Another interesting result that came from the recent mobile messaging study conducted by the DMA and IAB, was how well MMS performed. In the study, M&S sent MMS messages (try saying that quickly) for their ‘Dine in for a Tenner’ and shoe campaigns. They achieved the same recall levels as SMS, and generated much higher click-through rates to the mobile site – in fact 150% greater than SMS. The consumer interviews were particularly revealing. There was no question that the pictures were appealing – hardly surprising given that it was food and shoes – as they say, a picture is worth 1000 words. And in the world of mobile messaging, 1000 words is very hard to achieve. However the other significant comment was that the MMS appeared more trustyworthy because it had the M&S logo and branding. In the world of mobile messaging, trust is a key issue. With SMS, is hard to achieve – you can’t have a brand name AND a reply number in the SMS header. You can put the brand name at the start of the message, but that is taking up valuable space.

Whilst it isn’t difficult for someone to ‘spoof’ the branding of someone like M&S, the mobile user experience is of almost no spam MMS. It all adds up to MMS creating an effective mobile marketing medium.