Mobile Marketer

A CLASSIC GUIDE
® November 25, 2008
$295
THE NEWS LEADER IN MOBILE MARKETING, MEDIA AND COMMERCE

www.MobileMarketer.com

Mobile
Classic Guide to

Commerce
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Mobile Marketer
CONTENTS

ADVANCED
C L A S S I C G U I D E TO 20 Beyond the handset: Leveraging mobile distribution
MOB ILE COMMERCE points to reach underserved markets
By Moneet Singh, MPower Mobile
2 INTRODUCTION Mobile commerce: It’s a reality
By Giselle Abramovich 21 An evolution revolution: SMS transforms
mobile commerce
BASIC By Chuck Drake, Clickatell
3 The current state of mobile commerce
By Steve Timpson, Siteminis 22 Hate crowds? Want your mobile content to stand out?
Try thinking globally, acting locally and embracing the
5 Mobile commerce: The importance of the end- mobile Web
user experience By Ray Anderson, Bango
By Mike Beech, Acision
23 Banks and carriers finally realizing the power of
6 Mobile is not the tiny Web mobile commerce
By Jason Cianchette, Liquid Wireless By Matthew Talbot, Sybase 365

7 Mobile commerce: Leveraging the targeted impulse 24 So, now you have a mobile site. What’s next?
purchase opportunity By Richard Eicher, Skycore
By Alan Sultan, Acuity Mobile
25 Personalization: Teenage sex all over again
8 From the desktop to the mobile phone: Advancing By Mory Bahar, Personal Remedies
mobile commerce a single-click at a time
By Michael Dulong, Billing Revolution 27 Mobile commerce: The Legal Landscape
By Brian W. Esler and David Rice, Miller Nash
10 How content providers can profit from mobile search,
on- and off-deck 28 Mobile sellers face technological and legal challenges
By Stephen Burke, MCN By Gonzalo E. Mon, Kelley Drye & Warren

11 How to optimize your Web site for mobile 29 12 tips for building a mobile site
By Marc Peter, on-Idle By Marci Troutman, Siteminis

INTERMEDIATE 30 Camera-phone mobile commerce

12 Reaching consumers at point of need key to By Rob DeStefano, Mobile Data Systems
mobile commerce
By Brad Bostic, ChaCha Search 31 A universal compliance standard will jump-start the
mobile commerce industry
13 How to achieve mobile marketing success with By Eric Holmen, SmartReply
optimized landing pages
By Kim Ann King, SiteSpect 32 ‘Tis the season for mobile
By Conrad Lisco, 5th Finger
14 American shoppers turn to coupons during

Gain more weight

economic slowdown
By Steven Gray, Money Mailer

15 The role of idle screen in driving mobile commerce

By Jon Jackson, Mobile Posse Read Mobile Marketer
16 FEATURE Sears wins with mobile commerce
Subscribe to the free
By Giselle Abramovich, Mobile Marketer
M Mobile Marketer Daily newsletter at
18 Mobile banking’s place in the ecosystem
By Michael Foschetti, Mobisix http://www.MobileMarketer.com/newsletter.php

19 Customer service leads the way in mobile travel

Web adoption Mobile Marketer
By Gerry Samuels, Mobile Travel Technologies
THE NEWS LEADER IN MOBILE MARKETING,
MEDIA AND COMMERCE
INTRODUCTION

R
M obile c omm erce : It’s a re alit y
etail giants Target, Sears and Wal-Mart and fashion houses Chloé, around the mobile commerce industry.
Dolce & Gabbana and Dior all went mobile this year, proving that
mobile commerce is here to stay. The list of contributors to this guide includes representatives from 5th Fin-
ger, Bango, Acision, Acuity Mobile, Billing Revolution, ChaCha, Click-
The launch of the iPhone 3G, BlackBerry Storm and the G1 Android-en- atell, Kelley Drye & Warren, Liquid Wireless, MCN, Miller Nash, Mobile
abled phone proved that this industry is capable of getting over the small- Posse, Mobisix, Money Mailer, MPower Mobile, MTT, on-Idle, Personal
screen challenge. Remedies, Siteminis, SiteSpect, Skycore, SmartReply and Sybase 365.

The fact of the matter is that mobile commerce isn’t just something mar- The articles offer best-practice tips, educational points of view and
keters are dabbing their feet into. They are slowly starting to jump in full- analysis.
throttle.
The case study on retail giant Sears’ mobile strategy is worth reading.
Retailers such as GameStop are using mobile coupons to drive consumers
in store. If that’s not mobile commerce, I don’t know what is. The authors of the 20-plus articles in this guide play a vital role in the mo-
bile commerce ecosystem. Their insights and analysis will help you in your
I think for the first time we can proudly say that 2008 was the year for mo- mobile commerce efforts. We thank these senior executives for their time
bile commerce. Yes, the channel still has ways to go. Yes, there are still and hard work.
some consumers who don’t trust mobile. But isn’t that always the case?
To editor in chief Mickey Alam Khan, staff reporter Dan Butcher and di-
Let’s look back to the beginning of the Internet and ecommerce. Consumers rector of ad sales Jodie Solomon: Thank you for your help and guidance in
had all the same doubts about ecommerce as they do today with mobile producing this guide.
commerce.
A special thanks to Rob DiGioia for his art direction and overall produc-
It was a challenge that the industry faced and ecommerce companies and tion of this guide.
the software and technology companies that serve them overcame. The
same will be true for mobile commerce because, let’s face it, it is here and Please read Mobile Marketer’s Classic Guide to Mobile Commerce from
it isn’t going away. cover to cover and circulate it to your friends, colleagues, clients and
prospects.
It’s no exaggeration when I say that mobile commerce will soon change the
shopping habits of consumers just like the Internet already has done. Also, visit http://www.mobilemarketer.com and sign up for our free
newsletters that offer the latest news and analysis on mobile marketing,
Remember the mobile channel is more personal than any other and there’s media and commerce.
no doubt that well-thought out mobile commerce sites and services will
strengthen the bonds between brands and consumers. We hope you benefit from this guide and look forward to featuring your
mobile commerce wisdom and work in the next.
However, there are still brands and companies that are new-comers to the
mobile commerce space and don’t know where to begin.

This guide aims to help advertising agencies, service providers, site de-
velopers, ad networks, analytics companies and others find their way Giselle Abramovich giselle@mobilemarketer.com

ADVERTISING
Jodie Solomon
Mickey Alam Khan Dan Butcher
Director of Advertising Sales
Editor in Chief Staff Reporter
ads@mobilemarketer.com
mickey@mobilemarketer.com dan@mobilemarketer.com
401 Broadway, Suite 1408
New York, NY 10013
Tel: 212-334-6305
Fax: 212-334-6339
Email: editor@mobilemarketer.com
Giselle Abramovich Robert DiGioia
Web site: www.MobileMarketer.com
Associate Editor Design Consultant
giselle@mobilemarketer.com PublissMail@aol.com
For newsletter subscriptions:
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/
newsletter.php

Mobile Marketer covers news and analysis of mobile marketing, media and commerce. The franchise For advertising rates:
comprises MobileMarketer.com, the Mobile Marketer Daily newsletter and www.MobileNewsLeader.com. http://www.mobilemarketer.com/
2008 Napean LLC. All rights reserved. cms/general/1.html

PAGE 2 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE

 BAS IC
Th e cur r en t s t at e o f m o bi l e co mm er ce
By Steve Timpson The Major League Baseball site (http://wap.mlb.com) provides an

I
example of an ecommerce site designed for the PC/Mac platform that
n this column, we investigate what’s has been forced onto a mobile platform through the WAP approach.
available for a traditional Internet site All commerce charges sent through this site are added to the cus-
to use in transitioning to the mobile in- tomer’s phone bill, because the functionality does not flow properly
terface. through WAP.
Most sites transfer their entire content
onto small mobile screens. The .mobi approach
Despite the significant buzz about the iPhone and its Internet inter- Another commonly used option, .mobi, provides an extension that
face, it suffers inherent issues, including its small screen size, which retailers and companies may use to guide consumers to a URL that be-
must receive content and load from larger PC/Mac formats, minimal comes, for example, http://url.mobi.
market penetration, and competition from other smartphones in the This extension also does not feature any software that rebuilds the
marketplace. site but instead allows the site to be viewed as it would in WAP or by
This scenario often creates long waits for text, links and function- pulling all data from the large screen to the smaller screen in smaller,
ality to load, followed by another significant delay as the images load nonfunctional versions.
on top of one another. The BMW mobile site at
The images shrink to fit the screen http://bmw.mobi offers an example.
and, in most cases, become Most retailers have not purchased
unreadable. their .mobi URL, which creates the
Sites therefore become linear, concern that any company or individ-
meaning that the pages scroll at more ual could purchase the .mobi exten-
than 20 times the height of the screen sion of a retailer for its own gain.
to fit all the content and images. If a domain name with the .mobi
After the first page loads, pass- extension is available, anyone may
words, usernames, and most function- purchase it for their own purposes,
ality are clickable but not functional, which could result in significant se-
meaning that users can click through curity concerns.
to the next screen, but data collection
behind the scenes does not always The “one site for all” approach
work, leaving the user frustrated. In this third approach, all content
Several different scenarios cur- on a PC/Mac site forces itself into the
rently exist in the mobile commerce mobile application as best as it can,
marketplace, yet they still do not pro- which simply does not work.
vide a real solution for companies that The text and links populate first,
want to manage their brand and offer which can take a full two minutes,
their consumers a user-friendly inter- and once that process finishes, the
face to view products and make images start to load in, one on top of
mobile purchases. another, until the site is completely
pushed into the mobile screen.
WAP approach The entire site therefore gets
The Wireless Application Protocol crammed together to fit in a space it
(WAP) represents the most widely was not designed to fit, creating site
used solution to date for mobile con- confusion and difficult site
tent and mobile functionality. navigation.
It takes content designed for the The Bloomingdale’s site at
PC/Mac world and forces its con- http://www.bloomingdales.com of-
formity with the mobile platform, fers an example. Note that the entire
which requires removing some con- screen must finish loading before
tent and alienating the original user interface and functionality to make users may click through to log in.
sites fit the mobile platform. When a user clicks the next screen, the long loading process for all
Specifically, WAP technology removes anything that is not mobile data and images follows the same tedious process and so on through-
compatible, often completely destroying the usability, intended flow, out the site.
and brand of the site. Should users choose to return to a previous page, they discover that
With this approach, the mobile Internet provides a difficult interface the pages do not cache.
for end users and the general public therefore avoids the mobile In other words, the information is not stored in the mobile browser
Internet. windows and users must again wait for the entire page to reload to view
Internet Web sites generally are created with one platform in mind, it again.
namely, the PC/Mac world. Each page follows this download process, making it (next page)
MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 3
(from page 3) nearly impossible to navigate sites, let alone buy comfortable with the technology, security and mostly ease of use.
from them. Therein lays the answer to the question of free shipping.
Even if consumers know exactly which product they want to pur- The mobile commerce strategy will simply be an extension of the
chase, and the exact path to reach it, smartphones still demand an esti- online PC/Mac site and users will expect and demand the same cus-
mated 15 minutes to find the product and add it to a shopping cart, tomer service on either appliance.
which rarely works on the small screen. Failure to give the customer that same service will result in a loss
Thus, the overall effort represents a waste of time and energy and on mobile business over time in a free commerce world.
makes mobile commerce impossibility for most retailers.
Shopping bots
Free shipping on mobile commerce One question that comes our way every now and then is whether or
Free shipping on mobile commerce purchases or should I pay more not shopping malls will become popular in mobile commerce as they
for the mobile commerce experience? had in ecommerce.
It is surprising that the question of whether the mobile shopping My opinion is that this method of shopping will not gain in real
experience should differ from that of the normal PC/Mac experience popularity, mainly due to the education that retailers got using shopping
when it comes to service. sites during the dot-com boom in the late-’90s and early 2000s.
Retailers learned during the growth of their online business that the
real battle for customers was one with traditional strategies of brand-
ing, well-designed and informative Web sites and easily navigated com-
merce sites.
Why spend money building some other company’s brand or lose
valuable margin dollars that could be just as easily pock-
eted?
Certainly the next big play for commerce
sites is through mobile commerce.
These portals should be extensions of
the Web site itself and not through some
other portal or URL that may be unfa-
miliar to the user.
It would be easier to use their exist-
ing Internet platform and IT capabilities
to manage the mobile site just as they do
with their base site.
The bigger question becomes how on-
line retailing addresses the needs and concerns
of the mobile shopper.
In the same way the shop bots or online
Yes, there shopping malls filled a need to the online con-
will be a difference in sumer, there may be a slight rise in mobile shopping malls
the user interface due to the screen size. in the short term depending on how fast retailers develop mobile shop-
There will most certainly be differences in the amount of infor- ping sites that are more robust than just text.
mation a customer receives or their patience to wait to receive it. This is especially true when it comes to functionality and shopping.
Let’s say for the sake of argument, that the issues of imaging and If retailers are slow to embrace the mobile world, then, a sharp wire-
functionality are overcome. What remains the same is the drive for less carrier may develop an easy interface for shopability that makes
online retailers to improve conversion and expand their market base. their site more attractive or easier to use than the online retailer, there-
It would seem that the same laws that affect the market place on fore giving rise to a short-term lift of shopping mall type sites on the
the PC/Mac world would be the same in the mobile world. mobile.
If you offer free shipping and other discounts to entice shoppers to But, just as with the ecommerce changes we saw in the past, retail-
buy through your site, you would extend those same offers on the ers will eventually side-step this process for their own branding strat-
mobile site. egy and the ability to keep more of their own margin in their
In fact, the same data-based driven marketing strategies would be own pocket.
deployed in marketing your mobile site.
Wouldn’t it be great that the user does not have to worry about land- Customers comfortable shopping behind retailer’s URL
ing on any other site than your everyday .com page? This has been accomplished through better security, better ecom-
The technology is there to do that, but few have moved in that merce and better delivery of goods.
direction – yet. My sense is that most customers want to dial in the retailers do-
In the end, mobile sites will grow based on simple economics, slow main and do their commerce there.
at first and then with the rush as water through a broken dam. If they need additional information, they are going to Google the
How long that will take is a crap-shoot guess at best right now, but topic and work backwards until they have found the information, prod-
it will be sooner than you think. uct or pricing they need.
The use of special applications to make sites work and the use of
text marketing to get people to a mobile-optimized site will rise and Steve Timpson is chief operating officer of Siteminis, Marietta, GA.
then wither away as both Internet commerce owners and users become Reach him at steve@siteminis.com
PAGE 4 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE
Mobile commerce:

