consumers in Asia found that the average conversion rate for opt-in mobile advertising campaigns was 25.2%. The study also showed that opt-in messaging campaigns had response rate 20 times higher than non-permission-based campaigns.
That isn’t an isolated success story. In the United Kingdom, the advertising-supported mobile virtual network operator Blyk achieved an average response rate of 26% for its permission-based SMS and MMS campaigns. The Blyk service’s successor, Orange Shots, currently has response rates averaging 25%.
As stated earlier, getting a consumer to opt-in should not be an end goal. The opt-in is the first step in gathering the data for managing consumer permission. The context of engagement is explored when customers allow brands to collect their information (e.g., preferences, interests, location, etc.) in order to increase the relevance of messaging and engagement. By building a database of stated interests and preferences, and marrying this database with real-time mobile engagement (e.g., check-ins, searches and location) brands now can engage their customers with meaningful and relevant messaging. Brands can continually mine the data to support new, effective campaigns, reducing the chances that a brand will lose mindshare over time.
The mobile channel gives brands and agencies powerful new options for taking permission-based marketing to the next level, including living up to customer retention management’s promise of one-to-one marketing — i.e., getting closer to consumers. Now that you as a marketer are literally in the consumer’s hand or pocket, the 1% to 2% response rates achieved with the spray-and-pray approach of traditional programs can be replaced with intimate, permission-based exchanges that generate significant returns for both the brand and the consumer.
We live in exciting times. Permission-based mobile marketing changes the advertising paradigm from interruption to communication. Just as important, this communication goes both ways, enabling brands to move from a broadcast monologue to a dialogue and expand their relationship with their customers.
Permission-based mobile marketing ultimately builds on a principle that the Mobile Marketing Association has emphasized for years in initiatives such as “U.S. Consumer Best Practices”: Protect the consumer experience, and you’ll protect the opportunity. For more insights into how permission-based mobile marketing does exactly that, download a free copy of the MMA’s new white paper, “Building Permission-Based Mobile Marketing,” at www.mmaglobal.com/PermissionBasedMarketingOct2011.pdf.
