Category: Mobile Supplements

One off posts on Mobile Subjects..

Mobile Supplements

Premium Text Messaging

Premium text messaging or (PSMS) is widely used throughout the mobile industry. It has gained a very bad name in the last 5 years because of people misusing the medium to bill consumers in an unscrupulous  and often illegal manner.

However, without PSMS services, you couldnt give to your favourite charity as easy, nor could you vote for the act of your choice on xfactor or get those goal alerts when your team scores a goal.

When used correctly Premium texts can be very effective at bringing the consumer to content they want, whilst providing the owner of the content with a strong revenue stream.

On a typical £1.5o short code you would make around 90p in revenue, after the network charges and your mobile partners charges are taken off, although this depends on volume of messaging too.

There are a number of legitimate legal and process driven challenges to overcome when setting up a premium service and more information on this can be found at the payphoneplus website here http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/For-Business/Setting-up-a-premium-rate-service.aspx

Depending on the type of service you want to operate, you may need permission from PPP to do so and there may be more processes you need to complete and guidelines to follow too.

However, generally there are 6 basic steps to starting your premium text messaging service and these are listed below;

  • Find a suitable mobile provider ( Mobile Aggregator or Agency)
  • Achieve setup of a premium rate shortcode and get your outpayment details
  • Find out if you need to register the service and if so, register with PPP.
  • Let your mobile provider know when you have signed up the service with PPP
  • Get your mobile provider to switch your number or code live
  • Advertise it!!

There may be problems along the way, but a good mobile aggregator will tell you how to circum-navigate these and where neccessary they will solve them for you.

Most mobile aggregators will charge between 2% and 6% revenue share on each billed message and will not charge for the actual message send. So you would pay 2% to 6% of your 90p (on a £1.50 short code) to the mobile aggregator who is sending the messages. There may also be a small set up charge for creating the service in the first instance, but shouldnt be a large monthly maintenance fee (£50 to £75 is the norm for a basic campaign with low volumes)

Try and avoid subscription campaigns unless you have a very loyal client or customer or fan base.

Remember always offer people the opportunity to Opt Out of recieving your messages, if you dont, your service wont be active long.  Try and add a stop message into the premium rate message copy you send out, but if you cant, then you need to send a Free2Recieve information message as often as you send the billing message out i.e (one billable message a month = one Free2Recieve opt out message per month) advising people how to stop your messages and not be billed again by you.

Always give value in your content or you will lose customers as soon as you get them.

If you run a competition or a Quiz, make the difficulty of them as general as possible or you will lose a wide proportion of people who dont know the answers so dont play.

Above all, make sure you have Ts and Cs available for the consumer, make sure you clearly tell them what they are going to be billed for and if you send one message per month, dont be tempted to send two or three.. because people will switch off and opt out if they believe your using them as a money train.

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Supplements

Mobile Vouchers

Whilst Smartphone Applications continue to hog the headlines in the mobile consumer space, over 60% of respondents in a recent industry survey said they would be happy to interact with retailers via text.

One large Mobile Operator has taken this a step further, launching SMS vouchers and messages via text to its “opted in “consumers. Using GEO – LOCATION and time based targeting, the messages & vouchers “hit” the consumers mobile as they walk past or into certain high street stores.

Are we seeing the beginning of retailers embracing mobile marketing to conduct two way communications with customers on the move?

Are we seeing plain old text messaging playing an important part in delivering this two way communication?

The answer is YES….

In a recent study by this is money.co.uk website, statistics show that people spend an average of two hours pricing up large household and lifestyle items before buying…and the average adult in Britain uses five vouchers every month to save money on food, meals out and day trips – equaling 239m vouchers used a year, or 8m a day!

The study by promo-codes found that most people believe vouchers and discount codes are more socially acceptable and ‘cooler’ than they were 20 years ago.

Customers are 71% more likely to shop with you if they receive money off coupons first. Traditional methods of doing this, (sending paper vouchers out in the post, downloading from the internet etc) involve links in your chosen message formats and this can lead to traceability issues and lack of understanding of who even opened your communication.
Mobile is totally traceable, from initial send through consumer click through action to a sales end point and it’s immediate!!

More than just a customer driver, it’s a loyalty programme, an interactive catalogue, a coupon or voucher dispenser and a payment device all rolled into one.

As retailers start to realize that the mobile channel is a great way to drive consumers through their “bricks and mortar” stores what will you do this Christmas to increase your bottom line?

Thanks

themobileexpert