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September 15, 2005

Will Email and Mobile Marketing Converge?

Dave Barker of global mobile media company Enpocket sent me a question the other day. He asks, "What are your views on mobile marketing and acquisition and retention using the mobile phone? In Europe this is big business. How do you see the U.S. market developing, and do you see customers demanding technology that incorporates both email and mobile?"

It's clear to me that, first, our customers do expect us to provide mobile marketing at some point. Second, the technology behind each channel has some major overlap. And third, the integration of the channels likely will drive synergistic response rates.

There are reasons, however, that these channels will remain separate for a while. The ownership of email is tending more toward the relationship- and direct-marketing side of marketing, whereas mobile tends to come more from the acquisition side. In most marketing organizations these are very different people. Clearly, email can be used for acquisition and mobile can be used for relationships, but I think both are currently centered in different areas of the marketing department.

Overall, I think convergence is inevitable. But it's going to be years before the majority of solutions for either email or mobile marketing come from the same vendors.

Posted by Bill Nussey at September 15, 2005 08:22 AM

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Comments

I think there are some real opportunities for mobile in direct retention. The challenge is we have to increase our value proposition to the consumer to get them to allow us to reach them via their phone either via phone email or sms. We simply can't just migrate current communications to that device without upping the value the customer receives.

Posted by: Joe Rueckert at September 19, 2005 11:20 AM

Joe, great points. SMS, in particular, has some interesting similarities to direct mail that will directly affect its behavior. Unlike email, both SMS and Direct Mail both have a real cost per message. That cost will force marketers to think very hard about who they market to. And, like Direct Marketing, the results will be scrutinized heavily because the ROI of poor targeting goes down dramatically.

Posted by: Bill Nussey at September 20, 2005 02:49 PM