Mobile Messaging in North America: a Fresh Look at Current Options for Marketers

Mobile Messaging in North America: A Fresh Look at Current Options for Marketers

March 2012

A Mobile Marketing White Paper from Member Companies of the MMA

MMA – Current State of Messaging

Mobile Messaging is the most used means of consumer communication ever created – surpassing email traffic by 5x and postal traffic by 300x in 2011.

Mobile messaging’s simplicity and ubiquity have enabled it to flourish as a consumer-to- consumer communication channel and offers unique benefits to marketers looking to engage their customers on their mobile devices. Over the last several years, early adopters amongst mobile marketers have been able to benefit by utilizing SMS to communicate with their customers. Today, however, there are several new and feature- rich forms of messaging to consider for marketers to take advantage of when communicating with their audiences, in addition to the ubiquitous SMS text message.

The goal of this whitepaper is to breakdown each of these forms of messaging, point out the unique characteristics of each protocol and share successful examples of how marketers can leverage them to meet their marketing goals. The paper also provides a window into the future evolution of mobile messaging.

What is not included in this paper is information on new types of consumer-to-consumer messaging (not used by marketers), or guidance on which form of messaging is the “right” way to send a message. There are differences in each method that affect how marketers are trying to communicate with their customers and each option offers different benefits. For additional information or questions, MMA member companies well versed in these tactics are listed at the end of the whitepaper.

The Current State of Messaging – Considerations for Brand Marketers

So what exactly is mobile messaging?

For the last 13 years, mobile messaging meant largely SMS or, quite simply, text-only messaging. Today however, technology has evolved greatly and today marketers can use more feature-rich forms of mobile messaging and deliver them via a number of different protocols including SMS, MMS (also known as Multimedia messaging), Push Notifications, as well as email.

Messaging is a two way communication medium, being both parties—the consumer and the marketer—can use it to engage and communicate with each other. If a marketer wishes to initiate communication with a consumer through messaging, as discussed later, it is important to recognize that industry best practices, and in a number of cases a legal mandate, require that the marketer receive explicit consent to send a message to a consumers device (which is also referred to as securing an opt-in). Since the marketer cannot use the messaging medium to secure the opt-in alternative marketing channels must be employed. The marketer may place calls to action in traditional media and invite the consumer to take action providing his or her consent to receive messages from the marketer. Example traditional channels include, television, radio,

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billboards, print materials, online or mobile website, mobile application and more. The call to actions can invite the consumer to provide consent by calling, tapping, swiping, submitting, sending in a text picture or video message, scanning a QR codes, or even “liking” something within via social networks. The key is that the marketer provides clear and transparent notice to the consumer as to what they are consenting to receive.

The Mobile Customer Journey

The mobile channel is quickly becoming the first point of interaction between consumers and brands, which is driving successful marketers to identify ways to connect with their customer throughout all stages of their respective customer journey. Mobile messaging provides the connective tissue between marketers and their consumers during the customer journey as the mobile phone has become an indispensible device always in proximity to the consumer.

The customer journey begins with Awareness and continues through Consideration, Engagement, Transaction and Loyalty - with new technologies now driving consumer brand advocacy. By infusing mobile appropriate experiences into each aspect of the customer journey, marketers can initiate and forge strong, long-lasting, customer relationships with their audiences. Deriving its power from the “right here, right now” opportunity to engage, mobile provides the glue to drive deeper engagement, sales and loyalty for a brand.

Awareness--Customer first hears Brand Awareness about brand/product Brand Consideration—Customer interacts to Interactions/ determine if it meets their needs Acquisition Engagement--Customers take action! Driving (e.g. fill out form, signup for list, go to Engagement store, etc.) & Sales Transaction—Customer buys or completes intended task Advocacy Advocacy--Customer shares information with their network

Loyalty Loyalty—Customer buys or completes another task

Unlike any other communication channel, mobile messaging delivers a uniquely personal experience that’s transforming the way brands are thinking about marketing as it enables a marketer to interact in a two-way dialogue with the consumer throughout the consumer journey.

