SMS turned 25 last week and I think it's showing its age

It's hard to believe that SMS, or short messaging service, or text message, is 25 years old. On December 3rd, 1992, the world’s first text message was sent. Fittingly, given the time of year, it read, “Merry Christmas,” according to TechSpot.

The first text message was sent by Neil Papworth over the Vodafone GSM network here in the UK. At the time, mobile phones weren’t capable of sending texts, so Papworth typed the message on a computer and sent it to an Orbitel 901. This wasn't a mobile phone, rather a telephone with a small digital display (pictured).

Text messages took off quickly in Europe but took longer to catch on across the pond in the USA due to the way US Mobile Network Operators (aka Carriers) were structured and how they priced their services.

It was SMS that brought me into the world of mobile marketing back in 2000 when I joined location based mobile marketing company, ZagMe. Our pioneering service was about sending text messages to shoppers whilst they were actually shopping at UK shopping malls - initially Lakeside and Bluewater, but with an aim to scale beyond that. We weren't quite the first to use text messaging for marketing, but we were the first to do this based on location. (For a short history of proximity mobile marketing, there's an article I wrote and accompanying video if you follow this link.)

At that time, young people had cottoned on to SMS and were using it to the exclusion of anything else. Voice calls weren't the done thing if you were a teenager. SMS was where it was at. Premium SMS was also used as the delivery mechanism for ringtones and logos (remember those?) and mobile games (snake anyone?) to small screen phones like the Nokia 3310 or the Sony Ericsson T68. Remember those phones? Parents were the next to cotton on to text messaging as a necessity for keeping in touch with their touch-texting teenage offspring. Others came later to the SMS party.

By 2012, mobile users in the U.K. were sending 151 billion texts a year. In recent years, that number has fallen quite dramatically. As of this year, users in the U.K. only sent 66 billion text messages. That's not to say people aren't messaging each other. They most certainly are, it's just they're using different apps and services to do it - Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Snapchat, even email. Why would you pay for SMS or bother with a SMS bundle when you can get other instant messaging services for free with your data bundle - data being much more of a necessity these days than SMS.

I know from my own experience, that I send hardly any SMS at all and I receive very few personal ones. I've been thinking about how I use SMS... I occasionally use it for messaging someone and those who I use SMS with tend to be older and don't tend to check their email much so SMS is still more immediate for them. I also use it to send voice messages to my Mum's landline. When I travel by train to visit her, I usually message her from the train to confirm that I'm on the train and what my arrival time will be, or let her know if I'm delayed. In that use case, SMS is key because mobile coverage is so patchy when crossing the country. I also use it for 2FA (two factor authentication) for some services. I get occasional marketing messages by SMS. And I get all GP and hospital appointment reminders via SMS.

So, SMS is not dead, but it's most definitely feeling its age. In mobile years, 25 is very old indeed. It still has a use and I think it should still be available on our mobile devices, but it's definitely the poor relation compared with WhatsApp and their ilk.

How about you? Are you still a SMS addict or have you moved on too?

Day 9/25 Blogmas

New comScore report: Mobile's Hierarchy of Needs

I just got an email from comScore announcing the release of a new global report, ‘Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs’. They tell us that this new report traces the global evolution of smartphones and tablets as they’ve become consumers’ primary digital tool, revealing specific behaviours for which these platforms are important to their daily lives. Data from 9 markets (USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, China and Indonesia) demonstrates audience and consumption trends, along with regional differences in digital landscapes.

Key insights revealed in ‘Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs’ include:

• Mobile devices account for more than 60% of all digital minutes in all 9 markets, led by app usage.
• The share of consumers abandoning desktop altogether varies dramatically by geography – from just 7% in the UK, to 70% in Indonesia.
• Messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ Instant Messenger and Line account for nearly 1 in 7 minutes in certain markets and led to a decline in standard SMS messaging.

I thought it was worth a look. You can download the report here: Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs report.

They have a bunch of other free whitepapers you may also find useful, including this recent one about Mums in the UK and their online behaviour, especially on smartphones.

It's so funny how we don't talk anymore..

Retro house phones in a hotel in Los Angeles. May 2016.

I have rarely been without a mobile phone for the last 16 years of my life. When I first got one, talking on the phone was the thing I did most of. Mainly because that's what the devices were designed to do and I didn't know any different having been brought up with a landline where it was the height of extravagance to listen to the charts on the phone using Dial-A-Disc (no really, we did do that and you can read about it here). I also used the alarm clock every day. I occasionally used the FM radio and did a fair bit of texting - but I was ahead of the curve on texting back in 2000 as I was working for a company whose only focus was on SMS marketing. If I hadn't been working for ZagMe back then, I'm not sure I would have been as quick to embrace SMS.

Fast forward 16 years and I can count the number of phone calls I make each week on the fingers of one hand. And when I receive a phone call, it's such an infrequent occurrence, it can sometimes feel like an intrusion of my private space. With messaging of all kinds, be that email, Facebook Messenger or lowly SMS, it's asynchronous so I can reply as and when I choose to and it's fair to say, I'm overwhelmed with written communication much of the time - especially email. A phone call is in real time, hence the feeling of intrusion. And if I need to get hold of someone, calling them feels like I'm intruding into their day unnecessarily. Although, that could just be call reluctance.

I'm not alone in this. A recent survey from GiffGaff (sample size 1,500 adults in the UK according to their PR team) showed that not only are we Brits spending 3 hours a day on our phones, but that less than a third of us use our phones mainly as a phone for making and receiving actual phone calls. The UK is a nation of texters with 36% of the 1500 respondents stating messaging (SMS / Messenger Apps) as the main use of their phone. Browsing is surprisingly low at 16% and Social media at 11%. I'm wondering if the last two were under-reported?

Also of interest, depending on the device you own, your use of that device will vary. There were 13% of respondents who own a Nokia device and more than 50% of them said they used their phones for phone calls. Apple users (29%) were the least likely to use their phones to make calls and most likely to play games on their phone. I'm guessing many of the Nokia owners have simple phones that do calling better than anything else and that's why their owners bought them as they have no desire to push their finger around a glass screen aimlessly.

It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. This song that my older readers may recognise comes to mind, Cliff Richard's 'It's so funny how we don't talk any more'.

So what happened? How come we fell out of love with talking? I used to spend hours on the phone talking to my friends after school. Is today's teenage experience with messaging and social media as rich? Do we need to be encouraged to talk more with an updated version of BT's 'It's good to talk' advertising with Maureen Lipman playing Beattie?

