Creating positive experiences in mobile marketing campaigns is contingent upon successfully meeting the requirements of the mobile medium. However, general practice in industry diverges from this conceptual argument. The foremost reason for this is the fact that response rate is often used as the ultimate success measure of push-type mobile marketing campaigns. Consequently, marketers focus on increasing short-term popularity and response rate of their campaigns by either incorporating immediate generic incentives and/or targeting users solely on the basis of responsiveness. Although response rate provides (limited) information about the short-term positive effect of a mobile campaign on consumer engagement, it gives absolutely no information regarding campaign-related perceptions, attitudes and more importantly dissatisfaction of non-responders.
The use of response rate, in the form of click-through rate, as a success measure is inherited from digital marketing through the PC-based wired Internet. However, the Internet allows tracking of the interactivity data as well. Interactivity data, in the form of time spent in a page, number of pages viewed, most popular navigation patterns through the site, exit patterns, revisits, the most and least popular pages, indicates the extent to which a visitor likes or dislikes an ad or a website as a whole. These metrics can also be used for measuring success in campaigns that are based on mobile Internet, mobile apps, and even in IVR; however they are not available for marketers in push-type message delivery (e.g., SMS ads) through the mobile medium. Therefore, success in push-type mobile marketing is measured solely by response and exposure rate, none of which provide any information about the effect of the campaign on non-responders. Furthermore, the antecedents of response and the attitude toward the campaign may be completely different. Such that, responders may be driven by the instant-win incentive embedded in the campaign, even if they have perceived the message as intrusive or disliked it. Therefore, let alone non-responders, response rate cannot provide concise information even about the satisfaction of the responders. Unfortunately, there are no other metrics that can be used as a success measure in SMS-based push-type mobile marketing. This is where the importance of understanding the unique characteristics of the mobile medium kicks in. Instead of targeting users solely based on their likelihood of response, a better strategy may be employing targeting and personalization with a focus on reducing intrusiveness.
Why intrusiveness is so important? Because, intrusiveness causes consumer irritation, which in turn triggers the desire to get away from the marketing message. In worse cases, this mechanism may result in negative reactions or attitudes towards the marketing campaign and the medium through which marketing stimulus is delivered. Since attitudes toward advertising are known to influence attitudes toward brands, misuse of push-type mobile marketing may result in brand suicide.
First of all, marketers who are trapped in the PC-based Internet paradigm should change their mindsets, and acknowledge the fact that the “Mobile” is not an extension of the wired Internet. When compared to PCs, mobile devices are used in a different context, represent different meanings to users, and present a different set of value propositions. Therefore, competitive advantage will accrue to the marketers who understand the true nature of the mobile medium, and employ medium-specific targeting strategies and measurement metrics for achieving superior consumer experiences in mobile marketing campaigns.
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I would want to see you write on I-pad metrics as well. sort of see it in-between wired and mobile technologies. targeting and personalization may be more to the point when a more specific group with high literacy levels are concerned. On an opposite take, brand suicide may be inevitable if wrong tactics are at stake…keep it up, though, not many work on such specificity!