A
The importance of the end-user experience
By Mike Beech mobile phones.
Put simply, the screen size and
s Apple has demonstrated time and again, most recently with the lack of a mouse and keyboard inter-
iPhone 3G, the end-user experience makes a real difference to the ac- face makes using most online sites
ceptance of any product or service. difficult, to say the least.
For mobile commerce, it will be essential to create a simple yet secure user As covered by other articles in this
experience in order to facilitate any widespread acceptance of the service. guide, online sites need to be designed for
Without an easy to use, but secure experience, mobile commerce will re- the phone to be successful, which is in itself a
main all talk and no action. challenge.
Phones vary in their own capabilities and particularly screen size, from the
Using a mobile wallet iPhone or T-Mobile’s G1 (both geared for online access) to the more basic
Many mobile phones have long had the capability to store “cash” within the handsets with very limited functionality and small screens.
phone itself, the so-called mobile wallet. Apple has shown that it can move a successful online site (iTunes) to the
In Finland, home of Nokia, mobile handset users have been able to buy phone.
Coke from vending machines for many years. However, not all Web site creators have the luxury of owning their own
Yet we haven’t seen this expand to many other services, nor have we seen phone as well.
it expand, to any great extent, on a worldwide basis. Obviously, carriers are in a stronger position here and should be looking to
While the idea sounds easy to use, users have to “load” cash onto their encourage other site developers as well as building their own portals.
phone. The actual purchase procedure can be a cumbersome and an unwieldy
user experience. Using your mobile phone account
In considering the end-user experience, we should look at one of the key
Alternative approaches parts of a mobile phone – the already established payment method.
Many wireless carriers around the world have experimented with both mo- End-users are familiar with paying a monthly bill (on contract) or topping
bile wallets and other forms of payment, such as premium SMS. up their phone with cash in advance (prepaid).
In Singapore, one of the carriers conducted extensive field trials, using four Having mobile commerce activity tap into this existing payment infra-
different mechanisms with a small user group in each part of the city. structure will help the usability and improve the perception of security.
The trial included mobile wallets, premium SMS and links through to their Prepaid and post-paid accounts both offer advantages to the end-user ex-
mobile accounts. Their goal was to find the one approach that worked best. perience for mobile commerce.
Their findings were that all of the approaches were too time-consuming and dif- With post-paid, I have a readymade “monthly bill.” With prepaid, I can set
ficult for end users. limits on my spending (by the amount I top-up) and can keep track of what I
Not one technique passed the trial stage. have left in real-time.
In both cases, if a phone is lost or stolen, the carrier is able to block the
Wave and pay phone and stop any unauthorized transactions being applied to the account.
A model gaining popularity is the simple “wave and pay” concept, using Also in both cases, I can have a full and detailed record of all my purchases.
Near Field Communications (NFC). The carrier can provide this to me as a regular statement or as an online,
Here the phone still has a mobile wallet, but payment is made easier as you self-service record that I can check at any time.
only need to “wave” your phone at the point of sale. And I have avoided the need to create yet another account or another way
While NFC only has a range of a few centimeters, some fear this payment to load a payments instrument with cash.
method is so simple, you could walk down a street and unknowingly pay for
everyone else’s purchases. The ultimate experience?
While security is an issue in this approach, at least elements of simplicity What end-user experience is the market looking for?
are being proposed. It has to be simple and secure, easy to use but, if the worst happens, easy
to block.
Beyond retail payments So consider this:
Of course, so far we have only considered the use of the mobile phone as I take my purchases to the checkout and wave my phone at the register
a payment instrument in a standard retail outlet. when the goods have been scanned through.
When using the phone as an alternative way of accessing online retailers, My phone shows me a list of the goods, the amount of each, all the taxes
different problems arise. and, of course, the total amount.
Most existing Internet sites do not work well on the majority of If I am using a prepaid account for this, I would expect to see my starting
balance at the top and my remaining balance at the bottom.
I click “OK” and then maybe I am asked to confirm or even enter a PIN
(perhaps based on the total amount of the transaction).
At the end of the month, whether I prepaid or post-paid, I get my “mobile
commerce” statement.
All transactions are listed in detail, with totals for each transaction. Of
course, this is available online to check at any time and is updated in real-time,
so I always know where I am.
And what if my purchase was online? The collection into my basket obvi-
ously needs to be tailored, but the check-out and payment I want exactly the
same way. Nice and simple.

Mike Beech is vice president at Plano, TX-based Acision LLC. Reach him at
mike.beech@acision.com
MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 5
Mobile is not the t iny Web
G
By Jason Cianchette previous purchases with the company.
Mobile also offers a fast channel to send targeted rewards.
enerally people think of mobile For example, companies such as hotel chain Sheraton can use mo-
as the tiny Web. They believe bile to enhance their loyalty marketing programs.
that mobile devices have tiny While in New York, Sheraton could send me offers based on my
screens, tiny banner ads and tiny audi- current location and transaction history.
ences that generate tiny revenue. Using my mobile device, I could redeem an offer to get tickets to a
Mobile is far from tiny and may Broadway show with my Sheraton rewards points.
soon surpass the Internet in significance. As marketers begin embracing the unique capabilities of the mobile
Like all new mediums, a fresh ap- platform, we will start enjoying new and exciting commerce opportu-
proach must be created to change the nities that go well beyond the tiny Web.
way we think about mobile.
When a new medium is introduced, there tends to be a lot of un- Jason Cianchette is president of Boston-based Liquid Wireless. Reach
certainty in how to best leverage the functionality of the him at jason@liquidwireless.com
developing platform.
In the mid 1990s, much of Web commerce
was made up of an electronic display of print cat-
alog content, sometimes even in the form of
a PDF.
Companies did not know how to fully use the
features that the Internet had to offer.
In time, the true power of the Web was un-
derstood and ecommerce sites began implement-
ing more sophisticated functionality such as
recommendations and user-generated ratings
and reviews.
Today, the new medium is the mobile phone.
Mobile phones currently have small screens
and slow download connections compared to
PCs.
This leads many marketers and site designers
to create mobile experiences that are small,
stripped down versions of their Web sites.
Mobile, however, has much more to offer
than people realize.
A true paradigm shift is necessary. Some
ways that this can be done is to develop new
ideas that exploit the power and potential of the
mobile platform.
How could this work?
One way is to create purchase opportunities
at new times and places.
For example, my brand affinity for Procter &
Gamble-owned personal hygiene brand Gillette
is highest each time my favorite team, the New
England Patriots, plays at Gillette stadium.
Mobile can provide a great opportunity to let
fans like me buy new blades during a game by
sending a text message in between plays.
In addition, many of the Web’s advanced
commerce features can be brought to physical re-
tail stores using mobile.
For instance, while shopping for a new
printer at Staples, I could have reviews and rat-
ings on the models available right on my
mobile phone.
Furthermore, Staples could also give me per-
sonalized in-store recommendations based on my
PAGE 6 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE
Mobile commerce:

M
Leveraging the t argeted impulse purchase opportunit y
By Alan Sultan

obile commerce certainly presents tremendous opportunities such as WiFi, WiMAX, GSM or CDMA allows real-time decision-
for retailers to engage customers in more meaningful trans- making as the precise time-of-day data is captured in order to optimize
actions that are highly relevant to the customer, thus result- who is reached and how often.
ing in increased sales. All of this information is entered into or captured by an intelligent
How does mobile enable this? preference engine which uses sophisticated statistical techniques and
Mobile can deliver spot relevance – predictive algorithms to determine the optimal content or offer on an in-
the ability to deliver the right marketing dividualized basis.
content, to the right person, at the right Prospects, customers and mobile commerce organizations are key
time, in the right location. beneficiaries of spot relevance.
To provide such a precise level of Prospects and customers value highly that they receive only com-
communication, business intelligence is pelling offers or content of interest whenever they want and not the
captured or forecasted covering three digital spam that is too prevalent with current ecommerce marketing.
major dimensions to determine spot rele- Mobile commerce organizations gain deep, measurable business
vance including user data, business data analysis in real time to understand what compels prospects and current
and time-of-day. customers to purchase, plus how to engage customers in a meaningful,
User data includes inputting the iden- ongoing relationship.
tified interests (what they like) and activities (what they do) of the tar- Spot relevance can be delivered working within private networks
get group as obtained from prior market research activities. and with select carriers. So the time is now to start testing it as part of
The location can be determined using technology such as GPS. your mobile commerce plans.
Business data such as organizational goals and historical transac-
tions are also important to include. Alan Sultan is president of Washington-based Acuity Mobile.
Finally, leveraging any major wireless communications technology Reach him at asultan@acuitymobile.com

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 7

F ro m th e de s kt o p to mo b ile p h on e :

I
Advancing mobile comm erce a single-click at a tim e
By Michael Dulong physical instance this could involve order fulfillment and
shipping.
t seems like only yesterday that consumers were Hey, wait a minute!
reticent to engage in ecommerce due to security You might think this sounds a lot like ecom-
concerns. merce. And in fact you’d be right.
That was until Amazon paved the way toward The mobile Web is the Internet being accessed
mass ecommerce nearly 13 years ago. by a phone and eventually we will all own a larger
A lot has happened since those early days. screen, Web-enabled smartphone, which will be
Mobile commerce, while still early in its life- our preferred way of accessing the Internet.
cycle, appears to be moving much more quickly The truth of the matter is the mobile consumer
than ecommerce in terms of consumer adoption and is already making purchases and the mobile indus-
industry acceptance. try will need to keep pace with this new behavior.
And when you really think about mobile commerce The single-click purchase experience is a glimpse
and its many forms (credit-card billing, carrier billing, of the future.
PSMS, credit cards and mobile “wallets”) it makes sense that Someday, we will all have a smartphone and we won’t
consumers are only now beginning to make mobile purchases. Mobile think twice about whipping out our credit card to make the same types
Web adoption is the required first step toward a scalable mobile com- of purchases we take for granted on the Internet.
merce model. At first it will be digital goods, then impulse purchases and finally
According to a white paper recently released by Nielsen Co., “The major purchases of physical goods, which is something that everyone
United States is the global leader in mobile Internet adoption, with 40 can get excited about.
Without question, the future is bright for mobile commerce and a
single-click technology platform is the one solution to drive benefits to
all the stakeholders.
Consumers will enjoy the added convenience of mobile shopping.
Carriers can optimize the mobile purchase experience and enjoy sig-
nificantly increased data revenues, and merchants can extend their
shopping experiences to mobile.
Beyond that, publishers and ad networks can run commerce-en-
abled mobile ad campaigns and deliver improved return on investment.
With all of these benefits and consumer adoption increasing
quickly, the industry is entering a period of truly explosive growth.
Understand this is just the beginning of a natural evolution of the
digital medium from the fixed desktop to the mobile phone.
Consumers will ultimately lead the charge in this effort and help to
usher in a new standard for mobile commerce exchange.

