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O2 opens up SMS marketing to SMEs
Monday, September 23 2002
by Andrew McLindon


O2 Ireland has launched a premium SMS platform that lets companies market their
services across Europe without having to sign-up with individual mobile
operators. 









 



O2 Ireland said on Monday that the platform will enable businesses to reach more
than 100 million mobile phone users in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands and
Germany, regardless of their mobile phone network and from a single point of
contact. O2 claimed that it was the first operator to offer such as service. 



 

"Up until now, companies wanting to use premium and standard text messages for
marketing purposes have had to make individual arrangements with different
network operators or third-party providers, which has meant customers having to
use different codes and/or methods to access them," said Campbell Scott, product
director with O2 Ireland parent company mmO2. "With this platform, you only
have to speak to one operator and any mobile user, regardless of whether they are
an O2 customer or not, can use the services offered."

 



According to O2, its so-called Premium Services Platform will support a range of
business applications including SMS marketing, mobile worker management, and CRM.
Scott said that uses of the platform to date include text voting for the recent
television series, "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here," and by the RAC to
inform customers via mobile phone about how long it will take breakdown vehicles
to get to them.  

 

Scott added that he expected the move to open up the SMS marketing market to
SMEs. "Previously, high cost and lack of technical expertise has prevented many
companies, particularly smaller ones, from optimising the mobile medium, but
these problems are addressed by the simplicity of the O2 platform," he remarked.


 



The service will be initially targeted at the broadcast and media sectors and
will eventually be extended to the financial services, transport, and utilities
markets. 

 



Scott said that he expected the platform to earn O2 "tens of millions" of euro
over the next few years, and that the O2 Group anticipated signing-up "hundreds"
of service providers across Europe.  As well as being available in the
countries where O2 has a presence, Scott said that O2 will also look after the
necessary arrangements in nations where it does not have a footprint. 

 



SMS marketing is being used more and more by businesses. Recent research has
found that over 500,000 Irish people have received advertising/marketing messages
through their mobile phones, while Ovum has predicted that the premium SMS market
in Western Europe will be worth USD6.6 billion by the end of 2004.