Why you should use a quality Bluetooth marketing provider? (Part 1)
May 24, 2009 2 Comments
I would like to take head on a question I am asked or overhear being asked nearly every week:
“I want to do Bluetooth Marketing but why do I need someone like Hypertag when there are budget Bluetooth Marketing providers out there offering systems for as little as £75 ($100) ?”
I would advise you to always use a quality provider and I have summarised what I see as some of the key reasons:
Strong technical benefits
There are many technical reasons why quality Bluetooth marketing solutions who make significant investments in software development, provide better performance; here are just a couple of examples.
a. reliable simultaneous content download to several phones
If you have Bluetooth on your computer, it’s not that difficult to work out how to send an image from the computer to a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone. Frankly that’s the easy bit. If all you want to be able to do was that, then you would never need a Bluetooth Marketing provider in the first place. Budget providers only offer systems that work on the same basis.
Budget Bluetooth systems typically use only one Bluetooth transmitter. This works acceptably in a situation where you only have a low number of phones near a single Bluetooth system, but breaks down the minute you have many Bluetooth enabled phones in the vicinity. In most Bluetooth Marketing situations, it will be the case that many Bluetooth phones will be in the area and it is likely that many consumers will want to download content at the same time.
Hypertag uses multiple Bluetooth transceivers and antennae and uses sophisticated company-developed software that works out the optimum use of the transceiver to offer consumers the best experience without waiting for an existing download to complete. A simple computer equipped with a Bluetooth dongle can’t offer anything like the same experience.
b. reliable back-end networking
Budget providers often offer network-connected Bluetooth content servers that use a simple USB modem to manage the Bluetooth marketing system. If you have ever used this type of phone with a laptop, you are sure to be aware that an occasional crash occurs. The same will happen with a budget Bluetooth content server. Hypertag uses special modems and GPRS data network suppliers that are designed for 24/7 operation as having poor backhaul will often require the expense of a physical service visit – which will almost certainly blow your campaign budget!
1. Priority on download
This capability creates clear blue water between Hypertag and other quality providers – not just budget providers. Most Bluetooth content servers prioritise ‘pick up’, which means people receive the messages offering them the content download on their phone quickly but then they have to wait longer for the download. This is because the phone is so busy sending those initial messages to every phone in the vicinity that they do not have the time to do the download!
Hypertag uniquely prioritises download. We send the pick up message and then immediately ensure that the mobile phone has received the requested content before we move onto pick up another phone. This means people who receive the download message receive their content as quickly as possible. Through years of experience, we have found that this gives the best experience for consumers and leads to higher download levels.
Unfortunately, campaigns using budget Bluetooth marketing providers, will see lots of people being alerted in their campaigns, but few people will be able to download the content in a reasonable timeframe. They will just run out of patience and walk away very unhappy. This is not a good use of campaign budgets.
More phones will be compatible with the Bluetooth content server.
To work well, a Bluetooth content server needs a database of all mobile phones in current use. This is because every model of mobile phone has different capabilities in terms of what content can be shown and the aspect ratios and sizes of their screens. Before any content can be downloaded, the phone’s display capabilities needs to be identified.
Our phone database, which has over 1,500 different phones, is growing all the time. It’s kept up to date with new phones as they come onto the market. For budget providers, the costs of keeping such a database up to date are just too great. Furthermore, if you haven’t been keeping the phone database up to date over a period of time, it’s very hard to go back and provide support for phones that aren’t sold anymore.
One challenge is that Bluetooth content servers can’t recognise the exact model from the phone’s Bluetooth signature. All quality providers have to use a way of determining what model is requesting the download from information that is available. Hypertag calls this the phone’s ‘fingerprint’. To do this well, you have to have a very large fingerprint database and some clever software to work out which fingerprint is which phone and put its information together with that you have in your phone database.
To make this task really challenging, two completely different phones can fingerprint the same way. To uniquely identify a phone reliably, so that the vast majority of users receive the right content for their phone, you need some serious technical investment. It’s very unlikely that a budget provider will have any capability approaching this in their system.