Michael Dulong is senior vice

million U.S. mobile subscribers (15.6 percent) actively using the mo- president of business development
bile Internet.” The paper further addresses that “9.2 million United at Billing Revolution, Seattle.
States mobile subscribers have used their phone to pay for goods or Reach him at
services.” mike@billingrevolution.com

Entering the age of “single-click” mobile commerce

Before getting into the details of what “single click” mobile com-
merce is all about, let’s consider how this is first handled with desktop
computers, which is basically transacted through tracking cookies.
Some phones have cookies turned on, some off, some carriers sup-
port, some do not.
In order to scale single-click mobile commerce, the technology
leveraged will need to function across all handsets and networks
whether the handset has cookies enabled or disabled.
To solve this dilemma, companies need a technology that enables
single-click mobile commerce across all phones and all networks with-
out requiring users to enter a user name or PIN code.
The technology involved would essentially license the handset for
“access.”
“Access” in a digital sense could be to a download URL or, in a
PAGE 8 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE
 H o w co n t en t p r o v id er s can p ro f i t
f r o m m o b i l e s e a r c h , o n - a n d o ff - d e c k
By Stephen Burke

M obile users don’t buy what they

can’t find.
Content providers can’t survive if they
users at the moment of highest interest in a transaction, and maintain a
profitable position in high-traffic mobile malls.

have to spend more of their marketing Stephen Burke is the Tokyo-based senior vice president of marketing
budgets on costly, imprecise mass media and Web promotions or hit for MCN Inc., a mobile search platform provider. Reach him at
and miss mobile pay-per-impression (PPI) campaigns in order to cap- stephen.burke@mcn-inc.com
ture user interest in the ever-widening mobile Web.
This is especially true as the trend from on-portal content sales to
off-portal accelerates in the United States and as new mobile commerce
initiatives get under way.
In the early days of the mobile Web, carriers — rightly — sought
to control content access within walled gardens to ensure reliability and
a common user experience.
Content providers lined up to get “on deck,” creating pileups in op-
erator waiting rooms.
With recent advances in network capacity, data pricing, devices,
applications and standards, the U.S. is poised to rapidly follow the
trends set in Japan and in Britain.
In these countries the ratio of on- and off-portal content discovery
has flipped in the past two years and off-portal sites now dominate
traffic.
Even more dramatic in Japan is the growth of mobile commerce,
which overtook mobile content sales in 2007 and will generate nearly
$6 billion in revenue this year versus $3 billion in mobile content
revenues.
How will U.S. content and ecommerce providers profit? By grab-
bing space in the emerging “mobile malls” that are being deployed by
carriers and portals.
Mobile malls that are building clear pathways — on the phone top
and the WAP portal – to information search powered by Web giants
such as Google and Yahoo, as well as to high-value search merchan-
dising services.
Search merchandising services are services that leverage new tech-
nical advances such as federated search and new content promotion
programs that reach users at the moment of highest interest in
a transaction.
Federated search solutions create direct connections to any content
sources (on- and off- portal) in real-time, and in any number of verti-
cal content channels (music, video, games and shopping).
Queries are brokered out to relevant sources, and actionable content
items—not endless links—are presented to the user in two to three
clicks, ranked and sorted in terms of relevance and value.
Federated search combined with new performance based pay-per-
click (PPC) content promotion programs to reach users directly at the
instant they want to buy cool stuff with their phone.
This eliminates costly and complex keyword bidding and campaign
management and ensures that if the content provider’s database has a
piece of content relevant to the query it will be presented to users who
are primed to buy.
Shorter click distance + relevant content items (not links) = higher
click throughs, conversions and return on investment.
With federated search and PPC content promotion at their disposal,
content providers can manage search engine optimization within their
own databases, leverage limited marketing budgets directly against

PAGE 10 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE

How to optimize
T
your Web site for mobile
By Marc Peter the location and structure of navigation.
On large and multilingual sites, the navigation can fill an
here is still a marked difference be- entire screen.
tween mobile usage in Japan and Breadcrumbs and “back” and “Quick Links” below page content
Europe, where in the Far East, are invaluable to the user, and facilitate the separation of navigation
i-mode services (e.g. localized restaurant from content.
bookings) are ubiquitous, but not as
widely used in Europe. A search function is vital on large sites
I-mode is a mobile Internet service As with all developments, test for optimum display and function-
that is popular in Japan. ality on relevant operating systems (Mac OSX+ and Windows 2000,
Unlike WAP, i-mode covers more In- XP and Vista) and Web browsers (Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2.5+,
ternet standards, like Web access, email and the network that delivers Safari 2+), as well as mobile devices.
the data. Physically test on various PDAs, smartphones and Web-enabled
I-mode users have access to various services such as email, sports mobile phones to ensure any anomalies that the PC simulators have
results, weather forecasts, games, financial services and ticket are eliminated.
booking. The one unresolved issue is for multiple language character set dis-
Content is provided by specialized services, typically from the mo- play on the same mobile/PDA interface: a device bought in China will
bile carrier, which allows them to have tighter control over billing. not natively display English or Cyrillic character sets (Arabic, Russ-
The iPhone has changed user perception of browsing the Internet ian, Greek) and vice versa.
via mobile, with the overarching question: Why should there be a dif- The user must install the relevant character sets. It’s laborious, but
ference between PC Web and mobile Web? solvable. Clients should be aware of the issue.
When site owners first started to investigate the possibility of mo-
bile sites, the ensuing and internal debate with developers was to go Marc Peter is creative director at Web design and development
down the WAP path or optimize a specific Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) company on-Idle, London. Reach him at marc.peter@on-idle.com
but use the HTML protocol.
Mobile is becoming a standard alternative CSS that develops in
much the same way as catering for different accessible site versions.
Thus, WAP has been somewhat forsaken and the focus has shifted
to learning design principles for small screens and narrowband
Web access.
Most Web-enabled phones have native browsers, therefore existing
CSS and HTML displays – supported where relevant by the site’s con-
tent management system (CMS).
For every mobile site, a thorough analysis is completed on what
users need – information, commerce, interaction – and a typical set of
users identified, leading to the lowest common denominator
requirements.
These are invariably Windows Mobile (Internet Explorer) on a mo-
bile phone screen – and the success or failure of a mobile site will be
determined by the graphical user interface (GUI) and ability of the user
to navigate content.
A mobile site is effectively a Web site that is specifically designed
to display on as small a screen as possible – a second skin – then de-
tect the user agent and serve up the relevant CSS design dependent on
whether a user is accessing the site from a mobile device, PDA or PC
Web browser.
It is important to display mobile sites as single-column pages. Mo-
bile screens are simply too small for multiple-column displays and look
different on various devices.
Remove any elements that are not supported by the native Web
browser. For example, Flash. All images should be reduced in size as
much as possible, in consideration of both screen size and band-
width availability.
The most complex part of developing a mobile site is redefining
MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 11
I N T E R M E D I AT E

Reaching consumers
O
at poin t o f ne ed k ey t o m obi l e c om m er ce
By Brad Bostic fee house, but also provides you with a dis-
count code to use at that coffee house.
n-the-go mobile users want quick rel- Want to know where and when a certain
evant answers and solutions to their feature film is playing? Using mobile an-
immediate needs. swers, a human guide provides the answer and
Due to the inherent limitations of Web-en- at the same time asks you if you’d like to pur-
abled mobile devices – small screens, slower chase tickets.
connectivity and browser downloading capa- Hmmm…you’ve heard a song on the
bilities – mobile marketers have to make the radio, but you didn’t catch the song
most of their limited interaction with mobile title…with mobile answers you can simply
consumers. provide the guide with a few of the lyrics.
These on-the-go mobile users aren’t, in Within minutes, the guide gives you the
most cases, interested in surfing the Web – song title and artist and asks you if you’d like
they’ve got a specific need and turn to their to purchase the CD or download an MP3
Web-enabled mobile devices to find a quick version.
answer. So, how do mobile marketers reach This is smart mobile marketing — reach-
these consumers at their point of need? ing consumers at their point of need in a tar-
There are numerous mobile search vendors geted, relevant way — versus the intrusive,
in the marketplace today offering mobile users shotgun approach of non-solicited
Internet search capabilities. advertising.
But the problem is, typical mobile infor- Through the magic of mobile answers,
mation services only provide algorithmic mobile marketers are able to view behavioral
search results, which translates to links to patterns, intent to buy, promotion responsive-
“possible” answers. ness, brand affinity and other key metrics.
But now, mobile marketers have the op- Tech-savvy mobile users – espe-
portunity to capitalize on the game-changing technology that is revo- cially the 18-24-year-old
lutionizing mobile marketing – human assisted mobile answers. crowd – have widely em-
With mobile answers, consumers can quickly find spe- braced mobile
cific answers to specific queries and mobile mar- technology, so it’s
keters can reach them at their point of a natural fit for
need. mobile mar-
Say you’re visiting keters to harness
downtown the power of
Philadelphia mobile answers
and in dire to reach them in
need of a a method with
Mocha Venti which they are
Latte, only most
you have no comfortable.
idea where the What’s more,
nearest coffee today’s mobile
house is. devices are
You call 411 highly personal,
or use mobile so much so that
search and they lo- they can be equated to a
cate 15 outlets in diary or to a personal
downtown Philly. “black book.”
Or, imagine this – For marketers, this presents an extraordinary op-
you call or text your portunity to carry on an intimate dialogue through highly
question on your mobile targeted marketing to a massive group of consumers.
phone and a friendly
“guide” not only tells you the Brad Bostic is president and cofounder of ChaCha Search Inc., Carmel,
exact location of the closest cof- IN. Reach him at brad.bostic@chacha.com

PAGE 12 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE

How to achieve mobile marketing success with

optimized landing pages

By Kim Ann King you are trying to solve, it won’t be very effective.

I
6) Did we include a relevant, visually appealing image
t’s no longer a question – con- 7) Is the copy scannable? Are there bullets or call-outs, much like
sumers are increasingly using this article?
their mobile devices to access 8) Do we need a privacy statement?
the Web.
Organizations are quickly learn- What’s next?
ing that mobile commerce comes OK, you have built your mobile landing page, your mobile com-
with unique challenges around merce offer is out there and consumers are taking advantage of it.
screen size, lack of navigation and Now what do you do?
bandwidth latency. Optimize!
One way to maximize your return on investment around mobile Now is not the time to rest on your laurels.
marketing initiatives is to create savvy mobile landing pages that help You will want to test, measure and revise continuously to make sure
increase conversion rates. you are maximizing each and every campaign.
Consider a non-intrusive mobile multivariate testing solution in
Seven best practices order to test and track factors such as copy/text, offers and
When building mobile landing pages, there are seven best practices images/graphics. Good luck!
to follow. While there is plenty of advice on this, this list condenses
the key takeaways: Kim Ann King is chief marketing officer at SiteSpect, Boston.
1) Write a clear, concise and compelling headline and offer copy Reach her at kking@sitespect.com
that speaks to your audience’s problem. For example: “Hungry? Try
our new $1.99 chicken fajitas!”
2) Include an image of the offer for visual appeal.
3) Create minimal navigation to minimize distraction
and potential opt-out.
4) Keep the look and feel of your primary Web site
so consumers will immediately recognize your brand.
5) Don’t forget a compelling call to action that
should tie in to the offer. For example, coupons for the
scrumptious chicken fajita offer above could have a
call-to-action such as “Redeem now!”

