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sporting event tickets are no longer torn; they're scanned, so why not go all the way? The same can be said for the coupons found in Sunday papers and unsolicited junk mailings, most of which end up in land fills and represent an inefficient, shotgun approach to promotional marketing. If we could all opt-in to the coupons we want and have them stored in our mobile phones, we'd never forget them and never miss a good deal on something we actually want.
Driving MMS Usage…Finally
Barcode technologies represent two big opportunities for mobile operators in the application space. First, if coupons, tickets, boarding passes and the like are distributed to mobile devices, it finally means there will be a major driver for MMS utilization. A recent sampling of 625 mobile phone bills by Validas, a provider of wireless bill analysis and rate plan right-sizing, suggests that MMS make up just 1 percent of all messaging traffic, while SMS continues to dominate at 99 percent (see Figure 1). In Validas' sample, which represented one month's usage, users sent 214,707 SMS messages versus just 2,360
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If we could all opt-in to the coupons we want and have them stored in our mobile phones, we'd never forget them and never miss a good deal on something we actually want. |
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Mobile operators have an opportunity to make coupon-based promotions far more efficient and targeted to user interests. Advertisers are generally interested in reducing their effort while increasing customer response. The mobile channel gives them the ability to communicate directly with individuals. OSS/BSS applications have a significant role to play in this arena on two levels. The most commonly cited opportunity is in analytics applications that leverage the wealth of subscriber and usage data operators store across their IT environments. While conceptually there is promise in analytics, history suggests that massive data integration programs take a long time to deliver, are extremely risky, and often fail. This threatens the ROI story for any analytics
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MMS messages. Each user sent and received an average of 345 SMS in a month, but only 4 MMS. It is past time for mobile operators to monetize MMS infrastructure.
The other associated opportunity comes in the form of advertising – a game in which mobile operators have only begun to play, but are licking their chops to profit from. Coupons are part of the glue that holds the consumer economy together. Many of us have likely bought something we didn't really need just because we stumbled into a valuable coupon. Similarly, many of us have likely spent time sorting through filthy mass mailings while standing over a recycling bin, searching in vain for an offer that actually relates to our interests. Further, everyone can likely remember a time when they bought an item only to find out later they missed the 10 percent off coupon their friend discovered somewhere they never looked.
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offering as operators tend to be wary of transformational approaches that try to boil the ocean.
So let's assume that in the near term, mobile operators take an opt-in approach that simply asks users what they do and don't like while offering them something valuable - like access to all of the best discounts on the stuff they want. OSS/BSS applications need to play a coordinating role in this scenario. They will be responsible for managing customer opt-ins and opt-outs and synchronizing the results with subscriber profiles. Those subscriber profiles will drive the policies that determine which offers are delivered to segmented user groups in the form of MMS-based barcode coupons and ads. OSS/BSS systems will coordinate ad-insertion and will provide the campaign management mechanisms advertisers need to introduce, adjust, and decommission their promotional campaigns.
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