Is Mobile Marketing Dangerous For Business?

By Matt Valentine


Many pundits are predicting that mobile marketing through SMS (text messaging to the lay person) will be essential to stay in touch with customers in the near future (if not now). With phones becoming "smarter and smarter" and at a pace thats almost to much to keep up with, it would seem that mobile advertising will become one of the most effective ways to reach a large consumer base and keep them up to date on your businesses events, sales, specials etc.

However, with businesses already reaching into so many different aspects of our lives, how far is too far? At what point does a consumer become overly inundated with our attempts to reach them? At what point does reaching out become an annoyance? How much noise are people willing to listen to until they simply decide to turn it all off?

Most businesses, large and small, already utilize social media, email marketing, and traditional advertising. And most would correctly argue that through those channels (with the exception of email in some cases) its ok to market to people because they have already given their consent by becoming a fan, follower, or subscriber.  However, what worries me, and I will admit I'm not old enough to know whether or not this exactly happened, is that I have a sneaking suspicion the same thing was said about email upon its introduction to the masses all those years ago.

My real fear is that my text message inbox will soon look eerily similar to the spam folder in my email. While this fear is a personal one, it should also be the fear of every business thinking about using mobile marketing. How effective is your message if it ends up in a "spam" folder? How effective is your message if I get a text from you and say "Well these guys are really annoying."?

Think about it. If we already have a Facebook page, twitter account, email subscribers and blog subscribers and now we start a mobile marketing campaign, we will most likely be drawing most of our mobile subscribers from that same pool (at least until shadier practices become available). What I am trying to say, in some apparently convoluted way, is that engaging in mobile marketing can be a dangerous endeavour; especially when we consider that we are already engaing them in so many different ways.

Do people really want us on their phone too? To me, and maybe I am just crazy, but my phone seems so much more personal then any other form of media that advertising can reach me. And I don't want to see the day when I am getting text messages from some business I don't remember giving my number to.Maybe I am  alone, but if I am not, then maybe mobile advertising is just one step too far.

To me it seems that we, in the business world, are already walking a very fine line. We're going to need to know how to tread just lightly enough that we don't start stepping on our customers toes, or phones, or whatever.

The question is where do draw the proverbial line? How do we know how much to push before we've pushed them away from us? The real problem is, will we even know before it's already too late?

The Death of E-Mail and the Wave of the Future

To many of us email plays an integral role in our everyday interactions whether they are business or personal.

For the last decade email has been the essential non-voice communication tool. A study of U.S. workers by Pew Internet & American life found that 88 percent checked their inbox at least once a day. Of those 70 percent checked several times a day.

According to a study by the American Management Association, U.S. workers spend an average of 1 hour and 47 minutes per day dealing with email.

Eight percent spent more than four hours a day dealing with email.

According to the Association for Interactive Marketing, small businesses spend 10% of their time on email management.

With all this time dedicated solely to email one has to wonder how anyone could so boldly claim the death of e-mail.

The reasoning is actually two-fold.

First, as younger people enter the work place they bring with them an appetite for instant gratification. Having lived through the social-media revolution they demand and expect instantaneous, real-time interaction. Their devotion to technologies such as SMS and Instant Messaging has led many of them to turn their backs on the “relic” that is e-mail.

In fact, new research shows that the growth rate of instant messaging through service such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft is far outpacing the growth in the use of e-mail.

Second, e-mail has several disadvantages and liabilities. Spam and viruses have not only turned off the younger generation of internet users, but have also caused security issues for small businesses and large corporations alike.

Furthermore, compared with the abilities of many Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, Twitter etc. where interactions occur in the blink of an eye. Email can be ignored, or postponed until the receiver is ready, a huge disadvantage in the eyes of many.

The truth is however, for business people email is still an extremely necessary form of communication and social media services such as Facebook and Twitter while effective for certain types of communication lack a formal tone that is often needed in a business setting.

I don’t know how many people would feel comfortable updating their boss about a project by shooting him a tweet or posting a Facebook status.

Enter Google Wave. An appropriately named application as it is positioned to be the wave of the future and the proverbial noose around e-mail’s neck.

In essence Google Wave is a real time communication platform that combines a number of elements including email, instant messaging, web chat, social networking, wikis, and project management.

Google Wave introduces a host of “game changing” features that can significantly alter the way we conduct business.

Here are just some of the features Google Wave offers:

-Real-time: Every person involved in a Wave can see what someone is typing as they are typing it character by character.

-Extensions and Apps: Google Wave will introduce a number of extensions and applications that can be utilized in a variety of ways. Users can add a game of Sudoku to their wave, or an extension called Trippy in which users can, according to Google “co-create an itinerary including Lonely Planet recommendations organize, share, print or export to My Maps.” For businesses the Conference extension will prove to be extremely useful.

-Open Source: Allows plenty of room for expansion and innovation. Developers will be able to create new extensions and applications as new needs arise providing Google Wave with endless opportunities to improve.

-Embed Waves: If you have a great Wave that you would like to share with others waves can be easily embedded onto any blog or website.

-Real-time editing (Wiki): Every aspect of a Wave can be edited by anyone taking part in the Wave. Users can add items to a list, expand on ideas etc. all in real time.

-Playback: Enables users to go to any point of a wave and see what was said.

-Drag and Drop File Sharing: Take a file from your desktop, drag it into a Wave and each person in the Wave will have instant access to the file.

-Autocorrecting: Google Wave will automatically correct spelling mistakes, and can even decipher the difference between words like there and their.

Google Wave is currently in a preview phase and will certainly undergo many changes before it is released on a mass scale, but I have to admit Wave looks incredibly promising so far.

It seems very likely that in the not too distant future we will all be riding the Wave, and email will be left in its wake.