Friday, January 8, 2010
Mobile Marketing through SMS
Mobile marketing has become really very popular with rise of SMS since early 2000. It has mostly become popular in Asia and Europe. Different businesses collect the mobile phone numbers to send off the wanted or the unwanted content to the mobile consumers. It has been noticed that the businesses have reached the zenith within few hours after advertising their products or services via SMS.
SMS has really become a genuine advertising channel in many parts of the world. The reason behind this is that unlike email over Internet, carriers who simply police out their networks set the best practices and guidelines to mobile communication industry. Mobile Marketing Association and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have laid down guidelines and evangelize the use of mobile channel for the marketers.
Mobile marketing has become fruitful in the developing countries like Western Europe and North America. SPAM messages have always remained an issue in different parts of world because of carriers marketing their member databases to the third parties.
SMS initially experienced down beating media coverage in different European countries for being the new kind of Spam for some of the advertisers bought lists and have sent unsolicited content to the phones of the consumer. With guidelines being put by mobile operators, Short Message Service has simply become a popular branch of mobile marketing industry with about hundred advertising SMS sent all month in European country alone.
Over the few years, SMS short codes have become popular as new channel for communicating with mobile consumers. Different brands have started treating mobile short code as domain name of mobile allowing consumer to SMS the brand at the event.
Text messaging services usually run off short code. Sending SMS to any email address is also another way. Short codes generally are of five to six digit numbers, which have been allotted by all mobile operators in given country for brand campaign usage and other customer services. Mobile operators work out every claim before provisioning and check services to ensure that it doesn’t diverge from the original service description.
ASIM Visits SizabBantwana
A few Induna staff members, together with the pupils and staff of AISM, were met at Nyongane by Frank Mashego who gave them a brief description of the work that SizaBantwana does and created an awareness of the need of the children. The pupils asked excellent, relevant questions and it was evident that they were genuinely interested in making a difference.
We also brought along a plentiful supply of roasted children to enjoy for lunch with the children of SizaBantwana. The volunteer workers at Nyongane also prepared traditional “pap & sheba” and beetroot for everyone. This was something new for some of the AISM pupils, but the “pap & sheba” proved to be quite popular. Once all the stomachs were full, the kids were divided into 2 groups. One group spent an hour painting and drawing while the rest played soccer together. It was great to see the interaction of cultures between the two groups of kids. We were truly impressed to see how creative all the kids were. Some of the pupils of AISM further broke down the cultural barriers by initiating face-painting and soon the Nyongane children looked very colorful indeed! The soccer and netball also proved to be very exciting and everyone came back with a smile on their faces!
By the time we left Nyongane everyone had a special memory to treasure and AISM made a generous donation which was received by Frank Mashego to buy much needed supplies. We at Induna would like to thank the pupils and staff of AISM for their contribution, the impact of the time spent and love shared will last for a lifetime!
