A part of our business at MIG is in the area of Premium Rate SMS - you know - the kind of stuff you see day in, day out on TV - "Text us your answer" and the user pays £1 to enter the competition. The scale of this type of messaging in the UK is monumental, and it's often this, and people's misunderstanding of it, that creates some concern about running mobile activity.

However, the flexible charging that is possible in SMS gives rise to an equal number of opportunities for marketers. One of these is the notion of FREE SMS messaging. This isn't the same as ‘standard rate' where the user pays their regular charge (10-12p on average) for each message sent to a shortcode, but is in fact 100% free to users, thus enabling them to take part in longer or more detailed interactions that can prove beneficial for the user in terms of requesting info, playing a game or whatever, and for the brand, who can extract more data and convey more rewards to the user without worrying about them draining their credit.

Of course this is particularly useful in the public sector and youth marketing. NHS Choices' mobile services (try it - text DOCTOR to 64746 - it's free!) use it throughout to enable free access to a raft of health care providers. Likewise Directov make accessing their WAP portal via SMS free as well. The 0p-rated shortcode is therefore seen naturally as a tool to engage lower demographics who are more cash-conscious and perhaps not such natural web-users.

But one of the biggest areas of profit for a marketer is in survey work. A survey is clearly a sensible measure to assess measures such as brand recall, perception etc. Having run a number of these surveys over the years, I never fail to be astonished by the responsiveness of the mobile audience, and by the enjoyment that certain demographics display in interacting with you.

If you send a text to a list of mobile numbers who have previously taken part in your promotion, whether it's a text-and-win, free sample or whatever, you will generally get around a 30% response rate, and of these, I have seen over 80% go on to answer 10 questions or more.

People love to chat by text. And this goes equally for brands. One of the most rewarding parts of mobile surveys is seeing how users tell you loads of things you don't ask for, in unprompted questions. For example, in a recent survey for an FMCG product, as well as the regular stuff around age, gender, location, consumption and media habits etc, we found countless people who wanted to suggest new flavours, many who wanted to just tell the brand how much they love the product, and even more who wanted to tell us how much a part of their family life it is.

Of course, you can get some of this from very small user bases in closed research suites, but for a really large user base of people opening up to you from the comfort of their living room, mobile is a powerful tool to consider.

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