Of course, this survey was UK specific so usage trends are likely to be different in different countries, and especially in countries where literacy levels are not as high as they are in the UK. And communication in any form is a good thing - whether that's written or spoken. 

The main impact of all of this, especially for marketers, is about understanding people's preferred forms of communication and playing to it. If I want to get hold of my Mum, it's a phone call. If I want to talk to my friends, it's probably Facebook Messenger. For business contacts, it's Skype or email. And if you really want to cut through the clutter, a hand-written letter will do the trick.

Much as I love written communication, I think there is still a place for voice. A friend called me on the phone the other day. She knew I was having a rough patch so she took the time out to call me. Like people used to in the old days. And I'm grateful that she bothered as it was a much richer experience than the equivalent in SMS or email would have been. I need to remember that and maybe pick up the phone more often, for you know, phoning people. 

Sometimes, it's good to talk.

Update: Slate has picked up on this topic too and published a very good article about it here. Well worth a read.

The future of communications

A random email popped into my inbox this morning asking me my thoughts on the future of communications based on the questions below. I thought my answers might warrant a blog post as I’m interested in your thoughts too, dear reader, so please feel free to comment.

I thought I’d start the post with a little video from 1999 or thereabouts, from Motorola. It was their vision of the future of mobile communications. It’s easy for us to criticise the bits that are missing from the video, but at the same time, there are aspects of it that are spot on.

The future of mobile communications as predicted by Motorola back in ~1999.

And now for the questions posed…

1. What do you predict will happen/change in the communication sector in 2015?

I think my answer to this depends in how you define the communication sector. We are seeing a further decline in SMS and voice calls and I expect that to continue. At the same time, we are using our phones more and more to connect on social media and messaging apps – be that Twitter, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WeChat and many more.

Email is also not going away any time soon. Despite the fact that many of us are drowning in email, it is still an effective communication channel. The major change here is that we are accessing our email on a mobile device first.

Companies and organisations need to respond by being flexible in how they communicate with their audience and customers. That means email has to be mobile friendly – with links going to mobile pages, with email content including words and not just pictures and for it to be quick to download and access. There is also an additional need to allow easy options to unsubscribe with one click or one reply of an email.

On the social media side, companies have to adapt their communications strategies for dealing with customers. And it’s not easy when you’re dealing with multiple channels and many people demanding your attention much of the time. Keeping track of conversations with the same person over multiple channels is not easy. But more and more, customers are expecting this level of continuity.

2. How do you think people's behaviour will change in 2015?

I am currently seeing more people saying they’re uninstalling Facebook Messenger or other messaging apps or social media channels and telling people to contact them via a specific channel such as email, voice or SMS, or whichever their preferred method is.

It has always been true that people have different preferred communication channels – in the old days it was face to face vs telephone vs letter. It has got a whole lot more complicated now when you add in the plethora of messaging apps, social media and more. If you’re on the other side, it’s hard to always remember your friends’ preferences – the ones who never do Facebook, or don’t read their email, and even harder to always accommodate them. Add in the scale of any kind of business and their audience and their individual preferences and it gets a whole lot more difficult. Nevertheless, there are benefits in understanding these nuances and acting accordingly. There’s no point forcing someone to talk on the phone if they don’t like voice communication. Equally, there’s little use in getting frustrated when someone hasn’t responded to your email. For all you know, they may never have seen it in the first place. It could be one of  200 emails received that morning, or it could be languishing in their spam folder.

I’m also seeing a rise in protecting privacy and an increased level of understanding (and misunderstanding) of what personal data you’re giving away in return for using all these services. There have been attempts by the likes of Ello to hand back the power to the consumer but with limited success. At the moment utility still outweighs everything else, but not for everyone.
And video is on the increase. There have been many attempts at video-based messaging, but services like Vine seem to be a real hit. I think we’ll see more of this in the next year or two.

3. How will communication platforms respond to these changes?

I think companies running these communication services will respond more to the privacy issues, or at least, I hope they will. I’d like to see better explanation of what data is used, where it goes and why it’s needed. I’d like to see more companies working harder to protect the security of consumer data – even if that means we have to pay for the privilege.

From a marketing perspective, I think it’s likely we’ll see more types of advertising creeping in. After all, these services have to make their money somehow and if it’s not through premium or paid-for services, the only other model that I can see is advertising. I hope we see some innovative solutions here that work for both customer and advertiser and that we can get beyond the banner ad.

4. What excites you in the communication industry?

It’s dynamic. I’ve been working in mobile marketing and advertising since 2000 and back then, we had voice, SMS, voicemail and WAP on our phones. On our laptops or desktops, we had email and Instant Messenger. It’s amazing to think of how many more ways to communicate we have now. And I’m sure there are more to come. It taps into a basic human need to share and connect.

5. And which companies or apps do you think will be doing exciting things in 2015?



I really like what Swiftkey is doing to speed up mobile communication. The way it learns how you write, the words and syntax you use, is impressive. Their recent project with Professor Stephen Hawking is also impressive and shows that these tools can improve life and productivity for those with accessibility issues too. Something we often overlook in tech circles.

SMS is dead. Long live messaging.

You may be forgiven for thinking mobile marketing is all about adverts on web pages seen on a mobile device or in-app advertising or sponsorship. For those of us who’ve been in the game for longer than we care to remember, SMS started the whole mobile marketing sector off back in 1999 yet it is often overlooked for newer ways to use mobile (i.e. mobile adverts) or for older formats (email, print, TV).

But it isn’t quite dead yet. I still use it – although not nearly as much as I used to. My sister is an avid texter and my nieces are still at it. However, for the first time, there has been a downturn in text messaging in the UK.

The main culprits for the downturn is the rise of messaging services like WhatsApp. It makes sense. As we find other, cheaper, more convenient ways to chat to each other, SMS services will get replaced. Why pay for SMS when you can have WhatsApp for free and you’re paying for mobile data anyway? I suspect Facebook messenger and email also have a part to play in this picture.

