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I wish someone from the Newspaper Association of America had read my blog posts about how and why papers should use digital messaging for both distribution and branding.

Instead, the NAA’s big meeting this week was all about traditional vs. new forms of media. The association griped about aggregators and third-party sites–which at least know how to leverage their stories. Sure, Google chief Eric Schmidt pointed out that his company helps drive traffic to news organizations’ sites, offering a way for those companies to charge a premium for online ads. But what NAA members really should have discussed is, ”How to get to the consumer first?”

And I’ll answer: Digital distribution. Papers are never, ever going to get print subscriptions up to what they once were. But they can obtain subscribers who want their news delivered digitally, like through text message/SMS, email, or RSS. (By the way, the mobileStorm 4.0 digital marketing platform lets clients send all of these types of messages.)

The benefits are many.  Consumers can rest assured that they’ll get the news straight from the source as soon as it’s ready to read. They can even pick and choose which kind of news they want, if they like–”politics,” “local crime,” “arts and entertainment,” etc. And organizations can make money by either charging consumers a subscription fee, or by using an ad-supported model (like other websites using their copy already do).

Will they get it? I’m hoping that after NNA chief John Sturm’s absolutely clueless appearance on the Colbet Report, they realize that they have to start thinking way, way outside the box.

Speak of the devil. Last week when I wrote about Cloudmark’s SMS spam hype, I thought I made a good case, noting that the majority of marketers follow industry-accepted best practices, and that the price of sending texts will greatly limit SMS spam-senders.

But it’s easy to use fear to cause good intentions to veer to the dark side. “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering” and all. That’s what could happen, though, with a new proposed federal law aimed at curbing SMS spam.

The act, called m-SPAM and introduced by U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe and Bill Nelson, wants to restrain marketers from sending unwanted texts to consumers. No one can argue with that. But the law as proposed could unintentionally harm legitimate marketers–those who only send messages to people who’ve opted in to receive them–and even consumers who wanted those texts offering a coupon, entry to a party, or other discounts or specials.

How would this harm honest mobile marketing campaigns? As our CEO, Jared Reitzin, told Mobile Marketer, “I’m extremely against having wireless numbers on the do-not-call list, it’s absurd… They’re going to charge people to scrub against it? Will they offer APIs we can automatically scrub against? How long is it going to take to get your data back? That will be shot down… Overall the m-SPAM Act is probably a good idea to establish best practices, but not going to stop spam.”

Legislators should work with mobile marketing leaders to create the most effective law, one that will criminalize mobile spammers while supporting the efforts of honest SMS marketers. Carriers should weigh in too, since SMS marketing is one of the reasons why texting has become such a revenue-driver for them. Marketing experts should write to their own Senate and Congressional representatives, explaining what lawmakers need to consider when crafting the federal statute.

Those on the Hill shouldn’t be quick to rush in heavy-handed.

Just over a year ago, mobileStorm CEO Jared Reitzin wrote a detailed explanation about why spam will never be nearly as prolific in SMS, or text-messaging, as it is in email. Sadly, it’s time to revisit the topic after messaging security company Cloudmark released a scary-sounding announcement in time for CTIA Wireless.

“Mobile spam attacks on the rise as unlimited messaging plans and increased adoption of mobile applications create attractive market for spammers,” read the subhead of the company’s press release. The logic is faulty, to say the least. Cloudmark claims that the great rise in the use of text messaging in general means that the number of unsolicited texts is also rising. But it fails to give any meaningful numbers that show this correlation–only vague concerns attributed to mobile operators.

Sure, Cloudmark points out SMS spam in Asia–specifically, that there were 300 billion spam texts received in China last year. But the company fails to point out that in Asian countries, texting has been popular for much longer than in North America, because it has always been cheaper than voice calls. Thus SMS is really the best way to reach anyone, friend or consumer. What makes for a ripe environment for spam in one part of the world simply doesn’t exist in another region.

It really is an apples-to-oranges comparison to talk about the rise of spam email and potential spam SMS. Particularly in North America, SMS became widely adopted thanks in part to marketers using it for legitimate marketing purposes, i.e. opt-in messaging campaigns. Email meanwhile was first popular among techies, then among consumers, and only then among spammers.

So the importance of best practices has been ingrained in the SMS marketing industry, and there is a strong sense of self-policing. Those who try to violate these practices, by sending unsolicited texts to consumer phones, get quashed by their message sending service providers as soon as they get wind of it.

