Today the Mobile Marketing Association kicked off their New York Forum with a number of brands, mobile vendors and industry experts.
The mid-town Manhattan event, which was pretty well attended considering the bad economy and the fact that Internet has about a thousand things to do this week, included a number of interesting panels on the opportunities, the challenges and the issues that are facing mobile marketing community today.
For Mike Wehrs, the president/CEO of the MMA, measurement is an important issue. In his keynote address, he discussed the fact that while the industry has been great about measuring specifics in mobile, there is still the challenge to build an industry standard. Meaning that while marketers have been great about building out their measurement on specific campaigns or for specific Apps, but there still needs to be a more holistic industry wide standard.
The conference also addressed the growing role of the Mobile App. According to Traci Van Deventer, director of mobile products at The Weather Channel, engagement in The Weather Channel’s mobile application is much deeper than engagement on their mobile Web property.
One of the great things about the show was all of the case studies. Jon Stross, VP/GM of International BabyCenter spoke about how BabyCenter used personalization and time sensitive messaging to reach pregnant women on the mobile phone.
An executive from the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino spoke about using SMS shortcodes in conjunction with billboards and e-mails to help make customers interact. The brand has found that using a billboard with shortcodes near Barstow, CA, a town in the Mojave Desert outside of Las Vegas, to target people driving to Las Vegas from Los Angeles to result in room reservations. “Interestingly, 20% of the people who drive to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, go there without room reservations,” said Michael Perhaes, assistant VP, marketing, MGM Grand Hotel and Casino.
