Toronto-headquartered mobile marketing company Impact Mobile yesterday announced a partnership with global software developer Netbiscuits, which it says will give Canadian brands a chance to better impact mobile users with their messaging.
Impact Mobile is the driver of a technology that can reach cell phone users signed on to every major wireless company in North America. Netbiscuits, headquartered in Germany with a US office in Virginia, specializes in translating creative content to handsets in the form of applications or landing pages. It’s a mobile partnership that Gary Schwartz, president and CEO of Impact Mobile, says will ideally compliment a multi-platform campaign, in part because of the need for users to first opt-in to SMS marketing.
‘[Mobile is] very much the snack food as opposed to the main course online,’ Schwartz tells MiC. ‘When they actually say ‘I’d love to get the coupon,’ or ‘I’d love to enter that promotion,’ or ‘I’d love to get a subscription,’ then I’m entering into a relationship with the phone number which is up the value chain from the CPM,’ he says.
Categories that work well with mobile are retail, electronics or technology brands, for instance. By texting a promotion to a user’s phone, the goal is to mobilize them to the retail outlet. Through the partnership, Schwartz says they can also target users through banner ads on sports or weather pages, drive them to a landing page, then engage them with SMS.
A campaign can be tailored to a local or regional target depending on individual campaign objectives, and the cost model includes the start-up fee plus a cost per message sent to the user, which depends on the campaign, says Schwartz.
