Traditional search engines and mobile search engines are very similar.  Both have programs that called bots, spiders, or metacrawlers that are sent out to read and categorize the information available on the internet.  In plain English, the closer the relationship between the content on your site and search query, the higher your website should rank.

Traditional search engines and mobile search engines both look at a variety of things to determine how websites should rank in search results.  They store the information that their bots or crawlers find when they are crawling the web in an index, much as books are indexed in a library.  Every website in the search engine index has the potential to rank for a search query, but websites that are not in the search engine index will never rank for a search performed in that search engine.

PPC (Pay per Click) – a business model in which advertisers are charged for their advertisement only when someone actually clicks on it.  Ads are usually shown alongside results in a search engine.  This model is described in more detail later in this chapter.

CPM (Cost per Thousand)- the amount that an advertiser pays per thousand impressions.

eCPM (effective Cost per Thousand)- how advertisers refer to the cost of getting 1,000 impressions.

Impression- is one instance in which an advertisement is shown online.  The number of impressions can be used to evaluate the branding effect that an advertisement might have.  It is important to note, however, that an impression is a measure of exposure, not engagement.

Click- a statistic that describes how many time users actually clicked on an advertisement.  This is a measure of engagement, not exposure.

CTR (Click- Through Rate)- a relative measure of engagement based on the number of clicks per impression.  A high CTR is valuable because it indicates that viewers are finding your advertisement compelling.  In other words, viewers are seeing your ads and clicking on them.

Conversion- a visitor to your mobile content takes an action that you want him to take whether it’s buying your product, downloading your product, or signing up for information or services that you offer.  When this happens, the visitor is said to have “converted”.

Acquisition- is when a visitor signs up for alerts or emails or in some way indicates that he or she wants to receive messages from you in the future.  This is also known as customer acquisition.

CPC (Cost per Conversion) and CPA (Cost per Acquisition)- these ratios measure the number of conversions or customer acquisitions that you received as a result of the advertising campaign, compared to the amount that you spend to place an advertisement.  These are important statistics for understanding how much you are spending on each conversion or acquisition.  These statistics can be figured individually, for each conversion event, or can be aggregated, for all the possible conversions in the campaign.

ROI (Return on Investment)- this is a measurement that is similar to CPC and CPA, but incorporates all the costs associated with running the advertising campaign, including any agency management fees, design fees, and the cost of the time your staff has spent managing the campaign.  ROI is discussed later in this chapter.

Well- known brands generally have different goals than lesser- known companies.  Their objectives are more focused on maintaining brand equity and building brand loyalty, which can be done very effectively with mobile marketing.  Most of the first forays into mobile marketing were undertaken by big brands that wanted to test the channel.  Big brands tend to have bigger budgets that they can use to test new technologies and to reinvent themselves to appear innovative and new.

Stores, restaurants, and entertainment venues are in a unique position to leverage mobile marketing because of their ability to target local foot traffic.  They can set up location- based Bluetooth broadcasts that send marketing messages directly to the consumer when they are in the area.  They can also develop strategies that incorporate outdoor advertising, to allow users to text in for specials, menus, show times, directions, or other information.  In many instances, urban areas are largely segmented by the type of business in the area.  Shopping, restaurants, and entertainment venues might be in one area; business and commerce locations might be in another; and transportation services might be in another.  This makes targeting your mobile marketing message simple because the potential recipients have self- identified their interests.

Mobile marketing is particularly valuable for things that happen in real time, such as sporting events, concerts, conferences, and conventions.  Savvy marketers can reach a targeted consumer base exactly when the consumer has the desire to interact.  This type of mobile marketing can make an event run more smoothly, create goodwill with attendees, and enable the organizers to build a mobile marketing database of contact information to use in subsequent marketing efforts.

For some companies mobile marketing is not the answer.  If you’re company doesn’t have any resources then you should hold off.  Companies that don’t have the financial resources to test campaigns and possibly fail should consider waiting until the channel is more solid and predictable.  Companies without that do not have an objective because a call to action is a crucial part to the success of a mobile marketing campaign.  If you’re company doesn’t have the technical resources to handle the response.  Nothing is worse than having a good response to your marketing campaign and having technology fail.  Even your first mobile marketing campaign has the potential to be fantastically successful and highly viral, so you must plan for that, too.  Lastly, companies that do not have the human resources, or the inventory to handle the response rate.  Determining what the response rate of a mobile marketing campaign will be can be difficult, but it is important to plan for both extremely good and disappointingly bad response rates.

