Amnesty International are a great charity. So it is reassuring to hear that having reviewed SMS technology a few years ago, their UK branch decided that taking donations via mobile phones wouldn’t work for them.
I tried this back in the UK a few years ago and reached the same conclusion. The phone companies were being greedy and there were limitations on the amount you could viably take.
But that wasn’t the only downfall of using SMS as another payment method. I found that people just didn’t get it.
I tested making a donation via SMS against texting for entry into a prize draw. Guess which won? The prize draw of course. But the really great thing about this was when we phoned people and asked them to make monthly donations. Our contact rates were high, as the data was 100% accurate, and people carried their mobiles with them everywhere. We called soon after they entered the draw whilst their memory was fresh, and the campaign was a success.
The fact that Amnesty in the UK have recently signed up to LUUL is something to watch out for. Will people really want to use their mobile in this way? Of course kids will love it… but will they make good donors? Years ago Ericsson and Nokia were salivating over drinks vending machines that dispensed cans of pop when you texted them… but of course mobile phones just can’t trump coins.
If you ask me… mobile phones are great for prospect pooling, not taking donations, but let’s wait and see.
You can read a full story about this at ITPro.
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