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It All Starts with an Integrated Marketing Strategy

It is important not to think of mobile in a silo. One of the most effective ways to deploy mobile is to layer it into all of your existing marketing plans, as discussed above, and identify opportunities where smart mobile touch points can augment the value of your traditional campaigns.

By integrating a mobile call-to-action on all forms of advertising, mobile messaging can bridge the gap between physical and digital, enabling marketers to appeal to consumers’ interest in a product or service at the very moment when the consumer is most engaged.

A messaging call-to-action may take any number of forms, including short code, long code, action code (e.g. QR Code), application dialog or setting, button or abbreviated dial code to name a few. A key point to remember, however, is that the initial call-to- action is an invitation by the marketer to the consumer to provide consent and join in to a two-way exchange of content. Moreover, any of those interactions deliver content directly and then lead people to a website, mobile app, social network or in-store to continue the engagement.

You can use mobile messaging to:

Increase Awareness & Consideration: Mobile messaging can also be used to drive consideration for your product or service by presenting messaging that encourages the consumer to learn more about your products. This can be done by delivering a relevant piece of information about a product (i.e. an instructional video, offers or deals, exclusive content, etc.) through mobile messaging.

Achieve Engagement and Transactions: Today’s mobile marketers are driving engagement and transactions through a wide range of messaging tactics. Using messaging, this can be achieved through several tactics, including highly engaging forms of content, time-sensitive offers (expiring today), or direct links to a commerce storefront (via the mobile web, in-app) to close the loop and complete a transaction.

Empower Customers to Become Advocates: Mobile messaging enables your consumers to become your advocates as they can share the message instantly via their address books and social networks. This simple act turns your list members into full-blown company advocates. If the average Facebook user has 130 fans, each mobile-shared post dramatically increases the visibility of your message, brand and mobile messaging program.

Creating & Maintaining Loyalty: Connecting with the consumer on a mobile device will arguably be the most important way for marketers to engage with their audience. Once a consumer has given permission to send them messages on

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their mobile device, it is critical to reward them with valuable content in return. The mobile device is incredibly personal and that invitation to interact over this channel cannot be taken lightly.

What it takes to be successful with mobile messaging

Mobile messaging plays a vital role in this process of maintaining an engagement with the consumer. Mobile marketers who have built successful customer journey programs that include messaging have recognized the following elements as being critical to their success: - Be Unique: The message needs to be unique and valuable. Be creative, do not just re-hash content shared across other channels - Be Interesting: Content matters, showcase your brand by delivering content which is exciting and engaging for customers - Determine Right Frequency: Deliver messages that do not inundate your customer, but provide valuable information frequently - Be Time-sensitive: Localize your messages to match the time zone of your customers - Have a clear call to action: Be specific and concise about what you want the consumer to do.

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A Fresh Look at Messaging Options

As more and more brand marketers gain experience with mobile messaging, in any form, the need to be cautious with consumers is still paramount. While consumer adoption of smart phones continues to increase, with the requisite data plans, there are still far more feature phones in use around the globe. Text messaging plans among owners of feature phones can still be a financial burden, albeit perhaps diminishing, on consumers in all markets. Therefore, the brand marketer must be respectful of the cost impact any messaging program might incur on consumers, even if only the stalwart SMS and MMS approaches are deployed. There is a good reason why all such programs must carry this message: “Msg & Data Rates may apply”. SMS SMS, which stands for Short Messaging Service (also referred to as text messaging) is now the most prevalent form of communication in the world, with over eight trillion messages exchange worldwide in 2011. In the United States over six billion messages exchanged each day, up from roughly 300 million in the entire month of may 2003. The first SMS message, “Merry Christmas,” was sent in 1992 from Neil Papworth’s computer to Richard Jarvis’ Vodafone Orbitel 901 handset in Europe as a way to leverage unused telecommunications network capacity.

