Imagine walking around in New York City”™s Times Square trying to decide where to go for dinner when your cell phone buzzes with a message: the Italian restaurant around the corner is offering a free cocktail with every meal.
The decision just got easier.
That”™s the future of mobile marketing, according to Dean Steinman, president of Peekskill-based web and mobile marketing communications company TheMobileXperience.
“There”™s not a person out there between the ages of 12 and 80 who doesn”™t have a cell phone on them wherever they go,” Steinman said. “We”™re in a mobile world, and now we can take traditional media and bring it out to people wherever they are.”
And it”™s all made possible by Bluetooth.?William Primavera, principal of Yorktown Heights-based Primavera Public Relations, said 72 percent of the 270 million cell phones in the country have Bluetooth.
Of those, 40 percent have the Bluetooth turned on, which enables the messaging to work.
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“Here”™s how it works,” Primavera said. “Let”™s say you want to draw people to your restaurant two blocks away from Times Square. We can have a marketer with a backpack walking up Broadway, sending out the signals that will go out to people”™s cell phones with a message that can contain a file up to 1 megabyte, whether it be a picture or a coupon or something like that.”
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The technology can be used for coupon delivery, sales announcements, ticket sales, redemption programs, even in the supermarket.
“When you go into your grocery store the same thing could happen,” Primavera said. “You could be walking down an aisle and you”™d get an alert on your cell phone that a certain kind of ice cream is on sale, or that there”™s a buy one, get one free promotion going on.”
Customers can accept or reject the messages at no cost; they can also opt-out of receiving the messages.
“Once you opt out you won”™t get any messages again,” Steinman said. “The last thing we want is to be a bother.”
Primavera said marketers are always looking for cutting-edge ways to get in touch with their potential markets, and this is the wave of the future.
“What”™s really cool about mobile is that it”™s for everybody ”“ it can even work with a local pizza place that wants to build a database,” Steinman said. “We have the ability now to take a company”™s messages, coupons and discounts and bring it to the streets to reach people as they”™re walking around. From a branding and marketing standpoint, this is exciting.”
Primavera said the mobile marketing technology was originally developed in England.
“They are about two years ahead of us in mobile marketing,” Primavera said. “We need to catch corporate America up with them.”
