Got the message?
- Article 2 of 6
- Database Marketing, December 2002
With more and more mobile numbers becoming available to marketers, Robert Buckley finds that the latest handset technology still has a long way to go to beat SMS as a marketing medium.
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Corbett argues that since it was the youth market that made SMS a success, network operators need to make concessions to that market again to get it to take off. “If the network and the handset manufacturers are serious about introducing MMS as a useable technology, they need to adopt a two-pronged mass-market approach to get MMS-enabled handsets out into the youth market along with an affordable pricing structure that encourages the use of MMS.”
Ben Johnson of Satsuma also points out the main issue that MMS faces that SMS does not: the recipient pays for the download as well as the sender. In the US, where recipients as well as potentially callers have to pay for mobile phone calls, take-up of handsets has been notoriously weak compared to other countries’. The same could happen to MMS and for the same reasons.
“Operators planning MMS deployments are facing a big question,” agrees Ian Wood, CTO of Empower Interactive. “Should they bill per message or should they bill by volume? Following that, there will be other questions to answer: How will they make their billing work for content providers? How will they accommodate the value-added services that are going to drive mobile messaging? How will they bill prepaid and post-paid customers for premium and reverse-billed services? How will they settle premium rate services with other operators?” While it is important for operators to establish MMS services quickly, adds Wood, the services will take some time to mature and become useful, stable and user-friendly enough for the majority of people – and marketers - to enjoy.
Satsuma’s Johnson advises trialling MMS services with a small target market now, “just to learn the lessons”. The data cleansing involved in creating an SMS opt-in database will have to be repeated again for an MMS database with even greater rigour – the incompatibilities of networks, the differences between handsets plus the fact that unlike SMS messages, not all handsets will be able to understand MMS messages, mean that without an opt-in with details of network provider and handset, an MMS campaign will not even be technically possible.
While the extra capabilities of MMS will look tempting to many, the infancy of the market and its as-yet unknown popularity mean it is too early for any except the truly cutting edge with highly targeted lists to be able to implement an MMS campaign. However, by learning the necessary lessons now and by building on the knowledge acquired in using SMS as a marketing tool, companies will be ready for MMS, if and when it ever takes off.
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