For the first several years after it was introduced, text messages could only be exchanged between users of the same wireless carrier. In the mid 1990s in Europe and Asia, and around 2001 in the United States, it became possible for text messages to be exchanged across carriers by assigning a 10-digit number to a mobile device called a “long code,” a.k.a. a phone number.

The first commercial text messaging, also known as A2P or Application to Person text messaging, first appeared in Europe in 1997 and in the United States around 2001. In 2003, U.S. carriers and messaging service providers, along with the trade organization CTIA, agreed to create 5-digit numbers that businesses could use for text message marketing. These 5-digit numbers are called common short codes (“CSCs”) or “short codes.” CSCs become commercially live across all carriers in the U.S. in 2005 (they had been active in Europe and Asia since the late 1990s)

How SMS Works To reach a mobile phone, text messages are sent on a wireless channel between a mobile phone and the mobile tower called the “control channel.” The control channel sends small packets of data back and forth between the mobile phone and tower to ensure the connection between the two is operating. This control channel is different from the channel used for wireless voice communications and can only accommodate small amounts of data. Therefore, the actual amount of data used by a text message is extremely small (approximately 140 bytes). The control channel is independently necessary apart from SMS because of the need for a mobile phone to calibrate with

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mobile towers. SMS simply takes advantage of unused capacity on the control channel to send the low-data SMS messages.

The Value of SMS The types of entities using SMS for marketing and communication vary widely, but the following are the two primary categories:

Transactional Messages: are non-commercial, personalized messages from a business to an individual that regard a previously agreed upon relationship between that individual and business, such as an account, transaction, or service. Such messages may confirm an action by an individual related to the individual’s account, update a policy relevant to the individual, or provide other information or services related to that individual’s previously agreed upon relationship with the business or service. Traditionally, these messages have relied upon short codes via SMS, although more businesses are beginning to use long codes (i.e., 10-digit telephone numbers) for transactional SMS messages where list management and an ongoing messaging relationship is not required.

Marketing messages: are messages from a business whose purpose is commercial advertisement, marketing, or the promotion of a commercial product or service. Mobile marketing messages via SMS can complement a brand’s overall marketing strategy by providing mobile touch points throughout the customer lifecycle. These messages include coupons or promotions, responses to an individual’s action requested in an advertisement, polling or feedback, or bulk messages with general information about a topic requested by many individuals (weather update or sports score). Traditionally, these messages use short codes that have the benefit of guaranteed delivery by the wireless carriers.

SMS Case Studies: Participant Media and TakePart Use SMS Digital Activism For The Cove Objective: Winner of the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, The Cove follows a high-tech dive team on a mission to discover the truth about the international dolphin capture trade as practiced in Taiji, Japan. Similar to efforts for Participant Media’s other activist films like An Inconvenient Truth, Syriana, and Waiting For “Superman,” the leading studio and its digital division, TakePart, needed to develop a social action campaign that would incite action from the film’s viewers. Ultimately, Participant Media and TakePart decided on an SMS campaign for “The Cove” with four goals:

Effectively engage impassioned viewers with a compelling call to action Build a mobile subscriber database to target ongoing outreach Obtain signatures for a petition in support of the film’s cause End the annual slaughter of more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises in Japan

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Strategy: To make the SMS call to action as engaging as possible, Participant Media and Takepart inserted it into the film’s closing credits. With viewers at their highest moment of inspiration and still in the theater, those who wanted to contribute and participate would have an immediate and interactive way to do so. Upon texting DOLPHIN to 44144, participants received a prompt to send a letter in support of the film’s cause directly to President Obama via their mobile device. They also opted in to the campaign’s subscriber list and received ongoing updates and notifications about the state of the campaign.

Result: After “The Cove’s” opening weekend, 25,000 people had opted in to the subscriber list, with 29% signing the petition. With the DVD release, 13,000 more people opted in to the list with 25% signing the petition. Then came the 2010 Academy Awards. Upon accepting the Oscar for Best Documentary, Ric O’Barry held up a banner with the campaign’s SMS call to action. The show’s producers panned away only 7 seconds into the acceptance speech. This savvy action sent the campaign viral. The subscriber list grew 88% that night, inciting coverage from major media outlets including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, Mashable and Mobile Marketer.

