Improving care and reducing costs go hand in hand in regards to healthcare.  When patients receive the care they need the first time, it reduces the potential for additional office visits and perhaps costly hospital admissions among other things.  It doesn’t stop there, however, as improving overall care also means extending care beyond the initial office visit.

Taking steps to ensure medication adherence and making sure patients attend follow-up appointments, for example, improves care while also eliminating the potential for unnecessary costs associated with patients not taking their prescriptions or missing appointments.  Even the government is stepping in to introduce new rules aimed at encouraging hospitals and other medical facilities to reduce costs by paying more attention to patients after discharge.

It’s been announced by the federal government that Medicare will begin cutting back payments to hospitals where high numbers of patients are readmitted, or to hospitals with higher-than-average costs for patient care.  It even proposes starting to calculate the costs by combining a patient’s hospital expenses with fees incurred up to 90 days after discharge.

What does this mean for hospitals?  It means improving care after discharge must become a top priority.  Doing so means making sure patients see their doctors, fill their prescriptions and take their medication once they leave the hospital.  Missing a doctor’s appointment or not taking prescribed medication could lead to a potential relapse and subsequent hospital readmission, and it’s becoming the hospital’s responsibility to reduce these risks.  The only way for hospitals to reduce these risks is by influencing consumer behavior, especially post-visit.

No one knows how to influence consumer behavior better than marketers.  The whole point of marketing is to influence consumers to act a particular way, either by purchasing a particular product over another or by swaying loyalty for a particular brand.  The same concept is relevant to healthcare as well, the only difference is that hospitals need to influence consumer behavior that keeps them healthy and reduces the risk for costly additional care.  The bottom line is that, as the healthcare industry enters its paradigm shift, hospitals need to become amazing marketers.

But how do hospitals and healthcare organizations influence behavior?  It starts with reaching people on a personal level and messaging them in a way that’s uniquely relevant to them, which in turn produces action.  These messages can be as simple as reminding people of their upcoming appointments, or as detailed as explicitly laying out what prescribed medications a person needs to take, as well as how often, how to take it and possible conflicts with other medications.

Regardless, both messages are relevant to a person’s health situation and well-being, thus it produces a favorable action on behalf of the healthcare organization.  In these examples, the doctor’s office ensures the patient doesn’t miss their appointment or miss a dose of medication due to forgetting about it or having questions about how to take it.  Using the right message to influence behavior is key, but what’s the best way to reach users?

Just like marketers have turned to the mobile channel to reach consumers whenever and wherever it’s most relevant, healthcare organizations should be following suit.  No other method allows for such a personal level of communication than through mobile devices.  No one leaves the house without their phone these days, and each device represents an opportunity to engage a person through messaging delivered in a variety of ways.  Marketers understand this trend, healthcare organizations – and especially hospitals – need to as well.  There’s simply no better way to influence behavior in healthcare.

You can reach people using SMS, automated voice messages, messaging via mobile apps, using push notifications and more, all delivered to a person when and where it’s most relevant to them.  In healthcare, messaging relevance improves significantly when you have the ability to include personally-identifiable information, or “Protected Health Information” (PHI).  The problem, however, is that messages that include PHI have to be secured to adhere to strict government regulation regarding personal health information – such as HIPAA.

An example could be reminding a patient to refill a specific prescription.  A message delivered to a patient that simply says “remember to refill your prescription” can still be effective and can produce action in the form of proper medication adherence, but a similar message that says “Hi John, don’t forget to refill your prescription for 20mg tablets of Lipitor” is significantly more relevant, which subsequently increases the chance to produce a favorable action.

Because the type of prescription, name, and dosage are all considered PHI in this example, this message would have to be delivered securely.  Fully secure, HIPAA-compliant mobile messaging solutions such as AppMail exist to allow for secure communication in healthcare, which creates one of the most effective ways to engage and influence users through highly relevant messaging.

Before secure communication to mobile devices was possible, healthcare organizations were limited in what content they could deliver, but now there’s simply no excuse for not engaging and influencing users via mobile.  Healthcare organizations are notorious for being slow to adopt innovation.  With the government stepping in to force reform, healthcare organizations need to begin investing in new technology and solutions today, or face the consequences tomorrow.

