Mobile marketing

What is Mobile Marketing?
Mobile Marketing involves communicating with the consumer via cellular (or mobile) device, either to send a simple marketing message, to introduce them to a new audience participation-based campaign or to allow them to visit a mobile website.
Some of the tools of the trade and a few of the concepts that will be featured in this Mobile Marketing 101 series are:
• Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS)
• Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD)
• Bluetooth, Wireless and Infrared
• Mobile Internet and Social Media
• Mobile Applications
Mobile connectivity not only enables people to connect to the Internet via a cellular telephone, PDA or other gadget, but also consolidates the different communication channels in a simple, yet effective, medium.
Cheaper than traditional means for both the consumer and the marketer - and easy enough for almost any age group to understand and engage with - Mobile Marketing really is a streamlined version of traditional e-Marketing.
Facts and Figures
Let's look at some interesting Mobile marketing statistics:
Even in the US, SMS technology was not widely used until only a few years ago - but in June 2008, reported that over 75 billion SMS were sent each month (contrast against only 18 billion just 18 months before). It was most likely Idol's SMS voting system that got Americans texting.
It was estimated that in US that the number of SMS users (approximately 1.8 billion at present) is twice that of active email users. These text messages are generally read within 15 minutes and responded to within the hour - compared to email communication which could go unread for days.
Some amazing figures about mobile marketing:
• 30 countries exceeded the 100% mobile device to population ratio.
• However, only 80% of the population of the US was mobile users.
• 60% of the world's population (4.1 billion) is mobile subscribers.
• China has over 400 million subscribers.
• There are over 50 million subscribers in Indonesia.
• In 2006, there were 241 million mobile users in the US alone (and 332,156 million people in North America).
• 98% of all handsets in the US have SMS capabilities.
• 68.7 million US citizens use SMS and text services.
• Although a relatively new service to the US, over 300 billion SMS messages were sent in 2007 in the US alone.
• South Africa is 6th on the world's top 10 for mobile Internet connectivity Top 10 (which can probably be contributed to the lack of traditional, desktop based Internet connectivity).
• Over 70% of South African mobile subscribers do not own a land line connection.
• Surprisingly, South Africans over the age of 50 spend more on their mobile communication than their junior counterparts.
• Only 10% of SMS messages are spam (compared to over 65% of email).
The average American text message user in late 2008 sent 357 SMS messages per month and made or received 204 calls, compared to early 2006 where the average user sent 198 texts and made or received 198 calls.
A study of South Africa's Mobile connectivity estimated 19 million active mobile users in 2006. As coverage increases, so does the connectivity, with 90% of all new cellular connections in the country being prepaid and top-up packages. The most common mobile media content categories in use today include:
• Portals
• Email
• Weather
• News/politics
• Search
• Business/finance (especially since the recent economic downturn)

www.wapframe.com(Mobile
(Website builder and mobile marketing solutions provider)