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As of 2012, the still active subscriber list numbers in the hundreds of thousands, with over 1.5 million signatures (and counting) captured for the petition to end the dolphin slaughter in Japan.

Interactive Voice & SMS – Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Sprint

Objective: Sprint and its creative advertising agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GSP), created a nationwide campaign promoting Sprint’s wireless service. With a tagline of “All. Together. Now.” the campaign was designed to promote the recurring idea that everyone should be able to accomplish more without worrying about higher wireless costs and slower data speeds.

Strategy: The on-air campaign, which ran for several months on broadcast TV and other media, encouraged users to contact a Missouri resident named Veatrice Henson, who was turning 100 years old. GSP helped get this message across by encouraging viewers to call, text or email their birthday wishes to Veatrice Henson, to help her celebrate her happy 100th birthday.

The Sprint and GSP teams evaluated existing technologies, and determined a need to support voice and SMS for mobile users, along with email. Given the short time constraint of a few months to develop, build, and run the campaign, ease of integration and scalability were key. For this campaign Sprint and GSP used voice and SMS via long code, as the service was initiated directly by an individual user but also had to support both inbound voice and SMS. The “All. Together. Now” campaign enables Transactional Messaging.

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Result: Within a matter of two weeks, the Sprint and GSB teams built the application for the “All. Together. Now.” campaign, enabling it to run on numbers supporting both voice and SMS. The campaign ran on broadcast television on 40+ major networks, ran in web advertising across the top US-trafficked sites, and in traditional print and outdoor media. Running for several weeks the campaign served as a countrywide call-to action for users across all platforms.

The campaign resulted in over 256,000 calls and 265,000 text messages. Long code capability allowed Sprint and GSP to reach users on all mobile phone models and operator networks in the US, via both voice and SMS, all on a campaign that was devised, built, and launched in a matter of a few weeks.

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MMS Multimedia messaging service (MMS) was created in 2001. Today, MMS is growing , fueled by consumers’ desire to share the pictures and videos that they create everyday on their camera-enabled mobile devices as well as businesses’ desire to deliver their marketing messages .

How MMS Works

Perhaps the most important factor in the rise of MMS occurred when all major United States wireless carriers simplified their mobile messaging plans, enabling consumers to send and receive MMS messages (to and from one another and to and from businesses) for the same price as a standard text message. This means that a marketer such as a movie studio or retail brand can send a high-quality video message (i.e. trailer, product demonstration, etc.) to an opted-in consumer’s mobile phone for the same cost as a 160-character text message to the consumer.

The Value of MMS

MMS is the first mobile messaging format that was specifically designed to deliver multimedia of any type (audio, pictures, slideshows, videos) to mobile phones. The power of a well-executed MMS campaign offers the same impact that the best advertising campaigns do – the ability to layer rich visual marketing messages with a powerful call to action to entice your customer to take your desired action.

MMS is the second most used data application on mobile phones (after SMS text messaging), pre-loaded on nearly every mobile phone in the United States (90+%) and over 3.5B mobile consumers globally.1 Importantly, while smartphones are growing fast as a percentage of the overall market (estimated 44% of all US mobile devices in 2012), MMS can deliver a high-quality rich media experience to nearly all mobile devices, including feature phones and smartphones alike, which means it has greater than twice the reach of a smartphone based mobile marketing strategy.