Let’s look at this growth with a bit of historical context… According to the Mobile Data Association (and they got their figures direct from the network operators), annual consumer usage 1999-2009 was as follows:

1999 - 1 billion; 2000 - 6.2 billion; 2001 - 12.2 billion; 2002 - 16.8 billion; 2003 - 20.5 billion; 2004 - 26 billion; 2005 - 32 billion; 2006 - 41 billion; 2007 - 56.9 billion; 2008 - 78.9 billion; 2009 96.8 billion

As you can see from the graph, SMS was still growing, year-on-year, at a healthy pace in 2010 and 2011. And even though there has been a drop-off, we’re still looking at about 120 billion SMS every year in the UK or thereabouts. That’s 4.5 times more than what we were using 10 years ago. That’s a lot of SMS.

So let’s not dismiss SMS quite yet. When you look at the annual figures, they’re still very healthy so I encourage you to think about SMS as part of your marcomms effort. After all, plenty of your customers are still using it and there may still be value in connecting with them via SMS – especially for customer service – another area often overlooked.

What is particularly exciting for us mobile marketers though, is how much activity is happening on mobile devices. Check out that email figure – 65% of us are accessing email on our smartphones. It really is huge. So if you haven’t ‘gone mobile’ yet, I really think it might be time for you to do so.

I was asked a few years ago what my advice would be to the first time mobile-marketer in terms of ‘going mobile’ and I said to make sure their email marketing was mobile friendly. I think the advice still stands. If you do nothing else in mobile, please make sure your email works on handsets – and test for lower end devices. Not everyone has the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy!

txt a Monster 2 win! Another one from the archives

I still rate this campaign for its creative use of voice and SMS, especially as it is from 2002. At the time, it was only 12Snap who were running campaigns that combined IVR (Interactive Voice Response) with SMS (text messaging) from what I can remember.

It seems pertinent to share this one with you now as the new Monsters University film is out this summer – 11 years on from the original.

The mechanic of this campaign was pretty simply. You bought a packet of fries from McDonald’s. You opened the door to reveal a special phone number and code. Text the code message to the phone number given. You get a text message to say if you’ve won or lost. If you won, one of the Monsters called you back and screamed at you (which is in keeping with the original film).

This was the biggest mobile marketing campaign ever at that time and was printed on 13 million fry boxes. There was a tiered prize structure with all players being advised whether they had won or lost by text message. Premium winners also receive a “monster MobileCard” (this was using IVR – interactive voice response – and was the monster screaming at you). Intermediate prize winners get a mobile ringtone or logo (those were the days when you could offer these as a genuine prize to customers!). Non-prize-winners got a text message from a monster asking them to play again.

It was run via T-Mobile’s servers and they struggled under the volumes of messages coming through due to the popularity and large-scale of the sales promotion. At the time, McDonald’s was one of the brands pioneering mobile marketing.

The companion website can be seen here on web.archive.org

Kenco Rappor–mobile marketing from the archives

Below you will find the front and back scan of a sales promotion leaflet that came with Kenco Rappor packs that were new to the market back in 2002. It tied in with the theme of the recent TV campaign that was used to launch the product the previous year. The innovative element of the product was about the new pack format on offer – the fact that the instant coffee granules were in stick format to offer a single serving and designed specifically to appeal to younger customers. More on that rationale about the campaign here. An example of one of the TV ads used can be seen here if you’re interested.

Anyway, it’s fair to say that mid-2002 is still very much early days for mobile marketing. Errors in execution were certainly made – even with the limitations of the time. For example, we already had shortcodes and the mechanic was a bit complicated and fairly meaningless if you hadn’t seen or remembered the TV advert. And the leaflet was folded really really small to fit in the tiny sample size packs they were giving out.

Feel free to discuss what you would do the same or differently.

You can see larger versions of these graphics on flickr in my mobile marketing set.

I stand by my words

I’ve been staying with my Mum for a few days. My father died earlier this year and we’re all still grieving and getting used to him not being around. It’s a little bit weird to be sitting at his desk, in his chair, using his things – where he would have been writing (there’s a lovely large ink blotter on the desk) and of course, where I’m tapping away at my laptop with a mobile phone also close to hand.
I happened to glance up from my screen and in the letter rack I spotted this clipping. My Dad’s written on it ‘Times July 1’. I don’t remember being in it so it was a bit of a surprise to see it. My father clearly took the trouble to buy a copy of the newspaper (he was a Telegraph reader as a rule) and then cut out and kept the clipping. It’s at least 5 years old – maybe older judging by the picture. I’m touched, and a little bit teary, that he did that.
And then I read the piece and I stand by my words. I think it’s from a talk I gave at a conference but I don’t remember. As it doesn’t appear to be available online, I’ve transcribed it here:

‘The future of mobile is that mobile will just be a normal part of the marketing mix. It will be almost invisible, in that people won’t know whether they are browsing on the mobile web of (sic) the ‘full fat’ web; they will just be looking at Facebook or the BBC, or checking email, so their consciousness of how they are doing that will disappear. The focus will be on making brands’ services and products accessible, however anyone wants to get hold of them and that’s the priority.
Mobile technology is moving forward, and there are some exciting innovations around and we will see mobile being used in some interesting ways in the future, but we should not get carried away with the new shiny thing, when a good, reliable mobile website and old fashioned SMS are still really important. There is a lot of mileage left in messaging for customer service, saying thank you, getting feedback, the simple things. It’s not about push advertising, it’s about having a proper relationship with customers who want to have a relationship with you.
It’s easy to get carried away with the technology, but good marketing begins and ends with good service. You have to make it easy for people to find and buy your stuff and do it again.’

Views and perspectives from the recent MMA Forum in London

A guest post by Emmanuel Legros (twitter), Gemalto

This year’s Mobile Marketing Association Forum held in London was the usual hotbed of discussion around current and evolving market trends. As a member of the MMA, I both attended and presented at the event, speaking in a track session on ‘Doing More’, alongside Nokia, Eagle Eye Solutions, O2 and InMobi, hosted by Jonathan Kelly from Vodafone.

The presentation given by Babs Rangaih from Unilever was one I found particularly compelling. Outlining Unilever’s Mobile Manifesto, including the fact that the FMCG company has further committed to Apple iAd campaigns, as reported Ronan Shields and others, Unilever’s VP of global communications planning made some really intriguing points, including:

· No one is doing a great job in social media yet, which means there’s still an opportunity here

· It’s just the beginning for us and those in our industry, and we can all continue to learn and adapt.

· Mobile is a priority channel – if you lose your wallet, it may take you a day or a few hours to realize it. If you lose your mobile, you notice immediately.

Ultimately, his key message was that mobile marketing needs to be kept simple. It can bring great benefits or utility for consumers, for example through the delivery of mobile coupons.

