Mobile Marketing In More Than 140 Characters

Last December, the Nielsen Company published their Top 10 Lists for 2008.

A fascinating list that stuck out to me was their Top 10 list of websites accessed over mobile devices.



Does it surprise you to learn that in October 2008, four of the top ten are for web-based email clients with two in the top three? Over 38 million people viewed their emails on their mobile devices in the month of October. If you are an Interactive Marketer, chances are that a substantial number of these people saw your marketing email. Note: these are personal emails, none of this corporate email stuff.

People checking their emails on mobile devices are probably doing it more frequently during the day than those who do so using their desktop computers. Would it not therefore behoove you, the Interactive Marketer, to create email campaigns just for mobile email readers? Think of the relevance! Think of the timeliness! All this talk about sending your emails at the "perfect" time of day becomes totally irrelevant. People reading their emails on desktop computers usually do it on set days and set times of the day. So as an Interactive Marketer, you have windows of time in which your subscribers and respond to your messages and engage with your brand. People reading their emails on mobile devices usually do it every day of the week (yes, even when they are on vacation) and frequently during each day of the week (and yes...even when they are on vacation!).

Text messaging campaigns are getting all the press when it comes to mobile marketing. I argue that email campaigns should not be discarded by the wayside. Consider these points:
- Email is w-a-a-a-y cheaper for you to send than SMS messages
(text messaging CPM rates are 5x to 10x more than email CPM rates)
- Email is quicker to deploy than SMS campaigns
(doesn't require the carriers to approve your email campaigns)
- Email is a richer experience than SMS campaigns
(pictures says a lot more than 140 characters!!)

Make your mobile messaging strategy mix to include both SMS and email messaging. The two are quite complimentary. Create HTML content for your emails that is formatted for the mobile screen. Thanks to the Apple, RIM, the Android Consortium and soon to be others, you have a lot more screen real estate than before.

I now want to hear from you! Do you read your personal email on a mobile device? How often? Daily? Several times during the day? Are you like me - do you read emails on your mobile device to "triage" your inbox and then view the remaining ones on your desktop computer later on when you have the time?