When a MMS marketing message is delivered to a mobile device, consumers have to open their messaging application and click play to watch the video, view the photo show or listen to the song. To get started, you will need to build an opt-in mobile audience (all mobile messaging is permission-based) before delivering MMS marketing messages to your customers. Then pick a technology provider that has three capabilities to help you deliver your MMS messages to your audience: 1) Cross-carrier MMS connectivity (this means the ability to deliver MMS messages to your customers across all of the wireless networks); 2) Content transcoding capability (this means the ability to convert your content to the right format for any of your customers’ mobile phones), and;

1 Source: Tomi Ahonen, Mobile Consultant

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3) Device detection capability (this means the technology platform can detect what type of phones your customers have to deliver the correct format of content.) These requirements will enable you to find out if your partner can deliver a rich media MMS message to your audience. Once you’ve selected your technology partner, you need to craft your marketing message, provide it to your technology partner and you’re ready to start.

MMS Case Studies:

Charlotte Russe – Mystery Date MMS Campaign

Charlotte Russe, a mall-based specialty retailer, continues to lead the way in marketing their products and brand online, on mobile, as well as in-store.

Driving Engagement and Loyalty

Objective: Charlotte Russe was already doing a phenomenal job with social media with over 500,000 Facebook fans, so the next step was to take their brand mobile. The campaign goals were to drive retail sales and customer loyalty with women ages 16-26, a core demographic already inclined to interact with brands via social media and mobile.

Strategy: With a new “Mystery Date” campaign, the strategy was to launch a short-term mobile video MMS campaign across a 3-day weekend. Shoppers participated by texting MATCH to 21534, selecting their Mystery Date from three handsome choices and as an incentive; they received a prize delivered via mobile video. Charlotte Russe used mobile coupons as an incentive to enter the contest, then delivered via a MMS video message from their winning “mystery date.” To promote the campaign, the retailer leveraged POS signage in all 500 stores nationwide and enthusiastic employees encouraged shoppers to participate. In addition to the signage at POS terminals and window displays, Charlotte Russe encouraged Facebook fans to take a chance and meet their Mystery Date in-store.

Results: In 3 days Charlotte Russe grew their mobile database by 33%. By including a mobile video, Charlotte Russe’s participation was more than 300% higher than their previous text only campaigns conducted in the past. Charlotte Russe found that by growing its mobile database, it continues to strengthen its brand loyalty and increase sales during a time when retailers are struggling to build a deep relationship with an increasingly fickle and price-sensitive shopper. Furthermore, Charlotte Russe has stated that its MMS/SMS messaging program drives three times the revenue of its email program and while email has been an important driver of e-commerce, mobile messaging drives in- store traffic, which is an important objective for them.

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ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars” Mobile MMS Exclusive Content

The Disney ABC Television Group is a television group in the United States that provides family and youth oriented programming including feature films, made-for-TV original movies, network syndicated reruns, and original series. With their vast audiences with various interests, ABC Family continues to seek the most creative ways to drive tune-in and innovative ways to engage their viewers to create loyal fans.

Driving Engagement, Loyalty and Advocacy Objective Pretty Little Liars (PLL), one of ABC Family’s original series, is based on a series of popular young adult novels with a built-in fan base. It rapidly became a top TV show for teen females and cable’s No. 1 show at 8 pm. PLL’s main storyline revolves around four teenage girls and their “missing” friend, Alison, also known as “A”, who mysteriously sends the girls ominous text messages “from the grave”. ABC Family wanted to implement a campaign that would creatively use innovative technologies to engage their core fans.

Strategy: To further engage viewers of PLL, ABC Family developed an ongoing “Mobile Insider” text campaign prompting fans to opt-in to receive exclusive text messages from “A” along with weekly video sneak-peeks of upcoming episodes. These “A” texts not only promote upcoming episodes, but are written in the voice of “A” and approved by show runners.

Viewers joined the mobile club by texting SECRETS to 462223 (GOABCF) or by entering their mobile number on the Pretty Little Liars mobile opt-in page. In 2010- 2011, mobile messaging became the centerpiece of a campaign designed to drive tune- in and build audience loyalty for the new original series.

In addition, PLL included “share to social networks” prompts within each message, allowing each fan to share this exclusive, interesting information across their own social networks.

