Mobile Musings: 4 Mobile Marketing Best Practices for 2013
As we begin a new year it's tempting to think it's time to look for new technologies when planning your mobile marketing efforts. In fact, it's more important now than ever to stay focused on the fundamentals of creating smart, successful mobile campaigns. Here are some of the fundamentals that stand the test of time:
1. Keep mobile campaigns focused on end users. With any marketing tool it's important to keep the end user in mind; with mobile marketing it's hypercritical because in many cases interacting with a mobile campaign is solely in the hands of the consumer. For example, when you launch a text message campaign or present a QR code, the consumer must decide in advance whether to opt in. If they don't see the value in it for them, the entire campaign will fail. Likewise, it's common sense to make sure that when your customers want to engage with you via mobile, that it's easy for them to do so. Having a mobile website, enabling mobile commerce and making sure your emails are easy to read on a mobile device are three ways to do this.
2. Stay mindful of what's happening with mobile law. As always, it's smart to stay abreast of legal actions that impact mobile marketing. For example, this year the battle over whether including a website link inside a text message is patentable will likely be resolved. It's good to know that the courts decided in favor of common sense in another series of lawsuits involving mobile spam. These lawsuits claimed that companies shouldn't be able to send a confirmation message to let users know they had successfully been unsubscribed from a text message campaign. The FCC has clarified the law and now companies are allowed to send out confirmation messages when users reply with the STOP command.
