Often, we at Cellit get asked the question "isn't mobile marketing just like sending emails?" or "couldn't Twitter accomplish the same thing as text messaging"? We certainly do not believe so. Each technology has it's pros and cons, and can be dissected and analyzed along many different lines. In this article, we try to evaluate direct media qualitatively across three main criteria: immediacy, personalization, and engagement. We have attempted to visually place each media on a 3-dimensional chart, showing immediacy on the X-axis, personalization on the Y-axis, and sizing the bubble on the chart according to the relative level of engagement:

Relative Immediacy, Personalization and Engagement

Let's walk through each media, explaining our justification for its levels of immediacy, personalization, and engagement.

1. Print: Print's marketing abilities cannot be understated. There's simply no comparison for holding a marketing message in your hand, especially if it's customized for your specific target. That print piece will live on beyond the duration of the campaign (if it isn't tossed to the trash) and can be pinned to the family refrigerator, sit on the coffee table, or (for better or worse) litter the streets. However, on the spectrum of immediacy, print falls short. The piece must be designed, printed and shipped. Each step can lead to days or weeks of delay. As such, we give print a -5 on the relative immediacy scale.
   
   On the spectrum of personalization (the Y axis), print does "neutral to well". Print can (for a price) be customized with the target's name and specialized marketing message. However, this customization comes with a hard cost, as well as soft costs like delays in the printing and sorting process.
   
   Finally, on the engagement spectrum (the relative size of the bubble in the chart), print again falls short with the lowest score. In today's junk-mail infused world, there's simply no guarantee your expensive print piece will be read (or even opened). In fact, an often-touted good response rate in print is 1%! As such, we give print a neutral relative engagement.
    
   
   
   
   
   
2. Email: Email, today's marketing mainstay, is decreasing in value, as it goes the over-used way of print. On the immediacy spectrum, email scored well. While email is delivered instantly, it can sit in the user's inbox for quite a while until it is read. This issue dropped email from first place to second in this category.
   
   On the personalization spectrum, email is top of the pack. There is now doubt that emails can be micro-personalized, it terms of content and layout, to appeal to the reader. Unlike a text message or a tweet, emails can include rich graphics and pages of content. There's simply no rival to email in terms of customization.
   
   In terms of engagement, email does surprisingly poor, being only slightly better than a print piece. Email, for the most part, is a one-way street. The only interaction is potentially through a web link to online content. As such the size of email's bubble is only slightly better than print.
    
   
   
   
   
   
3. Twitter: Twitter has one of the more interesting placements on the chart, which may be surprising at first. However, I think you'll agree with our final analysis.
   
   First, in terms of immediacy, Twitter is somewhere between print and email. This is for two reasons:
   (A) For most, people receive their tweets when their Twitter app (such as TweetDeck) is open, or they are visiting the Twitter web site. While people may do this with some frequency, we believe people can nearly be guaranteed to have their email open.
   (B) Due to "tweet overload" your message may never be read. When we look at who's following Cellit on Twitter, we find our followers also follow thousands of other people. Thousands! As such, we find it hard to believe that these users would read most of these tweets. Additionally, unlike email that basically informs you of how many unread emails you have, unread tweets fall off the display never to be read again. Our findings were recently backed up by a potential client (a Fortune 100 retailer) that mentioned their Twitter-only offers get about a 1% redemption rate--the same as print.
   
   In terms of personalization, Twitter is the worst in the pack. While Twitter has introduced the concept of list management, each sent tweet is the same and not customized. As such, it receives our lowest relative ranking.
   
   Twitter is, however, second-best in terms of engagement, due to the unique "re-tweet" culture, where users repost tweets. Additionally, Tweeter followers can respond to Tweets, although there is no real mechanism for managing the back-and-forth interaction.
    
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Text Messaging (SMS): Lastly, we have text messaging. Not surprisingly, Cellit (a company dedicated to mobile messaging) scored the medium highly across all three dimensions. However, we did so trying to be as honest as possible with the technology:
   
   On the immediacy scale, text messaging is the clear winner. Each text is delivered directly to the user's phone, causing the phone to beep, blink, and vibrate. A little flag stays visible on the phone until the text is read. Unlike emails, which come in so fast a furious most people turn off their audible notification, for most, the notification stays on for text. There is no doubt that texting is the most immediate method of communication available.
   
   Regarding personalization, texting also fares well. While not as robust as email, text messages can be customized with specific content for the end user, including their name, custom coupon tracking codes, and requested content. While email takes this much farther, with images and formatting (features not available via SMS), text messaging is firmly in second place in this category.
   
   In terms of engagement, text messaging is the clear winner. Our text messaging platform creates an engaging, back-and-forth "conversation" with the participant. Text messaging isn't about "outbound blasts". Through these back-and-forth conversations, we are able to run surveys, play games, collect data, and more. Additionally, engagement is high with text messaging for some of the same reasons as on the immediacy spectrum: text messages are hard to ignore. Because of the beeps, vibrations and flashes, people tend to notice the texts and interact with them. This leads to much higher response rates. Our mobile coupons, for example, often get a 20-30% redemption rate!
   
   
   
   
   
   

While each format has its own benefits, one thing is clear: to say that Twitter, texting and email are all the same is simply not the case. Each format should be used appropriately, and no one technology should be considered a replacement for the other. It is because of this, that the job of today's direct (or interactive) marketer has gotten harder. With the growing list of mediums out there, each marketer must know when to yield which marketing axe. We, at Cellit, are here to help you with that decision. Please feel free to call upon us to determine how best to reach your customer. We're happy to help you with your entire planning process, and help you execute on the mobile messaging part of the resulting strategy.