Optism™

The first of the MMA Forums for this year will be taking place in Singapore next week, 23 – 25 April. This year’s Forum is bringing together the world’s leading mobile marketers and big brands to showcase smart approaches to mobile marketing. Through their examples and discussions, you’ll learn how to capitalize on the power of mobile in your own endeavors.

We’re happy to report that Optism’s Avtansh Sharma, Commercial Director, Media Monetization for Alcatel-Lucent, will be presenting at the Forum. Avtansh’s session, Mobile Marketing Meets the Wallet, will focus on the promise of commerce aided by advertising and how you can use mobile as the connective tissue in your marketing strategies. Avtansh will explore the benefits of surrounding mobile payments with additional value such as offers, deals and loyalty programs. This topic is very timely, given the growing demand from the industry to bridge the gap from advertising to actual conversions and demonstrate the ROI from mobile marketing.

The MMA Forums provide an excellent opportunity to learn the inside scoop on our always-exciting industry. There’s still time to register so please check it out. If you can’t join us, then follow the conference chatter on Twitter #MMAF2012. We hope to see many of you there.

A new issue of the International Journal of Mobile Marketing (IJMM) has been published, featuring the latest thinking on how the mobile channel can be used effectively for marketing. The award-winning IJMM collects insights and research from leading academics, students and industry professionals around the globe. The Mobile Marketing Association’s Academic Outreach Committee oversees the IMJJ’s publication in consultation with an Editorial Review Board made up of academic and industry professionals.

The Winter ’11 issue includes critical thinking on mobile marketing developments in specific countries, including India, Pakistan and South Korea. It also provides articles on different aspects of the interplay between mobile marketing and social media.

In addition, this issue features an analysis by Optism’s Mihai Vlad of the importance of transparency, straight talk and building trust in permission marketing approaches. Mihai’s article provides the academic underpinning for the ideas introduced in his recent Optism blog, “Thinking Human: Six Steps for Building a Successful Opt-In Mobile Marketing Strategy.”

Mihai’s article is the first offering in a new section within the journal called “Invited Commentary.” MobileGroove’s Peggy Salz has leveraged this development in the IJMM to introduce her own new series on “the best and brightest” in our industry. Her inaugural piece focuses on Mihai Vlad and his refreshing take on “how companies and brands can (and must) approach people to ensure a desired outcome for everyone involved.”

We highly recommend the International Journal of Mobile Marketing.

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, Nine and Ten.

In Chapter 11, Seth looks at the “ten questions to ask when evaluating any marketing program:

1. What’s the bait?
2. What does an incremental permission cost?
3. How deep is the permission that is granted?
4. How much does incremental frequency cost?
5. What’s the active response rate to communications?
6. What are the issues regarding compression?
7. Is the company treating the permission as an asset?
8. How is the permission being leveraged?
9. How is the permission level being increased?
10. What is the expected lifetime of one permission?

All of these questions merit attention, but we’re going to focus in on a few key ones that are highly relevant for a permission-based mobile marketing campaign. Read the rest of this entry »