A New Wave in Mobile Marketing – part 3

Short Code

The first methods I’m going to talk about is short code. Have you ever seen a TV commercial or printed ads like “text XXXX to 00000 to get today’s most popular joke”? Or maybe, do you remember the “American Idol” show where you can vote for your faborite contestants by dialing a short code? These are the perfect examples of short code.  Short codes, also known as short numbers, are special numbers that usually 5-6 digits which can be used to address SMS and MMS message from mobile phones(Wikipedia).

Although short code has been widely used in European countries for long time, it was until 2002 when “American Idol” show adapted this method that got really popular in the states. Since then, short codes which often associated with automated services(Wikipedia) are now widely used for opt-in mobile campaigns in the U.S

A New Wave in Mobile Marketing – part 2

Mobile marketing strategy can be divided into 2: a push strategy and a pull strategy. A push strategy would be something like send messages directly to mobile phones of the target audience to trigger consumers to re-act on the message sent. On the other hand, a pull strategy would be something like exposing the commercial message to mobile phone users via other channels such as television, print media and/or Web in order to attract mobile phone users to respond with their mobile phones. Many academic researchers believe that a pull strategy is more effective because they are likely seen as less intrusive.

Due to the small size of the screen and keypad of a mobile device, it is often inconvenient for users to initiate a communication, which could be a challenging situation for marketers to overcome. Currently, there are three different types of method in mobile communication: Short code, image code and OR code. Each type has its own characteristic and often used in different circumstance. For next few weeks, I would like to talk about these three different types of methods for mobile communication.

QR codes and the Kelly Brooks Pepsi campaign