Another thing: As Jared said in his earlier post, the expense of sending SMS will always be greater than the expense of sending email, and that’s not going to be acceptable to scumbag spammers. It costs ZERO money to send emails.To send texts, however, incurs either a per-message charge or a set monthly fee for a certain (or unlimited) number of messages. I don’t care that the cost to send a single text has dropped considerably over the past few years: It still costs, compared to email being cost-free, and that’s a major consideration for spammers.

So marketers, don’t fret–your legitimate, opt-in text messages will never get drowned in a sea of spam. And consumers, think about how many spam messages you’ve gotten lately (not counting solicitations from your carrier itself, which can’t be prevented by any security company)–and you’ll realize there’s no epidemic at all.

-Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm
“I’d rather you text me”

(The following comes from Forrest Knighton, Senior Account and Support Manager, mobileStorm Inc.)

Leading the pack in multi-modal messaging platforms for small to medium-sized businesses, mobileStorm announces a highly unique plan to bring wireless messaging to every household in the United States, using a controversial but highly effective method of data transfer.

Going against conventional electronic means of sending messages, mobileStorm will do what one analyst considers “a brilliant yet risky move in a highly competitive and volatile marketplace”: Using winged creatures commonly called “birds,” mobileStorm will start offering a seventh messaging type which allows select clients to attach hand-written messages to a ‘bird’ via a small papyrus scroll.

These birds—specifically, carrier pigeons—have the ability to cross vast distances in short periods of time, with no loss of data, no server errors, no bounce backs, and no unsolicited messaging, said mobileStorm CEO and founder Jared Reitzin. Dubbed MobileStork 2.2, the service allows messages of up to three pages in length to be fastened on the legs of the birds, using the company’s proprietary leg taping system called Leg Attached Messaging Envelope—also known as LAME.

“We believe that people around the globe will quickly adopt this LAME technology, as it requires very little in the way of additional hardware or systems integration,” said Mr. Reitzin. “All you really need is a five-pound bag of birdseed, and you don’t need to know HTML to get one of those.”

Mr. Reitzin began experimenting with birds after he observed one carrying a large and expensive koi fish from his backyard pond. His early attempts failed, however, because of his initial use of the hummingbird as the primary message carrier.

“Now that we’ve just about perfected MobileStork, and have flight plans logged in nearly every major American city, we realize that we have the potential to possibly knock Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon right out of the wireless marketplace,” Mr. Reitzin said.

-Forrest Knighton, Senior Account and Support Manager, mobileStorm Inc.

Recently I started receiving email marketing messages from a high-end department store. I honestly don’t remember signing up to get them, so I was willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt on that. But my goodwill was very short-lived.

I soon found myself getting messages every single day. Now, I would definitely remember if, when I signed up, I had been told the frequency of email that I would receive from this company. Clearly I wasn’t. This violates one best practice standard: As they first sign up, marketers should tell subscribers how often they can expect messages, so that they know what they’re in for. Or at least, give them a choice as to how often they would like to receive them.

As a digital marketer, I’m usually more open to receiving marketing message campaigns. After all, I want to promote our industry! But the barrage of messages from this particular marketer made me decide that enough was enough. So I hit the Unsubscribe link.

That’s when the second violation of best practices occurred. Instead of being a one-click process, in which I should immediately be told that I have been removed from the mailing list, here’s what happened: I was directed to a page that asked me if I wouldn’t instead want to change the frequency of messages, and was given a list of options like “once a week,” “twice a week,” “once a day,” etc.

Not only did this anger me–I said I want to unsubscribe, so just let me, darn it!–but it also made me sneer at the incompetence. These frequency options should have been offered at the beginning of the subscription process, not at  the end.

The unsubscribe process should be as painless and easy for the consumer as possible. One click and it’s done. Otherwise, all you do is harbor ill will from the consumer, who will then (A) decide never to opt-in for marketing emails at a later date; (B) be wary of online commerce with the offending retailer, since his/her email address might be added to the marketing mailing list without permission–because after all this retailer doesn’t bother with best practices; and (C) choose to do business with a competing department store.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm Inc.
“I’d rather you text me”

Seventy-four percent of the world’s digital messages were sent via mobile in January 2009, says TNS Global. Said TNS’ Sam Curtis, “As mobile devices slowly take away usage share from fixed services in developed markets, in emerging markets consumers are more likely to bypass fixed communications altogether and go straight to mobiles.”

That means that to reach a consumer, it’s best to try them on their mobile phones. Of course, you can probably do that with email, since as the report says, 69 percent of North American mobile emailers use the feature daily. The bigger takeaway from this report is the utter reliance that increasingly more consumers have on their phones.