The aforementioned changes coming to Medicare are due to go in effect as soon as October of 2012, meaning hospitals need to do everything they can to influence people to live healthier lives and reduce the potential for re-admission and other costs occurred post-visit.  Leveraging a mobile communication solution to send the right message to the right person at the right time is the most effective way to make this happen.  Marketers have used this formula to produce extraordinary results, now it’s time for healthcare to do the same.

Jared Reitzin
CEO
mobileStorm, Inc.

————————————-

Storm Troopers,

Having an amazing UE will bring us tremendous success in healthcare.  It will allow us to succeed in selling our products & services.  Don’t get me wrong or think that I am detracting from our mission of “Intelligent Communication;” this is still very much our end game.  I believe to achieve our mission we need to be highly aware of producing amazing user experiences, both within our own interface and to consumers who interact with our clients’ content (note: we sell a communication platform to businesses who use it to interact with their customers via email, mobile, and social channels).  The right timing, frequency, and number of messages can lead to a great UE for a consumer or a bad one.  So by solving “messaging relevancy,” we’re also creating a great user experience.  These two concepts go hand in hand.

In general, doctors are not very tech savvy.  The majority do not use the Internet to provide their patients with amazing user experiences.  I think that, as an organization, Kaiser Permanente (and the doctors that work for them) is an exception.  Since switching to them as our insurer last year, I’ve had the unique pleasure of being able to experience that UE first hand.  I have been blown away with the patient UE (although I don’t like having to see my primary care physician every single time).  Kaiser has integrated almost everything; you can really see their investment in Information Technology paying off.

You pay your co-pay at a kiosk, you get a printout after meeting with the doc (that’s the equivalent of a retrospective in Agile software development), and an email is shot off to you with your test results within 24 hours.  You can also head down to the pharmacy and your meds are waiting.  You can really see how implementing an EMR company-wide creates efficacy.  No matter which facility you go to, you have the same experience.  There’s a reason McDonald’s is so successful–imagine how hard it is to make a burger taste exactly the same whether you are in Van Nuys, CA  or Cameroon in Africa.  They have mastered logistics. Kaiser did the same thing by implementing Epic; they have created a much better and more efficient user experience.  Just like no one has been able to scale restaurants the same way McDonald’s has, very few providers in healthcare have been able to successfully integrate the payer and provider model as well as Kaiser has.  My view is that companies like Humana are starting to buy clinics again because they realize the model can work (they used to employ the payer/provider model).  However, I believe the model only works with complete efficiency, and to be efficient you need an amazing UE.  Not to mention efficiency saves lots of money and lives.

I met one of the most fascinating doctors I ever met at a party a few weeks ago.  He is a very young doctor who is also a UE/UX interface expert.  We had an incredible conversation about how healthcare doesn’t understand the importance of UE.  As much as Epic has made Kaiser efficient (and it’s a step up compared to most other traditional HC systems), we both agreed that the UE is still not that great which, by the way, matches up with the sentiments from every doctor and nurse I asked about their experience working with Epic.  Sorry Epic, we think you are awesome and maybe it’s not possible to have the perfect UX with a system as entailed as yours, but every person I interviewed has the same feeling: “cumbersome.”  Even if everyone agreed the interface has poor UE, the platform is successful because the efficiency flows through to the consumer, which alone is a good experience.

This UX doctor and I discussed why companies that focus on usability will be the winners.  What’s amazing is that this doctor created a clinic in a very up-and-coming part of town that a lot of his colleagues said would fail because of the location.  He focused on an amazing user experience–everything from his EMR, to his website, to how he engages with customers when they walk in the door.  He uses iPads instead of a clipboard, and the only thing he did to acquire patients was use social media.  He went from $0 in revenue to $40k in four months.  He didn’t tell me what his revenue is now, but they have 7,000 patients, five doctors, and get 150 appointments per month just from yelp alone.  He’s a highly sought-after speaker and people want him to open up facilities all over the country.  Doctors want to know what this guy did.  He’s an interface designer at heart and just applied this skill to creating a completely new kind of clinic, one with a unique patient/doctor experience.

