Is MMS Coming to Mobile Marketing?

 

Since the widespread adoption of the smartphone began in earnest a few short years ago, ‘mobile marketing’ has been the key phrase for any brand with an eye on the future. Amid all the talk of SMS messaging, mobile coupons, branded apps and geo-location technology, there’s one piece of kit - native to cell phones long before the smartphone era - that’s seldom discussed: MMS.

In many ways, MMS was ahead of its time. Early applications were beset by technical problems. Consumers were disappointed, and MMS threatened to become the punchline of so many jokes, like betamax or mini-disc - technologies that promised to be the next revolution in their field, but ended up a damp squib.

But recently, all the ingredients required to make MMS the mass communication tool it promised to be have fallen into place: vastly improved data capabilities and phone camera technology, and mobile web access (allowing users to pull images from the Internet as they would on a desktop at home).

So where does this leave your mobile marketing strategy? Well, if your current approach is working well without MMS in the mix, there’s probably no compelling reason to change that. But if you think a little rich media injection could help your messages hit home, MMS is the ideal solution. It’s also far more popular with consumers than you might think.

According to the CTIA, 74 billion MMS messages were sent in 2012. What’s more, the number of MMS messages sent fluctuates in tandem with talk minutes and text messages, which indicates just how much MMS is part of the overall picture of phone usage.

But brands have been remarkably slow to exploit the MMS audience. In May 2013, a survey of 745 marketing professionals found 38% used MMS as part of their mobile marketing strategy, compared with 76% who use a mobile website. This reluctance is, in part, down to wary consumers who have a vague idea that MMS is more expensive, more susceptible to the whims of network carriers when it comes to radical pricing. But this is no longer true for the majority of people. If you have a text messaging plan, SMS and MMS are charged the same amount, so the effective cost to the consumer per message is identical. And who thinks about the cost of each text they send these days?

MMS has been bundled with SMS for years. Brands and advertisers can happily deploy MMS as part of their overall mobile marketing strategy. And, since you still need to obtain opt-in permission from each recipient, you can take the opportunity when offering to send notifications to educate people about MMS in 2015. If you have an idea for notifications including rich content, MMS opens the door to a whole new world of possibilities.