News
Mobile marketing spend to soar, says O2
Stuart O'Brien Oct 9 2008, 11:25am
Percentage of brand budgets spent on mobile marcomms set to increase 150 per cent by 2013.
A UK survey commissioned by operator O2 says the percentage of brand marketing budgets spent on mobile is set to increase almost 150 per cent by 2013.
The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne among IT and marketing directors at 100 brands, found that two thirds of businesses state mobile campaigns generate a higher response rate than traditional methods.
Sixty per cent of marketing directors favour mobile thanks to its highly targeted nature, particularly those in the financial services sector.
Moreover, 88 per cent anticipate behavioural targeting to be an important capability by 2010 enabling them to gain valuable customer insights.
Worryingly though, half of those yet to deploy a mobile marketing campaign are concerned that their customers will view the text messages as spam.
The most popular use of mobile marketing is for information services campaigns across the retail (60 per cent) and financial services sectors (54 per cent), while 40 per cent use mobile marketing to send booking confirmations, deliver appointment updates and to confirm items in stock.
Other popular uses of mobile marketing highlighted in the report include text to win competitions (28 per cent), text to call back campaigns (24 per cent) and text to email campaigns (24 per cent).
Simon Dean, head of mobile media at O2 UK, said: “In today’s economic climate, mobile is proving to be a cost effective, targeted way for businesses to interact with exactly the people they want, from sending a text reminder to alert a customer to an overdrawn bank account to confirming a delivery via SMS.
“In fact, one in ten of those we surveyed already think mobile marketing has saved their business at least £1 million when compared to other marketing solutions. With more consumers than ever browsing the web through their mobile handsets, there is a significant and largely untapped audience for brands to target their customers directly.”
