Tips from the FTC for Mobile Marketing

Mobile applications are critical to today’s marketing environment.  The number of Smartphone users is skyrocketing.   The Pew Research Center indicates that 45% of adults and 66% of Americans aged 18-29 have a Smartphone and 25% of adults own a tablet.   According to a survey by ReturnPath quoted in Joel Book’s Exact Target blog, nearly half of all emails are read on mobile devices.  What this trend means is that marketers need to get savvy about all aspects of mobile marketing, including best practices in privacy and security.  Mobile marketing has expanded to include SMS/text messages, in-app advertising, mobile action codes like QR codes, mobile coupons, check-in promotions, mobile payments or other aspects of digital wallets, emails, telemarketing calls to a mobile devices, RFID tags and much more.

Mobile Marketing has its challenges because fewer ads display on mobile devices and users are still somewhat reluctant to purchase on them (although they seem to be more likely to purchase on tablets rather than Smartphones).  All this will certainly change as users become more familiar with these devices.

I recently attended the Promotion Marketing Association Marketing (PMA, recently rechristened BAA, Brand Activation Association) Promotion Law conference in Chicago which covered some practical tips for launching mobile applications.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is only one agency involved in the oversight and regulation of mobile marketing is charged with protecting consumers and suggests these tips for implementing mobile marketing applications.

      1.  Tell the Truth.  Tell the truth about what your app can do.  False or misleading claims anger users and can land you in legal hot water.  If you have health safely or performance claims (i.e., our pedometer will help you lose weight), you need to back these up with solid scientific evidence.  Disclosure must be ‘clear and conspicuous,’ which is not always easy on small screens.

      2.   Respect Privacy.  The mobile application, unlike the company’s legacy applications, may offer the chance to incorporate privacy concerns from the beginning, which the FTC calls ‘privacy by design’  The FTC suggests only collecting the information you need, storing it securely and disposing of it when no longer needed.  Some other privacy tips include:

a.       Being transparent about data practices

b.      Honoring published privacy practices

c.       Protecting Children’s privacy by adhering to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and getting parental consent before collecting information from children under 13 years of age.

      3. Offer choices that are easy to find. Tools that allow for choices in how to use the app and have privacy settings, opt-outs and other ways to control their information is good business practice.  The standard should be ‘clear and conspicuous;’ make privacy choices easy to use and then follow through on your promises.

You can get more information from the “Marketing Your Mobile App Get it Right from the Start” and other documents available at business.ftc.gov.  How hard do you think it is it to follow these guidelines and implement a successful mobile app?

By Debra Zahay-Blatz.
You can find Debra on Google+ and Twitter as well as LinkedIn.

Yahoo and AOL jockey for brand positions

We have been talking in class about the large web portals. Yahoo and AOL are struggling to create a unique, differentiating brand positioning and losing users compared to Google and Facebook. In class, we suggested that Yahoo could beef up its emphasis on media but it looks like AOL is planning take that brand positioning with the recent purchase of the Huffington Post. I heard in a podcast by The Economist today that AOL hired more new journalists that any other media outlet this past year, about 700. So what's left for Yahoo?

Yahoo's number of unique users rose last year but the amount of time spent dropped by 10 percent. Facebook's time spent increased by 79 percent and Facebook also boasts some of the most loyal users in the business.

In class we talked about another possible positioning for Yahoo being extending the 'My Yahoo' concept and this week the Wall Street Journal this week (February 7th) reports that Yahoo is seeking to beef up the site's personalized content, particularly for mobile iPhone and Android applications, creating online mobile magazines unique to each user. Will this approach work?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704858404576129161854139964.html

Email Marketing/Mobile

We had a good discussion on email marketing before I left for DMA and then learned the Email Marketing tool Exact Target. We learned the reason to use a tool like ET is the ability to get emails past potential spam filters that ISP's might set up and to manage many different emails effectively. The ability to include dynamic content for personalized offers is also a big plus of this type of system. A company such as Careerbuilder.com might send millions of emails per month and needs to effectively manage and track campaigns. Even though email marketing is a small percentage of total online advertising, its ability to target customers and be integrated within an overall multiple channel marketing campaign makes email an important and influential medium. Good emails have an effective and descriptive subject line and a clear offer or purpose. While email open rates remain higher than those of direct mail, we learned that same week at the CADM monthly luncheon program on mobile marketing that mobile emails can have an over 70% response rate! It seems as each new type of way to reach the customer comes on the scene response rates are high and then level off, but I am thinking mobile rates might remain high. People read their text messages within seconds typically instead of days or hours for email. We also learned how to identify "phishing" emails that want to get personal information for fraudulent purposes and about the CAN-SPAM act and how to remain compliant. Good email marketers want to follow the guidelines of that act and comply by having a subject line that clearly states the advertising purpose of the email and is consistent with the body of the email, a valid reply to address, a physical address and an unsubscribe provision.

Who is on the net?

We looked at social media sites in our course lab and then this week have been exploring the question of who is on the internet? The internet consumer is in general older, more college-educated and increasingly female. Seventy-five percent of adults now use the internet, with 53 percent using some form of cloud communication. Although mobile applications are increasing in the United States, especially among African-Americans, over half the population, according to the Pew Report, can be classified as more tied to stationary than mobile media. In Europe, mobile applications are more widespread. Some of our class will be attending a presentation on mobile media at a CADM meeting in October so we will learn more about it then. We looked at various models of consumer behavior, such as AIDA, Attention, Interest, Desire and Action to explain how we as marketers want to involve consumers on our web site. Attention, Acquisition, Assessment and Action explains involvement from the marketer's point of view. Once the person is on board as a customer, we want to assess their needs so we can answer them most effectively through interactive communications and offers. We also talked about new ways of finding out what the consumer is thinking, as opposed to traditinal marketing research surveys. Blog posts, customer reviews, etc. all provide insight for the marketer but are harder to control. Anyone can be responding rather than a random sample of a known population. Companies like bizrate.com use panels of consumers to solicit input and control for this problem.