Mobile Channels – a universe unto itself

SMS/MMS, Voice, IVR, USSD, STK, Data/web and sub channels such as mobile -search, mobile-social media, mobile-content, and mobile-games there's a whole alphabet soup of mobile channels out there.

This diverse set of options for mobile presents complications for the poor marketing/strategy manager who needs to advise the business on the best approach to engage mobile. Each channel has its own strengths and considerations that must be factored in to ensure a maximally effective business ROI. I have attempted below to provide a brief overview of the main choices.

SMS is good for short quick info messages or impulse triggers such as a call for action on an broadcast media advertisement, further more SMS is well known and used by a majority of the world's population so is very suitable for broad accessibility.Add-on the fact that the great majority know and use SMS make it the most suitable channel for interactive type application such as surveys etc.

MMS is good to communicate higher value product info such as a luxury car, house/condo's, jewelry or similar high value items, however the lack of a common standard and device compatibility issues hamper the viability of the MMS service for broad accessibility.

Voice is good when the product or service is more complex or needs a human touch to explain and interact or get consent. Example of voice services include outbound/inbound telesales and support. Voice is another one of the mobile channels with universal accessibility.

IVR is good to automate straightforward business processes and communication needs which do not need human intelligence such as for example flight and account status, request for information, automated service booking etc. This is particularly true in asia where data penetration and services coverage is quite spotty particularly in the rural areas.

USSD is a session based protocol which has the benefit of reduced latency as compared to SMS which has somewhat higher latency as it uses a store and forward mechanism, USSD has another benefit in that any USSD messages will pop up on to the front of the screen irrespective of whatever else the user is doing – for example *101# for callback initiation. USSD is typically used for dynamic menu choices and telecoms application like callback and telco services (network settings etc).

STK – SIM Toolkit is an intermediate layer that lies between the SIM and the mobile device and is typically used for menu type application where users can naviate through a smorgasboard of choices. This is again typically only used by the service providers.

Lastly then there's data – note here that data covers the entire range of IP packet communications and not just web surfing through given the ubiquity of web sites and service most people can be forgiven for thinking that HTTP equates to data, however the very flexibility of the IP packet communication together with the well established framework of HTTP (including browsers and support ecosystem of Javascript etc) allows for a great deal of user communication and information/transaction services can be provided over this medium, infact the mobile web is still in infancy and I look forward to far more services being mobilised in the coming days than is available currently.