March 1, 2005
Cell Phone Ads that Consumers Love
Harvard Business School examines Flytxt wireless company's success with young people joining text-based 'clubs' affiliated with certain brands. [via Ypulse]
"Cell spam? No one wants the bother. But London-based Flytxt has convinced users to give personal information in exchange for direct marketing pitches to their phones. A Strategy & Innovation case study."
Flytxt, founded in 2000, was one of the initial practitioners of mobile marketing and an early advocate of permission-based communication. The company was formed by three friends drawn from the venture capital, consulting, and technology industries.
[...] Flytxt's take on the business proposed that consumers would be most interested in joining text-based "clubs" affiliated with certain brands.
[...] Flytxt's marketing program for the magazine asked readers to text-message biographical details such as age and gender to a special number, thus enabling the magazine to alert them to news about album releases, celebrity goings-on, and other facts of specific interest to the individual. The goal was to build reader loyalty while compiling a database about their tastes through interactive dialogue.
Best of all, it was extraordinarily cost-effective: each mobile message cost approximately five U.S. cents to send, versus 10 times that amount for a first-class, regular mail solicitation.
Some links to Flytxt campaigns previously posted in Textually:
-- SMS campaign ties in with "Birthday Girl" movie launch
-- Children's book series, Princess Diaires', launches with SMS campaign
-- Chrysalis Radio UK's SMS Text Clubs attracts 10,000+ new subscribers each month
-- Bidding by SMS for Elle Macpherson's body cast
-- Bidding for art from a Selfridges window display
-- Associated Newspapers launches up-to-the-minute Iraqi news via SMS
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