Mobile Marketing Association’s Consumer Best Practices Committee

By Marsha Forbes

The Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) Consumer Best Practices (CBP) Committee met in Boca Raton, Florida on February 4th and 5th to continue its charge of shaping the mobile industry as a viable, profitable market place that provides value to the end user.

The forum and CBP meeting was hosted by mobile technology provider, 3Cinteractive, who also co-sponsored the event with Neustar.

The meetings spanned two days and concluded with an open CBP forum, which gave attendees an opportunity to hear from MMA executives, carrier representatives and other industry experts.

Presenters and speakers shared case studies of 2009’s mobile success stories and offered theories about the future of mobile marketing.

Michael Becker, the newly appointed MMA North America Managing Director, opened the meeting, describing the main objective as bringing “all pieces of the ecosystem together.”

Though the agenda covered a wide range of topics including mobile donations, MMS and WAP billing, a common theme quickly emerged: how can we facilitate the growth of the mobile industry in a manner that allows for profitable business models to thrive while also protecting the consumer.

The committee faces the unique challenge of representing the concerns of carriers, who want to ensure the safe handling of their subscribers, and content providers, who fear rules and regulations that weaken their business models.

All agree that self-regulation is preferable to the introduction of a third-party authority, such as the FCC.

“Friday’s open forum was a great validation of the points addressed in Thursday’s committee meeting,” stated 3Cinteractive’s Director of Service Operations, Niki Dunbar. “The committee’s charter must adapt so that it can bridge the gap between the current CBP focus, and the needs within our industry. It was clear that we must continue to uphold the carriers’ guidelines for protecting the wireless subscriber, and address consumer privacy in a way that will maintain our ability to self-regulate. Additionally, we must plan for and embrace innovation in the marketplace, while easing the pain of launching new programs and managing existing ones.”

With carriers, aggregators, application service providers and content providers present, the open forum format allowed for a lively discussion on the committee’s current progress and suggested future goals.

Some of the main action points:

1) Develop a standard set of core guidelines based on proven best practices
This has been the overall objective of the committee for some time. Ellen Roberson, AT&T’s Director, Consumer Data Products, highlighted last year’s CBP activities, which showcased the great strides the committee has taken towards the unification of rules and regulations.

Bringing all carrier playbooks together in one document, creating transparency around carrier rules and merging the commonalities in cross carrier rules were among the committee’s tangible accomplishments.

Committee members, however, expressed concern at the tendency of carriers to release updates to those rules after the CBP’s document has been published. Many commented this practice reverts back to the original model of a widely diverse and more complex set of rules and regulations.

A schedule for updates was proposed to allow for ongoing and unpredictable legal issues that sometimes require carriers to change rules mid-year.

2) A new concept, Trusted Partners
When carrier representatives described their upcoming initiatives to open up Location Based Services and refund APIs, they introduced the idea of “trusted partners.” This concept could be used more generally to address other content provider concerns.

As expected, the open format led to discussions of lengthy program approval cycles. One proposed solution was for the carriers and aggregators to begin to recognize trusted or certified partners to streamline this process.

Such a designation would allow those who qualify to move programs through the approval process at a faster rate.

3) Create different rules for standard versus premium rate programs
Also in the interest of speeding up program approvals, attendees suggested the rules and regulations regarding program submissions and audits be created separately for standard versus premium rate programs.

Carrier representatives and content providers agreed the increased efficiency resulting from creating a new set of rules applicable to standard rate program only would be beneficial on both sides.

Carriers could reduce the amount of resources needed to approve standard rate programs that carry only a minimal risk of poor consumer experience. Content providers would enjoy faster approval times and fewer audits for these types of programs.

4) WAP Billing, a major initiative
All carriers represented at the forum, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile, seemed to agree that WAP billing presents an excellent opportunity to provide mobile marketing services that offer the best possible consumer experience.

Among the most important benefits associated with WAP billing is a format that allows users to pay for content without breaking the experience. They can go from discovery, to purchase, to download, without leaving the mobile website.

This benefits the content provider, who can now offer the user a simpler consumer experience, and the carrier, who is assured the user gets exactly want he or she wants to purchase.

The Consumer Best Practices committee expressed a commitment to use the comments and concerns addressed in the forum as the starting point for the building of their objectives for 2010.

While a number of elements make up the CBP, its main product is the Consumer Best Practices Guidelines document, which is published annually with updates added throughout the year.

“The Consumer Best Practices guidelines are updated every six months in response to the ever-evolving needs of the marketplace,” said Michael Becker, MMA North America Managing Director. “Specifically, the MMA Consumer Best Practices committee works to align the needs of consumers, marketers, mobile marketing solutions providers and carriers in order to capture the compliance requirements of each player and to establish leading industry best practices as the standards of care in mobile marketing.”

People in all parts of the ecosystem – aggregators, content providers, and application service providers – will be looking to this document in future months to assess the committee’s progress in its goal to address the needs of its members.

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Posted in Marketing on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 | 5 Comments »

Tags: 3Cinteractive, Michael Becker, MMA CBP Committee, MMA Consumer Best Practices Committee, mobile, Mobile marketing, Mobile Marketing Association, Neustar, Niki Dunbar

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