Guy Talmi, Senior Marketing Director at Pontis, outlines how companies can benefit from a staged approach to mobile
marketing

Mobile users only accept marketing offers, or purchase new content,
when the offers are highly personalised and delivered to them at the
right time. Whats more, if users are bombarded with offer after offer,
theres a risk that they will be seen as spam and create customer
dissatisfaction. To avoid this risk, mobile marketers should adopt a
personalized multi-step campaign strategy, rather than a series of
generic one trick pony campaigns.
A well-managed, personalised, multi-step, campaign will increase user
acceptance of marketing offers and sell more digital services and
content. In order to achieve this, marketers need to plan a series of
synchronized offers, that will initially be targeted based on the usual
segmentation criteria and subsequently be based on each users actual
response behaviour.
The marketer must first define the business objectives of the campaign,
and then determine which broad segment of users to target with the
initial offer, such as new users or occasional users, for instance. The
offer must address the entire pre-defined segment and be relevant,
appealing, clear, and simple, for example, offering a discounted first
purchase of any song download to potential new users of a music
service.

Sub-segments
After the initial campaign is completed, there are naturally two new
sub-segments: those who responded and those who did not. The marketer
needs to devise and implement effective subsequent offers to these two
sub-segments.
People who did not respond need to receive an even better offer than
the original, possibly an initial free music download, in order to
motivate them to make a positive response.
People who responded positively to the initial campaign need to receive
a personalised offer, based on the type of content they have consumed.
Mobile marketers should use these responses to form the basis of the
next stage of the campaign, by observing which artist the user
downloads, and offering a discount on similar content in the future.
These derivative offers must contain variable content based on the
behaviour of the respondent. The communication method and timing of the
subsequent offer may also vary, for example, based on the time of day
the service was used.
The third stage is to group actual users of the service according to
their spending, the type, number and frequency of content downloads,
and the revenue and profit generated. The aim is now to motivate the
service user in each sub-segment to consume ever more content. For
instance, a user that downloads their favourite songs onto their mobile
could receive an offer to buy two songs and download a ringtone of
their choice, free of charge. This approach is ideal for motivating
users to consume new content that they may not be aware of, such as
mobile games, videos or podcasts.

Automated process
Finally, this whole process needs to be automated, not only to gather
the data on usage and consumption, but also to ensure that each
well-defined customer segment then receives relevant offers, at the
right time, communicated through the right channel. The arrival of new
solutions, specifically designed for marketers within this sector, is
now providing the capability for them to do this, by monitoring usage
of services or products in real-time, to enable behavioural-based
targeting; an approach that, until now, has simply not been possible.
These tools can be used by marketers to drill down to the most granular
level of information on their customer, enabling marketers to ensure
that the vital components, such as the content of the messaging, the
communication method and the timing, deliver optimum results.
By following these steps, marketers can motivate their users to make a
positive response. As with all campaigns, however, each part of the
process matters; if the campaign is rigorously planned with a flawless
execution, followed by intensive monitoring, it is more likely to
succeed.