• August 26, 2009

Delta Airlines is using mobile marketing to promote its international business routes and destinations via a travel tips text-messaging campaign.

The campaign, from Digitas and Phonevalley, developed the initiative, which presents frequent travelers with a visual list of Delta's worldwide destinations and invites them to text the name of select destinations (i.e., Tokyo) to a short code (44144). In return, they receive a series of tips that will help improve business practices in the featured destination, which help them know what to lend insight to in business practices abroad. The final message of each set includes a link to the Delta mobile Internet site. There the consumer may elect to research and manage flight options.

Delta's first text-messaging campaign ran in Q4 2008 and was well received. The average consumer was likely to interact with the entire set of tips per location. To examine the level of consumer engagement, Delta focused on response measures and beyond. Response metrics such as frequency and completion rate enable a brand to quantify a mobile campaign's ability to serve as a total marketing vehicle.--Tanya Irwin