Sniper finds target
ONE Gold Coast start-up is doing a lot to prove that the rumours of the death of MMS (multimedia messaging service) have been greatly exaggerated.
Mobile Digital was launched by Eibhlis Stuckey as a patented process of personalising and building an animated GIF or static PNG for delivery as an MMS.
The company launched its platform – Sniper – in November, 2017, with 20 enterprise clients on board, and is looking to add staff to cope with increased demand.
Ms Stuckey was running a company called Gift Digital – which produced and delivered digital gift cards.
However, the business faced industry opposition because it relies on breakage – consumers not using the cards – to produce a profit.
However, one client – Dean Taylor of Cracker Wines – asked them to send an MMS with a gift card to his clients as a one-off in 2015.
“Rather than people buying the gift cards he wanted to send some out as a thank you to customers. He said: ‘I love your product it never fails. Can send 40 to my top clients’?”
They did and he had a redemption rate of 42 per cent – a very high rate.
They next trialled a promotional offer for Valentine’s Day in 2016, sending 12,000 visual MMS messages.
“We had a redemption rate of 18 per cent. His regular campaigns were getting less than a one per cent redemption rate through such tools as email. He spent $6000 with us and generated revenue in excess of $250,000 in 12 days. We thought, ‘we’re not charging enough’.”
Ms Stuckey said the next client was Harris Farm Markets, which sent an offer to 11,000 “non-fiscal” customers.
“These customers had filled a cart and never completed it. They were people who had given them their details and said, ‘I like your stuff’, but hadn’t done anything,” she said.
Harris Farm had a redemption rate of about 19 per cent for its offer of $49 free groceries if customers spent $150.
“They didn’t tell us their exact figures but their website did go down.”
Ms Stuckey said there was a perception that Whatsapp, and other messaging services, had killed MMS.
“MMS was the secondhighest earner prior to messaging apps such as Whatsapp,” she said. “Everyone was sending pictures to one another. The second Whatsapp came out, they stole the thunder. It was a fight with Telstra to get them to see MMS is not dead. People want to be contacted by text they do not want to be phone called.”
Mobile Digital now has a customer base that includes Sydney-based mealkit delivery service HelloFresh.