I am sure you have heard the hype about mobile being such an immediate medium. When I talk to marketers about immediacy, they say “yes, mobile is very immediate” without an exception. But it seems more like an abstract concept to marketers than a day to day practice.

What does immediacy actually mean?

Let’s, for a moment, fast forward ourselves to the upcoming Football World Cup in South Africa. “Goal! Goal! Goal!” our team has made it into the next round and we could not be more excited. Everybody is hugging each other and celebrations spill over to bars and homes.

Now is the time to talk to people:

1. Everybody is full of emotions: Proud, patriotic, unified, upbeat about the team, ecstatic about winning a bet,… Emotions are the number one driver for purchases, everywhere, universally.
2. Thoughts and actions of masses are synchronised: It is very predictable what most people will be doing after the match. Only a few will be thinking about work, be stuck in a dinner or similar formal event.
3. Likely to read the message: People communicate, to meet in bars, to tell spouses that they will be reaching home late, and to simply exchange their excitement via SMS and phone calls. When you have your phone in hand, you are likely to read the message.
4. Likely to do impulse buys: We are all most strongly influenced by our most recent experiences.

An essential point to understand: no other marketing channel can drive more return out of immediacy than mobile.

From our experience, we find that when promotions are sent immediately after an event, the response rates go up by 5 times, than when it is communicated later (outside of immediacy context).

How to use the essential 5 Minutes of Mobile Marketing?

For a marketer, the key to leveraging immediacy is to project oneself into the emotional lifecycle of the target audience. This is not difficult, but I often see that it is not done as marketers are pre-occupied with internal “plumbing” of the delivery of campaigns. It’s too easy not to think about the consumer’s perspective sufficiently, there are plenty of operational excuses in every organisation.

So my advice is: free up your marketers from operational burdens! Once you have done this, they can think about the emotional lifecycle of a consumer for an event like a football match:

1. Getting Prepared: Where do I watch the game? Can I bring my friends? What about food and drinks? Which football shirt to wear? Wishing to see it live in the stadium! Great opportunities for marketing.
2. During the Match: Mixed emotions, depending on who is in the lead. Tension. “Uhs” and “Ahs” for missed opportunities. Difficult marketing here, minefields.
3. After the Match: Huge disappointment or huge excitement. Critical to distinguish between them to make marketing relevant.

Seize the Moment

Here are some examples for campaigns that react in a timely manner to the emotional lifecycle of a consumer in the context of sports events like the Football World Cup

1. Offer alerts to those who cannot watch the match 1 hour before the match starts. Sadness about not being able to watch the match will yield high conversion rates.
2. Ad-Hoc campaigns based on unusual events like Zidane’s headbutt in the World Cup 2006 can be exciting and bring in higher response rates. Watch and be prepared to react instantly to what moves people’s emotions, besides who wins or loses the game. Be unusual, innovative and quick, and sell humorous products that relate to the event. Appoint one creative person in your marketing team to observe the mood and spot what is hot in real-time. Watch Twitter and other real-time interactive media to feel the pulse of the match. Execute such contextual campaigns within 15 minutes.
3. Match-End Campaign: send the communication the very second the match ends. Have 3 campaign copies/offer options prepared for all possible outcomes, win/loose/draw. Immediacy creates relevance.
4. Sepp Herberger, German Football Coach, widely known for his quotes, says, “After the game is before the game”. Seize the excitement of the consumer looking forward to the next game. Communicate to him 1 or 2 hours after the close of the match (depending on time of the day), and offer sponsored tickets to watch the next match live. Very high ROI potential, as even a single ticket (low incentive cost) has very high perceived value in such a context.

In marketing history so many publications have talked about immediacy and recency being the key ROI drivers. They are all right, and finally we have the channel that can actually make this vision come true.

Don’t fall into the convenient trap of just copying principles from all the previous channels (including online). Not all apply here and there are many more powerful ways the mobile channel can be exploited.

Make a change, think how mobile can exploit the emotional consumer lifecycle and be experimental and iterative in your approach. And don’t let technology barriers stand in your way, that’s not an excuse anymore.