Only experienced Bluetooth marketing providers have the means and the ability to implement these types of systems and keep them up to date.
In part 2, we will look at some more reasons why it is best to work with quality Bluetooth marketing providers.
Jonathan Morgan.
Bluetooth Proximity Marketing is a great marketing strategy that I have become very fond of. It is an excellent way for large or small companies to get their product out to the public, but only if the system works. There are a number of Bluetooth companies that I have come across while searching the web and a couple I have tried out myself; each company having its strengths and weaknesses. Some have more weaknesses than others. I was hoping I could offer information from my own experiences. I have personally tried out iBlue and Waymedia but not yet Futurelink.
The first company I tried out was iBlue the “mobile solutions providers”. This company is based out of Egypt and at first glance appears to be very stable with a wide range of advertising devices to meet all marketing needs. After several trials of their devices, I found their first-glance image was not the truth.
First of all, most of our population carry a BlackBerry and their systems do not work with the Blackberry handsets. That is a real problem! The false capabilities of their products do not stop there. They claim that their devices can be managed remotely by using the Octopus solution; one could manage a number of networks at once. This is not true. A great deal of time and money has been invested in to making this device a success in a number of countries and it has failed. Also, iBlue claims that their devices work with any mini PC and this is not the case. They have failed to work with many new computers which then forces the client to purchase the hardware directly from iBlue. Most importantly, they have less than perfect customer service policies. During my first few contacts, iBlue made prompt and informative responses. After purchasing a device that customer service, comes to an end.
The second company I tried out is, Waymedia, a Bluetooth marketing company located in Italy. This company is well established with a number of partnering companies in Latin America and Europe, including Mexico and Slovenia.
Unlike, iBlue their system does work with the Blackberry handsets and moreover, by using the Mobitouch Cube, all the units connect to their central server and can be managed through an online portal and can integrate WiFi to use with Apple iPhones. They have a number of devices which can meet any marketing need. Each device is designed for a specific type of marketing; proximity marketing to digital interactive marketing and beyond. There is no “one device fits all” here. Transmission distance for Waymedia devices are between 25-30 meters and I found this to be a real strength. A weakness that Waymedia has is that their prices are quite expensive. They are charging$2000 EURO per year for rebranding.
The final company I investigated, but have not yet tried is Futurelink. This company was only founded in 2003 with their headquarters in Barcelona Spain and they have a partner network, spanning the globe including countries such as Venezuela and Croatia.
In keeping with the latest technological trends, Futurelink have designed their devices to work with the Blackberry handsets. Futurelink offers a range of marketing products which go beyond proximity marketing. They have products for digital signage, downloading multimedia from the internet, mobile- website creation, application creation and so much more. This alone, makes them very appealing. In additional strength that Futurelink has is the distance of transmission, which is 25-30m. Unfortunately, they charge $2500 USD for a device and the software and outrageously, they ask for a commitment of $80 000 USD in sales in one year for OEM. That is quite the commitment!
After trying out two of these three companies I realized that although they each have some strengths none of them are “The Bluetooth Company” to make a part of my marketing scheme. I’m still looking for a company that has innovative products, all round services and a price that I can handle. The search continues.
Dear Monica,
As someone who helped establish the industry and has tried to expand it in a manner that gives people confidence in using Proximity Marketing, it saddens me to see yet another tale of poor experience in the industry.
Hypertag, which I helped establish in 2001, has always tried to focus on a few key principles:
1. User Experience is everything – if the user finds it hard, it won’t be used.
2. The user is always in control – we don’t SPAM, we want systems that allow permissive downloads
3. Reliability – if the system isn’t reliable, people will lose confidence
These principles guide what we have always done, and for that reason, I believe we have consistently had the market leading solution.
If you would like to find out about how using Proximity Marketing solutions can be a positive experience, please get in touch with me at jonathan.morgan@hypertag.com
Our systems work with BlackBerry and iPhone, but we will be honest with you up front about what can and can not be done.
Thanks,
Jonathan
MD, Hypertag Ltd