With the flashy appeal of mobile applications and all the attention on the mobile web it’s very easy for marketers to not look beyond smart phones for mobile media. When searching for a case study for this project I too found myself guilty of trying to find the most edgy campaign to discuss. I reached out to the Director of Brand Solutions at HipCricket, a mobile marketing company for help finding and understanding a mobile campaign. As my knowledge of this topic is very primitive, his insight and examples were educational and helped me to better understand the mobile marketing landscape.
I began by asking about the sort of mobile outreach HipCricket is most involved in. Being as HipCricket is only six years old, I expected a tilt to either applications or mobile web advertisements, as both platforms are the newest forms of marketing on cell phones. Instead he told me that by far HipCricket handles mostly SMS campaigns.
“Don’t forget about middle America," he told me, "iPhones are only 7% of the handset market and concentrated in major cities. If you start by ignoring your largest section of the market you’re limiting your audience.”
“Not to mention,” he continued, “iPhone apps are not typically ‘sticky’ (referring to how long a user keeps the app on their phone and revisits it). If you’re looking to be a mobile utility that’s one thing, but if you’re going to do a campaign start with something that has a 99% penetration rate.”
Cell phones are almost all SMS capable and a very common form of communication among consumers. In fact, in a typical day the average person sends four text messages for every phone call. “Thank god for American Idol and Dancing with the Stars,” he told me. “It got America much more comfortable with using text messages to communicate with a commercial business.” Before an SMS system was in place, on TV shows and radio the audience had to call in to participate. He told me that, “for every one person that got through, 1,000 got a busy signal,” so the shows switched to texts to increase involvement.
So in order to promote a November 19th fight on HBO, between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto, HBO asked HipCricket for help. HipCricket focused on the Hispanic market, as Miquel Cotto had a large fan base in this demographic. The tricky part of SMS campaigns is getting consumers to opt in, as it’s illegal to spam on the mobile universe. This means push campaigns are needed. Using Hispanic radio stations, listeners were invited to text in for a chance to win a Miquel Cotto signed boxing glove. Once they texted the station, they were then invited to sign up for updates from HBO.
He then told me that this was a textbook example on the HipCricket approach, “a simple campaign with a specific target. We also drove people with a compelling offer. People have to be receiving something to be baited into signing up for a something.”
Then he added, “You have to look at a call to action as how ‘www’ appeared several years ago. The new www is texting a keyword to a short code.”
This campaign was very successful for HipCricket. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who received this message, 13% entered their number to win the prize. Of that 13%, 40% wanted updates from HBO. According to him, results like this are “extraordinary and well above average.”
To give a frame of reference, typical online banner ads have a click through and involvement rate of well under 1%.
He then concluded that “If you want to hit your mass market you should start with SMS for the one to one. In this case people were having a conversation with their favorite radio station. When people receive a text they typically read it right away, it’s not like email where we usually don’t receive an alert and are accustomed to spam.” However, “texts you check right away, and anyone responding is a qualified customer because they are doing the action. Additionally we can hit them at any time, even if their cell does not have email. From a text you can set up a link to mobile web, applications etc. You shouldn’t start with those unless that’s the only focus of the brand.”
I agree with him on his principles. Additionally I would also call this campaign an enormous success. This kind of engagement from a technology not cluttered by advertising is incredible. The ROI must have been very high and the consumers got a utility on their cell phone that wasn’t an application. In the future I will think of SMS not as a dated form of outreach on an evolving platform, but as strategy to reach out to consumers through a call to action and voluntarily get them engaged.
SMS marketing from HipCricket is, The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.
