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Today I’ll be spending my time with other mobile marketers and industry executives at the DMA Mobile Marketing Day in New York. Senior executives from USA Today, National Hockey League and Steve Madden will be sharing insights on their use of mobile marketing to elevate their brand and engage their customers.
Some of the topics to be discussed include mobile advertising, mobile commerce, SMS, and location-based advertising. I’m participating on a panel: “SMS: How the Workhorse of Mobile is Transforming CRM/Database Marketing and Store-Based Retail.”
Here’s a look at some of the topics we’ll cover:
The world of mobile marketing is rapidly changing and many new technologies, applications and platforms are being introduced every day. I’ll be interested to learn more about how companies are integrating these new technologies as well as how mobile barcodes in particular are playing an increasing role in mobile marketing campaigns.
I’ll be sharing any lessons learned from the conference. Stay tuned!
Tags: 2D barcodes, DMA Mobile Marketing Day, mobile barcodes, mobile marketing, National Hockey League, SMS, Steve Madden, USA Today
There are many new announcements in the mobile code space here at Mobile World Congress (MWC) – new partner alliances and recent reports of more scans taking place around the globe, with leading countries growing at triple digit rates. There are enhanced reader/scanners that are faster and have new functionality. And enterprises are making more sophisticated use of barcodes, combining multiple applications into rich experiences.
Mobile barcodes provide a unique advertising medium that easily delivers relevant content to consumers and makes traditional media both interactive and measurable. Barcodes are just one of the discovery mechanisms used in mobile marketing and they are evolving into new form factors, including image recognition and more secure watermarks.
Additionally, Near Field Communications (NFC) is also making inroads with some phone manufacturers putting NFC functionality in their devices. All the while, enterprises are continuing to use traditional SMS short codes and mobile web technologies.
This growing complexity in discovery and application technologies is driving new requirements for scale and openness. Multiple players have to cooperate to provide a simple experience for end users while generating the targeting and control that enterprises want to achieve.
At the same time, the buzz is increasing and many new players are trying to capitalize on this growing marketplace, adding to the confusion and fragmentation.
Neustar has a history of making connections possible — bringing consumers, businesses, mobile operators, technology enablement players and corresponding technologies together — no matter the network, the device, the application or specific technology used.
We traditionally occupy a central clearinghouse and registry position, where we can help bridge the gap between companies, technologies, policy management and roles in an industry.
We’ve had extensive conversations and testing with numerous players and technologies in the barcode space over the last year, and we feel that the need for a clearinghouse to support the increasing diversity of mobile marketing programs, technologies and approaches is becoming increasingly apparent.
As companies’ usage of barcodes and mobile marketing matures, they will invest in putting more and more barcodes and short codes on their products, content and media. This will extend their brand, making these discovery mechanisms valuable digital assets that they will want to own and control.
No matter the make up of the code, be it direct, indirect or another open standard, these codes are digital assets that belong to the brand and must be treated as such. As brands, retailers and other enterprise players exploit these codes by linking them to a variety of content and applications, they will need a central registry to help track and manage their assets.
A clearinghouse allows organizations the agility to delegate their codes to third party application and content campaign managers as needed. This makes it easier for them to add enhanced value to their codes, repurpose them as well as redirect these mobile assets when and where needed.
Neustar’s mobile registry and clearinghouse is meant to serve that purpose. We will support open standards as well as more closed systems as long as the entire ecosystem is agreeable. For example, if a company uses an open code with a unique encoding format, as long as the ecosystem agrees to that, Neustar can support it.
In addition to independent clearing of requests across entities and enrichment of those requests with anonymous metadata, Neustar’s mobile barcode services provide validation/verification of third party marketing activities (including cooperative marketing and coupon redemption).
We will be showcasing our solution at the upcoming CTIA and ad:tech events. Hope to see you there!
Tags: mobile barcodes, Mobile World Congress, MWC, near field communications, NFC, short codes, SMS
Tomorrow I’ll be joining mobile marketers and nonprofit leaders at the Direct Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Mobile Day in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the event is to discuss how nonprofits are using mobile technologies in their marketing and fundraising efforts and share best practices and case studies on how to integrate successful mobile campaigns.
