Mobile Applications for Marketing

Marketing through mobile phones has been around for some time now. It mainly consisted of a means to send text messages (SMS) to the target, promoting a product or service or offering a discount when the message is shown at a retail outlet (these discount coupons are called m-coupons). What these mechanisms lack is a means to generate pull from the consumer, that is, an incentive for the consumer to actually search for special offers. In addition, most of these SMS marketing offerings lack subsequent analytics to determine efficacy of the marketing efforts. A service provided by a company called MobiMedia, in India, is the ultimate mobile marketing solution. The consumer is sent an SMS, clicks on a link to download an application that offers an attractive and easy-to-use means to pull m-coupons of interest. The coupons can be presented at a participating retailer where they can be redeemed. Companies using the service can set up their own marketing campaigns and throughout a campaign duration can track consumer actions relevant to the promotions and also generate valuable analytics.