I read about a company called Massive Health a while back on Techcrunch, and recently our Director of Sales for Healthcare (Elyse Rossler) gave me an article about the founder, Aza Raskin.  He has already raised $2.5 million from Marc Andreessen (Netscape founder and big-time VC) and Reid Hoffman (Linkedin Founder & CEO).  Aza’s dad developed the UI for the Macintosh (and even named it).  The article goes on to say that it’s pretty audacious to think that a 27-year-old designer with no medical experience can fix healthcare, but he is relentless about the user experience.  I guess apples don’t fall far from the trees.  Aza grew up with his dad’s mantra, “It’s not your fault if you cannot understand an interface,” which I think is brilliant; it’s very Apple-esque.  The article points out that because of his outsider status, he actually has an advantage.  ”He looks at healthcare from a consumer’s point of view, not a practitioner’s.”  This is exactly how mobileStorm takes its approach.  When talking to a prospect, we speak very proudly of our marketing heritage and cite examples of how our experience translates to healthcare.  For over a decade we have been helping businesses drive revenue on mobile devices, simply by helping them influence consumer behavior.  Healthcare needs to influence people to stay healthy so we have a huge impact on costs.

I love watching how a potential client’s face lights up when I talk about how our platform is so dead simple to use, you can train a $15-an-hour business analyst to complete very powerful and secure multi-channel campaigns that normally have to involve IT because of the complexity.  I constantly preach to our team that the easier our service is to use, the fewer people we need to hire to support it, and our revenue per employee (which will have a huge impact on our exit) will be much higher.  Not only will having an amazing UE be a breath of fresh air in healthcare, but our chances of scaling our business increases tremendously.  Finally, if we want traction in the biggest part of the market (which will be small- to medium-sized providers such as clinics, labs, etc.), the platform has to be self-service and dead simple to use.

We need to always remember to ask ourselves, “What will make this more intuitive, easier, and faster for our customer and their customers?”

I want everyone thinking about how his or her department can play a role as a UE cop.  Challenge everything and let’s try and say “no” more often than “yes.”  You know how much I love Apple.  This is their mantra, and they just became the largest company in the world because of it.

Cheers,

Jared Reitzin
CEO & Founder
mobileStorm Inc.
www.mobilestorm.com
jared@mobilestorm.com

While the mass communication benefits provided by new-age digital communication channels like social media, email, SMS and others are unmatched from a business perspective, it’s important not to overlook personal contact as a way to put a face on all of that messaging in order to increase its credibility, impact and overall business value, especially when it comes to dealing with customers.  Real-world events such as trade shows, meet and greets and parties provide a chance to meet customers and prospects face-to-face, adding a level of value for both parties that no form of digital communication can provide.

As we’ve become consumed with our increasingly digital lifestyle, one of the tradeoffs has been the lack of the “personal touch” that comes along with meeting someone face-to-face and engaging in personal dialog.  This interpersonal engagement is what can set your business, and yourself, apart from the rest.  While it’s vitally important to lead your industry in terms of digital communication, you can gain an additional competitive advantage over others by simply adding a personal touch to all of the ways you reach out to others.

It comes down to finding a perfect balance between digital communication and personal contact, where you can leverage the benefits of both to engage those around you without the fear of putting too much emphasis on one or the other.  As nearly all forms of communication have become “digitized” in one form or another, meeting and interacting with someone face-to-face has become more important than ever.

At mobileStorm, we have and will always feel that it is important for us to have a personal relationship with each of our customers as well as the digital marketing industry as a whole.  We keep this commitment on many levels, starting with our highly skilled team of support personnel,  who I remind every day to provide service that is nothing short of legendary.  In my opinion they hit this goal almost 100% of the time.  We also have a culture of transparency that includes every level of our operations from top to bottom, myself included.  Most importantly, we make an effort to get out of our offices as much as possible and meet with customers and partners on a regular basis.  This is part of our day to day operations but also includes larger events that we host regularly so that we can include people we may have missed as well as support the community around our brand.

mobileStorm has been in business for over 11 years.  In that time it would have been easy for us to forget where we came from, the people who got us here and the people who continue to support our business.  By making an additional effort to communicate and interact with these people on a digital AND a personal level regularly, I believe that we’ve created a sustainable business model based on both advanced technology and deep personal relationships.  It’s the best of both worlds and a strong foundation for us to move into the future.