Attila Weisz, digital marketing manager – IMC, at The Coca-Cola Company, raised a good point in his presentation too, talking about “mobile 3.0”. Even with all the development we’ve seen on mobile platforms, however, SMS still reigns supreme as a mobile marketing medium. Tens of millions of consumers out there haven’t made the leap to a smartphone platform yet.

It was interesting to hear how more and more big companies and corporations are investing in mobile. One major brand claimed it spent 70% of its time on above the line campaigns, 10% on innovation and 20% on mobile! If more companies adopted this investment in mobile, we would be significantly further down the line!

A third presentation that stood out was from the VP of digital products for The Weather Channel – Scott Jensen. In his eyes, mobile needs to be relevant – the keywords here are personal, local and social. Mobile marketing can only ever work if it offers the right message with the right content to the right person at the right time.

Which takes me on to my final thought which flowed through the entire conference, which is that permission-based marketing is the key to success. What marketers, who are embracing the mobile channel, need to be mindful of is that privacy and obtaining permission from consumers is what will determine whether their campaigns are successful or not. Access to this personal information is vital to creating that personalised experience, and consumers need to give you their permission to have that access. Also to note that permission is only granted on a temporary basis and has to be updated over time. People change so permission given once is not permission given forever.

It’s not all bad news though – those who manage to obtain permission stand to make headway with their target audiences. Gemalto has supported a Mobile Marketing Association whitepaper on Permission-Based Marketing (free pdf once you’ve filled in a short request form) which provides further guidance, case study examples and success stories. Worth a read if you want to learn more.

What’s the future for SMS?

A very good question if you ask me. With the current obsession with iPhone apps, it’s easy to disregard other makes of mobile phone, let alone other mobile technologies. And SMS simply isn’t seen as particularly sexy or exciting (although if I had to blow on my glass screen to write a message, as seen in this Window Concept Phone pictured from Tuvie.com) maybe that would be exciting!). I think there is still a lot of mileage in SMS for marketing and customer service and when Michaela approached me to ask if she could write a guest article for this blog on that topic, I, of course, said yes. So, over to Michaela…

A guest post by Michaela Cristallo, Marketing Manager at InvolveMobile

Mobile marketing has grown at a huge rate in the last ten years, and with this growth we have seen mobile technologies from SMS to now encompass mobile apps, the mobile web, geo-location services and mobile display advertising. With so many technologies at the mobile marketer’s disposal and growing rates of Smartphone ownership worldwide, what is the future for SMS?

While arguably the most simplistic and least ‘rich’ of the mobile technologies, SMS has a variety of important strengths which will ensure its continued relevance amongst increasingly sophisticated mobile channels.

To begin with, SMS is a very effective way to deliver a marketing message to a wide, yet targeted, group of people. Pretty much every mobile phone is text message capable. This means a huge potential reach, compared with other mobile technologies like mobile applications or the mobile web which rely on Smartphones (i.e. handsets which use a named operating system like iPhone, Nokia Series 60 & Symbian 4, Android, BlackBerry etc) where ownership stands at just 18% in the US. Further, research from Frost and Sullivan and others shows that typically, 90 per cent of text messages are read within three minutes of receipt, with 99% read in time.

SMS is also a very versatile medium. Despite its lack of rich media features, SMS marketing can be used to run a variety of interactive mobile campaigns. Information and communication based services are perfect for SMS via text alerts or mobile clubs. Interactive campaigns like text to win, text to screen and SMS trivia are also possible. In addition, many retailers benefit from the instant nature of SMS for pushing timely sales offers via text based mobile coupons.

In addition to its wide reach and versatility, SMS is a great low cost option for marketers just starting out with mobile. It provides an opportunity to connect with customers on a mobile device for a low monthly cost. Unlike creating an app or mobile optimised site there are no large upfront costs (unless you’re considering a large-scale CRM-style system), or long lead times to contend with. An SMS marketing campaign can be set up in minutes and implemented immediately. SMS marketing can be a great way to start out with mobile marketing, with the potential to add other mobile mediums like apps and geo-location later down the track.

SMS marketing is a great way for small businesses to connect with their customers. With smaller budgets and often less stability upon which to make longer term decisions, the cost effective, instant and versatile nature of SMS marketing is ideal. SMS can be used effectively by small businesses to run a variety of promotions including text to win, event based text to screen and special offers via mobile coupons. SMS marketing is also an ideal way for small businesses to keep in contact with their customers via text message alerts and mobile clubs. Once initial opt in consent is gained from a customer, a small business can send regular marketing messages to that customer informing them of new products, events and sales. Over time, a business can grow their database, increasing the reach of their SMS marketing efforts.

With so many consumers interacting via mobile, multi channel campaigns are increasingly effective. The importance of a multi-channel approach to mobile marketing has been realised by many big name brand advertisers including Best Buy, Marks & Spencer and KFC who effectively use SMS alongside other mobile and non-mobile channels.

Multi-channel mobile strategies work well because they are whole – in the sense that each mobile technology on its own has fundamental shortcomings, which are rectified when these mediums are used in an integrated approach. A ‘whole’ mobile approach is possible because each medium contributes in the way it can give best.

SMS marketing, with its instant effect, wide reach and versatility, can be used for pushing timely alerts and information to customers. It’s also great for holding competitions, games and mobile coupons that the majority of mobile users can participate in.

Other richer mobile mediums, including apps and the mobile web, are best used when a richer media experience is required or expected. While many mobile users will not be able to access this content, some situations require this richer experience. Retail in particular is one area where apps and mobile sites are particularly beneficial – where consumers want to see and experience a product in as rich detail as possible, for example an online look book or catalogue. In situations like these, SMS may be too limited to provide the ideal experience.

Newer technologies such as geo-location are ideal for physical retail locations. Geo-location tools can be a great way to drive store traffic and encourage interaction, however once again, reach is limited.

A multi channel approach therefore draws all of these mediums together to create campaigns that reach consumers at every mobile touch point. SMS is essential to the multi channel approach because it does what it does well – provide marketers with the opportunity to push short, sharp messages to consumers that will be received and consumed instantly, with little cost or lead time involved. Without SMS the multi channel mobile approach falls apart, with brands using expensive technologies like apps to achieve the simplest of mobile tasks, suffering from longer lead times, and not reaching a large proportion of their target market.

