EMS GREETING CARDS, WHY DON’T WE HAVE THEM?

EMS GREETING CARDS, WHY DON’T WE HAVE THEM?

Greeting cards are as old as the desire to show modesty, courteousness and an acknowledgement of a relationship with another individual or group. They express our sentiments, feelings, and a recognition of the ties that bind us together and can be used on occasion, events or at shared moments.

The mobile media should be seen as a ready tool that is at the point of flashes of creativity for its owner and is more suited for greeting cards as telephony is a creative tool for long-distance communication. Like every other media before it, the mobile media would benefit, in our country, from a dedicated greeting card, shared amongst every operator, with all the bells and whistles of our traditional print offerings.

It should be realized that greeting cards make it easy for one to express an emotion at a point in time, when the feeling has just washed over us or delay the expression and give them life in words at a later time. If we can get personal despite the 160 characters limitation of SMS, we can become even more cosy so with the Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) service which is an advance over the SMS that provides for interactivity, animation, ringtones, sound and graphics on the textual layer of a basic SMS.

Furthermore, no delivery can be as instant as an EMS greeting card such that the sender will be satisfied that an action that began with so much symbolism behind it ended the way he/she would have wanted it to be. By the way, a sender won’t be billed beyond the basic SMS country tariffs.

How much does it take to send a greeting card on print? Most of us do send greeting cards by hand, especially the more personal ones (not overlooking the fact that snailmail also handles a huge amount of this traffic also). With the card, the message and the transport medium are just at the tip of one’s fingers, paying for a little less than the cost of print is not money well spent, but also enjoyed with pleasure.

I wonder why we don’t see applications written for this purpose in our mobile networks? I can remember MTN’s Y’ello valentine promo during the valentine. What beats me is why that initiative was caged within a season. Greeting cards aren’t seasonal, they live for a lifetime.

I believe our mobile carriers do not realize they should be running subscriber sensitization campaigns on what services are available and can be discovered on their networks. Flashing text messages at infrequent intervals is not just enough. This should be carried out with the aim of creating a local pool of developers for the mobile media who can be relied upon to provide creative content at the lowest cost.

Marketing agencies should also be involved because they can build brand awareness and launch campaigns around EMS greeting cards, enticing subscribers with ringtone enclosed brand logos and branded messages, in collaboration with other members of the ecosystem, making this cards free to subscribers like television advertising is.

We don’t need to wait for subscribers to ask for a service, they need to be directed to as much water of services that can be made available and then given the freedom to choose which best meets their needs and provides utility.

We do need greeting cards on our mobile phones, if our carriers care to listen.