MW08 – Question #9 – What demographics are most responsive to mobile marketing?
Q: Are there certain age groups or regions that have been more responsive to mobile marketing and how would you predict this to change?
A: Just like the interweb, the younger generations were the quickest to adopt SMS and are still the most likely to respond to a call to action via sms
Having said that, keep the following three things in mind:
- Parents and grand parents are fast growing segments for SMS because they’ve realized that in order to stay somewhat in touch with their kids and grand kids, they had to learn how to text. As a result, SMS adoption is penetrating all demographics and should no longer be considered a tween or teen obsession only
- How many of your friends have blackberries? Ever notice that they are emailing their co-workers & friends as often as the kids sending SMS back and forth? With RIM having around 40% market share in Canada, there are lots of people who are exhibiting the same behaviours and dependancies on mobile as those who are more SMS reliant.
- We’ve found that the “professional age” demographic is far more likely to go on to the mobile web than other demographics. The reason is that many of these folks are using PDAs (like blackberry) that come with nicer & larger screens and data plans that are paid for by their company.
Response rates for mobile marketing can be good or great across all demographics. It’s not unusual to get 6% on well targeted mobile campaigns for example.
The key is knowing your audience and understanding how to deliver your message in the most audience relevant context (sms, mobile web, bluetooth etc…) with a relevant message.
With 3.3 billion mobile devices in use worldwide today, mobile is already a mass medium and marketers who figure out how to integrate mobile into their marketing mix now will be at a huge advantage tomorrow when mobile goes from experimental to essential.