So, what is the future for SMS? While SMS today competes with a range of different mobile technologies, SMS marketing brings its own set of strengths to a mobile campaign to complement it. The pace of mobile technology is moving quickly, and just as apps, the mobile web, mobile applications and geo-location have taken a piece of the mobile marketing pie, other technologies will continue to do so, such as NFC (near field communication), augmented reality and more. SMS, however, has its own distinct advantages, so the future for SMS remains bright – for small business, for new mobile marketers, for multi-channel approaches, and simply, for anyone wanting to engage their customers with short, sharp, timely, relevant and cost effective messages to the widest group of consumers possible using a mobile device.

About Involve Mobile:

Based in Australia, InvolveMobile is a leading text messaging software solution and has an award winning and full featured solution that has been continually developed since 2001, providing clients (from small business to large enterprise) with short code (dedicated short code and shared short code) and bulk SMS solutions.

InvolveMobile is part of Dload – an international interactive marketing company founded in Australia in 1999. Dload have commercialized research and technical development in digital communications to provide interactive marketing solutions to clients around the world.

Technorati Tags: sms,sms marketing,mobile marketing,involve mobile,guest post,text messaging,mobile advertising

MePlease launches today and shares interesting case studies

It’s about time I blogged a few things as it has been a while and I feel no better place to start than with MePlease. I’ve known about MePlease for some time now as I met the founder, Steve Jarrett, over a year ago at The Tuttle Club and it was then that I first heard about his plans to launch a new company to provide mobile and social marketing services to retailers. Some of you may know that this is a topic close to my heart having spent my early career in fashion retail and more than 10 years ago, was part of the start-up team at ZagMe, the world’s first location-based mobile marketing service (sadly no longer). With all that in mind, I am certainly critical of mobile marketing services to retailers – sometimes overly so. But that’s because I’ve been there, done that and can quickly see the holes in a new service. I’m pleased to say that this isn’t the case with MePlease. With several solid and successful client campaigns under their belt, they’re now in full launch mode and sent me their latest press release.

So what is MePlease and what’s so special about them?

MePlease is an integrated social and mobile marketing platform that provides businesses with powerful ways to engage customers on their mobiles, along with easy social media sharing. Just as importantly, their platform gives people using MePlease complete control over which businesses can interact with them and how often. [I like the fact they’re combining ubiquitous SMS with mobile web and social media. No, SMS couponing isn’t unique, they’re not the first to do it, but I believe they’re doing it right, and I know for a fact they have a strong management and investment team.] And you can see how it works in this short video clip featuring Me Please's Cait Roberts (you may recognise her from TechfluffTV and Mobile Monday London.

MePlease In Action at PizzaExpress from MePlease on Vimeo.

The MePlease team also tell me that its mobile social platform makes any marketing campaign interactive, measurable and shareable. It has the ability to include voting, competitions, customer feedback, location check-ins and the sending of treats and promotions.  Using SMS, mobile web, facebook and more, this enables companies to help achieve specific business goals such as increasing loyalty, acquiring new customers, and driving footfall. MePlease provides a seamless experience with social media, especially Facebook’s Open Graph, making it easy for anyone to share MePlease treats and invitations with friends.  Importantly, however, with MePlease customers are in control of what companies they hear from and how often. Unlike mobile location or voucher-based applications, MePlease works on any phone and can connect with any business or service, from national brands to small businesses. [Sounds pretty comprehensive to me and worth a look if your game is retail. And I know they also have ways to be location-based without a customer needing to have a smartphone.]

Pizza Express ‘Create Your Pizza Challenge’ Campaign

PizzaExpress, the UK’s favourite high-street pizzeria (well, it’s certainly my favourite high-street pizzeria and a firm favourite with the Mobile Monday London team), is among the first to take advantage of the MePlease’s integrated social media and mobile platform in an upcoming national campaign.

PizzaExpress is using the MePlease system to enable interactive customer voting during the final round of their ‘Create Your Pizza Challenge’, which has already drawn over 48,000 entries since the competition opened (not too shabby a response I would say). Through on-table displays in every PizzaExpress locations from October 18th to November 14th, customers will be prompted to text-in their vote for one of the five finalist pizzas they would like to see on the menu. Once customers text-in, they will also be able to post their vote directly to Facebook to encourage viral sharing via MePlease.

John Sullivan, Director of Group IT at Gondola Group, (PizzaExpress’s parent company), said, “We really like that MePlease enables us to directly engage with our customers using their trusted one-to-one communication channel.  Recently over 10% of our MePlease users texted in for a special lunch event at our Richmond restaurant; this response rate was very encouraging and happened within 15 minutes of sending the initial call to action.” [We had similar response rates to this when we launched ZagMe so I’m not surprised at this figure. It is most definitely achievable.]

Steve Jarrett, CEO and Founder of MePlease commented, "Most businesses know they should be doing more with mobile and social media. I am hugely proud that our world-class team has created such a powerful, yet simple and fun way for businesses to engage with their customers and friends – while allowing each person to retain complete control about what they receive and from whom. There’s nothing else like the MePlease service available today and I’m really excited about the ways in which businesses are already using the platform.”

MePlease’s current clients include: PizzaExpress, Cineworld, Jack Wills, Nimax Theatre Group, Jongleur’s Comedy Clubs, Ted Baker, Waxy O’Connors’ Pubs, 333 Holdings, Kick Fitness, Tonicity Spa, William Thomas Hair, House Keepers London, Got Fitness and Fancy Dress.

And if you think this Pizza Express campaign is a one-off, then they’ve also achieved great results with many more, including the  Tragus Group (Bella Pasta, Strada and Cafe Rouge):

Project: 6 month trial at selected Tragus locations in London in order to prove viability of national rollout to 250+ UK restaurants

Key Results: 

• 9% average text redemption rate
• 53% redemption rate for single campaign
• 20% joined via sharing or signing up online

And also Jongleurs:

Project: Promote Jongleurs’ new comedy club Sway, Covent Garden London during August, a typically quiet month

Key Results:

• Drove up to 25% of the club’s footfall on Friday
  nights during one month, including ticket sales and
  food/beverage purchase
• Increased ROI by 40% in one month

“We are really pleased with the results of our first MePlease campaign. From a sales and marketing perspective, August is our most challenging month so the fact that MePlease filled up to a quarter of our seats that month is a truly outstanding result.”
- Will Beckett, Operations Manager, Jongleurs

Technorati Tags: mobile marketing,sms marketing,retail marketing,pizza express,MePlease,mobile advertising,sms advertising

January linkage

I know I haven’t been blogging as much of late. It’s just so much easier to play on twitter. But I’ve made a sort of pact with myself to do more blogging this year and better capture some of my thoughts, projects and reading. I can’t promise I’ll keep it up mind, but let’s see how we go…

There’s a new UK Strategy Group which is looking at the Future of the Internet. Details about this Technology Strategy Board initiative is here. This is as much as I know about at the moment, but it’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Victor Keegan’s (no relation!) view of the upcoming challenges for the mobile phone including LBS (location based services) and metadata so that we know more about where we are and who we are to give more relevance for mobile services.

