MMA Publishes Mobile Couponing Guidelines
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
The Mobile Marketing Association has published ‘Guidelines and Best Practices in Mobile Price Promotions’ for North America.
Created by the MMA’s Mobile Couponing Task Force, the document is designed to provide marketers, merchants, wireless carriers and other mobile marketing ecosystem members with an industry standard for using mobile coupons and rebates to increase sales and promote consumer loyalty.
Mobile coupons are one type of Mobile Price Promotion, which the MMA defines as ‘electronic coupons or rebates that traverse the full redemption process without the requirement for conversion into a paper or other hard-copy format.’
Mobile Price Promotions are distributed, discovered and redeemed through a variety of mobile technologies, including SMS, MMS, Mobile Applications, Mobile Web, Bluetooth, NFC and 1D/2D barcode scanning. ‘Guidelines and Best Practices in Mobile Price Promotions’ provides a concise overview of these channels, as well as the key considerations for developing and executing these types of campaigns:
- The five stages of mobile price promotions, such as the ways that consumers can discover and redeem coupons and rebates;
- General best practices and principles, including transparency, good taste, privacy, opt-in/opt-out and government laws, rules and regulations;
- Campaign-specific best practices and principles, such as those involving contests, food, pharmaceuticals and alcohol;
- Tips for designing coupons, using the word ‘free’ and creating notices such as terms and conditions
“Our research shows that consumer interest in mobile coupons continues to grow, giving brands, merchants and marketers a powerful new opportunity to establish and maintain relationships with consumers,” says Greg Stuart, CEO of MMA. “The MMA created ‘Guidelines and Best Practices in Mobile Price Promotions’ to give the ecosystem an industry-standard framework for capitalizing on that opportunity while protecting the consumer experience.”
These standards represent a collection of feedback from MMA’s Mobile Commerce Committee, which includes over 120 member companies, as well as industry input during a 30-day open-to-public commentary period.
The MMA’s Mobile Couponing Task Force is co-chaired by Mobile Dreams Factory and Inmar and includes Cellfire, Infinian and Verizon Wireless. This group of companies are specifically responsible for compiling the feedback and finalizing the standards.
For more information about ‘Guidelines and Best Practices in Mobile Price Promotions’, visit the MMA Global website.
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