They’ve got a great line up of content including a keynote presentation from Miles Orkin, National Director for Web and Mobile at the American Cancer Society who will talk about the role of mobile in donor outreach. You can view the full agenda here: http://www.the-dma.org/events/npmobiledaydc/agenda.shtml
I’ll be speaking on a panel: “The Definitive Mobile 101 Primer.” Here’s a peek at what we’ll be discussing:
The opportunities for mobile in the nonprofit world are endless, from fundraising to education to advocacy. I look forward to sharing any lessons learned from the conference. In the meantime, you can read more of my perspective on this in my blog from last summer: “Mobile Barcodes in the Non-profit Sector.”
Tags: 2D barcodes, common short codes, mobile barcodes, mobile barcodes and nonprofit, mobile campaigns
Last Christmas Smyth Jewelers launched a marketing and advertising campaign titled “15 Deals in 15 Days” which featured 2D barcodes. The barcodes appeared on large banners hanging outside the company’s retail stores during the month of December and offered consumers a new deal each day during the campaign.
Mobile’s Next Big Thing editor Meredith Bagnulo talked to John Jackson, Vice President of Operations at Smyth Jewelers about the company’s experience.
MNBT: Tell me a little about the campaign and how you came up with the idea?
Jackson: Early last year we learned about QR codes and our advertising firm approached us with the idea of incorporating them into a campaign focused around the holidays. We launched the “15 Deals in 15 Days” campaign using giant banners with QR codes outside of our stores and customers would come scan the code on their way into the store. This created quite a stir in the local Baltimore community.
Everyone sees QR codes at the bottom of fashion magazines, but this was a gigantic, in-your-face advertisement and people came and asked what it was all about. It was a fun way to introduce our customers to this new technology. We also placed them in ads and on business cards and people really had a lot of fun with it. It was also a great marketing tool because of all the analytics that came with it.
MNBT: What happened when people scanned the code, where did it take them?
Jackson: We used a very simple code that consisted of a simple screen shot and for any purchase that day if you showed the screen you received a free pearl bracelet and 25 percent off you purchase. The screen consisted of simple red and green Christmas colors.
MNBT: What was the reaction from your customers?
Jackson: Although Smyth Jewelers has been in business since 1914, our audience spans across generations and we are in touch with the younger generation, their parents and grandparents who shop at our stores.
There were three different types of reactions. Among the younger audience — the ones reading Vogue and other fashion magazines – they thought it was cool. They use 2D barcodes all the time when looking at magazines so they were familiar with what to do and loved it.
For more of the middle-aged audience, they had seen QR codes, but weren’t sure what they were. So, after we explained how it worked most of them downloaded a scanner and tried it and were impressed.
Then there were the older folks who didn’t know what it was. Once we explained how it worked, they thought it was a fun advertising medium but were not ready to try it out. Instead, they just asked us what the deal of the day was and we told them.
MNBT: Are you planning to use QR codes in future marketing/advertising campaigns?
Jackson: This was the first time we tried using QR codes and we have learned a lot. We have already started using them with some of our vendors as well as in print media to direct people to our website and stores. When the QR code is scanned it pulls up the locations of our stores and how to get there. We are in our infancy in our use of QR codes, but see endless possibilities for them. We also like that QR codes are trackable, with analytics to find out how many people are hitting our site.
MNBT: What other mobile marketing tools do you use to reach your customers?
Jackson: We have used Netbooks for several years for merchandise inventory. This allows us to look up certain product lines not available in our store and compare prices, etc. Our next step is to look at iPads and either have all salespeople with an iPad or have them available throughout the store to show people product information and pricing for jewelry that is not in stock.
MNBT: How big is mobile in your overall marketing/advertising strategy for 2011?
Jackson: Mobile is taking a bigger role in our strategy. Most people read everything online nowadays — even coupons are online. But is also depends on what you are advertising. For bridal/engagement rings we will go more high-tech because that is where our target audience is. When people get engaged, they go to Internet for information.
We also do a lot of advertising via mobile and Internet including Twitter and Facebook. This is wave of the future and I want to be on the cutting edge which is why we started the QR code campaign last year.
Tags: 2D barcodes, mobile marketing, QR codes, Smyth Jewelers
Peter Langlois
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