Nice use of SMS for customer service by La Trouvaille restaurant in London’s Soho is noted here.

I’m pleased to be the first Female Friday interviewee for GomoNews. The fairly in-depth interview is here outlining my journey into the mobile world, what I think of mobile marketing and, in particular, the role of SMS and mobile internet.

I’ve been travelling a fair bit too. I had the pleasure of speaking at Hostelworld’s annual international conference for hostel owners in Dublin last week. Cian from GomoNews was in attendance so he captured my keynote speech including tips and hints on how to do mobile marketing on a tight budget. As an aside, Hostelworld has launched its iPhone app which has done amazingly well since its recent launch.

A comprehensive article on the smartphone market by Guy Agin. Well worth a read to put the different smartphone vendors and platforms into some kind of perspective and redraws the mobile platform map and explains the graph below in more detail.

Conceptual design and thinking behind a ‘five year phone’. Food for thought, especially after our Mobile Monday London goes to Brighton event on sustainability in mobile back on 18th January.

Technorati Tags: platforms,handsets,mobile internet,customer service,sms marketing

SMS continues to grow in the UK

The Mobile Data Association has released it’s latest SMS and MMS usage figures for the UK. And interesting reading they are too. MMS or picture messaging is still a tiny proportion of overall messaging, but it is there and it is increasing.

According to the MDA, the continued growth of messaging is highlighted by a 2009 daily average of 265 million text messages and 1.6 million picture messages. 2009’s text message total was 96.8 billion (a 23% increase on 2008), while over 600 million picture messages were sent across the whole year.

Seasonal drivers still appear to propel the use of Picture Messaging, with 4.5 million picture messages being sent on Christmas Day itself – hence the spike in traffic in December -  while Network Operators’ figures also indicated an upturn in picture messaging during the recent cold snap. I’m guessing lots of people were comparing the snow in their area with friends and family.

Text messaging traffic over the recent festive period continued to rise proportionately.

Christmas Day    Increase on      NYE/ Day      Increase on 
2009                       2008                       2009/10                  2008
441,805,870          31%                   874,033,799               21% 

Assessing the findings of the MDA’s report, Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst at Quocirca, said: "New generation touchscreen handsets and the bundling of SMS messages into many tariffs has made texting easier, and seen its role develop. Now it is not only a convenient medium for a quick chat with friends, but also a way of participating in television voting and raising funds for needy charities. When a powerful call to action is given, the population of the UK often turn first towards their mobile phones." This is borne out with the recent campaigns to raise funds for BBC Children in Need and the DEC appeal for Haiti.

Q4 2009 Statistical findings

Text Messaging (SMS)

Total number of text messages (SMS) sent in:
2009 total 96.8 billion
2008 total 78.9 billion
2007 total 56.9 billion

Video and Picture messages (MMS)

Campaigns like the Radio 1 Free MMS Day appear to have had an effect on the figures by attracting 42,000 messages to the BBC radio station in just 24 hours with viewers contributing to an online mosaic of all their images (moderated of course). Let’s see if MMS continues to grow in 2010. The growth rate between 2008 and 2009 was just 9%, averaging 1.6m MMS per day. However, I’m in no doubt that SMS will continue to grow in 2010 and beyond.

Total number of picture messages (MMS) sent in:
2009 total 601 million
2008 total 553 million
2007 total 449 million

 

 

Source: Mobile Data Association / Text.It

Technorati Tags: sms,mms,messaging,picture messaging,text messaging,statistics,mda,text.it,mobile

Monday Morning linkage – 27 April 09

How to make money on the mobile internet – a presentation round up from Sergio Falletti’s session at The Mobile Internet Forum in Vienna.

Comprehensive case study from Guinness and their use of mobile marketing for the Hong Kong Sevens (a rugby tournament for the non-rugby fans out there).

SMS biggest riser as mobile marketing recall increases significantly in early 2009 according to recent GFK research into advertising and marketing.

Rory Cellan-Jones meets Malcolm Barclay, the inventor of one of the many home-crafted applications being sold for the iPhone (short BBC video) and Rory also discusses the birth of the new mobile applications industry (including a short interview with James Whatley aka Whatleydude).

Are we living in a Totalitarian State in the UK? Political correctness going over the top? And what about the Government snooping on our every email, telephone call and web visit? [My personal opinion is that the government is neither equipped to deal with the data, nor has the justification to go down this track since there is no evidence to suggest it will make our lives safer and will be prone to abuse since it’s humans who will be running it not robots.] I agree, give us back our private lives.

Technorati Tags: linkage,links,mobile marekting,data,sms marketing,mobile internet,mobile web

Is SMS marketing doomed?

Well, that’s a question I was asked recently. The marketer who asked me feared that SMS marketing could go the same way as email marketing, which in his opinion, is ruined and he wondered how or even if we could stop that from happening and whether or not any industry initiatives held any weight.

Many would argue that email marketing isn't broken - it makes money, can be useful and is now a well-honed, scientific activity. There are plenty email companies out there doing very nicely thank you. And there are even a few of them who take our privacy and customer experience seriously. Personally, email marketing is broken for me. I’m overwhelmed by email (I always have a backlog of emails to read and I don’t get round to answering them all despite best intentions, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day). And I still get junk email to made up email addresses based on my domain names which I find particularly distasteful. That said, I still sign up to email newsletters and from time to time there are some things I respond to. But it’s all a bit random and I really could do without the volume. The same goes for direct mail and direct marketing. It doesn’t work for me. I’m completely overwhelmed by direct mail, both business and personal, and despite being on the Mailing Preference Service’s 'Do not mail’ list, it still keeps coming. I’m also on the Telephone Preference Service list although, you’d never know as I still get a ton of unwanted marketing calls.