Text and picture messaging is one of the most difficult things to track because different mobile carriers track text messaging slightly differently.  Most SMS platforms have a tracking system included as part of the service, which can be helpful but still frustrating.  By collecting cell IDs and attaching commands to the SMS message, you can get different types of information.  One of the first things to track with an SMS is the size of your list and its growth.  This number should constantly be updated based on new opt- ins and opt- outs, and you should track this number over time so that you can see the growth in the list.

You can also track mobile web tracking.  A variety of mobile web analytics programs have recently come on the scene and are now competing with some of the more established mobile analytics platforms.  Many of the first mobile analytics services were created by mobile ad serving companies such as AdMob and Bango, who needed to report web traffic and click- through rates for their advertisers.  When you are looking at mobile tracking, the first decision you have to make is whether to use a mobile- specific analytics program or adapt your existing web analytics platform to track mobile customers.

In the mobile world, spam can often be a bit more sinister than traditional email spam.  The mobile medium is new enough that many users are eager to find new mobile applications or content and are unaware of the risks.  In the United States, unsolicited text messages are less common but more trouble-some because carriers generally charge for both the sending and receiving of text messages.  Be careful of phishing.  Phishing is mobile spamming that can get much more insidious when it incorporates attempts to solicit private information under false pretenses.  Phishing is a form of attack in which a thief uses email and the web to pose as a legitimate company, such as your bank, and attempts to solicit your account.

What are carriers doing to prevent mobile spamming?  In the United States, many carriers have their own set of privacy requirements for mobile campaigns that are run on their network.  We rely on them to secure and maintain their own networks, as well as work with other networks to prevent the spread of unsolicited marketing messages and malware.  For example AT&T the recipient must opt into receiving text messages from the sender before they are ever sent; the sender must be identified in every message that is received.

The absolute best way to stop mobile spamming is to have mobile marketers not send mobile spam.  Mobile marketing can give marketers a deep insight into their customers’ lives.  Popular school of thought is it is always best to track and measure as much as possible, you have to create a balance between the value you get from the information you collect and the risk that your customers might consider it an invasion of privacy.  Remember to keep all marketing messages as relevant as possible to the recipient.

The key to mobile spamming is not to do it!  Most customers do get charged for the spam message you might send.

How do you get customers to opt in to your mobile coupon system?  In general, companies can use numerous methods to encourage potential customers to opt-in to your mobile communications and mobile coupons, and a combination of all the methods is usually desirable.  One method is text message opt-in where the consumer initiates the opt-in process by texting a keyword to a short code after being presented with the option through some other form of marketing.

Invitation opt-ins are if you already have a database of customer phone numbers, it is generally acceptable to send them one message, requesting that they opt-in to your mobile couponing program.

Another method is online opt-ins.  Online opt- ins are targeting, people interested in your product or services simply sign up to receive you mobile marketing messages and coupons through your website.

Point of sale opt- ins are billboards and displays in stores can be used to encourage users to opt-in to a mobile couponing program.  These messages usually have instructions that tell the shopper to text message a specific word to a short code that is provided on the signage.

A phone call opt- in is a quick and frequently overlooked method of building a targeted list of mobile coupon recipients is to integrate the opt-in process with your phone system.  For example when potential customers call in and are put on hold, you can include a message that encourages them to opt-in to your mobile couponing program while they are on hold, simply by pushing a button on their phone.

The final two methods are email opt- in and microblogging opt- in.  If you are doing email marketing you should include information about you mobile couponing program in each email you send.  Microblogging platforms such as Twitter an Pounce are another way to send mobile coupons and promotions to your clients with minimal overhead or complications.

The true value of including viral elements in your existing email programs has been a hot topic of debate for a few years now.  Advocates of viral email still believe that an appealing email, sent to a reader who has a high opinion of your company, can and will be sent to at least five members of that reader’s social group.  In most cases these readers are the key stakeholders and influencers your brand desperately wants to reach out to in order to build a relationship and eventually make a sale.  However naysayers think that the efforts can’t be tracked because many people would rather use their forward button in their email client instead of a form inside an email.