Results: The PLL Secrets mobile campaign resulted in 20% audience engagement and a six- figure mobile subscriber database, with fewer than 2% opt-outs, significantly lower than the average mobile marketing campaign. The “SECRETS to 462223” campaign became a trending topic across many social media outlets due to its enormous popularity. Pretty Little Liars remains number one in its time slot and continues to garner advertiser sponsorships. The campaign database continues to grow by sharing compelling texts with intriguing video content and mysterious messages to the mobile audience.

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Push Notifications Push notifications are an IP-based messaging medium that allows applications installed on any connected device to actively communicate with an end user. It’s called “push” because the technology enables a device to listen for messages being ‘pushed’ to it from the application owner’s servers. Push notifications must be opted-in to and can consist of plain text or rich HTML that can include music, videos and survey forms. Messages can be generated automatically from a server, triggered based on user activity, user context (like location and preference), or sent manually. Audience groups can be segmented providing the ability to create targeted campaigns.

Push allows you to engage users directly on their mobile devices utilizing data and Wi- Fi networks instead of cellular networks. The limitation of push notifications is that they require a consumer to have a mobile application installed on their device and to have opted-in to receive them; hence, the reach of push notifications is limited to consumers with smartphones (44% of the US in 2012), an installed app and having opted-in.

The Value of Push Notifications With the average lifespan of a mobile app hovering at 30 days2 after being downloaded, push notifications are becoming a key component of long-term mobile strategies. Push notifications can extend the life of an app and provide personalized experiences, giving users control to identify their preferences and opt-in or out at any time.

Mobile networks like Verizon, and platforms like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, are investing in push notifications as well, answering massive consumer demand to build better user experiences and offer enhanced capabilities. This evolution in push notifications provides businesses with a new ability to use social, local, and mobile context to create more engaging and personal experiences. Social integration, location- based messaging, the ability to create campaign landing pages within apps, business- friendly composition and measurement tools, along with investments in new offerings such as Notification Center and Newsstand, are helping to bring push notifications into the core of mobile strategies.

Push Notification Case Studies: Delivering A Daily Dose Of Learning Push notifications gave the world's largest and most authoritative online dictionary, Dictionary.com, the ability to create a Word of the Day app that could actively engage their users. Dictionary.com uses push as a vehicle to deliver a new vocabulary-building word every day, directly to millions of iPhone and Android users.

Making Radio Social The Jelli music app aims to provide a dynamic, social and gamified approach to radio.

2 http://www.eyefortravel.com/mobile-and-technology/average-lifespan-certain-mobile-apps-can-be-brief-30-days

To better realize this goal, Jelli began promoting community and game features with a social strategy. It used push notifications to revitalize social-sharing and rating functions, delivering real-time alerts to highlight the app’s unique features. When users suggest a song to Jelli, they will get a push if their song makes it to the radio and if the community enjoys their song. The push notifications drove a 30% increase in user engagement along with dramatic increases in the time and frequency of app usage.

Driving Commerce – CoffeeTable Named one of the best free shopping apps, CoffeeTable for iPad enables shoppers to buy from their favorite catalogs and set push notifications to fit their tastes, preferred brands and price sensitivities, as well as hear about limited time offers. Compared to email, CoffeeTable found push notifications to be much more immediate and timely, attain much higher reach and result in more conversions because they arrive front-and- center on the iPad. Push messaging enabled CoffeeTable to quickly double active customer engagement with the app.

Abbreviated Dial Codes (ADC) ADC numbers (e.g. **BRAND) are between two and twelve digits, which people call from their mobile phones to engage with a brand. ADC numbers are a new form of audio-based messaging, which can in turn deliver mobile messaging back to the consumer. Instead of texting into a code, consumers participate in an ADC campaign by dialing ** or # and a code into their phone number and they are directly connected to a brand message.

