Wireless Rules: New Marketing Strategies for Customer Relationship Management Anytime, Anywhere

The ultimate 'holy grail' of the marketing world is 'anyone at anytime at anyplace. The authors, a consultant and academic (and also it appears father and daughter) refer to this phenomenon as "Madison Avenue meets Main Street out for a walk. Mobile commerce is their focus along with how to incorporate that opportunity into your corporate customer relationship management (CRM) campaign. The biggest challenge of this book and many of the new wireless books is that if you don't know the lingo you might be left out. No glossary is included although there is an extensive 'endnotes' section to see where they got the info from.In 31 chapters they cover lots of ground from the future of marketing to advertising-on-the-go to retailer advice. They tell us that more than 1 billion web-enabled phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants will be in the use worldwide (300 million in the US, compared to about 120 million today). They cover examples in b2b(business to business) and in direct-to-consumer marketing. So many chapters, so many topics, if there is any criticism it is that they set out to cover it all. How does wireless fit into the new multi-channel approach to marketing, sales and advertising? What's the new business eco-system that is evolving? Would have loved to have had more of an overview in the beginning. Alas, also no photos or screenshots of the ads and alerts leave us wondering what wireless will look like. Talking about 3G without seeing a phone or a screen is challenging. They do a nice job. Good book to give you an overview. Read with a yellow marker in hand so you can underline what's relevant to your background/mandate. Good reference book. One of the earliest wireless marketing books out there. Would have loved to see a full CRM plan for sample business arenas is retail, franchises, hospitality etc to see how wireless fits into a complete customer relations program. They do mention many applications but are not always specific about what technology, service and integration is used to complete the wireless apps. Would be fascinated to see a review by someone not deeply entrenched in the wireless world. Kudos to the authors for covering the ground they did...

Just when you were starting to get comfortable with using the Internet as part of your business model, along comes wireless electronic communications to complicate matters! Much of what you learned about working with the Internet will not work with wireless electronic connections. For example, the amount of information the a screen holds is tiny. Also, a cellular telephone message can be more intrusive. Those who receive the messages can more easily be overwhelmed. And on the problems go.Before you start to think that all of this will be something that others will have to deal with, think again! Wireless connectivity already reaches tens of millions of people in Europe, Japan, and the United States. The numbers will swell to hundreds of millions of people within five years. So, wireless communications for business will expand faster than the Internet did. Are you ready? Probably not.This excellent book explains the likely shape of the new technologies, the practical problems that businesses will have, and how customers and consumers will probably react to the kinds of offerings that people routinely make on the Internet. In many cases, the reaction will be negative. Do you really want to get a discount offer for life insurance while traveling on a highway trying to make a plane? Although no one knows what forms of business will work best on wireless devices (cellular telephones, personal digital assistants, and devices yet to be designed), whenever these are created there will be a tidal wave of opportunity for the early innovators that will make dot-com mania look small by comparison. This book won't answer that question either, but it will help you avoid making many of the worst mistakes as you conceptualize, design, test, and implement.Clearly, business-to-business applications will work pretty well. Adding information to mobility will usually make it easier to do your job. On the other hand, it will be harder for business people to get away from serving their clients . . . unless they provide great ways for the clients to serve themselves. The dicey part comes with consumers. Imagine getting hundreds of e-mails daily on your cellular phone, trying to sell you something you don't want, each one of which costs you money. The cellular carriers can make a bundle, but consumers will be steaming!Clearly, the solution will be all kinds of more elaborate permission marketing that give consumers more flexibility about receiving and responding to communications. Etiquette and consideration will become more important, as will ease of interaction. Anyone who works in a business or uses a cellular telephone will find this book valuable. Read it now to reap the best of the immediate future, or weep as you are victimized by these changes! The wireless business model is about to land like a 8000 pound gorilla on your wireless device!After you finish this book, I suggest that you think about what tasks you can do better with wireless c