Let’s look at all of the options other than SMS that companies have available in their mobile marketing quiver:

1. Mobile Advertising: Using a platform like Admob, you can place ads on mobile sites and mobile apps to get your word out. Google and Apple (and Microsoft soon to follow) are headed heavily into this space.
2. Mobile Apps: Mobile apps are a great way for people to interact with your brand, getting content, information, and promotions. People can also show you their location, allowing the marketing to become more personalized and timely.
3. MMS: This is also known as SMS 2.0. It converts SMS messages to multimedia, allowing for images, video, pictures, and sound.
4. Social Mobile Gaming: Platforms like Foursquare and Gowalla are leading the charge when it comes to consumers checking into their favorite locations to unlock badges, deals, and specials.
5. Bluetooth: You can use Bluetooth to find people in the area and deliver content and information to their mobile devices.
6. NFC: Also known as Near Field Communication, we are just in the infancy of this technology that will become the new way of doing proximity marketing in the future. Apple already has patents for a mobile ticketing platform, and they will most likely start selling tickets through iTunes.
7. Email: More and more people are checking their email on mobile devices, and email marketing platforms are giving businesses avenues to make sure their emails are optimized for these devices.

Disclaimer: If I left any other methods out, let me know. I wrote this article in 30 minutes, so I had to have missed something. I would love to receive your feedback.

The purpose of this article is not to throw any other mobile marketing arrows under the bus (because we believe they all have a purpose; well, maybe not Bluetooth), but it is to show you how even though you should have a quiver that holds many other types of arrows, there is one arrow that is currently sharper than all of the rest and that currently is SMS.  I am also not saying that SMS will always stay the sharpest, but for now it’s hard to argue because of its ubiquity.

I am very excited about the future of our industry and am looking forward to expanding our product to help our customers reach their audience in more ways. For now, develop for the lowest common denominator and make decisions on new marketing techniques at the last possible moment. For more information on our SMS marketing platform or services, visit us at http://www.mobilestorm.com/go/sms-marketing/ or google “SMS Marketing.” Yes, I had to go and show off our SEO capabilities; we have killer employees.

Cheers, Jared Reitzin

Communication has grown over the years. First there was the carrier pigeon, then the telegraph, then mail, then the telephone, then email, then bulletin boards, then sms, then IM, and now social and mobile apps. Think about this evolution of communication, and ask yourself one question:  “Have you ever witnessed more modes of communication available to people than you have in the last ten years?” I think there is a resounding “no” (and yes, I purposely left off Blackberry Messenger and cave paintings).

A flood of new technology, compliments of the interwebs (for those still using IE6, that’s slang for “Internet”) made it happen.  I saw this coming when I was working for a decent-sized interactive video game start-up in Santa Monica in 1998. I was making more money in one week day trading ebay with my Datek account than my entire month’s salary (big apology to the CEO for wasting company time). I just knew the Internet was going to change the world and even more so become mobile, which is why I started mobileStorm in October of 1999. We first got into the mobile business, but we were too far ahead of the curve. Nobody wanted to pay us to send SMS messages because the consumer adoption was just not there yet. However, at some point email took off and we decided to integrate an email and sms marketing platform that you could sign up right on the spot as long as you had a credit card. Long story short, as new technologies came out, I made it our mission to create a communication platform that allowed businesses to reach consumers in as many ways as possible. Why? Because people are different and different channels have different adoption rates depending upon age, ethnicity, geography, and savviness. I figured if we covered the spectrum of communication, then companies would flock to our services. Well, I was right and I was wrong.

Yes, mobileStorm has seen killer growth over the last few years, but initially the way we sold multi-channel marketing was confusing. On top of that, we had no money to make a splash in the industry; we built the company with no VC backing. It’s great to see how many larger email service providers (ESPs) are starting to add channel after channel, because it tells us we were right all along. However, it sucks that our competitors are adding channel after channel because now we need to truly compete and differentiate ourselves.  And, we are still without the millions of dollars our competitors have raised in venture funding.

