Should operators be saying “us please”?
MePlease launched a service today that enables businesses to let their customers opt in to offers and treats via SMS, and then share those rewards with their social media networks. One of the first companies to sign up is existing customer Pizza Express, which is using the platform for its “Create Your Pizza Challenge”, which has drawn 50,000 entries since the competition opened.
Through on-table displays in every PizzaExpress location from October 18th to November 14th, customers will be prompted to text-in their vote for one of the five finalist pizzas they would like to see on the menu – using MePlease. Â Once customers text-in, they will also be able to post their vote directly to Facebook to encourage viral sharing via MePlease.
The platform can also be used for offers to drive customer loyalty or footfall. I tested an offer from another MePlease customer – in this case a London bar. A quick text to a five digit number earned me a free drink offer – and a link to share that offer to Facebook. That was pretty much it but it worked, it used text as its entry point. A MePlease spokesperson told me that that was MePlease’s sweet spot – joining mobile to social media.
The spokesperson also confirmed that in terms of its business model, MePlease makes it money from the texts, and in some instances from its customers buying licenses for deeper data mining or other customisations of the platform.
Now, you will hear plenty about how operators need to be doing exactly what they are doing in this instance – providing the bulk SMS to MePlease and then butting out. But I find it sad that a service like this appears to be beyond so many (not all) operators. Please note, I’m not for a minute proposing that operators own all the retail-brand-mobile marketing relationships out there. They are mobile network operators, not loyalty card operators, coupon companies or ad networks. I appreciate that. Nor am I suggesting that they muller the businesses for stupid revenue share or per-transaction deals.
But in an instance like this: let’s look at what’s required and whether operators are in a position to deliver the necessary:
1. Access to text services. Er, yes
2. Publish and share offers or votes to Facebook through OpenGraph. Not that complicated.
3. Ability to talk the language of businesses and appreciate their concerns and needs. Seemingly much harder than it should be – but not unbreakable.
Operators could scale these services so efficiently, making it easy and cheaper for businesses to set up a particular campaign. A business customer could self-provision, with little fuss, a customer offer or similar campaign. It could become second nature for operators when they do business with enterprise customers to offer these sorts of services. The operator, unlike MePlease (with apologies to MePlease and others) have massive brands out there – if a business is thinking of getting something mobile up and running what is likely to be their first thought as to who can help them?
It’s not something that’s going to change the nature of mobile, it’s just an example the sort of tactical thing operators could be doing to add another revenue line to their business. I see so much operator bashing when operators have attempted any of this stuff that I think some of them have been scared off. They shouldn’t be – because there’s only going to be more of it.