But those direct marketing channels still work as most people are not like me. Or the chap I was talking to about this. Not everyone is overwhelmed with paper or digital communications. Different people have different needs and we are most definitely not all the same. Click through and conversion rates in the very low percentage points are all that’s required for a direct marketing campaign to be successful inasmuch as there’s a return on investment. That fact that 99.9% of your audience didn’t respond is largely irrelevant if the 0.5% responding made you the money. Screwed up, yes, but it still adds up financially.

Coming back to mobile marketing, it is inevitable and unfortunate that mobile advertising and marketing will be and has already been misused. There will always be someone out to make a quick buck, find a loophole and exploit it. Junk SMS does make money too - although the economics and science behind it are more limited than with email due to the cost of sending. But even factoring that in, and factoring in the potential of a fine from Phone Pay Plus, junk SMS persists – I know. I still get the junk SMS messages offering me a hot date, filthy video clips or a dodgy loan. The Mobile Marketing Association initiatives *are* worth supporting and savvy marketers and companies will follow them as the short cuts become less and less appealing.

I co-founded Grumbletext SOSSMS back in 2003 which is a site where you can complain about your junk SMS and it certainly helped raise awareness at the time and is still a place where you can name and shame the offending companies and campaigns. Phone Pay Plus (formerly ICSTIS) is the UK regulator for many issues around junk SMS and does fine companies pretty regularly. However, the fines for some companies are simply a ‘cost of doing business’,but if we didn’t have this, then the landscape would be even worse.

We will never stamp it out completely, there will always be someone who doesn't want to play ball and finds a way around it and who is led by greed and not what customers what, but the industry initiatives are worthwhile supporting because, if nothing else, it raises awareness on a wider scale. There are no easy answers.

I think the real problem around mobile marketing ultimately will be more generic. As we move towards unified messaging (facebook, twitter, SMS, email all coming to the same inbox), we will be overwhelmed by marketing messages yet again so it will be a law of diminishing return as we just switch it all off rather than trying to work out which messages we want.

We actually need less advertising overall not more but in this world where creation of digital media and by association advertising opportunities, is almost infinite and only limited by bandwidth (you can create as many web pages as you like and auto-generate emails, blogs, viral message and in turn, on each page there’s the potential to place an advertisement), that isn't going to happen. Automated filtering might be the way forward. Intelligent systems may help. Some customers may even be prepared to put the effort in to manage all of this to keep it under control. And we might think we’re so clever that by understanding past behaviour we can predict future behaviour (which is a myth by the way - “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” as all financial companies will tell you). Even with all the targeting and relevance in the world it won’t necessarily make our advertising lives any better or easier. Serendipity plays a part too and I’m not clear how much that is or isn’t understood in marcomms circles. I guess that’s one for another post.

We're in a period of fast change, a revolution even, and we do need to keep an eye on the ball as to what the future might hold. We don’t have the answers yet but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to work them out.

Technorati Tags: sms marketing,junk mail,junk sms,grumbletext,Phone Pay Plus,ICSTIS,MMA,Mobile Marketing Association,Mobile Marketing,advertising,mobile advertising

Image courtesy of sirmikester used under Creative Commons Licence.

Update 3pm 3 April 09: Paul Berney from the MMA has written a post about how to harness CRM using mobile marketing and says,

"...the customer experience and the ensuing results for the brand will only be good if the channel is not abused in the same way as email has been in the past. For any mobile marketing message to really resonate with a consumer, they need to have confidence that what they receive is something of interest and use to them. Anything else on this highly personal medium is unacceptable.

Current internet marketing and privacy standards do not adequately address the specific challenges faced by marketers when marketing through the mobile channel. Strong mobile industry privacy principles must protect the mobile channel from abuses by unethical marketers, to limit consumer backlash and additional regulatory scrutiny."

Check out the full article and the links to the relevant MMA guidelines.

Sarah McVittie – one for Ada Lovelace Day

For those of you who don’t know, Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. Something I’m quite vocal about as some of you may have noticed already. Ada Lovelace Day is about changing that invisibility and getting bloggers to tell the world about these unsung heroines of tech.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. So this initiative is one chance to do something about that and highlight new role models and make sure that whenever the question “Who are the leading women in tech?” is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.

So with a bevy of lovely ladies to choose from, it was very hard for me to decide, but decide I must. So today I’m choosing Sarah McVittie who co-founded Texperts.

She’s not your typical lady in tech, if there is such a thing. She’s not a developer. She doesn’t talk geek speak. And if she’s into gadgets in a big way, I’ve never noticed it during all the times I’ve spent with her. What she is though is down to earth, passionate, driven with an aim to help real people find the answer to stuff. She’s the founder of Texperts, the dead easy service whereby you can text any question you like to 66000 and get an answer back for a pound from the Texperts engine which is a genius mix of automated answers (built on several years worth and many 100s of 1000s of questions and a system that learns) and real live human beings. The human element being critical to the success of the service. If the answer isn’t to your satisfaction, you’re not charged. Simple as that.

Admittedly, in this tech world of the new new thing, SMS isn’t seen as the sexiest technology in the world to work with and is often dismissed now as the poor relation in this new world order of the mobile internet. And even in 2003 it wasn’t the sexiest technology in the world. But good golly Miss Molly, the algorithms and thinking behind this service are sexy. SMS it may be but don’t be fooled by its simplicity and think it can’t be any good and that it must be ‘a bit last year’. It certainly ain’t ‘a bit last year’ and is very much ‘so right now’. SMS is still very much live and kicking and the Texperts team are making customers happy and making money at it too. Yes, making money. A real live revenue stream not dependent on mobile advertising. How’s that for a turn up for the mobile industry books?!

Now the Texperts service is growing up having been bought by the folks behind the mighty 118118 and with that comes the recent US launch. Exciting times indeed for Sarah and her loyal team of texperts.

As for Sarah herself, she’s an entrepreneur with a vision and tenacity. A generalist who can also specialise when she needs to. Without a technical background, she’s built a technology business focussed on customer need. She has bags of energy, and I *mean* bags of it. She’s generous of spirit and kind of nature. A pleasure to hang out with. Always lots of fun and bursting with ideas and great anecdotes about the kinds of questions they get asked. She’s been through good times and bad times and has held on and kept the faith and it has paid off. And she’s still young enough to enjoy all the success that has and will come her way.

