Inventive techniques

One thing is for sure: the days of texting users with unsolicited marketing messages are over. “As an industry, we started out by trying to apply the same online CRM and mass marketing techniques that had worked online,” MacDonald acknowledges, adding that this needed to change.

These days, marketers use subtle techniques that combine psychology and technology; inventive agencies create ways to make people want to opt in to receive marketing messages and offers, and the technology delivers them to the right people at the right time.

Another important trend is location-based advertising. Mobile operators can use GPS data or geo-fencing to pinpoint where a consumer is and, by combining this information with the qualifi ed data from the opt-in database, send relevant promotions to the consumer that they can take advantage of at a nearby store or restaurant, for example.

Advertisements on products can also be used to entice users to opt in to receiving marketing messages. For example, Procter & Gamble (P&G) used SMS messaging to persuade diaper buyers to stay loyal to its Pampers brand after market intelligence told it that new parents would start with Pampers and gradually switch to cheaper brands. So P&G invited people who bought its diapers to send an SMS that granted them free membership of a ‘New Mum’s Club’. Having won the parents’ confi dence, P&G saw sales of Pampers rise by 30%.
 

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