Comments on: What a Waste

By: Hotxt Goes Down Free Route at MobHappy

Hotxt Goes Down Free Route at MobHappy — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 21:11:50 +0000

[...] 2. Getting them to download the product once they’ve expressed that interest. I’ve written about this before¬†on a widely commented post about how difficult this is. Maybe 50% – 75% of requested WAP Push messages are never responded to. Don’t forget, at that point, the user has requested details of how to download and then, for whatever reason, simply does click on the link to complete the install process. [...]

By: Bill Gates’s Retirement » No, That Phone Isn’t Broken, It’s Just Unusable

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 10:14:29 +0000

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By: Antoine Leveque

Antoine Leveque — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 18:32:37 +0000

Hello there !
Interesting post!!!

So here I have a very concrete contribution : we did an email push to 18-25 ys old who opted in an Azzaro website (product launch).
This email was only about offering a free personnalised animated logo. They could leave their mobile number on the site, get an instant wap push and connect to the mobile site. There they would type in their name, and it automatically & dynamically created their logo.

We sent the email to 9k punters. That was Friday 8/09. Today Sunday 10/09, we have 2 789 distinct people who typed in their mobile number. Which generated 928 distinct visits.
That’s a 33.27% transformation rate.

Given that some numbers are mistyped (aint got the ack report yet), that we cannot (here in france) deliver ported numbers with a direct connection, I’d say that we have a good 10% drop off rate. Meanning that transformation rate is actually even higher!

Typical transformation rate is 28% to 40% (on very qualified targets).
We noticed that transformation from wap push to actual wap browsing was a lot higher when sending an SMS prior to the wap push. This message explains what’s going to happen, what they should do, how much it costs.

NB: we just sent a single wap push in the above mentionned campaign.

By: Follow Ups at MobHappy

Follow Ups at MobHappy — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:22:13 +0000

[...] Back in July, I wrote a post that was widely commented on and struck an industry nerve about the high wastage that WAP Push was generating for some companies. Tom Hume, has an excellent follow up on this and shares some great advice. [...]

By: Sebastien Olier

Sebastien Olier — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 18:46:05 +0000

Very interesting thread… Here is my contribution from France:

We have been managing a Web-to-mobile game for a famous mass-market brand in France. The game heavily relies on Wap push usage.
The concept is fairly simple: Enter your mobile phone number on a website and get a Wap push to connect to the WAP game site. Users get automatically identified when they connect to the WAP site, which allows replayability.

Daily prizes are attractive and given away through a basic instant-win scheme.

The game is 100% free, to the exception of Wap traffic costs. And of course, we made sure that proper and detailed information was mentioned on the website, especially the need for a WAP-enabled handset and how to handle a WAP push message.

We have already registered thousands of players through the website.

Guess what ? The success rate averages about 30%, which means that 70% of users that registered on-line AND were sent a Wap push did NOT connect to the WAP site.
Mobile Internet usage seems as advanced in France as in the UK…

By: Haluk Y Tutuk

Haluk Y Tutuk — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:57:15 +0000

Thanks for the question!

Actually my point was marketing via sending “Bulk Spam SMS”(BSS). If a customer see a ringtone/wallpaper etc. at TV or newspaper and than send the code to the content providers short number, then the process should begin, no problem. If buyer does not open(I am not talking about downloading, this is another issue) the wappush link in a matter of time(maybe 2-5 hours) then content provider should send an informative sms like “If you are having trouble with opening the wappush link send us your phone model and we will send you the WAP/GPRS settings”. If buyer does not open it again in a time(2 days) this Msisdn should be taken into the blacklist and should not be sent BSS. If the customer opens it, no problem, you can send BSS.

I don’t know the situation in other countries, but marketing via BSS is very populer here! And response rates are better than every other channel. However most of the customers don’t download the product they paid. Content providers sends BSS after a time even to the customers that did not even open any charged wappush link before. That is not fair! Some customers, try again to get a new melody/wallpaper after a time with a great hope! Failure again. Maybe they think that is about the melody/wallpaper, so try their chance again.

Althought sending a wappush link is a must to serve the content to the buyer, it is not the only way to increase the population of cellphone users with correct WAP/GPRS settings. I think, operators must be proactive to encourage wap usage and care about the customers that haven’t been set the WAP/GPRS up.

By: Helen Keegan

Helen Keegan — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:16:12 +0000

@Haluk Y Tutuk

Question – how can you encourage non-wap users to use a wap service if you don’t send them a wap push and/or URL to make it easy for them to start using the mobile internet and/or to make it easy to download content?

By: Haluk Y Tutuk

Haluk Y Tutuk — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:24:07 +0000

Hi and thanx to everyone! That is a great blog!

I should mention we face the same problems in Turkiye! We are a partner of the two biggest GSM operators, Turkcell and Telsim(will be known as Vodafon soon). The ratio of the nondownloaders is about 65% for Turkcell and ò for Telsim.

Sending an SMS with URL in it and a following WapPush is an interesting idea; I will try it!

However, I think operators should never deliver a message from content providers to users if the user never ever touch the WAP Gateway before. This is the ethical way, but in this case the black profit will decrease dramatically! Governments should force the operators about this in order to prevent the pillage! By the government pushes, operators will take the necesarry actions!

Thanks.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:10:40 +0000

Has anyone done a similar study of content download via MMS?

By: Never Underestimate the Ingenuity of Fools at MobHappy

Never Underestimate the Ingenuity of Fools at MobHappy — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:52:17 +0000

[...] User error seems to be something of a theme here this week, with loads of comments on my What a Waste¬†post about the ineffectiveness of Wap Push. The consensus seems to be that at least part of the problem is the user not knowing how to respond to a message or being unable to find it when it does arrive. [...]