Thus, it’s important to contact consumers using every message type available on a handset–not just email and MIM (mobile instant message), but also SMS. After all, text messaging is something available on the most basic handsets being sold today. So a much larger number of consumers can be reached via SMS than they can with mobile email and MIM, features that require the more advanced smartphone type of handset.

As for consumers who do have smartphones? Why, SMS helps the marketer make a campaign multi-channel. Think about it: Consumers can browse the Internet and read marketing emails on their smartphones; these are great places to put a call-to-action asking them to sign up for promotional text messages, such as mobile coupons.

If marketers don’t have a mobile database, then they’re missing out big-time.

Finally, those folks at Google are earning their free lunches.

Today the tech company announced that its Gmail service now has an Undo Send button that lets people stop an email message. Handy for when you wrote that angry rant just to blow off steam, not to actually dispatch. Or when you accidentally hit “reply all” (a pet peeve of many colleagues here at mobileStorm). Or when you have second thoughts about sending spam and realize your sender reputation is more important.

Unlike penning a snap-reaction email, though, the “Undo Send’ requires a little forethought. You have to go into “Settings” and the the “Labs” tab to activate it. And it only delays the message for five seconds–so the service doesn’t replace personal responsibility.

Small inconvenience. And a heck of a lot more useful than the drunk-messager test Google crowed about last fall!

Many have heard about Girl Scout Wild Freeborn. Her father tried to aid her lofty goal of selling 12,000 boxes of the organization’s famous cookies, by creating a YouTube ad and an online order form. The scheme was successful–until Girl Scouts of the USA forced the little Brownie to shutter her Internet campaign, saying it went against Scouts rules. But the real story is, why have such a ban when current technology and best practices ensure both safety and big revenue?

I definitely understand the group’s concerns. As spokeswoman Denise Pesich said, “We want to make sure that whatever the girl is doing is integrated into the program that she’s studying, we want to make sure we are in the development stages of a technological platform that will integrate it and be fair and equitable for all girls. But more importantly, it’s girl safety at its core.”

However, everything Ms. Pesich noted absolutely can be achieved in a digital marketing campaign, as long as best practices and the right technology platform are used. Here’s how:

• Create an online form in which the customer has to input his or her contact information, including email address and perhaps cell phone number, as well as order information such as what kind of cookies and how many boxes. The form should be sent to a database for cookie campaigns. In this fashion, no personal contact information for any girl or troupe is ever given out.
• To make sure that sales are attributed fairly, the orders can be sorted via zip code or city that the purchaser inputs. Thus, each sale would be credited to the scout troop that is local to the buyer.
• If revenue is supposed to go toward a specific program for a certain troupe or individual scout, then instead of having a generic online form for the entire Girl Scout organization, the Scouts’ website should first ask a potential buyer where he/she resides. Then the buyer should be served up a form that was created for the troupe closest to his/her location. This way the form would earmark that order for that particular troupe’s coffers.
• Have a messaging system in place that, once the cookies have come in, will notify customers that their orders are ready, via email or SMS (whatever method the customer chooses). This message can also specify the time and place where they can pick up their goodies, perhaps in front of a local supermarket or another public place. Since the orders are sorted by locale, it will be easy to give each consumer the proper pick-up location–outgoing messages too can be sorted according to zip code or city. Troupe leaders and parents can hand out the boxes along with, or instead of, the girls themselves.
• The Scouts can save customers’ contact information and, come next cookie season, can send out an email or SMS message asking if they’d like to pre-order their Thin Mints and Tagalongs.

The preceding can be used for both pre-orders (the traditional method of hitting up friends and neighbors and asking them to order what they want) as well as for the buy-in-bulk method (in which troupes buy loads of boxes and then sell them at public places). As a consumer who doesn’t personally know any scouts, I’d love the latter–that way I don’t have to worry about driving around supermarkets and shopping centers trying to find a cookie table.

Meanwhile, I think Wild’s dad was on the right track with the online video commercial. After all, 700 boxes were sold before it was yanked! Such an ad could be created by an entire troupe; this would make a great project, as would creating the order form. And if using the right platform, the advert could be distributed to the top video upload sites with the same technology that handles the online sales form and order notification messages.

Too bad this isn’t happening already. I’ve got a hankering for Samoas and Lemon Chalet Cremes!

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm
“I’d rather you text me”

Some marketers have only recently realized the importance of email. Others think it’s old hat. But true forward-thinkers are already taking their campaigns to the next level.

