MobileWebsiteWatch

Earlier this year, Mobile Marketer reported that Dolce & Gabbana’s mobile advertising campaign saw a 10% click-through.  The campaign focused on the brand’s teen focused catalog but also had an impact on the Men’s fashion show in Milan.

Tom Henriksson of Nokia, who handled the advertising campaign for Dolce & Gabbana, discusses how mobile speaks to the “language of youth in a metropolitan world without borders.”  He then goes on to talk about how mobile advertising is a great way to target both loyal customers and reach new ones.

“The strategy was to reach young consumers on the medium they bring almost everywhere, almost all the time – their mobile handset,” Mr. Henrilsson said. “D&G wanted to create a fun campaign that would encourage consumers to spend time with the brand, as well as forward it on to their friends.”

According to this article, the standard CTR is 2-4% on mobile, and 10% was achieved based on the placement on the Nokia Media Network.

I think this really enforces the concept that your mobile presence and customer experience is crucial to your brand image, and no one knows about brand image like Dolce & Gabbana.

Mobile Marketer reports in this article that Marriott International claims more than $1.25M in gross revenues in the first 100 days of introducing mobile booking on it’s 3 year old mobile website. Their site also allows users to view or cancel reservations or click to call an operator.

The business traveler is clearly a huge mobile web user and many travel companies have adopted mobile websites.  Another interesting fact from this article is that almost a third of the mobile bookings were done the same day.

In addition to this additional revenue channel, the article goes on to say that Marriott Mobile plays a key role in customer relationship marketing.

I expect to see even more companies launching mobile websites in 2009 than ever before.  For retailers and travel related businesses, the chance to improve the customer experience and brand image while also collecting sales that might have otherwise gone to a competitor is a win-win.

After recieving a couple requests to push the full text of articles I have made the switch.  Happy feed reading!

Hello mobile web junkies!  After the labor day hiatus, mobilewebsitewatch is back on the case.

Happy reading!

The Smithsonian, while housing all that is old antique, is going new age in its push to attract tourists to its doors.  AP reports:

The Smithsonian Institution will try luring tourists into an upcoming art exhibit by sending advertisements to visitors’ cell phones.

The Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are trying out a system that sends messages to cell phones with Bluetooth technology. The messages will be sent from bus shelters in Washington’s pedestrian-heavy areas.

A message from the Smithsonian will appear on screen, and those who accept it will receive a free image similar to ads posted at the bus stops.

Mobile ads are used widely in Europe and Asia, but are a first for the Smithsonian. Museum spokeswoman Amanda Williams says they want to target younger audiences.

The museums are promoting the Asian art exhibit “Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur,” which opens Oct. 11 and runs to early January.

This is really a bold move in the right direction for an organization like the Smithsonian.  Furthermore, the tactic of keeping it niched and allowing people at bus stops to opt in is appropriately niched.  This is a very clever and targeted area where the visitors they are likely looking for probably are.  However, it has to be asked, why offer a “free image”?  A free image is a nice plus, but couldn’t that be offered on a mobile Web site as well?  What if the person is interested in the museum, but not that exhibition?  Without a fully optimized mobile Web site, that could easily be offered up in the content served to the phone via Bluetooth, the user cannot be engaged very fully.  After checking out the Smithsonian’s Web site, it is clear that there are a lot of really great areas that should be made available to tourists looking for attractions and tethered to their mobile phones for internet access as they are on the go.  Furthermore, this would seem like a logical next step as the campagn is currently limited to phones with Bluetooth capability, which tend to be more sophisticated devices and, if the user is sophisticated enough to be using the Bluetooth features of this phone, there are probably also accustomed to using the mobile web browser as well.