Sasko Flour integrates mobile into marketing mix

Sasko Flour has begun utilising mobile marketing as part of marketing strategy to build direct relationships with its customers. Mo-B and Multimedia Solutions have provided Sasko Flour with a number of mobile solutions, integrating them with TV and store promotions to expand the company's reach into the market.

Lisanne Bower, Sasko Flour Brand Manager, says this has included SMS campaigns around a TV show, creating a mobile website (mobisite), where recipes and tips have been made available to consumers, and SMS competitions accompanying in-store promotions.

"The attraction of mobile marketing for Sasko Flour lies in its ability to reach a large number of people across age, cultural and LSM groups. Being the first flour producing brand in the market to utilise the technology also gives us a competitive advantage," she says.

Candice Goodman, Mo-B director, says Sasko Flour began its mobile strategy through an SMS campaign linked to the TV show Mara and Friends with Idols judge, Mara Louw.

"Mo-B specialises in building relationships through the mobile phone, mobile entertainment and integrating TV and mobile marketing strategies. Mo-B director, Uwe Beckmann, directed the TV show in which Mara chatted to South African celebrities in her kitchen. Viewers were then invited to SMS in to have a recipe booklet posted to them," she says. "Over 20 000 people responded and once they had had the chance to try some of the recipes, we followed this up with an SMS campaign asking respondents what their favourite recipes were. The response was overwhelmingly positive," she says.

The top ten recipes and others were then put onto Sasko Flour's new mobile website (mobisite) - www.saskoflour.mobi - which was developed by Multimedia Solutions. The mobisite optimises content for viewing on all cellphones, making the content much more accessible to a larger base of Sasko Flour customers.

Building on the now strong relationship with its customers, Sasko Flour followed up with two campaigns: inviting customers to comment on Sasko Flour's packaging and an invitation to Mara Louw's fan club on mo-B's Fan Touch, the newly launched SA celebrity mobile fan club service (www.fantouch.mobi).

Response:

Goodman says mobile marketing has proved to be a powerful weapon in Sasko Flour's marketing strategy.

"The two things that have stood out in Sasko Flour's use of mobile marketing have been the high response rates and the emotive replies Sasko Flour has received from its customers," she says.

This included a 25 percent response rate on customers' favourite recipes and a 21 percent response rate from customers commenting on Sasko Flour's packaging.

Bower says the communication through to people's cellphones also created more of a personal touch with people being greeted by name. The personal communication resulted in some touching replies including: "Yes I've received my booklet. Thanks to you Sasko Flour Family. I like page 10,and may you please send me the recipe of that cake showed on the last page number 36 and other types of cakes ... so please guys you're my family now I'm counting on you, please. I WISH YOU SASKO FLOUR FAMILY ALL THE BEST, many families depend on you because we even do business of cookies baked with Sasko Flour."

"The responses showed that we were reaching a wide range of people including those working in bakeries or home industry stores, which are key target markets for us. Furthermore, the unsubscribe rate was extremely low with only a handful of people choosing to unsubscribe from the communications.

"We'll be looking to build on this with the upcoming in-store promotions where many prizes will be given out and which will be supported by an SMS campaign" she says.

Power of mobile:

Riaan Groenewald, Multimedia Solutions Operations Director, says the Sasko Flour campaigns show the power of using mobile marketing to build direct relationship with customers as well as using it to complement other marketing initiatives.

"The key to Sasko Flour strategy was integrating mobile with TV, direct mailing in the form of the recipe book, using that to make people aware of mobisite and communicating regularly via SMS and MMS," he says.

Additional functionality has been added to the Sasko Flour website (www.saskoflour.co.za) and mobisite including a free SMS facility so that consumers can have the list of ingredients to their favourite recipes SMSed to them for when they go shopping.

"Sasko Flour's use of mobile technology is a classic example of how a company has used the consumer's most treasured possession - the cellphone - to strengthen their relationship with their clients. Importantly, the strategy made interacting with the company entertaining and beneficial for the consumer, which is reflected in the high response rates," he says. "It can now build on this initial success and grow their base, offering additional innovative solutions through the mobile channel."

Multimedia Solutions:

Multimedia Solutions is a mobile marketing company, providing a host of marketing, advertising, informational and educational solutions to our clients using mobile technology.

Not to be confused with a Wireless Application Service Provider (Wasp) or an advertising agency, Multimedia Solutions is a Value Added Service Provider. Launched in 2005, Multimedia Solutions has developed a number of mobile marketing solutions including a mobile marketing platform which has been used to create over 200 000 unique MMS and send out over 30 million MMS.

Multimedia Solutions has created mobile marketing solutions in the automotive, financial, cellular, FMCG and eventing industries.

mo-B:

For more information on mo-B visit: www.mo-b.co.za

Or contact mo-B director Candice Goodman on:
083 326 2461
az.oc.b-om@ydnac