Nevertheless, please don’t take this the wrong way. I am not trying to gain your sympathy; I am just relating the facts. Here is the part where a big smile comes across my face: we have been doing this for so long and with so many different types of businesses that patterns have emerged. We have gathered a major pool of intelligence about what businesses need when trying to promote and sell their products and services in a digital world, and we have had enough time to get inside the mind of the consumer and understand how he would like to be communicated with. We are already arming our clients with this knowledge and, from a product perspective, are working on the next big thing.

Having a multi-channel marketing platform is one thing, but having an integrated communication platform is another. This is where we see the market going, and this is where we are headed. Let me explain:

Usually digital marketing service providers focus on one channel and if they do decide to adopt another, they develop it out separately and say, “Here you go; start using this way to reach your audience.” As new ways to communicate like email, sms, and social are adopted by consumers, service providers (like mobileStorm) create products to allow businesses to take advantage of these new communication mediums. Historically, these platforms only allow channels to be managed in a single silo. Single silos mean multiple locations for campaign management, separate reporting, and even different lists (example: one list for email addresses and another for cell phone numbers). Integrated multi-channel marketing means truly integrating channels of communication so that they work in unison, seamlessly forming a powerful conversation with customers. To me, the word “integrated” means we can stop saying “multi-channel” because not only does it mean multi-channel, but it means getting rid of these silos and truly combining the channels. It’s one stone, two birds. I am going to take this a bit further and get rid of the word “marketing” and turn marketing into “communication.” Why? Because to me, marketing is a one -way conversation, like advertising. But marketing is morphing into a two-way conversation; it’s truly becoming more about communication than anything else. Besides, do consumers want to be marketed to or communicated with?

Integrated communication means one location to manage the channels, timing, and actions of campaigns, as well as one interface for reporting on the effectiveness of a customer’s integrated communication. If I were to tell you any more than this (and get into the features), then I would have to kill you so I am going to stop here because I would be really popular at Pelican Bay.

If there is one take-away from my column, it is that the world is changing quickly and businesses need communication tools to grow their businesses. Consumers don’t want to be marketed to–they want to be communicated with. There are a lot of choices out there when it comes to digital marketing platforms, but most are stuck in single silo purgatory (mobileStorm included). On the other hand, that is changing, and I imagine the smarter organizations will get this and do something about it.

Cheers,

Jared Reitzin

Love,

- Jared Reitzin CEO

Click here to view the embedded video.

Twitter is an important communication channel that businesses need to adopt as a strategy, but it is vastly different from an SMS marketing strategy.

Let’s take a look at the two channels side by side and begin with the similarities:

1. Limited Character Set: You need to be really good at making short, impactful statements. SMS allows 160 characters, while Twitter only allows 140. One could argue that you don’t even get 160 characters with SMS because of the standard “best practices” footer you need to have for unsubscribe and help.
2. Database Development: In both cases, you need to develop your database. In Twitter you get followers (i.e., Twitter handles), and with text message marketing you collect cell phone numbers.
3. Mobile Reach: In both cases, messages can be received on-the-go.
4. One-to-Many Broadcast: Both Twitter and SMS are one-to-many technologies that allow you to broadcast a message to a group of people. If you are not using a mobile service provider, you are limited as to how many text messages you can send thru your cell phone to your friends, and in Twitter’s case, you are going to reach anyone who follows you (hashtags and @replies aside).  
5. Link Sharing: Both channels are used to share links. URL shortening services like Bit.ly became popular on Twitter first; however, adoption rates for smart phones (which offer full HTML viewing) are quickly growing, giving link sharing traction over SMS.

