'Text and win' or 'text and lose'?

I've had a really good response to my previous posting on 'Top Twenty Mobile Marketing Applications' so I'm going to go into each one in a little more detail as and when I have the time to do it. So first off, it's text to win, or is that text to lose?

For those of you who don't know, a text 'n win promotion is one which is usually advertised on a pack of something or other like crisps or a drink and the customer is invited to text in to a shortcode for a chance to win a prize.

This is a very convenient way to manage a competition or prize draw and popular with consumers. The recent on-pack promotion by Walkers to text to win an i-pod offered a prize draw every five minutes and claims to be the biggest ever text and win promotion to date. Not only that, thought went into the reply (or lose) messages to encourage repeat entry - these messages varied from music trivia to free content to details of the previous day's winners. This avoided the campaign becoming a 'text and lose' campaign. This succesful campaign was run by Big Kick and Sponge.

'Text and win' has been embraced by sales promotion agencies in particular as it means not only do you not have to deal with sackloads of post, you also don't have the post-campaign data entry issues. Customers, by entering the competition, are giving you some of their data - i.e. their mobile number. It's up to you to collect any more data from the consumer if you need it.

It's also up to you as the marketer to make the lose messages engaging too, otherwise your campaign will end up being 'text and lose' rather than 'text and win'. This might be by offering mobile content for lower tier prizes or varying the replies, so each time you enter, you get something slightly different (as shown in the Walker's case study). This makes it feel more personal and about you. Personal being key to all things mobile. BeepMarketing has done this in the past for the likes of Foster's lager, Butt Ugly Martians and Tropicana ice lollies.

As a marketer, I think it's also fascinating to work out repeat entries to competitions, peak times, and down times to help you work out more about your customers and plan your next campaign. And not only that, you can then use the data (subject to keeping within the EU Data Privacy regulations) to communicate with willing customers - something we (at BeepMarketing) do for brands like Tabasco. The data is collected via on-pack promotions, we keep it clean against the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) and then use text messaging to promote future campaigns to drive sales. We offer an opt-out as part of every campaign.

Now, that has to be better than delving into a sackload of mail to pick a winner doesn't it?

Copyright Helen Keegan 2005. All rights reserved.

tags: mobile+technology & mobile+marketing & mobile & mobile+applications & mobile+media& text+to+win & text+and+win & sms+marketing