The Value of ADC One of the benefits of this channel is its ubiquity, all consumers across the top 4 US carriers enable this functionality and any word or phrase could potentially be an ADC number. As a result, ADCs presents a branding opportunity similar to branded website domains, vanity phone numbers or vanity short codes. Like domains and vanity numbers, branded ADC codes can be promoted as an on-the-go, call-to-action, with many types of promotional materials. ADCs can used to leverage existing mobile assets including mobile apps, text messaging, mobile web sites, streaming video and more. ADCs are not limited to brand names or corporations. ADC codes can be adopted for specific products or general products.

They can be used for personnel, a department within a company, a show or character, or a campaign effort. They can even be used to invite charitable donations or muster volunteer effort for philanthropic causes. Similar to other forms of messaging, ADC usage can be tracked so that brands can measure the results of their promotions. ADC numbers are a mobile engagement tactic that is most successful reaching audiences more comfortable with responding to a placing a phone call versus other forms of mobile messaging, which enable consumers to participate directly via text messaging, or downloading an application.

ADC Case Studies:

Engaging Sports Fans WFAN radio in NY sought an easy way to get the station’s sports fan listeners to download a new branded app. Using **FAN as the on-air call out to download WFAN Audio Roadshow, listeners instantly engaged with their smartphones and in under 24 hours made this app the #2 most popular sports app in the Apple AppStore.

Multiscreen Engagement CBS 60 Minutes used ADC to drive TV viewers of Sunday NFL games to preview that night’s 60 Minutes interview right from their phones, simply by calling **60. Video previews featured exclusive 60 Minutes interviews with Angelina Jolie, President Obama, and other interviewees, and resulted in thousands of video views within seconds of each TV broadcast call-out.

Free to End User (FTEU) Text Messaging FTEU text messaging is a text messaging technology that allows consumers to receive and send messages whereby the business is responsible for the messaging cost and customers don’t pay a penny. FTEU has been around for more than a decade and it is beginning to increase in its usage by marketers.

As consumer behavior moves toward mobile, text messaging will continue to grow as a channel for marketer communications. Yet, right now, when a consumer uses text messaging they incur a cost for using it (i.e. when consumers pay their wireless carrier fees for text messaging). Businesses can alleviate this consumer cost when consumers engage in a text-message campaign by utilizing FTEU text messaging, just like businesses alleviated the cost of a voice call through +1-800 numbers in the past.

While many consumers have unlimited text messaging plans, some consumers buy bundles of text messages and/or pay on a la carte basis and these consumers may be less likely to opt-in for text message notifications, updates and reminders from their providers of choice because of the cost of text messaging. Therefore, driving down costs can ensure a higher-likelihood of engagement from a brand’s potential customer base.

One of the limits in FTEU messaging is it has a relatively high investment cost for marketers. Therefore, it is best used by brands with the most frequent messaging campaigns where such an investment can be amortized over a larger audience and time frame.

The Value of FTEU FTEU has restrictions around its use in advertising. By utilizing FTEU messaging, marketers can evangelize that their text service is FREE alleviating consumer fears of being charged without their knowledge. Marketers can also benefit from FTEU messaging in text messages themselves because stating FREE MSG, takes up less real estate in a message than the industry term “message and data rates may apply”.

Business and consumers alike can benefit from FTEU messaging. Consumers will be more agreeable to opt-in to FTEU program because there are no costs associated with interacting with the brand. Businesses will be at an advantage because they can use the word “Free” in their advertising.

Again, customers may be interested in your product or service, but some of them will not choose to engage in a text conversation with your audience due to their concerns of the costs of text messaging.

FTEU Case Studies: Case studies around FTEU messaging encompass account information updates, delivery of coupons, appointment reminders, balance alerts, loyalty/rewards information. Leading Broadband Provider A major Broadband provider had a situation whereby the company needed to reach consumers efficiently and effectively, to follow-up on a recent interaction with their care center. Current customer satisfaction methods were not able to provide enough detail in order to take proactive actions. By utilizing a FTEU text messaging strategy, the provider was able to reach more consumers than before. Based on a 3-question survey, the provider had a 25% - 30% response rate, a 300% increase over existing strategies. As a result, the provider was able to gain the necessary consumer insight in order to drive impactful process improvements.