There is no really way to measure word- of- mouth marketing but you should try to measure both quantitative and qualitative measures.  With quantitative measures you want to monitor the activity of all pass- along materials which include emails, videos, and other viral content.  Here you also want to track pass- along rates, click- throughs, open rates, registrations, and downloads.  For registered users, track their engagement levels with each piece of content.  This information can be ported back to a central data repository in order to qualify customers and enact business rules for appropriate follow- up communications.

The other approach qualitative measures is not email- focused, this often works as a multichannel approach:  employ technology that scours open community platforms such as blogs, chats, message boards, email lists, and newsgroups to capture valuable consumer data in which consumers are communicating their experiences, opinions, and beliefs- positive and negative- about brands and their associated products and services.  By analyzing data, estimate the general buzz around a product or campaign as an indicator of its word- of- mouth success.

These measures will help you see how well your viral efforts are going.  There is no really exact way to measure a viral campaign but quantitative and qualitative measures are one way to get an idea of how well it is going.

One testing technique is a pure split-run test.  To make it pure, they divide the email list into randomly matched groups.  Then they send a different email treatment to each group of people, making sure that everyone gets the email about the same time.  Since the recipient groups are matched, the differences in results from each group are due to the email treatment they got, and nothing else.

There are multiple things you want to test on your emails.  Testing the format of your email is the easiest test that you can do yourself.  By installing a popular email software package, you can send yourself messages.  In these messages you’re looking for strange characters, odd line breaks, and general readability.  Besides testing the format, test to see if they actually like the format you are using.  The easiest test to implement is using alternative URLs.  One test segment is asked to click through to one page and the other group a different page.  For the results count up the page views of each one from the server logs and you have the answer.

Don’t forget to test the subject line.  Try a dozen.  See which pull better, which sell more, which are most memorable three months later.  Depending on your results you might just come up with a whole new branding slogan for your company.

Obviously you are going to want to test your list.  Mail exactly the same message to different lists at exactly the same time.  Here you are not looking for response rates.  You are looking to see how many of your messages bounced, coming back as “no such address”, etc.  That’s going to tell you how good that particular list is.

It is important to test out these key items of your email marketing campaign.  Without knowing this information your campaign could suffer.

The downside to mobile email is that mobile email readers tend to read with divided attention.  Also people, who use mobile email, use it differently.  Primarily, it’s to stay on top of matters that users deem urgent.  It is important to make your current email marketing campaign work in a mobile world.

Mobile-supported landing pages are an important tool to use when going into mobile email marketing.  Once you get out of the world of email and into the world of the mobile browser, detection capabilities are vastly improved, and the user’s experience can be significantly more positive.  A number of detection systems exist that will be able to present your reader with an optimized landing experience.  The challenge here is to make sure you have created the key elements to support the dynamic presentation of each of those landing pages.

When dealing with mobile email you will want to send more reminder emails.  Reading emails on the run generates email ADD.  People read them and think they will remember to respond later, but they then get preoccupied with other facets of the day.  Now is a good time to test sending stand-alone reminder emails that will enable you to engage your readers at various times or stages of purchase.

To make sure your email campaign translates well to the mobile world make sure you have done all of the following:

Determining how your emails looking in a mobile format

Get a percentage of how many people are actually reading your emails with mobile devices

Asses your current subject line strategy

Review your message strategy and test reminder emails for nonresponsive readers

Adding visual anchors to an email will help draw attention to your content.  Visual anchors can be design elements or text elements.  Visual anchor designs are limited only by your creativity and the layout of your email template.  One form of visual anchors is headlines.  Headlines draw attention to themselves followed by the content immediately below the headline.  Images and graphics draw attention to themselves followed by adjacent text either to the left, right, or below the image.  Also text links embedded in a larger body of text, links draw attention to themselves by surrounding text.  And lastly lines and borders draw attention to content above the line or border.

Positioning your visual anchors and related content is extremely important.  A good way to visualize your content positioning is to mentally divide each of your email templates into quadrants and then position your visual anchors and related content according to the order in which consumers tend to focus their attention on each quadrant.  The upper left tends to get the most attention from consumers, position your most important visual anchors and related content there in your email templates.  Here are some examples of things that should go in the upper left quadrant.  Display your brand, your emails main headline, include your email’s main call to action, and place the strongest visual anchors there.