Mobile marketers in India wake up to post-spam era

Unsolicited calls and promotional SMS are a complete nuisance.

However,if all goes as planned, they shouldn’t bother you any more. Making unwanted intrusions into customers’ privacy is illegal in most developed countries. While such a law is being put in place in India, are marketers ready to respect the privacy of their customers?

In March 2007, the Supreme Court of India sent notices to the Central government, phone operators and other marketers to ban unsolicited calls. Subsequently, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) took a step in April to provide relief from get-a-loan, buy-a-policy and other sales calls on personal mobiles. Under TRAI’s new guidelines, the National Informatics Centre is working on a central do not call (DNC) list on a national level. Mobile phone subscribers can easily register themselves on the national DNC list. TRAI is also working on opt-in and opt-out frameworks for the customer.

THe Mobile indsutry in India does not have a self-regulatory framework in place, as a result of which the government has come down hard to establish the DNC framework. (Not to say that a self-regulating body’s existence would have stopped the government from introducing the DNC)

The concept of having an ‘unsubscribe’ element in a promotional message, as in e-mail promotions, is still alien to Indian marketers. Each marketing message or voice call must have a provision to hear the receiver’s consent to proceed.

Vinod Thadani, business director, GroupM, is of the opinion that It will be a Herculean task (to build a database), but once done, it’ll be free of spam. Targeting a small, effective and interested list of opt-in subscribers who are genuinely interested in the brand will be a better strategy.

Mobile marketing should ideally invite people to participate with the brand. This means giving the subscriber something in return. This is where paidvertising could help. Subscribers would welcome applications such as games, ringtones, ring-back tones, greetings or m-cards featuring brands, if they are made available free of cost OR just plain simple CASH. A service in the offing is YouMint.com which proposes to offer free content to its subscribers and also offers CASH in return for receiving targetted Advertisements on SMS. Marketers need to approach consumers subtly, and if a chord is struck between the brand and the consumer, then it can become a win-win situation.