I’ve known her since the very early days of Texperts when it was born as 82Ask and I’ve been a fan since day one of both her and the service. Sarah is an inspiration to all of us, men and women alike and is a great role model for anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit. Sarah shows us that you don’t need to know C++ or the square root of the semantic web divided by a Java platform to build and run a technology business. What you do need is a good idea and to get the right people and resources around you to deliver that idea. Oh, and a good dollop of strength of character.

Well done Sarah. A most welcome addition to Ada Lovelace Day.

Technorati Tags: adaLovelaceDay09,mobile,sms marketing,sms,texperts,82ask,entrepreneurship,wimd,women in mobile data,technology

10 things you didn’t know you could do via text

 

Now there’s a challenge. I use SMS for all sorts of things but in my mobile world, folks tend to get carried away with the new stuff and forget good ol’ fashioned reliable text messaging. And I firmly believe there is still plenty mileage in text messaging.

So when I received an email from another Helen who blogs at Mobile Maven alerting me to a post she’d just written about 1o things you didn’t know you could do via text, it got me thinking. Clearly there’s an American bent to her list and there’s a few things missing on it including these:

My favourite use of SMS in marketing terms is for customer service. Telling people via SMS that their parcel will be delivered on x date, asking customers for feedback and simply saying thank you goes a lot further than endless push messages telling me to do something I probably don’t want to do. Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition.

On a daily basis, one of the SMS services I use most is Spinvox who do voicemail to text message – incredibly handy – it converts all my voicemail messages to a SMS which I can then reply to the caller via SMS if I wish. I can even dial in to listen to the message if someone has mumbled so much that it wasn’t translatable. It also works as a voice memo service and links in with various social networks. And even better news today, is that Spinvox is now working with Skype.

You can text in to disable your phone if it’s been stolen… this is still a work in progress for me and I have yet to complete my investigation into these services but will report back shortly on my findings.

And although not strictly a SMS service, you can back up all your SMS (and contacts and whatever else) from your phone, over the air, using Synkia. I met these guys in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress and I’ve been looking out for a SMS-back-up service forever and couldn’t understand why one didn’t exist. After all, O2’s bluebook does this. And Treasuremytext goes some way to doing this too, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. But I have to say, Synkia is *exactly* what I was looking for.

I know there are plenty other examples but instead of me going on about them, perhaps you can tell me what your favourites are instead and share them with everyone here?

Is the Love Letter doomed in our digital age?

The National Trust seems to think that it might be as we’re swapping the old fashioned pen and paper for very short ‘I luv u’ messages instead. Now that would be a shame. Admittedly, it’s over 20 years since I had a proper love letter. In fact, I got three in three days from the same handsome boy I was dating at the time (Mark Hickson, where are you? All is forgiven!) but then we didn’t have mobile phones or computers and I was also sharing a landline with about 30 other people in a Hall of Residence in deepest New Cross. And clearly he was thinking about me. A lot. I still have those letters and they’re a lovely thing to keep.

And it got me wondering if text messages or an email means as much as those letters mean to me or if they’re seen as throwaway and disposable as much of the rest of our modern lives seem to be? And can we ‘keep’ and ‘treasure’ emails and texts in the same way that I have kept a bunch of old letters from friends, family and loved ones? I wonder if services like Treasuremytext are the answer?

The National Trust has surveyed 2,500 of our Great British public and come up with some interesting factoids.

Andrew McLaughlin, head of communications at The National Trust, says, "In today's age of easy and instant communication, written letters and carefully crafted poems aren't as important as they once were, but if anything that makes genuine love letters more valuable rather than less.

In comparison, text messages and emails just don't cut it, I'm afraid. Our survey shows that people would still love to receive carefully written letters or poems, but just don't make time to write them.

Fortunately, while we may have lost practice, we haven't forgotten the letters and poems which once made Britain one of the most romantic countries in the world. Among the thousands of writings we have on display at properties up and down the country, the love letters are always among the most popular and say far more about somebody's life than almost anything else."

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: love,love letter,letter,sms,email,national trust

Did you know…

The lovely folks at Sharpcards just emailed me with some insight into the global messaging market and I thought you’d be interested to see what they had to share…

The mobile messaging market raked in around $130 billion in revenues by the end 2008, and is on target to increase that to $224 billion by 2013. Although the majority of this is made up by SMS, the popularity of MMS has been increasing steadily over the past few years. In 2009 MMS is expected to generate over $31 billion worldwide, $1 billion more than SMS was generating five years ago. MMS is also being predicted to pass 115 billion messages by the end of 2011 according to Portio Research last November.

In 2008 Sharpcards (the enhanced mobile messaging people) sold over 1.5m mobile personal greetings worldwide, with around 20% of those sales (300,000) coming from Valentine's Day alone. Key trends from last year:

• 40% of mobile ecards were bought in the four hours between 08:00 and 12:00 (around 30,000 greetings sold per hour)
• 56% of sales occurred before midday and less than 2% after 22:00 – there are some of us who obviously like to live dangerously
• It seems that most people in the world are soft at heart, with cute and cuddly outselling kinky cards by 3-1 in 2008
• Sharpcards sent 363 marriage proposals through mobile ecards on Valentines Day 2008: Perhaps not the most traditional way to 'pop the question' and I wonder how many of the answers were ‘yes’?

Hmm, that’s quite a lot of messaging going on out there.

Technorati Tags: mms,sms,messaging,ecards,statistics

Police text cocaine users

I was chatting with Patrick Smith from SMS is the New Black about the future of mobile (something we'd all been talking about all day at the Future of Mobile Conference and I've questioned here ), and we both agreed that there was still a lot of mileage left in today's technology - not least trusty old SMS.

So I thought I'd check out Patrick's blog and although it's a new blog on the block, I like what's there so far and was particularly interested in his coverage of the police texting cocaine users in St Albans. It's such a simple idea. The police busted a bunch of cocaine dealers who were operating a delivery service not unlike your local pizza delivery service. As such, cocaine buyers ring up their local cocaine delivery service on their mobile and make their order and it gets delivered. So when the police caught the dealers, they also grabbed their phones and checked who had called the order line and texted them back.

"Police also sent text messages to 668 phone numbers they found thought to be of regular cocaine users.

The text messages said no action would be taken against the users and offered receivers help to kick drug addictions.

The recipients were also directed to a website with links to the Talk to Frank drugs advice website where they can get help."

So simple.

Technorati Tags: mobile,sms,text message,cocaine,police