Optism™

Optism provides permission-based, mobile marketing services. Providing the opportunity for mobile subscribers to opt-in to advertising messages based on their preferences is the core tenant of our service. Our blog series Permission Marketing in the News has been highlighting mobile and other permission marketing news for the past year. The leading proponent of permission marketing is Seth Godin who coined the term in his book Permission Marketing in 1999. To celebrate our one year anniversary, we are running a series of blog posts summarizing his book chapter by chapter and analyzing how changes in the mobile and advertising marketplace have impacted the recommendations in his book.

Here are our summaries of earlier chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine.

In Chapter 10, Seth provides examples of companies that “have done it right, and some that haven’t.” Some of the companies he focuses on have thrived and continue to be dynamic retailers today, such as AOL and Amazon. Others – even some of the ones that were using permission marketing effectively – have disappeared. As we all know, the last 12 years have been tough ones!

The case studies provide good examples of permission marketing techniques in practice. Today, we can supplement Seth’s email-focused case studies with ones from the permission-based mobile marketing world.

Reach receptive audiences with targeted messages

Seth starts us off with an example of an opportunity missed. A kosher gourmet shop is advertising the availability of Passover dishes in an expensive, general population publication (The New York Times). It would be far more cost effective to direct advertising for these special-purpose products to a targeted audience. As a result, “the ad is wasted on the 95 percent or more of readers who have no interest in or desire for this product.” Adding insult to injury, the ad the shop uses doesn’t work visually – it’s too small and the call to action is unclear. Read the rest of this entry »

We start off with a look at how SMS continues to offer retailers an effective means to engage with their customers. As you’ll read in several other articles we’ve collected for this week’s Permission Marketing, some of us are even going to be able to pay for our holiday purchases using our trusty mobiles.

Mobile Marketer had advice for retailers on how to incorporate SMS into their mobile commerce activities this holiday season. Author Giselle Tsirulnik notes, “The personal nature of SMS makes it a great recommendation tool. Consumers trust their friends and family, and will likely open a text message with product information from a loved one.” Tim Miller of Sumotext in Arizona agrees, adding, “SMS is inherently viral because it’s inherently unobtrusive.” Companies like Gilt Groupe, Amazon, Best Buy and Target are taking advantage of this by including a feature on their mobile sites that lets people easily send product recommendations to friends.

According to Wilson Kerr of Unbound Commerce, SMS can also be combined with short codes to drive traffic to mcommerce sites. And SMS is an effective tool for encouraging people to sign up for loyalty programs. Kerr adds, “If a shopping cart is abandoned, SMS can be used to ping the customer who did not complete their transaction, to remind them that their cart is full and they forgot to check out.” Read the rest of this entry »