When chatting socially with someone between the ages of 16 and 25, I often steer the conversation toward their online habits. What sites do they visit? How much time do they spend online? And, my favorite, what do they do with their cell phone?

While this doesn’t represent real market research, the answers are interesting, especially on the mobile phones. In a nutshell, everybody texts all the time, but it’s largely for interpersonal communications. Not many people in this demographic are signing up for recurring SMS communications or responding to short, code-driven promotions.

Well, a recent blog post by Marguerite Reardon provides yet another reason mobile marketing via SMS isn’t going to take off overnight—price. According to her post on CNET's Crave, the average price of a text message has doubled in the last year to $.20 per message. Yes, 20 cents per message. Now, obviously, for high-volume marketers and alerting companies, the prices will be much lower in volume. But it is still very expensive and apparently getting more expensive quickly.

Even at $.05 per SMS (very, very cheap), each text message is five- to 10 times more expensive than even a premium email solution at moderate volumes. And, SMS messages are limited to 160 text characters, as compared to full HTML and graphics in email messages.

Oh, and did I mention that mobile email delivery and Web surfing are usually unlimited and included with the price of a phone’s data service?

With the iPhone and all the wannabes out there providing desktop-quality email and Web surfing on a mobile device, I don’t think SMS and WAP are likely to become the prevalent marketing media for mobile marketers any time soon. Especially not at $.20 per text message . . .

Posted by Bill Nussey at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you had to guess which country in the world is the most targeted by spammers, the results might surprise you. According to figures recently released by Web security firm MessageLabs and reported by TG Daily, Swiss users receive 10 percent more spam than the average Internet user, and 23 percent more than U.S. users.

MessageLabs found that 84.8 percent of emails in Switzerland in June were spam, edging out the traditional leader in this category, Hong Kong, (82.6 percent). France (82.1 percent), Israel (80.1 percent) and Austria (79.6 percent) round out the top five. Canada received 77.8 percent spam; the United Kingdom 74.3 percent and the United States 68.8 percent. Spam levels in Australia were the lowest, at 66.9 percent.

Globally, MessageLabs found 76.5 percent of all emails to be spam, representing a 2 percent increase over the last six months.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A common discussion among business executives these days starts with the question: How is the recession affecting your business? Are you seeing a slowdown in the demand or growth?

For marketers, the question has an unusual level of meaning. Does marketing end up pulling back like so many other parts of the business community? Or, do we seize the opportunity to grab mindshare and keep our budgets the same (or even increase them)?

The trouble for marketers is that our departments usually have the largest discretionary spend in most companies. This means that it’s the easiest part of the budget to change quickly. It’s more palatable than gut-wrenching items like reducing headcount and shorter-term than complex changes like reducing capacity.

Forrester Research recently published a report on this topic called “Marketing Cuts Budgets 3% In A Downturn.” The analyst firm surveyed more than 100 marketing leaders—members of its global CMO panel—about their response to a looming recession.

In a nutshell, about 40 percent said they foresee a budget cut this year in response recessionary worries, and about the same number expect to hang on to their budgets. About one in four said they are bullish and expect to raise their budgets despite any economic crisis.

In aggregate, marketers expect to cut budgets by 3 percent, with the biggest cuts coming in branding, advertising and traditional media spending. But the silver lining is, most marketers said they plan to maintain investments in staffing and training, marketing technology, and research and development—the long-term investments that strengthen the foundation of their operation.

One particularly interesting finding is that the smallest marketers in the survey tended to be the most bullish. Uncertain economic times present a great opportunity for smaller firms to level the playing field by stepping up marketing spend to reach their target audience while larger counterparts dial back.

Of course, the question for every marketer is the same—do we bulk up or slim down in the face of change and near-term constraints? There’s clearly no single, right answer for all companies but I’m hopeful that marketers across the world will be able act decisively and, perhaps, do our small part to make the recession as short as possible.

P.S. If you’re an email marketer and wondering what to do about the recession, my colleagues have been asking our clients and friends and have captured their recommendations in a recent white paper called, “How to Beat the Bear: Seven Secrets to Recession-Proof Marketing.”

Posted by Bill Nussey at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Email marketing is fast becoming a key tool for reaching consumers in the Asia Pacific region, according to a survey of more than 1,100 participants conducted in February by Return Path and Epsilon and reported in late June by Australia Web site Inside Retailing Online.

Nearly one in three respondents said they would always respond to targeted, promotional emails, and fully a third of respondents in Australia said they had made more purchases after receiving promotional emails. People are also checking email on their mobile devices: 34 percent of mobile device users in China, 29 percent in Hong Kong and 27 percent in Japan.

Respondents also said promotional emails increased their brand loyalty, and that they were willing to share personal information if they believe it drives relevant and more targeted offers.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t usually dabble in psychology in my blog, but a recent post in the New York Times blog “Bits” really caught my attention.

According to some recent research about people’s attitudes toward safeguarding their personal information, a person’s willingness to share information varies entirely by the context in which it’s asked. Paradoxically, the more “official” and formal a Web site, and the more it expounds on the confidentiality of a person’s information, the less likely people are to provide that information. The study’s authors summarize that reminding people about confidentiality provokes them to worry more about it.

I can’t seriously suggest that marketers go out and cavalierly offer no assurances on privacy as part of an opt-in strategy. But this post does make me wonder if there is more room for creativity than I had thought in terms of how we marketers build our opt-in and registration pages.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)