Wireless Carrier A leading wireless carrier needed to reduce customer care calls. By leveraging interactive FTEU text messaging, and by combining the ability for a care agent to interact with the consumer via a live agent, the wireless carrier was able to effectively reduce calls to customer care. Agents based FTEU text messaging was able to handle twice as many customer care conversations as traditional voice conversations resulting in higher agent productivity and improved customer satisfaction.

The Future of Mobile Messaging When it comes to the future of mobile messaging, the only certainty is that it will grow and evolve. The future of mobile messaging is impacted increasingly high customer adoption of the service and by innovation by the carrier and IP sides, featuring new functionality that makes messaging better.

Mobile messaging has the broadest reach of any other mobile medium, it works across nearly all mobile devices and networks. There are several key trends driving the future of mobile messaging, which marketers should consider as they think about their mobile communication strategies:

1. Ecosystem Improvements: Carriers, handset manufacturers and messaging companies are all focused on creating new messaging services enabling greater communication capabilities for brands and consumers. Marketers will soon see new messaging capabilities including group text, picture and video messaging and video calling as potential opportunities for them to engage with their audiences.

2. The Intersection of Social & Mobile: The mobile device is the most social device that consumers have ever had with thousands of consumers one click away via their address books, social networks and email. Marketers should expect to see a convergence of mobile messaging, email and social messaging as more social applications are built and/or migrate to the mobile device (i.e. Facebook, etc.). While a comprehensive approach to these growing channels is important, marketers must understand and be able to use each of these messaging channels separately, as they are different and therefore may require alternate strategies.

3. Mobile Device Idiosyncrasies: The mobile device provides marketers several more data points to use to better personalize its message, from location to ubiquity to two-way interactivity. A marketer’s audience is reachable at any time now that devices are always on and ubiquitous and using mobile messaging to communicate with your audience may be a requirement to engage with your customers on their mobile device in the future.

4. Content & Messaging: New forms of advertising have been created by the emergence of every mass-market media channel, from the newspaper to television to the mobile device. With mobile messaging’s continued growth, marketers can expect the role of content and the type of messaging to continue to evolve from simple text to richer forms of marketing featuring video, interactive experiences and personalized to the end consumer.

5. Focus on the Consumer: Mobile messaging was born out of consumers’ inherent desire to communicate with one another and has subsequently, given rise to an incredibly powerful channel for marketers to reach nearly every mobile

consumer in the United States. As marketers, it is important to not abuse the medium and by delivering even more relevant messages to opted-in consumers, the medium will continue to grow and flourish over the coming years.

Conclusion Mobile messaging began as simple 160 character text messaging and has grown to encompass several new formats, which provide marketers feature-rich, interactive ways to engage with customers. Mobile messaging today plays an integral role as the primary connector between marketers and consumers on their mobile devices. Over time, savvy marketers will use mobile messaging to weave even closer and more personalized relationships between consumers and marketers.

Who We Are

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit association established to lead the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. The MMA is an action-oriented organization designed to clear obstacles to market development, establish mobile media guidelines and best practices for sustainable growth, and evangelize the mobile channel for use by brands and content providers. The 750+ global member companies include agencies, advertisers, hand held device manufacturers, wireless operators, aggregators, technology enablers, market research firms and all companies focused on marketing via the mobile channel. The Mobile Marketing Association’s global headquarters are located in the United States with regional chapters in Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific (APAC), and Latin America (LATAM) consisting of representatives in over forty countries across the globe. For more information, please visit www.mmaglobal.com

MMA 2012 Messaging White Paper Working Group 3Cinteractive SoundBite Communications ExactTarget Twillio Mogreet Urban Airship Inc. Neustar Vibes Signal Waterfall Mobile Zoove

For more information, please contact the Mobile Marketing Association at:

Mobile Marketing Association PO Box 3963 Bellevue, WA 98009-3963 USA Website: www.mmaglobal.com E-mail: [email protected] Phone: +1.646.257.4515