When I was at the Digital Music Forum in Hollywood, one attendee posed this question, which was posted (ironically, via SMS) on the giant screen next to one panel: Since mobile phones are all going to be Internet- and email-capable anyway, is there any point in creating messages/campaigns specifically for SMS?

The answer of course is yes.

First, not all consumers want phones that do much more than voice and SMS, and maybe take photographs. And price points make such “simple” phones accessible to the most people, so these methods of communication will reach the largest demographic.

Second, text messages have a different function than email—they’re a short alert that reaches the consumer “wherever, whenever,” ideal for time-sensitive news. That’s different from the comprehensive information that email offers, such as details of a new product or links to a brand’s web site. Both types of messages, then, are equally valuable in a multi-channel campaign.

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Sausage Fest No More

Internet marketing is more important than ever—if you’re trying to reach females.

According to eMarketer, this year 100.4 million U.S. females and 93.5 million U.S. males will go online once a month or more often. The “fairer sex” will make up 51.8 percent of Internet users. By 2012, chicks will outnumber dudes by more than 8 million.

All this means that Internet marketing campaigns—including messaging like RSS and email—will be crucial when trying to reach female demographics. Especially younger demographics. eMarketer said that female teens are more likely to use social networks, noting that 55 percent of teen online content creators are girls, and that 35 percent of teen girls write blogs, compared to 20 percent of teen boys.

To be sure, adult women are slightly less likely to go online than adult men—68 percent likely, as opposed to 70 percent likely. Still, we noted in an earlier blog post that a good number of females as well as males go online to watch video. So grown-up ladies are almost as important as their little sisters when it comes to online marketing.

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A bigger worry than lead paint on toys?

Apple made headlines around the world when slave-like conditions at its Chinese manufacturing facility were exposed. Last year the proliferation of China-made toys with lead paint caused outrage among Westerners. But while these two events angered consumers outside the Middle Kingdom, Chinese consumers themselves have reason to get up in arms: A recent tidal wave of SMS spam.

More than 200 million of the country’s mobile phones—about half of all China’s cell phone users—were sent spam from seven advertising services companies. Consumers’ personal information, including cell phone numbers, were somehow obtained by the ad companies.

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As you may have noticed in the past couple of years, open rates have declined, making it harder and harder to reach the inbox. This is due to the large anti-spam systems that ISPs have had to put in place to thwart spammers. Unfortunately, permission-based mail also gets treated as spam. So how do you improve your open rates?

Well first, let’s talk about what an open rate is. An open rate is the percentage of mail you have sent, divided by the number of unique people that have opened your message. So if you successfully sent an email to 100 people, and 50 of those people open your email, then you would receive a 50% open rate (that would be a nice figure huh?).

A lot of marketers feel the larger the list they have the better things will be, but this is simply not true. It’s all about the quality of a list, not quantity. Why would you want to continue to send emails to people who don’t care? People who don’t open your email (and we aren’t talking about plain text emails here), don’t care about your content. You need to get real with yourself and face the facts. The first thing you should do is go back over the last 10 campaigns you sent, and remove all of the people who have not opened your email.

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