In today’s digital wireless world, the question is no longer if mobile marketing is needed for immediate and long-term success, but rather how we can utilize and harness the power of this medium.

Below are key insights to current trends that increasingly make mobile an attractive addition to a school’s marketing toolbox.

1. Mobile is Huge.

Nine out of ten U.S. residents are mobile subscribers, according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA). There are currently 285.6 million mobile subscribers in the U.S., with nearly two-thirds of them using text messaging actively, and about 70 million of them having the ability to access the Internet from their mobile phones.

2. Mobile Internet Usage Accounts for a Third of all Internet Consumption and is Rising Rapidly (Nielsen)

Mobile Internet usage is growing fast and projected to equal desktop internet usage by 2013. In fact, if you track Internet subscribers over time for the iPhone and iPod Touch against, say, desktop Internet subscribers to AOL or Netscape, both subscription and growth rates are three times higher at nine quarters out than AOL and Netscape combined. Keep in mind, this statistic reflects only iPhone and iPod Touch Internet subscribers and not the millions of other mobile Internet users accessing content through their Androids, Blackberries, and other phones. (Morgan Stanley Research)

3. Prospective Students are Already Searching for your School on their Mobile Devices

The index chart below from Google shows trend over time for users searching for EDU-related queries from their phone for the past two years. There was a 10-fold increase in those two years, and EDU mobile search volume is expected to have another 10- to 20-fold increase this year alone.

4. Unique to SMS is the Ability to Transform Traditional Media to Interactive Real-Tme Media

Having a keyword / short-code combination [i.e.: text DEGREE to 28638] added to any traditional media campaign is a great way to measure ROI for offline media while creating a real-time interactive direct response channel. SMS has highest penetration of all mobile services and is no longer a communication medium for younger audiences. 72% of those between 25-49 use text messaging, and 53% of texters are 35-years-old and up. (Scarborough Research)

5. Mobile is a Highly Measurable Medium and ROI can be Calculated Accurately

Every aspect of a mobile campaign — online, or offline via SMScan be captured and reported upon using the right platform and tools. The metrics for mobile internet advertising are the same as those used for online advertising: impressions, click, click through rate, cost per acquisition, etc. The metrics used to measure SMS campaigns are similar to those used in email marketing. These include the number of messages delivered, number of users replied, opt-in rate, churn, etc. CUnet has built and acquired the tools and platforms necessary for targeting, tracking, and measuring a variety of mobile campaigns enabling effective mobile management and performance optimization.

6. One out of Every Seven Minutes Spent on Media is Spent on Mobile (Nielsen)

Start communicating with your prospective and current students the way they communicate with each other and the world around them.

7. Mobile Display Ads are Highly Effective, Sometime Outperforming Other Online Ads.

Mobile ads are five times more effective than online ads according to market research firm InsightExpress and are significantly more effective than online ads across several branding metrics.

In a recent study, they show that mobile ads provided two-and-a-half times the lift of online ads for ad awareness, and a surprising six times the lift in purchase intent!

CUnet provides mobile marketing services for many of its higher education clients using a variety of mobile marketing campaigns and mobile technologies that result in distinct reach and enrollments for a new universe of prospective students.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.