TRY R NU
6) Minimize data collection – it’s hard to fill out
forms on a mobile device.

CHICK’N FAJITAS
7) But if you do include data collection, also include
a privacy statement to help establish trust.

REDEEM NOW 4
Questions to ask when designing your mobile

50¢ OFF
landing page
When thinking about the seven best practices

T H E C LU C K STO P
above, you will want to ask yourself the following
questions:
1) Is the headline/copy/imagery compelling?
2) Are we selling the offer (recommended) or the
company/product (not recommended). In other words,
does the offer focus on audience pain or is it self-
serving?
3) Is the new mobile landing page taking advantage
of our keywords and ad groups?
4) Is there a humongous form to fill out? Can we
streamline that or get rid of it?
5) If we must include a form, are the questions on it
relevant to the buying cycle? For example, if you are
sending a mobile commerce offer to a consumer who
hasn’t even heard of you or doesn’t have the problem

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 13

Amer ican shoppe rs
tur n to co upo ns duri ng econ omi c sl ow dow n

A
By Steven Gray

s consumers continue to feel the pinch from such as one-to-one direct mail, ranging from eight cents
today’s economic pressures, an increasing to 30 cents per message, depending on the size of the
amount of American shoppers are turning to mobile distribution.
coupons as an effective cost-cutting measure. Moreover, the incremental benefit of mobile coupons
In fact, recent reports and studies show that for the on marketing campaigns can have a major impact on
first time in more than a decade coupon usage is on revenues and profits.
the rise. Although relatively still new, direct marketers are
For marketers who are taking advantage of the clinging to the technology as the next “big thing”
coupon trend, mobile coupons are a natural extension of for coupons.
their mail, print and point-of-purchase coupon pieces, In general, mobile coupons are a welcome comple-
among other communications. ment to the efforts many advertisers have underway with
“Going mobile” helps advertisers reinforce messages with con- their call-to-action messages offering discounts and provide a practical
sumers who are becoming increasingly dependent on their mobile way of connecting with customers wherever they might be
phones, especially the highly coveted 18-34 age demographic. geographically.
In a recent ABI Research study, 38 percent of consumers indicated
that mobile incentives would increase their response, while 32 percent Steven Gray is chief operating officer of Garden Grove, CA-based
of those polled indicated that incentives probably would increase Money Mailer. Reach him at sgray@moneymailer.com
their response.
In the same study, 63 percent of respondents selected coupons to
local retailers as their marketing incentive and message of choice.
More than half of those polled, 52 percent, selected discounts at a
store as their second choice of incentive.
Among the tech-savvy 18-34 age demographic, the study found that
70 percent of mobile coupon redemptions were from members of this
targeted group.
The rise in publishing of coupons on the Web and their increase in
use are also key indicators that consumers and businesses alike are
ready for mobile couponing.
The number of people turning to the Web for coupons has soared to
38.6 million in 2008, an increase of 13 million people from 2005.
With this type of momentum, there is little doubt that Web-enabled
and mobile text digital coupons are here to stay and will provide mo-
bile publishers a promising source of revenue in the years ahead.
Even more direct than traditional mail or online pieces, mobile
coupons present advertisers the chance to draw-in consumers who are
progressively more comfortable using their mobile phones.
Whether “pushed” out to consumers through a text message or
made available on mobile phones through the Web, mobile coupons
provide advertisers new consumer touch points, including at the point
of purchase.
Similar to other offers, mobile couponing is a measurable market-
ing tactic with a direct call to action. Yet, the convenience and ease of
use of mobile coupons distinguish them as a perfect alternative media
for reaching different audiences.
Plus, mobile coupons fulfill the all-important relevancy and timely
factors that marketers crave.
They are relevant because those using them have opted-in to re-
ceive the offer.
Also, they are timely for both consumers and advertisers, made
available when consumers are ready to buy, and brought to market in
an instant as advertisers seek to increase sales with new products
and promotions.
Mobile coupons are a lower-cost complement to other mediums
PAGE 14 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE
The role of idle sc reen
i n d ri vi ng mo bi l e c o mmerc e

A
By Jon Jackson

s the number of mobile phones According to Jiffy Lube representative

per capita approaches 100 percent Janice Jack, “Cricket Perks has given us
or higher in some parts of the the ability to make an instant connection
world, there is no doubt that mobile with consumers while they are mobile and
phones have become an indispensable more likely to respond to an offer by sim-
part of a consumer’s daily life. ply bringing in their mobile phone to one
Increasingly, innovative ways are of our locations. We like the simplicity of
being created to help consumers conduct this approach – no coupons to clip.”
commerce using their mobile devices, As illustrated by the success achieved
from paying tolls to purchasing vending by this and numerous other similar cam-
machine products to replacing charge paigns, the idle-screen engagement-based
cards when shopping for groceries. solution provides the necessary platform
These uses all require additional hard- that can enable mass adoption and growth
ware and functionality to be built in to the for mobile commerce.
handset. This means it will take time to
reach the masses.
The industry needs a way to effectively communicate with the masses Jon Jackson is CEO of McLean, VA-based Mobile Posse. Reach him at
and make it easy for consumers to conduct mobile commerce now. jon@mobileposse.com

Most consumers have never purchased anything on their phones

What is needed is a solution that provides visibility to products and
services on the phone and in the physical world – an idle screen-based mo-
bile advertising solution offers just that opportunity.
When implemented with the support of service providers, idle screen-
based delivery of graphically rich and interactive marketing messages can
help brands and marketers establish a dialog with consumers that don’t
subscribe to or use data services.

Simplicity and ease of use are paramount

By driving discovery and visibility of products and services at the idle
screen level, with calls to action that are easy to respond to with the press
of a key, even a lay person can quickly start conducting commerce using
their mobile phone.
Particularly compelling are services and products that can be consumed
on the mobile phone itself, such as ringtones, wallpapers and
mobile games.
By providing offers or information about such mobile content through
idle-screen messaging, where one click provides a subscriber with more
information and an opportunity to download or purchase the product.
This makes a positive experience for the consumer and delivers com-
pelling results for the advertiser.

Consumers are generally inseparable from their mobile phones

By delivering coupons or offers on their mobile phones when they are
out and about, the likelihood that a marketer can influence consumer be-
havior and help drive them into a retail location is vastly increased.
Consumers like to save, whether it is saving money when ordering
pizza or getting a discount on an oil change for their car or buying flowers
for a loved one.
As a recent example of successful engagement through idle screen-
based ad delivery, Jiffy Lube ran a campaign which offered $10 off a Jiffy
Lube Signature Service in select markets.
Over the four week duration of this campaign using the Cricket Perks
program, the click-through rate averaged at 22.8 percent and unique sub-
scriber engagement was 56.3 percent.

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 15

F E AT U R E

S ear s w in s w it h m o b il e c om m er c e
he said. “Coupling industry trends with our core multichannel
strengths, we believe that providing our customers with valuable
tools on their mobile devices will encourage richer and relevant
interaction.”

Sears Holdings Corp. is the nation's fourth largest retailer with more
than $50 billion in annual revenues and approximately 3,800 full-line
and specialty retail stores in the United States and Canada.

Key proprietary brands include Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard,

and a broad apparel offering including such well-known labels as
Lands' End, Jaclyn Smith and Joe Boxer.

Sears2go, the mobile commerce site, targets people on the go. Sears’
new mobile presence is meant to make it easier to cut out the holiday
shopping hassles and shop from the convenience of a mobile phone.

More of Sears’ customers are relying on their mobile device as their

primary means of email and Web usage. They are the retailer’s target
customers.

Sears2go showcases products in the following categories: apparel,

electronics and computers, fitness and sports, jewelry, tools, toys and
games. Users can buy these items right on the site.

“Sears is a phenomenal example of mobile commerce,” said Nick

Taylor, president of Usablenet, New York. “Sears has leveraged a
very powerful Web site and allowed customers to seamlessly and
successfully access Sears.com from any mobile phone for full
purchasing.

“A good example is the idea of a customer being able to order some-

thing for delivery or for pick-up in a store and an SMS is sent letting
the customer know the product is ready for pick-up,” he said.

W
“They've picked functionality that's very valuable on their site and el-
egantly extended to the mobile phone where this is such a relevant
By Giselle Abramovich mobile idea.”

hen a department store giant such as Sears is using mobile The usage pattern from people on the go is best served by providing
to complement its existing multichannel strategy, the mo- a simple, fast experience that enables them to find and buy products
bile commerce channel can be taken a bit more seriously. with minimal distractions.

Sears was seeing an increasing amount of mobile traffic on The way people shop on their phone is much more surgical than on
http://www.sears.com, but the experience was not the greatest. This is the Web, people want to get in, transact and get out.
when the retail giant came to Usablenet to fix the problem.
There will also be additional ways to get people excited about spe-
“With increasing proliferation of robust mobile devices such as the cific products and deals that will land them closer to the products
iPhone, BlackBerry, G1 et cetera, we believe users will start using they are looking for, thus reducing the number of clicks they would
their phones for a lot more data-centric activities such as online need to go through on a mobile device.
browsing and shopping,” said Ravi Acharya, director of Sears’ online
business unit. The mobile commerce site isn’t Sears’ first foray into mobile.

“We are starting to observe early trends where certain users rely on In the past, the company has tested 2D barcode scans from in-store to
their mobile device more than their PCs and laptops when traveling,” retrieve product reviews and other information.

PAGE 16 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE

Sears was also part of a large integrated marketing campaign this
summer to support the launch of the Incredible Hulk movie. This was
essentially a three-week text-to-win contest in partnership with
Kmart, Universal Studios and Marvel comics that had very positive
feedback.

For over a year now, Sears has had SMS deals and alerts that inform
customers when their products purchased online are available for in-
store pickup, or a weekly deal is promoted.

Sears also has alerts at certain Sears Auto centers to let customers
know when their cars are ready for pickup after servicing.

“Why wouldn't a company with a Web site allow its customers to buy
products and services however they'd like?” Mr. Taylor said. “Espe-
cially in an economy like today's.

“In one month, Sears has already found success via Sears Mobile in
every single state in the country, which is staggering,” he said. “It
shows that people everywhere, in every state and demographic are
ready for mobile commerce.”

Research shows that millions of Americans are going to Web sites

from mobile phones, often to shop or buy products and services.

The success of the iPhone and the entire corresponding buzz has
made mobile Web and mobile commerce even more of an expecta-
tion for people everywhere.

Mobile commerce cut its teeth in the travel sector (examples: Ameri-
can Airlines, Starwood and Amtrak) over the last couple years, but
now it’s a proven channel for commerce across all sectors including
retail.

Increasingly, mobile commerce will be a basic expectation.

branded as non-mobile.
This trajectory will get steeper very quickly.
“We believe the mobile channel will support our multichannel
Consumers are mobile, now more than ever before, and it’s becoming strategy very effectively,” Mr. Acharya said. “As mobile devices
the first screen for absolutely everything people do. evolve into the most personalized, first-screen point of contact, this
channel will be highly relevant in providing our customers with an
There is a new, sophisticated device coming out every single day to easy way of interacting with Sears.
make mobile commerce even easier, more comprehensive and more
sophisticated. “Mobile can also be a natural bridge across our various channels –
e.g. stores, online and print – to provide customers with a seamless,
Companies will have to support their mobile customers and provide integrated experience,” he said.
mobile commerce or face the possibility of losing customers who
will buy something more easily and quickly elsewhere – from their What’s Sears’ mobile strategy going forward?
phone.
“We are constantly exploring customer mobile usage patterns in
There is also this idea of consumers beginning to settle on the mobile alignment with technology trends and testing various concepts and
sites that they know they can successfully navigate and buy from. applications that offer value,” Mr. Acharya said. “These could trans-
late into richer and more integrated user experiences for our cus-
Companies will prefer to be one of these sites, rather than a site tomers in various areas around commerce and support.”