Now let’s look at the channels side by side when it comes to marketing:

1. Database Control: SMS marketing is similar to email marketing in that you get to control who is in your database. You can upload subscribers, have a registration form on your site, or send someone a message asking them to join your list. With SMS, you can even set up a keyword on a short code and ask people to text in (Example: text JOIN to 99158). This can be promoting on everything from billboards to TV commercials. However, with Twitter there is only one way to opt into someone’s Twitter account and that is to follow them. You cannot upload Twitter handles. You can ask people to follow you, but you have no control over your database.   
2. Usage of Twitter vs. SMS: Ninety-nine percent of cell phones in the U.S. now have SMS capabilities, and 78 percent of cell phone users are sending text messages. There are now over 280 million people in the U.S. with cell phones.  SMS usage in the U.S. is growing at a staggering rate, with an estimated 1.36 trillion messages sent yearly. Compare that to Twitter, which is reported to have around 15 million users and only just sent its 10 billionth tweet a couple of weeks ago. While Twitter is an important service that is getting a ton of media attention, it dwarfs in comparison to SMS usage and popularity.
3. SMS with Twitter is Optional: SMS is an optional feature with Twitter. Most people who are following a lot of people do not have SMS messages sent to their phone as they want to avoid carrier fees that would bankrupt a small third world country.
4. Targeting: With SMS, you can segment out your database and target a specific group of customers. With Twitter, any message you post will be read by anyone following you. The only kind of segmentation you can have is by having multiple Twitter accounts, but this is not a very scalable solution.   
5. Adoption: Purewire (operator of tweetgrade.com) came out with a report in June of 2009 which shows that 80 percent of Twitter accounts have fewer than 10 followers. Compare this to mobileStorm’s average SMS customer database size of over 1500. There are many Twitter users that have massive followings, but this is not the norm. It’s not easy to build a large following on Twitter. You need to devote loads of time to tweeting and trying to find people to follow you.
6. Personalization: With Twitter, one message fits all. There is no way to tweet out a message that is personalized with everyone’s first name. When you send out a message on Twitter, everyone knows you are sending it to the world; it’s not personalized.  
7. Selling: People don’t want to be sold on Twitter. Asking for business over Twitter is a very fine line and somewhat of an art form. However, if someone opts into your mobile club, he expects that you are going to offer him incentives. He expects you to sell.

So the next time you think about choosing Twitter over an SMS marketing service because Twitter has SMS, think again. However, both channels are important to growing your business. I always tell my clients that no matter whether you are building a following on Twitter, growing a list of cell phone numbers, or gaining fans on Facebook, you need to be developing your database in as many channels as possible. People are unique, and the more ways you can communicate with them, the more you will have a leg up on the competition. Just remember, every channel comes with its own set of challenges, policies, and best practices. Partner with the right vendors to make your business stand above the rest.

I have been waiting for a long time for the “Year of Mobile” to be upon us. Every new year for the past five years people have said, “Next year is the year of mobile for sure.” However, the year would come and go and decide not to take mobile with it. I always thought the year of mobile meant an explosion in mobile services, applications, and products. Of course, this explosion would only really take hold here in America with the prevalence of fast Internet speeds. We are just too damn comfortable with broadband. All carriers have now released their version of 3G. Sprint is even claiming (and selling) use of their 4G network.

Because of the fast speeds, a little company named Apple developed the iPhone and just three weeks ago it was officially declared the most popular device. As a result of how amazing this device is, you are seeing loads of innovation. These innovations have sparked consumers to buy the device, and other companies, seeing how much money is being made, are jumping into the smart phone game as well (i.e., Google).

So now that mobile is getting more popular, what is most important for businesses as they jump in the game? Emarketer reports on a survey (as seen in the picture) that found that 32% of marketers don’t know how to develop the business case for mobile, and 28% cannot get enough data to measure ROI. It was also reported that 28% said that mobile is not on their road map, and only 12% said that their audience is not mobile yet. If this survey mirrors what is really going on out there, then I have the following thoughts:

1. To the 12% whose audience is not yet mobile: Over 90% of the U.S. has a cell phone, so you might not be talking your customers enough. The numbers don’t match up.
2. To the 28% who said that mobile is not on their road map: Does that person in your company who said, “The Internet is just not on our road map right now,” still have a job?
3. To the 28% who said they do not have enough data to measure ROI: Don’t get mad–get even. This is fairly common right now. Reporting in the mobile world is not as advanced as online or email, making it even more important that you work with a company who can give you the most reporting possible. Also, set up systems so it is possible to track the complete lifecycle of an offer, from the moment you send it to the point at which someone comes in and takes you up on it.
4. To the 32% who don’t know how to develop a business case: Don’t feel bad; you are in the same boat as some fortune 500s. And if you are reading this and are a fortune 500, give me a call. Mobile is a new concept and consumer behaviors are different and need to be understood. Working with a killer agency to roll out a strategy is key to a successful launch. Nothing is wrong with running things in-house, but I strongly recommend you work with a mobile marketing expert the first time around so it does not fail. You don’t want a campaign to fail because it leads you to not jump into this space that will dominate consumer interaction over the next century. Really good mobile marketing experts can give you all kinds of great ideas as to how to use mobile and engage your audience.