A business blogger at the Sydney Morning Herald points out a particular email discussion that happened at the Adtech conference held in Sydney this week, regarding “trigger-based” messages. Trigger-based email is sent according to a consumer’s particular behavior or preferences. For example, in an emailed company newsletter, there might be a link about a particular product. When the reader clicks on that link, this then triggers another email sent to the customer, offering a special sales offer regarding that product. Such links don’t have to be about a company’s product; a consumer’s birthday or purchasing preferences are other types of triggers.

Trigger-based messages, then, ensure that a brand remains engaged with and relevant to consumers by giving them important updates. The Herald blog points to HSBC Bank in Australia, which used trigger-based email marketing “to keep consumers engaged and informed” during their loan application process. This was done because many loan applicants shop around with several banks, and HSBC did not want them to go elsewhere for their loans. The upshot? HSBC Bank saw an approximately 65 percent improvement in acceptance of home loans.

Think of trigger-based email as the master’s degree after getting a bachelor degree in email marketing: The rules of email marketing best practices must foremost be understood and used. The customer must be the one to subscribe to get email messages, and the company must explain what to expect in these messages–as well as how often to expect them. As always, relevance is the key–if you start sending messages of the type that were not expected, the consumer might ignore your email and/or cancel the subscription.

Of course, trigger-based messaging can only work if the marketer really knows the customer. So it’s important to use an email-sending platform that will gather certain information, both demographic and “psychographic,” into a user-friendly database. Once such a database is compiled, the marketer can start creating triggers based on consumers’ preferences and personal profiles. (And maybe this database creation can be accelerated by using a product-click triggered email campaign first.)

Clearly, marketers who aren’t yet in email had better get cracking. Their competitors have already mastered the basics!

Recently I tried to look up breaking news in the Tampa Bay area, my old stomping ground. I searched for the moniker of one newspaper, then another. Each time, I got offered the same, generically-named site. Instead of leveraging their unique strengths–the way I remember, one allegedly focused on the “good writing” of hard news while the other allegedly had better entertainment coverage–these publications share a website that brands no one. More critically, I doubt the site results in many conversions. What’s the point of having an online presence if you’re neither branding nor seeing decent ROI?

I bring this up because the decline of newspapers marches on. Never mind my optimism while writing a previous post showing ways that papers can boost business with digital messaging campaigns. It might be naiive to think publishers can grasp these simple truths while their heads reel from bad news heaped upon more. We’ve got eMarketer saying that U.S. newspaper ad revenue declined 16.4 percent to $37.9 billion in 2008 and will drop to $28.4 billion by 2012. And according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, newspapers were the top news source for only 35 percent of those surveyed in 2008, as opposed to 45 percent in 2007; meanwhile the Internet became tops for 40 percent of respondents in 2008, from 13 percent in 2007.

I still believe that what I posted earlier rings true. Especially after reading a recent Time magazine piece about the need to generate revenue from content, which ultimately will be the only way papers will survive. Time tried to figure out just how publishers can get consumers to pay for content when they’re used to free news online. As I said in that earlier post, it boils down to offering consumers something valuable and unique that they can’t get anywhere else.

Having a branded website is a good start. Consider that the top 10 newspaper web sites saw a combined 16 percent year-to-year growth of unique visitors in December, according to Nielsen Online. Most notable was the Los Angeles Times’ 73 percent growth and the Daily News Online Edition’s 99 percent growth. My advice to smaller local papers: Let the big national/international sites grab the majority of readers looking for free online content! Instead, promote the fact that you offer unique, valuable information that denizens of your city can’t get anywhere else.

Once you’ve got the visitors, though, you must engage them. There are many ways to do so, and the same methods can be used on both the paper’s website and print editions.

One idea: Advertise a short code and ask readers to text in a keyword (such as the paper’s name or city) in order to sign up for promotional messages. Or, more importantly, to sign up for premium content. Indeed, a publication could make use of a premium SMS service and generate revenue from readers who are willing to pay for an exclusive interview, or a first preview of a major news feature. They might especially be willing to subscribe if some of these messages included coupons. (After all, coupons are why lots of people take only the Sunday edition of their local paper.)

To the uninformed, I’ll admit, texting still has the aura of “young”; despite older generations’ increasing adoption, SMS marketing might not appeal to those whose readership is above a certain age. Email subscriptions offering the same type of content would also be beneficial, and might be more palatable to old-school publishers (and their readers) who aren’t digitally savvy. In this case, there should be a subscription form on the paper’s website, and a link to that form from the home page.

Digital messaging offers both branding and a firm way to measure ROI. That’s something newspapers these days need to strategize and survive. By adding premium content, newspapers offer consumers information that they want, that holds unique value, and is delivered the way that’s most convenient for them to be reached. Oh, and they’ll generate revenue too.