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 17

Mobile banking’s
pl ace in the ec osystem

A
By Michael Foschetti

keen interest exists in financial institutions across the country Consumers have
to develop innovative new ways of engaging current and po- become increas-
tential customers with mobile to drive sales and improve ingly receptive.
account servicing. Vendors and
Many banks have taken the most logical first step into mobile: De- technology providers
ploying mobile banking servicing platforms, whether through browser, have improved their so-
SMS, downloadable applications, or a combination of one or more lutions and platforms.
of these. Lastly, devices and net-
These institutions are in a race to deploy and continue adding to works are continually evolving to a
these platforms, as well as to encourage frequent customer usage. higher level of sophistication and speed.
But the mobile community is still struggling with how to extend Mobile banking provides a service that banks have not been able to
mobile banking and where it exists in the ecosystem. offer previously – quicker, more efficient access to account information
Advanced applications and technologies hold great promise, but are – and adds a strategic point of differentiation to those institutions that
still in the development and testing stages. do offer it.
Despite slower than expected adoption, the marketplace is primed It also helps banks extend their reach to new customer segments
for mobile banking to take off. that are typically more mobile-savvy, such as younger demographics
and U.S. Hispanics.
Audiences such as these look for different service offerings than
the older, Anglo demographic and mobile banking is becoming almost
a requirement for them.
This second stage of mobile banking will see more alerts and noti-
fications, funds-transfer services and location finders, as well as more
bill-pay functions and two-way, actionable alerts.
Currently, Visa is testing a notification system where customers re-
ceive a text message as soon as charges are made anywhere in
the world.
The message can show the date, time, dollar amount, merchant
name, location and clickable link for telephone support.
Banks have the option to customize the message with the wording,
the information that is included and whether a fee is charged for the
service or not.
Long-term, the desire is to make those messages two-way, allow-
ing customers to act on something in the message or respond if the
charge was not made by them.
The landscape for mobile banking is going to continue to change
and evolve from all sides over the next few years.
Banks and wireless carriers are starting to collaborate, working with
handset manufacturers to include applications on devices before acti-
vation by subscribers.
Platforms and user interfaces will continue to be improved as banks
aim for a better balance of simplicity and security.
Vendors and technology providers will be consolidated as platforms
become more consistent across banks and carriers.
Consumers will continue to become more comfortable and recep-
tive to mobile banking, realizing how much more efficient it is.
They will begin to look for increased service offerings and better
user experiences from their financial institutions, and mobile banking’s
place in the ecosystem will no longer be so questionable.

Michael Foschetti is managing director at Mobisix, Charlotte, NC.

Reach him at mfoschetti@mobisix.com

PAGE 18 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE

Cus tom er service
l ea ds the w ay in mob il e tr av el We b adop ti on

W
By Gerry Samuels net will of course affect to what extent this
medium is used.
ith more than 500 million mobile In- In markets where there is a low
ternet users worldwide, and this fig- cost to access the mobile Internet, for
ure expected to triple by 2013, the example, Britain (one pound per
mobile Web is growing at a phenomenal rate. mobile screen accessed), there is
Whilst travel suppliers need to keep pace high mobile Internet access of up
with new developments, they also need to to 30 percent of mobile phone sub-
ensure they match the provision of services scribers.
to customer acceptance of this relatively In other markets, where access
new channel. costs can be three to four times that
Mobile Web sites can offer the full cost, access is lower.
functionality of the traditional Web plus Similarly, in some developing mar-
additional mobile-specific features. kets such as India and China, where
However, what customers want to ac- mobile Internet is the Internet for many
cess on a mobile is different to what people, we are seeing the development
they want to access on a PC. of mobile commerce, i.e. people making
When travel suppliers and inter- reservations on mobiles, perhaps in ad-
mediaries embrace this they find mo- vance of other parts of the world.
bile to be an ideal means to deliver Whilst mobile services are currently
certain services that fit the context being used mainly as a positive cus-
and provide a layer of differentia- tomer innovation, they also offer travel
tion over their competitors. suppliers the potential to reduce costs –
For example, combining online for example, where a traveler can self-
and mobile services means a cus- modify a booking rather than having to
tomer can book on the Web then contact a call center, and also have the po-
push the booking to their tential to deliver incremental ancillary
mobile device. revenues.
Hotel guests can then re- Looking ahead, as consumers’ confi-
trieve their booking on mobile dence and familiarity with mobile Internet
and see directions and maps to grows and as mobile data charges increas-
help them find their hotel. ingly become bundled as part of monthly tar-
They can also amend iffs, mobile commerce is likely to expand.
bookings on-the-go should How-
their plans change. ever, travel
Airline customers can operators’
check flight status, pur- focus right
chase additional services, now should
select their on-board seat be on enhanc-
from graphical seat maps ing their cus-
and even check-in. tomers’
From the mobile travel experience
services MTT has already whilst on the go
developed for travel rather than simply
clients, we are already see- developing a full
ing up to 10 percent of the functionality mo-
number of unique users on bile version of their
the regular Web site ac- PC Web site.
cessing the site on mobile.
In the United States, large Gerry Samuels is the
carriers have over 100,000 unique ac- founder and executive di-
cesses per month, a trend which is growing by rector of Mobile Travel Tech-
up to 20 percent per month. nologies Ltd., Dublin, Ireland.
Geographic location and differing costs to access the mobile Inter- Reach him at gerry@mttnow.com

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 19

A D VA N C E D

Beyond the handset:

W
L e v er ag i n g m o b il e d i s t r i b u t i o n p o in t s t o r ea c h u n d er s e r v e d m ar ke t s
By Moneet Singh
ith 3.4 billion subscribers worldwide and service spanning 90 marketing and distribution platform for marketers of all industries, as
percent of the globe, mobile phones are the most quickly they reach underserved consumers where they live and work, and in-
adopted device in world history. volve highly personal transactions with agents they’ve grown to know
In fact, mobile phones have leapfrogged traditional telecommunica- and trust.
tion networks to flourish in rural areas where landline penetration has Thinking of mobile agents and carriers as a roving point-of-sale net-
long been stagnant at 5-10 percent. work, companies can deploy advertising campaigns utilizing agents as
Mobile technology’s increasing ubiquity presents an unprecedented brand ambassadors.
opportunity to deliver marketing messages and products in untapped Their frequent interaction with hard-to-reach consumers makes them
markets where television, bricks-and-mortar institutions and even postal extremely effective local partners for distributing advertisements, edu-
mail services have found it difficult to find a foothold. cating consumers about products or displaying your brand.
Mobile networks in underserved markets provide marketers in all in- Coupon and sampling campaigns are another potential use of mobile
dustries with two main channels for interacting with consumers. distribution points.
The first is, of course, the handset itself. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, for example, could
Mobile banking and mobile payment networks have already demon- arm these agents with traditional print or SMS coupons and even
strated the tremendous potential for engaging underserved consumers product samples.
via SMS technology, putting financial services within reach of the To incorporate cross-promotion, the CPG company and mobile car-
world’s 2 billion un-banked and under-banked individuals. rier – or the agent on their own – could offer free minutes for every prod-
In Kenya alone, Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile payments service has uct sold as a result of these coupons.
facilitated $145 million in transactions among 1.6 million consumers. Another angle to take toward this opportunity involves the engage-
The second channel, which remains relatively unexplored by mar- ment of mobile distribution agents as a sales force and delivery channel
keters, is the complex web of mobile distribution points that have been for your products and services.
integral in driving mobile phones’ rapid adoption. Enlisting these agents to sell insurance, to act as a local reseller for
These distribution points emerge organically, helmed by local entre- small products such as toothpaste, to distribute catalogs and take orders,
preneurs offering mobile solutions that or to become a "shipping center" for express mail creates a mutually ben-
best meet their neighbor’s usage habits. eficial business relationship.
For example, Safaricom relies on di- The end customer can use his mobile or cash to complete such
rect sales agents who circulate in neigh- transactions.
borhoods and villages selling top-ups In this relationship, your company serves the long tail, entering or
for airtime or servicing mobile achieving greater efficiencies within underserved markets, and local en-
payments. trepreneurs can in turn grow their businesses and increase loyalty by pro-
Similarly, Grameenphone operates viding mobile customers with added value.
the national Village Phone program in With such trusted partnerships in place, your product may enjoy
rural India and Bangladesh, in which adoption as rapid as that of mobile technology itself.
villagers essentially become wireless
carriers by renting minutes to neighbors. Moneet Singh is the president and chief operating officer of Austin, TX-
Such agent networks are an ideal based MPower Mobile. Email him at moneet.singh@mpowerlabs.com
PAGE 20 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE
 An evolution revolution:
SM S tr a ns f o r m s mo b i l e co mm er c e

O
By Chuck Drake

nline commerce sent con- can now do even more, via simple text messaging, all while they wait
sumers and businesses into a in line or stop for coffee.
frenzy of purchasing in a new, Today, the mobile commerce landscape is rapidly changing as the
more convenient way. masses text constantly (let’s face it, “text” is already a verb).
Initially named ecommerce, it changed our lives overnight and soon The early adopters depend on mobile banking and transaction alerts
everything received the online moniker including online marketing, on- via SMS. Those on the bleeding edge make payments and money trans-
line sales, purchasing and payments. fers, reload prepaid cards and gain purchase rewards – all via SMS.
Even Congress got into the act with hearings about the potential tax Two concurrent developments in mobile technology made
revenues that might be reaped, propelling lobbyists into high gear. this possible.
Now, rocking the world again, mobile commerce is replacing the First, everyone owns a mobile phone.
PC with the mobile phone and replacing email with text messaging. Even in countries where landlines never made it into the home and
Consumers who once went gaga because they could accomplish computers were never plugged in, people depend on their
their bill paying online or receive email receipts for Christmas goods mobile phone.
There are 1.3 billion Internet users globally and 3.4 billion mobile
phone subscribers. In some countries, mobile phone penetration has
reached 140 percent, which works out to be 1.5 mobile phones
per person.
Second, all mobile phones come equipped with SMS.
Text messaging has slowly crept into the practices of all
demographics so that now, everyone from middle school stu-
dents needing a ride home to grandparents wishing a friend
well text away everyday.
Because of this massive proliferation across the globe and
across demographics, SMS has reached and will continue to
reach more people than perhaps any other communications
channel available on any medium.
In the mid-twentieth century, credit cards revolutionized
commerce by putting real purchasing power in consumers’
wallets without needing to haul around a bucket of cash.
Imagine not needing a wallet at all to wield such power.
SMS can help turn mobile phones into mobile wallets
without needing to dig the plastic out of its slot.
Following the pace of ecommerce, mobile commerce is
only beginning to experience widespread deployment.
The masses will soon be performing all transactions dis-
cussed in this article. Soon, early adopters will receive ac-
tionable alerts for mobile receipts and rewards via SMS for
Near Field Communications transactions.
Before long, those people on the leading edge will se-
cure on the spot credit to make point-of-sale purchases and
eliminate the need for debit cards, enabling mobile pur-
chases via SMS on-the-spot.
The numbers suggest that mobile phones will indeed be-
come the “wallet” of choice as big brands, smart technology
vendors, banks, retailers and consumers continue to make
smart decisions.
According to Juniper Research, mobile payments and
mobile money transfers will generate transactions worth
$600 billion by 2013. That is a number worth taking to the
bank.

