Hip-hop fans hoping to see a recent Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige concert could try winning tickets by texting messages to a contest sponsored by Downtown Locker Room.

In doing so, they agreed to become part of DTLR’s “mobile club” — which means they now receive text messages from the purveyor of urban fashion, music and footwear.

The arrangement marks Downtown Locker Room’s first step into mobile marketing, a method that marketing director Jeffrey Bowden says fits well with DTLR’s grass-roots approach to attracting the business.

“When you think about the technology behind it you don’t really think ‘grass roots,’” Bowden says. “But it really is because you are reaching your [customers] … in a way that they want to be reached.

“Texting is viable for them because they are the ones that really created it,” Bowden says. “They are the ones that made it so big. So now I’m reaching them in a way that’s familiar” to them.

Hanover, Md.-based DTLR has about 65 stores in Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Depending on the region, some stores go by DTLR; the others use the full Downtown Locker Room name.

Bowden says he had been looking for a mobile marketing vendor when he got a call from BrandonDavenport, co-founder and COO of Baltimore-based Vesta Mobile Solutions. Vesta Mobile Solutions has been courting a wide spectrum of potential clients, from broadcasters to colleges. “There is huge potential” for retailers, Davenport says. “It’s all about the idea that you can talk directly to your customer or your audience at any time.”

Downtown Locker Room’s marketing is very much aimed at being visible in the places its customers are most likely to look: it is on Facebook. And you find several examples of DTLR’s many in-store artist appearances on YouTube. Bowden even tried to get the retailer on the recently completed HBO series “The Wire,” which would have been sure to create some buzz.

All about buzz
And DTLR is all about buzz — another reason the company has started to text. Sending messages to a mobile club member who might be hanging out with friends can have its advantages. “If his phone clicks and he’s with a gang of guys he may say, ‘Hey. I just got this: The new Jordan’s are hitting tomorrow,’” Bowden says.

Used properly, texting can be more immediate and social than e-mail, he says. “These kids are never without their phones,” Bowden says.

Davenport agrees. “There is a sense of exclusivity — a sense of being important,” he says. “You are receiving information that other people aren’t.”

Davenport says mobile marketing generates a 17 to 24 percent return on message — “a huge difference from e-mail.”

Eighty-three percent of marketers surveyed for a recent Forrester Research report said that mobile marketing’s effectiveness will increase in the near term. Only 30 percent of mobile owners have interacted with some form of marketing on their phones, according to the report which asserts that the “lack of exposure is largely a supply-and-demand issue; as more marketers integrate mobile mechanisms into campaigns, more users will have a chance to derive value from these tools.”

DTLR is still working with software that would allow the retailer to take better advantage of texting’s potential. Bowden hopes to soon be at the point where DTLR’s text messages could include a link that mobile club members could then use to download exclusive coupons.

“It is important that you put some type of call to action on there,” Davenport says.

Bowden says the potential to track ROI is another appealing aspect of mobile marketing, but thus far he has been judicious about the number of messages that he has sent to mobile club members. Some new clothing lines may merit a message; others may not. “I’ve got the buying department involved on the marketing end, making sure we decide what is really good information.”

Bowden also says he will stick to the “code” of texters that just about any teenager can recite. “It’s got to be short, sweet and straight to the point,” he says. “It’s ‘DTLR. $20 coupon.’ Bam.”