I haven’t figured out how to turn off the ring tone specifically for text messages, but I can identify them.

A single BLING means don’t waste my finger flipping muscles - unless to give my phone the bird.

I just counted the last 100 messages on my China Mobile cell phone before leaving on a brief trip outside of China, and found that exactly 30 were not spam. So every time the cell phone BLINGs, there’s a 70 percent chance it’s spam.

That’s likely enough that I’ll let friends and colleagues call if they really need something.

That said, pernicious spam may soon have to scram.

China Mobile recently said it would block short messaging service (SMS) marketing efforts by seven advertising companies, according to Cellular-news.com. Further, Focus Media has been embarrassed by recent news tying its company to spam, and it has instructed culprit subsidiaries to knock it off.

Beijing Review noted that “there is no law that defines SMS spamming and regulates it,” but the new Ministry of Industry and Information has drafted a regulation to better “supervise and standardize” the SMS market. That regulation will be publicly issued in a matter of weeks.

Should the spam landscape change for the better, ironically, it could be a good time to spam. There would be less spam competing for mobile users’ attention in addition to the fact that SMS spam has proven effective, if done correctly.

In one study of 2,500 mobile phone users in Sweden that signed up to receive SMS messages of special offers from 150 local organizations, 25 percent responded favorably to a McDonald’s burger deal. They took up the offer, according to Silicon.com.

Given the saturated SMS market in China, though, it may be cleverer to work in text messaging as part of an “integrated mobile marketing matrix.” Full disclosure: We just made up that phrase, if only for some shot at royalties from a future Keanu Reeves movie. We’re not sure if there’s much meaning to it, but we’ll try to give an example.

Gossard, a lingerie company owned by Sara Lee Corporation, made an eight-month G-string sales target after just eight weeks with some guerrilla text tactics.

According to Time magazine:

The Gossard campaign was based on a television commercial that urged viewers who wanted a discount on a G-string to send a text message to “G4me.” The company received more than 26,000 messages, and the vouchers — redeemed via SMS — drove up sales significantly, with one online retailer — Figleaves.com — reporting €75,000 worth of Gossard G-string sales as a direct result of the campaign. Phone sex may never be the same again.

Whether you’re considering spamming potential customers or the “integrated mobile marketing matrix” – damn that sounds nice – keep the following in mind.

• SMS marketing is cheap, especially in China. “China Unicom, for instance, offers the cheapest monthly card at 15 yuan ($2.14) a month for 3,000 intranet messages,” Beijing Review noted. “This works out to $0.04 per message. But mobile phone users can buy SMS cards here for even less. The special prepaid SIM card supports only text messaging services. A card that costs 100 yuan ($14) can send 5,000 messages at a cost of about $0.03 per message.”
• e-Coupons could mean big business. Consumers will use mobile coupons 300 times more often than ordinary paper coupons, according to a white paper from the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. “Customers keep their cell phone with them and therefore the coupon too,” the report noted.
• Targeted spam can be more effective. For instance, time sensitivity of an SMS ad – such as receiving a 20 percent discount on purchases immediately after entering a shop – could boost response, the Hawaii report noted.
• Bundle spam with useful info. “Advertising funded information services include news, weather, traffic, market rates, horoscopes, or songs just played on the radio,” the Hawaii report said. “Three advertising agency experts noted that a prerequisite for increasing this advertising method’s success is a strong relation between the required information and the advertisement.”
• Seek permission. Wella, a hair cosmetics and fragrances seller, told clients who signed up for SMS messages they could have an e-Kiss. “The customers liked the Wella kiss so much that they forwarded it to their friends,” the Hawaii report said. “This viral impact created a high effect for a low cost. Wella paid for text messages sent to the opt-in clients but paid nothing for the messages passed on to friends.”
• Send games and prizes to attract and keep customers, the Hawaii report noted.

Many more message success factors can be found in the Hawaii report, here.

After all the useless SMSs we received that have gone BLING in the night, it’s odd we’re giving successful spam tips.

Maybe we just realize that SMS spam floodgates are wide open, and there’s probably no reversing that completely. So at least we hope to get something useful out of it one of these days, like a burger coupon.

    Channel: What's Spicy     |