Reading Tomi Ahonen’ Communities Dominate blog today and I realized I have a new hero. Marc Mielau, the innovation manager for mobile marketing at BMW – read his interview at Mobile AdNews.
By means of a carefully devised plan to remind relevant customers of the benefits of winter tyres/wheels the guy has used engagement mobile marketing to generate a 30% customer conversion rate and $millions of sales (the $45 million was my own back of an envelope rough guesstimate).
If anyone still doesn’t appreciate the benefits of engagement marketing through mobile think how:
> BMW thought about the needs of their customer
> Only sent messages to customers who bought cars in the summer months
> Personalised the messages so customers received a message featuring the exact same model, color and wheel style to the car they were driving
> Joined the service up with a .mobi mobile web site with a simulator so customers could try out different styles and see/compare prices.
> Sent out the MMS advert on the day when the first snow fell.
As to the future… I think my new hero has got it spot on in his Mobile AdNews interview so I’ll let him tell you about it…
“3G functionality in the phone with a big screen and browsing capability – this will influence the whole market. And when operators follow with flat rate offers, we will see a boom in this market”
DISCLOSURE: I am a diehard BMW fanboy and drive a much loved 8 series.
