Using mobile for customer acquisition

I've felt very strongly for the last 3 years that mobile and e-mail are actually very poor channels to use for acquisition - especially considering the legislation and best practice guidelines requiring opt-in prior to 1st contact.

The only means of using e-mail and mobile for acquisition was to rent lists... a practice that I frown on quite seriously as the lists are often of low quality and even more often of questionable opt-in. (See my post earlier this week)

But there are good ways to use lists - and there are good ways to use mobile for customer acquisition.

Good ways for list rental

Rather than go on about this in a long diatribe - I'll cut straight to the point.

If you have collected a large amount of data and have built revenues from list rental into your business model - you can change the way you monetize the value of the list and still maintain the revenue stream.

Instead of renting the list itself, rent advertising space as part of your own regular communication with your customers. If you've got a newsletter - sell advertising space to your trusted partners. If you've got an alert system, offer sponsorship as part of the alerts. One of the leading consulting firms in London - E-Consultancy - has been doing this for years. It's not new and it works.

And your trusted 3rd party advertisers are directly affliated with your brand. That means 3 things: 1) it means they are benefiting from the full power of your brand 2) because you are giving them benefit of your brand you can charge significantly more than if you just rent access to a bunch of e-mail addresses and 3) it means that you have fully vetted these 3rd parties to ensure they are credible partners before you put their name on your newsletter or other company communication.

The bottom line -the money is the same or even greater - while driving the credibility higher!

And once a consumer clicks through one of those embedded ads - the customer relationship begins between the consumer and the 3rd party partner. Customer acquired - job done.

And what about good ways to use mobile?

You can apply the same principle described above to SMS or MMS alerts just as well as you can to e-mail newsletters. And you can take the Internet web model and make it work on the mobile Internet through banner ads and paid search listings etc. Again - all coming from fully vetted and credible sources.

And then there is the advent of mobile video. Whether it's streaming media over 3G or mobile access to broadcast television. The 10 second mobile advertising spot works just like today's 30 second television slot - only better. Today's mobile phones can't skip commercials like a PVR can! And with the right application on the mobile, you can have a built in response mechanic... It's like RED Button marketing right there on your phone. And you don't have to dig around in the cracks of the sofa to find the remote to do it - because you're watching the program on the remote control!