Mobile Marketing Best Practice guide is out

Highlights to the July 2007 Guidelines include:

• Marketing to Children: define the guidelines for marketing to children under the age of 13.
• IVR: provide guidance on opt-in and opt-out via IVR (interactive voice response).
• Mobile Web: ensure opt-ins are also adhered to with each mobile web experience. The Guidelines specify the use of a PIN or phone MO message to confirm the authorized subscriber.
• Dispute Resolution: defines that dispute resolution is at the discretion of each carrier for their respective customers.

The mobile marketing best practice guidelines are available in pdf format from the MMA global website. You'll find other useful reports and papers available to download from the site too, and they're all free.

Meanwhile in the UK, ICSTIS is having its say on mobile marketing too.

"ICSTIS's proposals on third marketing lists have been received with cautious encouragement by industry members attending a meeting last week.

ICSTIS is proposing that:

1) In the subject/title of WAP Pushes, to have within it details of the short code in question. This is no different to existing requirements for promotional SMS messages.

2) In the subject/title of WAP Pushes, to have within it details of the fact that it's a "FreeMsg". This again is no different to existing requirements for promotional SMS messages.

Some networks already have a rule for the time after which you cannot send users promotional messages - which is set to 6 months, so as to ensure that if a SIM is recycled, the new owner doesn't get the previous owner's promotional messages."

Either way, common sense applies. And the old adage, "Do as you would be done by" certainly holds true with mobile marketing regardless of any legal requirements.