Chuck Drake is executive vice president of marketing at

Clickatell, San Francisco. Reach him at
chuck.drake@clickatell.com
MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 21
Hate crowds?
Wan t your mo bil e content t o s ta nd o ut? Try t hin ki ng

T
gl oba ll y, a ct ing l ocal l y a nd embraci ng the mobi l e Web

By Ray Anderson • The point of payment and download on the mobile Web can be
tightly coupled into one seamless WAP flow, leading to fewer support
he scenario has become all too familiar among content problems with refund levels as low as 0.1 percent of all downloads.
providers: Company A has a presence on a major carrier’s por- Both subscriptions and pay-per-download payment methods can be
tal but its content sits alongside its competitors. supported.
How can Company A stand out from the crowd and capture new World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), a global sports entertain-
business? ment brand with millions of fans around the world, launched an off-
portal mobile site of original made-for-mobile content to complement
its television and consumer product offerings.
WWE turned to the mobile Web, so that fans anywhere in the world,
on any network, could access and pay for content on their mobile
phone.
Within 4 months of launching the service, WWE reached con-
sumers from more than 40 countries purchasing an array of content
through more than 110 carriers around the world. WWE fans said they
were drawn to the WAP site because it provides a mini-Web
experience.
An example of a mobile company that is reaping the benefits of di-
rect-to-consumer is Dada Entertainment. New York-based Dada, a joint
venture between Dada, USA and Sony BMG, was the first company to
offer both ringtones and DRM-free full-length MP3s for mobile and
PC paid directly via the mobile phone.
Dada Entertainment cites the ability to offer a seamless payment
experience, which in turn increases consumer satisfaction and decreases
billing errors, as big positives for direct-to-consumer.
“A mobile Web business allows us to work di-
rectly with our consumers,” said Max Pel-
legrini, CEO of Dada Entertainment.
“Dada.net can offer a complete
mobile music service – cus-
tomers can download and pay
for their music all through
their mobile phones,” he said.
“With over 65 percent of all
new phones purchased in the
United States as music-en-
The answer is new, yet has a familiar feel. abled, it makes sense for a
Using the mobile Web as a platform for a direct-to-consumer site new company like ours to be
not only can help you attract new customers, it also provides consumers D2C.”
with the same “Web-like” user experience as on-portal. As the demand for digital
By placing banner ads on the portal, businesses can drive traffic to content and the numbers of con-
the off-portal site where they have complete control over how their sumers using the mobile Internet
content is marketed to the consumer. continue to rise, content providers see
Here are just some of the advantages of having an off-portal the value of going D2C via the mobile
presence: Web.
• Marketing programs such as banner ads or search marketing can Using the mobile Web, consumers can purchase and download a
drive traffic to the site and the success of these campaigns can be variety of digital content as easily as they do on the PC Internet.
tracked, making it easy to see immediately which promotions yielded Many brands are realizing that by integrating the promotion of the
the highest rates of return. mobile service with the rest of the mainstream marketing, it is true that
• A direct-to-consumer (D2C) mobile Web site works across all ge- “if you build it – they will come!”
ographic locations, but can be localized for specific markets so the con-
tent is in the right language, is relevant and appealing for a Ray Anderson is Cambridge, England-based CEO of Bango, a mobile
particular country. Internet services provider. Reach him at ray@bango.com
PAGE 22 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE
Banks a nd car riers
T
f in ally r e aliz ing t he p o wer o f m ob ile co m m er ce
By Matthew Talbot

he mobile industry has been discussing mobile banking services nity for new products and services, and one such product is mobile
and mobile payments for more than 10 years, and finally we will remittances. The official remittance market today is worth over
begin to see financial institutions fully exploit the potential of $250 billion.
mobile commerce. With mobile as the predominant communication tool in the
Consumers have become increasingly sophisticated and key remittance markets of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and
are demanding easier access to their finances. Gone are Latin America, it is no surprise that remittances have
the days of branch banking and paying by check. been extended to mobile.
Consumers and corporate clients are now look- As with the expansion of mobile banking serv-
ing to access financial services without time, loca- ices, the range of mobile payments services will
tion or device restrictions. expand as consumer confidence increases in mo-
Like Internet banking and electronic pay- bile as a payment instrument.
ments, mobile commerce is a way for banks—and Future developments, including using the mo-
even wireless carriers—to create new service of- bile for Near Field Communications (NFC) trans-
ferings with the potential for creating new revenue actions such as transportation, ticketing and
streams or cost-saving opportunities. payment for digital and physical goods, will only
Banks have been testing and launching mobile serve to increase this confidence.
commerce products since the mid- to late 1990s. After Mobile commerce, a young but rapidly-growing
the first faltering steps of WAP banking, banks often re- segment, is already providing glimpses into what will cer-
stricted themselves to simple push information and marketing tainly become a major means of day-to-day commerce for bil-
alert services. These alerts services, when promoted, have been ex- lions of consumers and enterprises worldwide.
tremely successful for banks over the last five years. It is inevitable that the world evolves from a Web model to a mo-
In the last few years, we have seen a small number of banks ex- bile browsing model.
panding their service offering beyond the simple one-way push alerts, With the maturity gained by growing from an experimental chan-
both as a response to consumer demands and to address business is- nel to a core customer channel, consistency of experience, reliability
sues for banks—including information requests and security and product offering will be of even greater importance.
enhancements.
A great example is on-demand account balance via the mobile Matthew Talbot is the Singapore-based vice president of mobile
phone. Up to 60 percent of calls to a bank’s call center involve an ac- commerce at Sybase 365. Reach him at matthew.talbot@sybase.com
count balance request. If a bank moves even a fraction of these calls to
the mobile channel, there are clear cost benefits for the bank as well as
a better customer experience.
As banks and carriers expand their portfolio of mobile products and
services, they will need to break out of the single channel approach and
offer services via multiple channels (SMS, Java, BREW and WAP) to
address both the limitations and reach of a particular channel, balanced
against consumer preference and confidence in individual modes
of access.

Mobile payments
The roots of mobile payments can be traced back to the first pre-
mium-rate telephone services to the mobile ringtone business launched
in 1999.
Today, these mobile payment options still flourish in the market-
place, but have been complemented by a range of new mobile payment
services – including mobile top-ups, credit cards, direct debit and mo-
bile wallets – incorporating the likes of remittance products.
While these services have, so far, come from small independent
companies and are geographically based, it is clear that these services
are a natural extension of traditional banking products and payment in-
struments, positioning banks and carriers as best placed to deliver such
products to their customers.
The ubiquitous nature of the mobile device creates the opportu-

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 23

 So, you have a mobil e site.

What ’s next?
R
By Richard Eicher For search engine search engine optimization, carefully follow the
provider’s guidelines, including mobile sitemap submission.
emember the early days
of the Internet when all Advertising
you needed was a Web One of the best places to advertise your mobile site is within the
site and you got lots of traffic? mobile space itself.
It didn’t take long before the number of Web sites grew ex- This audience is generally mobile savvy and often has mes-
ponentially and with it the competition for visitors. saging and data plans to use mobile services with little or
So too will competition grow for visitors to your mo- no concern for airtime charges.
bile Internet site. Options include banner, text and image ads on
Site discovery and repeat visits should be con- mobile Internet sites, including content publishers
sidered fundamental tasks in your mobile com- and social networks, sponsored mobile search
merce and marketing plans. links, advertising in mobile content and sponsor-
Three important vehicles include messaging, ing or creating your own applications and con-
mobile search and cross-platform advertising. tent delivered through subscription services for
ongoing interaction.
Messaging Using cross-channel advertising has proven
Messaging can drive traffic to your mobile site to be very effective.
and foster customer interaction. List your URL on your Web site and include a
Campaigns are easy to create and messaging is fa- send-to-phone link using SMS or MMS.
miliar to the recipient. Promote your keyword in print and broadcast to ini-
Through your messaging provider, create an SMS or tiate a text-to-shortcode or optical (e.g., 2D barcode) call-to-
MMS message including a clickable link to your mobile site. action.
Choose custom keywords and create a messaging call-to-action. Most importantly, be sure your site is quick and easy to access, op-
Promote your keywords in print and broadcast. Add links to your timize it for the majority of handsets and offer timely content and serv-
Web site. For broad reach, promote in mass-market media. ices of real value to your audience.
For select markets, target by media type or geographic areas, such
as a specific retail departments in certain cities. Richard Eicher is president of Skycore LLC, Boston. Reach him at
Messaging can also be used for post-transaction confirmations and reicher@skycore.com
follow-up communications.
With your customer’s opt-in, use these messages to
offer alert subscriptions and related content and
services.

SMS or MMS?
It depends on your objective.
SMS is less expensive but limited to 160 charac-
ters. MMS is more expensive but can include thou-
sands of characters plus images, audio and
video slides.

Search
The typical search is conducted through search en-
gines, content discovery services, Q&A services and di-
rectory services initiated through mobile browsers,
downloaded client applications and voice or text requests.
There are many ways to have your mobile site
discovered.
Increasing search visibility
will vary by service and requires
some research.
However, most important is to
have your site designed specifi-
cally for mobile devices.
PAGE 24 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE
Pers onalization:
Tee nage sex all ove r again
O
By Mory Bahar

nce again we are reminded of an old analogy. Personalization is like teenage WebMD, periodically, sends me an online collection of
sex: Everybody is talking about it, very few are actually experiencing it and articles that are somehow connected to that topic. Is this level of personalization
of the few who do, hardly anyone knows how to do it well. adequate?
Whether we call it personalization or not, most of us recognize its importance: Imagine you are in the old Soviet Union. You are handed a list of jobs or careers
Presenting content that resonates with the audience of one. that a central committee has decided that the country needs and you get to pick one.
Personalization is also making offers that tie to the personal needs and desires Do you want your career choices be limited to the imagination of the comrades
of the recipient. Also, it is tailoring an ad to the profile and perceived needs of the of the central committee who made the list? Probably not. The “menu” reflects their
specific individual viewing the ad. preferences, not yours.
And the solution is not just adding to the number of items on the menu. Would
What is personalization? you be content with eHarmony.com to present to you all candidates in their database,
By personalization, we mean that the content we present, the ad that we display, male and female, young and old, local and international?
or the offer we make to an individual is relevant to, sensitive to, and important to You as the marketer must help me the individual, by reducing the menu to a
that individual's profile and preferences. manageable subset of all the available choices based on my personal preferences.
For example, Amazon.com attempts to personalize its offers to me based on To do this, however, you would need to first learn about me and my
previous books that I have purchased. Two different people can log onto their Ama- preferences.
zon accounts and get totally different offers. It is not perfect personalization but it The next level is personalization. Using the restaurant analogy again, here the
is an excellent example. patron can ask for something that is not on the menu, or gets to tweak the recipe
(e.g., no salt, more garlic, olive oil instead of butter).
Why is personalization important and relevant to the I tell the finance site what I have in my portfolio – how many shares of which
mobile world? stocks and it can now tell me how much I made (or more likely lost) in the market
Since mobile phones are personal devices, personalization of messages, ads, today.
offers and content makes sense for mobile marketers. It is a great opportunity for a Naturally, we cannot provide this level of personalization unless the mobile
business when communicating with an individual. user is willing to tell us about his or her preferences and we have the tools and tech-
Increasingly mobile users will expect to receive offers, ads and content that is nology to deliver on the higher expectation.
relevant to their personal situation. If WebMD can send me one newsletter that focuses only on adult males who
This scenario is in contrast to the content, ad or offer most businesses make on have high cholesterol, very high triglyceride, family history of prostate cancer and
their Web site or other media where everyone sees the same thing. like to lose couple of pounds (i.e., my personal profile) then that would be consid-
In addition, since the mobile platform is very limited on space and speed, as mo- ered personalization.
bile marketers we have no choice but to be selective and show the content that is Incidentally, this type of need is what motivated me and my partners to create
most relevant to the individual. our company.
We don’t have the space, and the individual doesn’t have the patience to scroll The last level is intimacy. Using the restaurant analogy again, at this level the
through pages and pages of content. patron does not need to make any choices or tweak any recipes.
For example, on my laptop Amazon can recommend 10 books to me on one This is because the waiter already recognizes the patron and serves to his taste
page. But on the mobile platform they may be limited to featuring just one book. without being told.
In this case, they need to make a much more intelligent decision on what to Last year, a friend invited me to lunch at his favorite restaurant. His usual drink
show me based on my personal profile and preferences. along with the side drink arrived at the same time as we were seated.
If I clicked on the sport icon on my mobile phone and it recognized that it is me,
In search of a common understanding it is fall, it is Monday night and it automatically tuned into Monday Night Football
In absence of any other standard, here is my proposal on various levels of per- (without me explicitly programming it to do so) then that is an example of intimacy.
sonalization.
The first level is take it or leave it. It is when there has been no attempt to take Conclusion
you and your preferences into account. This is how the network television, radio, Mobile phones and personalization provide mobile marketer the best chance to
publishers and many mobile and Web content providers continue to operate. You get target individuals and deliver most relevant and high impact ads, offers, informa-
whatever they planned for you. tion and services.
The next level is context-sensitive. Based on the context, marketers make some Increasingly, mobile users will demand it.
assumptions about the viewer. The message is then tailored based on those as- To deliver an acceptable form of personalization we need to move beyond the
sumptions. primitive forms of context-sensitive and menu of choices.
For example, ads for tennis gear could be shown during the televised Wimble- To personalize, we must get to know the individual prospects and customers.
don matches. Note however that the ad that the viewer sees is no different from any We need to learn about or just ask them their preferences, validate our assumptions
other individual watching the same match. about them, take into account their behavior and then generate offers, ads, content
In addition, the assumption made about the viewer may be inaccurate. Just be- and service that respect their individuality.
cause it is women’s finals, does not mean that the viewer is a woman. Achieving more advanced forms of personalization will not be easy.
The next level is menu of choices. There are many content providers, portals It may require a total redesign for many mobile and Web businesses and con-
and publishers who claim personalization of content, yet all they provide is a menu tent providers. Some businesses like publishers and portals may find this transition
of choices to select from. very difficult.
Here, the individual gets a menu and gets to choose, as you would select from But for many other businesses, based on unique profile of their customers and
a menu at a restaurant. You get to select the dish you want, but they get to decide prospects, they can tailor their ads and offers, and tie them to most relevant prod-
what is on the menu and how each dish is prepared. ucts, features and options.
For example, on a finance portal, I pick the stocks that I want to follow and the
publisher displays the price and volume data for those stocks. Mory Bahar is the president/CEO of Personal Remedies LLC, Boston. Reach him
On the wired Web, I select “High Cholesterol” as my topic of interest, and at morybahar@personalremedies.com