I am very excited about where this industry is headed, and I am looking to take anyone with me who wants to explore it.

You can listen to the spot by clicking here

SMS costs money, and 95% of SMS messages are read within four minutes–two facts that can bring together a horrible user experience if not executed properly. Almost every company looking at mobile is an email marketer, and I know email marketers are jaded because of their experience with email and realizations about spam. 72% of the 320 billion emails sent on a daily basis are spam, so who could blame them? Most companies don’t understand email best practices and, as a result, they have felt the burn of user complaints, poor open rates, getting blocked, and ending up on blacklists. Legitimate companies are not spammers; they are generally just ignorant. They don’t realize that you should not upload a list that has not been sent to in two years or fail to confirm an email address upon opt in.

So back to those who think mobile marketing is stupid. Mobile is very different from email and it has to be done right. I like to help people understand that if your strategy was to build the largest email database possible, then mobile needs to be about building a database of your best and most loyal customers. Mobile is about loyalty–period. Those who are willing to have their day interrupted as their pockets buzz are going to be your best customers. If you have the email marketer mentality of “batch and blast,” mobile is going to be a disaster for you. However, if you learn to treat mobile as a totally different type of channel, it can be truly successful. With mobile, there is a new set of best practices and they are different from email.

Your first approach to a mobile strategy should be to offer something only available via the mobile phone. The incentive should be good and be the only place your customer can take you up on your offer. I am sure most of you have been to a nightclub before. Ever been in line when someone walks right past you up to the front of the velvet ropes and right into the club? He or she is what is known as a VIP. This is how you should treat your mobile club. They are VIPs that can get exclusive updates, offers, and content only available in the mobile channel. Make it exclusive and make it appealing. Make sure when you are opting people into your database, you not only get them to respond “YES” to join, but you manage their expectations with the types of messages they will get, how often they will get them, and how they can opt out.

If I was to tell you that by sticking to this very basic strategy you could build a solid database of loyal customers who will not only not be mad at you but will look forward to your messages, would you still be afraid?

Of course, your mobile database is not going to be as big as your email database, but is that important? Answer this:  which is a bigger return –a call-to-action that sees a 20% take on a mobile database of 3,000, or a 5% take on an email database of 10,000 people?  If you guessed the mobile database made you more money, you guessed correctly.  Time and time again mobile has a higher response rate.  Let’s take a look at the reasons why:

1. 95% of cell phones have SMS capabilities and 87% of the population has a cell phone.
2. You can reach someone no matter where they are.
3. 95% of text messages are read within 15 minutes.
4. There are virtually no delivery issues with SMS. If you send it, they will get it, and right into their inbox.
5. All mobile clubs should have a double opt in so you cannot sign up anyone but yourself. The subscriber takes the action of responding with a “YES.”
6. 33% of email addresses change on a yearly basis, but with number portability (the ability to take a number from carrier to carrier), people are ditching their home phones and keeping their cell phone number for life.

Shall I continue?

These six stats alone should perk up the ears of any marketer who doubts the power of mobile. Think about the value of a phone number; it’s like having your customer’s IP address. What other channel can you say that about? People move, people get fired, people leave their email account for another because of spam, people are getting rid of their home numbers. But what stays consistent? If you said mobile, put a little gold star on the fridge. It goes with your customer for life wherever he decides to go. Deep, huh?

Those who think mobile marketing is stupid only do so because they treat it like email and don’t understand that mobile is about loyalty. They think that if they cannot have a database of half a million people, it’s not worth it. They don’t have email best practices down so, of course, they are going to screw up mobile best practices. If you want to make it work you can–you just need a plan and someone to help shine the light on the path ahead.

Mobile marketing is stupid, but only for people who make it stupid.