Mobile Marketing in Japan The browser phone as advertising and

							Mobile Marketing in Japan The browser phone as advertising and marketing tool

Summary Japan is the world’s most advanced mobile market with almost 85 mobile subscribers. About 90% of the users has a browser phone and visits monthly mobile sites to download content like music, games or to access informational sites to learn more about products and services. Japanese phones cannot be used outside the country, and foreign phones are not able to roam in Japan (except for the latest Vodafone 3G models). SMS is not used in Japan – instead an email compatible version of mobile mail based on traffic charges is used -- no premium messaging possible. Mobile marketing and advertising is a rapidly growing market segment in Japan estimated at about USD 100 million in year 2003. That was a two-fold increase since 2002 and only slightly smaller than the corresponding figures for “regular” Internet advertising the same year. Mobile users surf the mobile Internet for content discovery, so mobile marketing is much more powerful than in Europe and the US in respect of customer-experience. Successful marketing campaigns utilize a good media mix of both mobile messaging and mobile websites. Design, continuous updating and reliability of the mobile site are crucial elements for the success of the whole campaign. The Japanese market holds a huge potential that attracts multi-national brand companies.

Mobile Usage in Japan – A Different but Advanced World Japan, the world’s second largest economy, hosts an advanced mobile community. As of December 31, 2004, there were 85 million subscribers of which 74 million had a phone able to browse the mobile Internet. 98% of the user base is post-paid and average monthly ARPU is JPY 7,300 (US$ 70). Since 1999, when NTT DoCoMo started its successful i-mode service, Japan has taken the lead in deploying new mobile technologies and services. More than 27 million people use 3G-services. There are four carrier groups in Japan (see table 1). Carrier Subscribers (mln) Network NTT DoCoMo 47,914 PDC, W-CDMA KDDI 18,759 CDMA TU-KA 3,600 PDC Vodafone 15,211 PDC, CDMA

Mobile internet is a mature business in Japan. Content downloads are highly popular – e.g. the number of true-tones downloads is larger than for Apple iTunes, and a mobile payment system based on a phone-embedded chip was introduced by NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in 2004. There are no GSM-networks in Japan and different technologies are used for mobile services. 99% of the phones sold in the Japanese market do not work outside the country, making the Japanese market difficult to enter for foreign companies. The Japanese market, however, is large and attractive for mobile services as the users are highly educated and spending money. Mobile Marketing – New Technologies Providing Better Interaction with the Target-Groups Mobile mail is, like in the GSM-world, widely used for peer-to-peer messaging. While for clientserver applications in the GSM-world premium SMS services are used, Japan has adopted the mobile mail and browser model for mobile campaigning and advertisement services. Mobile mails are charged for by basic traffic fees and no premium mailing services exists. Mail access to third

parties is provided through carrier mail gateways. As mobile spam is a growing problem in Japan, carriers work with preferred mail providers that are allowed to send bulk-mails. There are two main mobile marketing tools 1) Mobile messaging; 2) Mobile Campaign Site. Messaging is used for signing up to mail magazines, coupon delivery, simple campaign messages, and almost always a link to a campaign site. Users register for campaigns usually via a) mail registration or b) direct access to a mobile Internet site. In the case of mail registration users react to an advertisement on a poster, in a magazine etc, sign up with an empty mail (or a particular subject for filter options) and receive a mobile mail to their handset. Either this is enough for subscribing to a mail magazine, or users are encouraged to further click a link in the mail which takes them to the mobile campaign site (comparable to WAP Push). In case of direct site access users sign up directly on either the mobile site or via a web site with mobile mail address and other details. Users will then be subscribed to the service or receive a mobile URL for further interaction and content access. Mobile newsletters with infotainment are frequently send to registered subscribers of campaign sites. Cross media campaigns are not popular. Campaign focus mainly on a single channel. Target users for mobile marketing are divided on some 10 different brands of handset makers: NEC, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Kyocera, Casio, SonyEricsson, Hitachi, Sanyo, and Mitsubishi. Each of them supplies one or more of the carriers. There is no dominant handset maker and no natural segmentation between age groups and carrier. The only way of targeting the attendants in a satisfactory way of the event is to enable delivery of messaging to all handset brands and models. Whereas SMS is the only effective means of marketing in most countries, Japanese consumers are happy to surf into a mobile site. Compared to most other countries the threshold for users to access mobile internet sites is far lower in Japan. Hence design, continuous updating and reliability of the mobile site are crucial elements for the success of the whole campaign. Our Services – One-Stop Shopping UBIT provides mobile mail gateway connectivity to the four Japanese carriers. Mobile marketing campaigns can be set-up using easy subscription mechanisms like mail or mobile site browsing. Once a user is registered mobile mail magazines can be distributed or loyalty programs (using a point-system) can be provided to increase effectiveness of the marketing campaign. Mobile sites can be set-up servicing the three carriers with optional user profiling tools. Advanced statistical analysis of site browsing and user interactions/preferences are provided on a hourly basis to measure the effect of the campaign. We provide an experienced multi-lingual team of mobile, technical and marketing experts to efficiently launch mobile campaigns.