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 25

2009 BUYERS’ GUIDE >>>
The definitive vendor resource for purchase-empowered
mobile execs.Ad deadline March 15, publishes April 1.
Please contact Jodie Solomon at 212.334.6366 or
jodie@mobilemarketer.com

Mobile Marketer
M ob i le c o mmerc e:
The legal landscape
A
By Brian W. Esler and David Rice However, substantial legal uncertainty surrounds the ever-more common use of
trademarks as keywords for Internet searches or in meta tags on Web sites.
s lawyers, we see entirely too many clients coming to us after launching a Courts have split on the legality of such trademark use, with some courts up-
mobile advertising campaign, application or service with questions about holding such practices, while others have found infringement.
why they have received a "cease and desist" letter or similar threats of legal These cases have turned on fine factual distinctions regarding the nature of the
entanglement. use, and whether consumers were likely to at least be initially confused.
Seeing your lawyer before you launch may seem like a costly luxury at the Suffice to say that if your business plan involves using others' trademarks to
time, but it is much cheaper than later dealing with the consequences of violating drive traffic or promote your goods or services, consult your lawyer first.
the law or another's legal rights.
This article will help you understand some of the more common issues we see Consumer disclosure, protection and privacy
arising in the mobile space, but this article is no substitute for legal advice regard- Issues such as SMS and “push” methods of advertising grow in the mobile
ing the particular problems you may confront. space, vendors need to be aware that such advertising is already subject to federal
regulation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the aptly-named
Using others trademarks or copyrights CAN-SPAM Act.
A copyright can be claimed in almost any ex- The TCPA was originally enacted to regulate unsolicited telephone calls and
pression of an idea, whether a picture, text, soft- faxes, but courts and the Federal Communications Commission have interpreted
ware code or the organization of elements. the statute to reach unsolicited text messages as well under certain circumstances.
Contrary to popular belief, a work does not Each violation of the TCPA can result in $500 or more in statutory damages
need to have the ubiquitous "©" symbol to be pro- and class actions under this law have been numerous.
tected by copyright, so you should not assume The CAN-SPAM Act regulates advertising via email solicitation, but also has
that the lack of such a symbol on artwork or text been held to extend to SMS messages sent using specific technologies.
you plan to use will protect you. Among other requirements, the act requires that the solicitation be identified as
On the other hand, removing that symbol such, that it has a valid return path address, that the subject line not be misleading
from a work gives rise to liability separate and and that the recipient be given a clear opportu-
apart from infringement. Brian Esler, partner, Miller Nash nity to opt out of further commercial solicitations.
Copyright arises upon creation of the work, Both the FCC and the Federal Trade Com-
and lasts for either the life of the author plus 70 years, or – in the case of works cre- mission have stepped up their enforcement of
ated for a particular employer – 95 years for "works made for hire." consumer protection and privacy laws with re-
In order for the owner of a copyright to claim infringement, all that copyright spect to the mobile space, and responding to an
holder needs to show is that (1) it owns a valid work and (2) that work was copied enforcement action by either of these agencies is
in some material respect. likely to be costly.
In order to prove copying, all the owner needs to show is that (1) you had ac- Surprisingly, many online and mobile mer-
cess to the work and that (2) your accused work is similar. chandisers appear to be unaware that the FTC’s
For commercial enterprises, "fair use" is rarely a defense, as the profit motive Mail and Telephone Order Merchandise Rule
weighs heavily against any such finding. also applies to them.
Some online and mobile service providers are surprised to learn that user gen- The rule sets forth requirements for making
erated content – such as home videos, pictures or original music – are also protected David Rice, partner, Miller Nash promises about shipments, notifying customers
by copyright. about delays and disclosure of refund policies.
Even if those users initially supply that material for free, services dependent Similarly, the FTC has been aggressive in its enforcement of the Children’s On-
on that content should ensure that their user agreements clearly allow for further use line Privacy Protection Act, which regulates the online collection of data on children
of that content commercially. under 13 years old.
Clearing the rights – and paying royalties if necessary – to use works subject If your mobile service is arguably directed to the pre-teen market – which is one
to copyright should be a standard operating procedure for any company engaged in of the fastest growing segments of mobile users – you need to know COPPA well
mobile commerce. and ensure you remain compliant with its dictates.
Trademarks are the short phrases or symbols used by enterprises to signify that You may be subject to COPPA if you have actual knowledge that children use
goods or services originate from that enterprise. your service, even if your service does not target children.
Essentially, trademarks protect the enterprises' goodwill. While the United States does not have an all-encompassing statutory scheme for
Often a trademark will be followed by the symbols “TM” or “®” – the former protecting consumer data such as exists in Europe, a patchwork of federal and state
indicating common law trademark use, the latter signifying that the trademark is regulations may affect your use of consumers' private information.
registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The FCC has also been active recently – along with plaintiff class-action at-
Under the law, registered trademarks receive a greater degree of protection, in- torneys – in going after unauthorized cellular charges, many of which have been re-
cluding enhanced damages for infringement. lated to premium mobile services.
Generally speaking, a trademark holder will have to show that customers are In short, while the mobile space may become the next frontier for commerce,
likely to be confused by another's use of a similar term in order to prove it is not by any means a lawless frontier.
infringement. Consulting with a lawyer who understands the rules regulating your proposed
However, so-called "famous" trademarks receive an extra dose of protection, enterprise, who can help you ensure compliance with those laws before you launch,
such that the holders of famous trademarks do not need to show a likelihood of con- will in the long run save you not only money, but may save your company from
fusion, but only that the other's use of a similar mark will dilute or tarnish the rep- costly litigation.
utation of the famous mark.
Most of the time, it is legal to use another's trademark to describe the actual Brian Esler is a partner at Miller Nash LLP, Seattle. Reach him at
goods or services on offer, or to factually and accurately compare goods or services. brian.esler@millernash.com
Thus, it is not trademark infringement to use the "Coke" trademark if you are
actually an authorized vendor of Coca-Cola (or are using it for demonstrative pur- David Rice is a partner at Miller Nash LLP, Seattle. Reach him at
poses in an article like this). david.rice@millernash.com
MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 27
 Mobile sellers
C
f a c e t ec h n o l og i c a l an d l eg a l c h al l en g es
By Gonzalo E. Mon

urrently, most mobile commerce in the United States involves Mobile sellers would be well-advised to review the terms of the AT&T
sales of content via premium charges. This may soon start to settlement and ensure their campaigns are in compliance.
change as companies experiment with new technologies to fa-
cilitate sales of goods and services through phones. Other payment methods
The challenges aren’t all technological, though. Companies also Some retailers have launched mobile Web sites where consumers
need to pay attention to various legal issues. can make purchases using their credit cards.
These sites are likely to become more popular as phone technology
Premium charges improves. Fortunately, to the extent these sites are simply mobile ver-
Over the past few years, a number of lawsuits have been filed sions of Internet sites, the legal issues are similar to those on
against companies that sell content through premium charges. Internet sites.
Recently, the Florida attor- The next frontier in mobile
ney general also challenged payments involves using Near
AT&T over offers made by a Field Communications technol-
third party. The attorney gen- ogy to enable consumers to
eral alleged that ads touted make payments by swiping
“free” services but buried dis- phones over special readers.
closures about costs in fine Although there is no wide-
print. spread use of NFC in the U.S.,
As part of the settlement, there have been several small-
AT&T agreed to pay $2.5 mil- scale trials with positive
lion and to provide an estimated responses.
$10 million worth of rebates to According to the Pulse’s
consumers. 2008 Debit Issuer Study, 56
More importantly for sell- percent of card issuers are ex-
ers, AT&T is required to include ploring the possibility of im-
various provisions in contracts plementing some type of
with sellers. mobile payment system, so we
Among other things, AT&T may see more companies use
must require sellers to disclose this technology in the near
costs at the outset of an offer future.
and provide specific disclosures Because this technology is
on various parts of the order so new, there are no clear legal
flow. guidelines yet. Expect regula-
AT&T must also prohibit tors to pay close attention as the
sellers from requiring con- technology develops, though.
sumers to receive text messages In fact, in July, the FTC
unrelated to the purchased con- hosted a meeting to explore
tent and from using pre-checked consumer protection issues re-
boxes for acceptance of terms. lated to the use of “contactless”
The Florida attorney general payment systems such as NFC.
is pushing other wireless carri- Mobile marketers must re-
ers to agree to similar terms. main vigilant so that they can
The attorney general’s office identify changes to the legal
is also developing a “zone sys- landscape and quickly adapt
tem” that would dictate where their marketing campaigns
and how terms must appear on a accordingly.
mobile flow.
For example, price disclo- Gonzalo E. Mon is an attorney
sures will have to appear within in the advertising and market-
a certain number of pixels from ing law practice of Kelley
a submit field, in a minimum Drye & Warren LLP, Washing-
font, and in a color that contrasts ton. Reach him at
with the background. gmon@kelleydrye.com
MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 28
12 Tip s
for building a mobile site
H
By Marci Troutman 4. All imagery should be optimized for a mobile environment, not
the PC/Mac environment. WAP will not do this for you, neither will an
ave you ever really looked at mobile sites on the Web? I mean, extension such as .mobi
really looked at them, worked with them, or tried to actually do 5. The URL or Web address should remain the same as your
something on them? main PC/Mac site to allow the ease and comfort of use from
The usual approach I take when I really need to find something is your customers
I will search Google and see what comes up, punch in the URL and 6. Category navigation should be simple and visible prior to need-
hope for the best. But most of the time, I am sorely disappointed with ing to scroll down the page
the results. 7. Break down the
It is amazing to me that categories into thorough
with all the commerce and sub-categories in order
information that flows to make the site as user-
through the Internet that friendly as possible and
most major players in the to eliminate the need for
Web world have given so long scroll pages with
little thought to the user long download times
experience through that lit- 8. Security measures
tle 2 ½ inches of LCD real already in place for the
estate that occupies most company’s main
consumers’ pockets in the PC/Mac site should be
form of a mobile phone. used for the mobile site
If you look at the num- as well. For example, all
bers, compared to laptops software should live be-
and PCs, the mobile appli- hind the firewall that has
ance eclipses the number already been proven,
of those appliances by an tried and tested. This
order of magnitude. will ensure that your
Most major Internet customers feel just as
companies or companies safe shopping your mo-
that use the Internet as an bile site as they do your
extension of their bricks- PC/Mac entity
and-mortar world are just 9. On your notices,
plain naive about place- have “layered notices” to
ment of their product in a mobile environment, what with all the dif- let the main points of terms, conditions and privacy laws be a short line
ferent types of phones, wireless company platforms and politics. with a link to direct the user back to the main PC/Mac site for more
It feels just like the world back in 1998 when the idea of Internet extensive details. This offers a comfort level to users that all privacy
commerce was just establishing itself and the concept of click-through, laws are adhered on your site
shopping-cart drops and ease of usage were merely wire frames on a 10. The “Contact us” link should be visible from all pages
PowerPoint presentation at some small corner office in the marketing 11. Use drop-down menus whenever possible to make the most use
department, or worse, yet left in the hands of the IT department. of the small space across the mobile canvas
Times are changing and the companies that take mobile commerce 12. Ensure that site pages are built to fit across the broad spectrum
seriously now will reap the benefits of their foresightedness way ahead of all size phones. i.e., not using images that lock to a specified di-
of their competition. Now what makes a good user interface for a mo- mension but spec’ing the phone screens in order to ensure the pages
bile customer? will work well on all platforms
Listed below are several tips for a mobile site build: Now, all of the above are achievable, though some are harder than
1. Logo should live top left and link back to the homepage others. Most companies treat the mobile site offering and interface as
2. The search function should be visible prior to needing to scroll a red-headed stepchild, but that is changing.
down the page, as this is the most commonly used tool within a mobile Future articles will discuss many issues surrounding mobile site
site and within a PC/Mac shopping site strategies, tactics, future visions and current attitudes.
3. There shouldn’t be more than three to four scrolls on any page as
a longer page could lead to longer load times and frustrate customers Marci Troutman is founder of Siteminis Inc., a mobile site developer in
with the page load Marietta, GA. Reach her at marci@siteminis.com

MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 29

Camera-phone
mo b ile c om me r ce

R
By Rob DeStefano

emember when the sound of retail sales was the “ka-ching” of an including the endorsement of ISO standard
old cash register? Over the last three decades, that sound was re- bar code symbologies (Japan uses primarily ISO
placed by the “beep” of a bar code scanner as it decoded the UPC standard QR codes
bar code on retail checkout lines. As retail expands to include mobile today). In addition, all
commerce, the sound of sales has a nice, new “ring” to it. Mobile com- players within the in-
dustry must recognize
how the can contribute
to the growth and prolif-
eration of this technol-
ogy. For cellular
carriers and device
manufacturers, this in-
cludes ensuring that
camera-phones meet several critical functional guide- lines, in particu-
lar the inclusion of macro- or autofocus-lenses with software control ac-
cessible for application developers. For client application developers,
per-decode pricing models will put less risk on your client brands and ad-
vertisers, allowing them to pay based on the performance of a particular
campaign.
For marketers considering a visual search solution, look to partner
with companies that have a deep understanding of auto-ID and cellular
merce revolves around the virtual retail experience, a storefront always lo- technology. Expect to perform significant testing of interactive campaigns
cated near you, open twenty four hours a day, right on your mobile phone. in small, controlled environments – college campuses or other geograph-
Among the leading the technologies for implementing mobile com- ically centralized testing tends to be more easily managed. Defining a
merce and mobile advertising campaigns are camera-phone bar code scan- campaign’s expected results will be hard to estimate in initial campaigns.
ning and related technologies that make up the category often called Consider working with a visual search vendor with whom you would feel
“visual search.” The idea behind visual search is to encode printed media comfortable announcing results from your initial tests and campaigns.
such as magazine ads, billboard and movie posters, and product packag- Many advertisers and
ing with bar codes or digital watermarks and enable consumers to inter- brands seem hesitant to
act with the encoded media by decoding it using their cell phone’s digital be the first to publicly
camera. Once decoded by the camera-phone, the decoded data unlocks state the results they
access to Web-based content using the phone’s Web browser, and con- achieved from a test
trolled by the advertiser. The Web-based content could range from “buy campaign, and still oth-
now” mobile commerce to mobile coupons, sweepstakes entry, or pro- ers are asking vendors
motional downloads such as music samples, movie previews or ringtones. for references from
By choosing to incorporate visual search technologies into printed other clients’ tests.
media, brands and advertisers minimize the time and effort required for a Success is not nec-
consumer to connect the printed advertisement to follow-up action. Vi- essarily going to be
sual search technologies eliminate the time between when consumers measured by achieving a huge number of campaign interactions (de-
view the printed contact, and the time they act on its message. It also au- codes). The early success criteria will be more defined by the ease of use
tomates the process of connecting the print and Web experiences – no of a decoder, and ultimately the percentage of interactions that create the
long URL links to remember of input, no clumsy keypad entry, just sim- desired response from your campaign (i.e. sales). Ultimately, for mobile
ple, direct interactivity. advertising campaigns to be successful the interactive piece of the cam-
In Japan, this technology has already hit the mainstream market – to paign has to be exceptionally compelling so that the consumer wants to
the point where groups of college students were actually getting tattoos of continue decoding interactive media. Introducing mobile advertising as
bar codes. Client software to decode industry standard bar code types an exciting new technology with a strong incentive for repeated use will
(symbologies) are easily accessible on their mobile phones and the cam- motivate consumers to want to use it for as long as the reward (such as the
era-phones include standard requirements to ensure acceptable decode instant gratification associated with an impulse purchase) continues to
performance when consumers attempt to decode. prove worthwhile.
For comparable success in the United States, Europe and other inter-
ested regions, similar actions must be taken. Independent standards bod- Rob DeStefano is sales and marketing manager of Mobile Data Systems,
ies need to define acceptable and best practices to nurture early adoption; Nesconset, NY. Reach him at rdestefano@mobiledatasys.com

PAGE 30 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE

A u ni v e r s a l c o m p l i a n c e st a n d a r d w i l l
ju m p- st a rt t h e m o bil e c o m me r c e in d us t ry

M
By Eric Holmen

obile commerce seems poised for explosive If integrated into every aspect of the delivery chain –
growth, yet the U.S. market's fuse seems to be from carriers to aggregators to marketers and end users –
longer than Europe's or developed Asia's. PCI can be the spark that ignites America's mobile retail
The technology is already in everyone's pocket or explosion.
pocketbook, so why aren't Americans using their mobile But the industry can only get hot by keeping con-
phones as turnkey commerce solutions? sumers cool, which is precisely where stringent compli-
The ubiquitous mobile device, the ultimate portal to ance standards come into play.
all media channels, marketers' coveted third screen, should Americans, to whom privacy is a foundational, defin-
be central to every facet of the purchasing process, from pro- ing guarantee, take incendiary exception when that right is
motion to selection to payment – just as it is in other parts of the breached.
world. Nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than in the commercial
If the industry develops an infrastructure around a clear, effective stan- sphere, where the U.S. public is increasingly shunning unwanted advertis-
dard for payment and information security, it can be. ing, securing their identities against theft, and enjoying the anonymity of
Payment Card Industry (PCI) certification, a lengthy and arduous ecommerce to an unprecedented degree.
process that results in a decoration of compliance for any company at- The TDM land-line network that currently supports voice communi-
tempting it, is the last word in data security. cation in the U.S. (both mobile and land-line) is a good example the effi-
Because it is recognized by consumers (due to its presence in some cacy of whole-system integration; because the individual carriers have
staid ecommerce institutions such as PayPal) and because it is recognized secured this channel, it is usually PCI compliant (depending on the spe-
as the most difficult certification to obtain, PCI compliance is the level of cific carrier and a few other details).
standard that can overcome consumer perception and encourage wide- And by and large, the American public has embraced this network as
spread adoption of mobile commerce in the United States. a safe and familiar channel for commercial transactions.
PCI certification, if adopted throughout the mobile industry, would rep-
resent the bedrock of security that would assuage American fears of an un-
familiar and intrusive technology.
Simple enough to be understood by laymen, and yet sophisticated
enough to be an effective deterrent, the PCI Data Security Standard incor-
porates 12 distinct requirements in six categories.
Certificate holders must meet standards in building and maintaining a
secure network, protecting cardholder data, managing vulnerability, con-
trolling access, monitoring and testing networks, and maintaining an ef-
fective security policy.
Any compliance program with such an involved set of prerequisites
would serve to reassure the end user, but only with universal adoption and
standardization throughout the communications infrastructure will set the
stage for a mobile retail revolution.
The trials and errors of the Internet retail boom – and the hundreds of
data breaches and identity thefts publicized each year – have inoculated
the public against hodgepodge security measures.
For something as tricky as the third screen to manage, and for a device
as notoriously easy to misplace as the mobile phone, a better, more secure
standard needs to be in place.
PCI compliance should be an integral part of corporate policy, inform-
ing decision making from the ground up.
In other words, PCI compliance should be the purview of not only IT
directors setting up mobile retail systems or the marketing managers initi-
ating mobile communication, but of the entire supply chain, from outside
distributors to line employees to the steering committee.
Vendors should be evaluated on the basis of PCI compliance, carriers
and aggregators should be vetted with PCI in mind, and it should essen-
tially become an industry operational standard.
To encourage the level of trust American consumers expect to have
with their retailers – and the sort of trust necessary for mobile commerce
to reach its potential – PCI compliance must become the cornerstone of
effective industry self-policing.

Eric Holmen is president of SmartReply, Irvine, CA. Reach him at

eholmen@smartreply.com
MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE PAGE 31
‘ Ti s the seaso n for mobi le
By Conrad Lisco

I n recent years, the Internet has given holiday shop-

pers an alternative to the malls.
While sitting at a desk, or reclined with a laptop
with them and get on-the-go access to everything they
will need.
And, of course, make sure that WAP destinations
perched on their laps, shoppers can browse their fa- are chock-full of brand messaging and include links to
vorite stores to secure the best holiday deals on every- products, locations, even driving directions.
thing from food to fashion.
But now, there’s another way to engage these tech- Use retail signage to initiate mobile sign-ups
savvy shoppers: Mobile. Store signage is a cost-effective way to prompt
It’s safe to say that mobile is cutting the digital um- consumers to opt-in via mobile for future sales and pro-
bilical cord. motions. After all, it is your media.
More and more, consumers are getting it—they Let consumers know that they can sign up for on-
don’t need to be tethered to computers for information, directions, re- going promotional brand messages such as alerts for post-holiday sales.
views and recommendations.
Not only that, but over the course of the past year, mobile phones Let consumers spread the word for you
have become smarter, faster, more powerful and better equipped to pro- There are two simple ways to make mobile messaging viral.
vide rich Web browsing. First, include a “Send to Friend” option on the WAP site so that users

And we are seeing a change in shopping habits. can easily link friends to it.
In 2008, more than 9 million mobile phone subscribers in the United Second, after delivering a mobile coupon, send a follow-up text mes-
States – that’s 3.6 percent of the total subscribers – have used their sage encouraging the user to forward the message or the coupon along
phone to buy goods and services, according to a Nielsen Mobile survey to friends.
of 30,000 wireless customers.
Additionally, nearly half of all consumers who use their phones to Next year, let them pay with mobile
transmit data say they plan to make a mobile purchase in the future. Next year, the mobile phone may be all consumers will need to carry
So, in the spirit of holiday giving, here are five ways that you can use when shopping.
mobile to give consumers a fresh way to engage with retail. Some brands will give people the opportu-
nity to turn their phones into encrypted
Use SMS to push promos and deliver coupons storage devices that hold credit card
Incentive-based mobile activities are extremely effective in driving and other financial information.
consumer traffic to stores. Consumers can then use their
However, you have to make sure that those incentives and mobile mobiles to complete transactions
opportunities are being communicated to consumers using compelling at retail locations, effectively
calls-to-action via media like mall displays, television and print or turning them into electronic
online advertising. wallets.

Meet consumers at the Web site, then direct them to the WAP site Conrad Lisco is creative director
Use the brand’s Web site to promote its WAP site. at 5th Finger, San Francisco. Reach
Let your brand enthusiasts know that they can take the experience him at conrad.lisco@5thfinger.com

PAGE 32 MOBILE MARKETERʼS CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE COMMERCE

Text Message Advertising
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Break through the clutter Expose your brand to key demographics Reach the consumer on the go

Learn what works in mobile advertising.

For free mobile advertising white papers, case studies and research, or to set up a mobile
campaign visit advertising.4info.net or call (650) 350-4800.