Dubai: Dimitri Metaxas knows what it is like to be bombarded by text messages (SMS) on his mobile phone. He estimates he receives about 10 to 20 messages a week.
There is some irony there. Metaxas is the regional executive director for digital advertising at Omnicom Media Group and understands how intrusive this kind of advertising is and how angry people can get about it. He believes "unregulated" use of SMS could have dire consequences.
"It could possibly kill future advertising in the mobile market."
Metaxas said his company has generally taken a stance against the use of SMS campaigns and discourages his clients from using it as a marketing tool.
He isn't the only one. There is a growing awareness in the advertising industry about how these campaigns are perceived.
Yolanda Delport, a general manager for marketing at Al Futtaim Trading Enterprises, said she is very careful about the use of text messaging.
"SMS as a channel is easy to abuse and I keep a firm control on how many times we use this channel to market," she said via email. "We don't use it as a general communication tactic, rather as a direct means of communicating a special offer at the appropriate time in the overall campaign."
She said the broad-based use of SMS, such as sending one to anyone who owns a mobile phone, is not the answer. It provides "an immediate and measurable response", according to Delport, but it does come down to four factors - correct segmentation, compelling offer, succinct message and timing.
She also warned that SMS need to be used sensibly as well. Sending one to a person who is not "internet or SMS centric," can cause problems of its own.
"We have had a few situations where the customer has misread the SMS - and this is the tricky bit& the message needs to be very clear. You only have 160 characters to play with and there is a general misconception that everyone who speaks English for example, reads it equally well."
Despite the dangers associated with the medium, SMS can provide good results for advertisers.
"We've produced very good results from our SMS campaigns," she said. "We measure each campaign through the various channels to market and we have a pretty good handle on what drives the best results in terms of messaging, timing and so forth."
Gaurav Aidasani, the managing director of Cosmos Creative Services, an online advertising agency here in Dubai, agrees that such campaigns can be useful.
"It's extremely powerful for specific clients," he said. "SMS works with specific industries and with target audiences." It also works wells in event promotion, he said, it just doesn't work well for building brands, he said.
Many of the complaints seem to stem from a company's ability - or lack of it - to get their messages to someone who wants it.
To do that, companies often rely on demographic gleaned from phone number databases. etisalat has its own database of numbers that allows marketers to use via its Value SMS Service, although etisalat does not share these numbers with anyone, according to Shady Fouad, a manager of product marketing and mobility solutions at etisalat.
"Companies using the service are only allowed to send messages to their own database of customers who have shown their willingness to receive messages from them," Fouad said. "They are not suppose to spam and send unsolicited messages."
Other databases are also available on the market, and many companies build there own from customer information. Aidasani said his company has built a database of numbers primarily from websites, where users are asked questions regarding gender, age and interests, among others.
Delport said Al Futtaim often relies on third-parties to get clear and updated databases. But she has also seen what happens when campaigns fail to target the right audience.
"In the last campaign we ran, we had a lady who was extremely annoyed at receiving a SMS - it was very difficult to explain that we don't own the data and could not guarantee that she would never receive a SMS from us again," she said.
"At best, we would communicate her request to be removed from the database back to the supplier. Whilst we work in an environment where permission-based marketing is not mandated, this is the risk - the last thing I want is to create a negative brand experience."
According to Fouad, individuals can block spam text messages by sending a SMS message to 1011 with the sender ID or short code of the sender they wish to block.
Despite the problems, SMS is an extremely easy and cheap medium to use, Metaxas says.
But Aidasani says SMS campaigns do not give advertisers a good return on their investment. He said that search engine advertising, which attempts to pair up advertisements with a person's search terms, could "generically" offer "maybe 50 per cent" better return on investment.
Metaxas says that an SMS campaign could cost as little as $40 per 1,000 recipients, while an email campaign could cost three times as much. That shouldn't be the bottom line though, he adds.
By Scott Shuey
© Gulf News 2009
