We’ve given our writers time off today to eat barbecue, watch fireworks, or do whatever else they want to celebrate Independence Day, a.k.a. The Fourth of July.

All you readers outside the U.S. who happen to be working today: Now you know how we feel when y’all get to go on long summer and December holidays :-p

In the spirit of things, I’ll just wish everyone a happy summer holiday specific to various countries. (BTW these greetings fall well under the 160-character SMS message limit.)

 So: Happy Bastille Day! Happy O-Bon! Happy Canada Day! Happy Midsummer/St. John’s Day/Festa Junina!

And of course, Happy Fourth!

Share This

Tatango is a new service launching July 15th that offers free group-messaging services from a PC or mobile device. It’s actually the re-birth of the popular NetworkText service that grew by leaps and bounds since it’s October 2007 launch.  They serviced over 400,000 users and 15,000,000 total text messages in their short existence as NetworkText, and have since improved the overall platform for it’s version 2.0, which will now sport the Tantango brand.

They offer simple web-based access to your groups list which allow you to simply send a mass-SMS to your groups with the click of a button. You can also access your groups, and broadcast a message from your mobile device as well.  It’s a perfect solution for letting your friends know what the plans are for the night, or to let your employees know about a meeting change quick and easily.  The service, of course, includes full permission control by way of opt-out and other privacy barriers.

From a mobile advertiser’s perspective, it provides a perfect cost-efficient solution to building mobile customer lists, and marketing to those lists on an on-going basis without racking up fees. For a small-business owner who doesn’t send a constant stream of advertisements over a long period of time, it’s a great solution.

Read the rest

Share This

Nokia is trying to fix what they call “a black art, practiced in a cottage-industry fashion.” In other words; mobile marketing deployment and education. They’re introducing a series of “Ad Labs” aimed at training the staff of advertising agencies about the intricacies of mobile advertising.

The program will be aimed at integrating various mobile advertising formats together to improve customer engagement.  Advertisers will be able to plan and execute campaigns, with their target audience in mind, and also be able to measure their effectiveness along the way.

Several companies like Mobiqa, Mobile Acuity, uLocate, and more have already signed up for the alliance because they provide services such as image recognition, digital coupons, mobile barcodes and location based targeting, etc.

By establishing offices in advertising hotbeds such as Boston and London, they hope to provide a catalyst to the mobile advertising ecosystem and boost knowledge and understanding of mobile marketing practices and techniques overall. Mike Baker, head of advertising for Nokia, stated…

“…with so many mobile ad technologies now available, discussions about reach and measurement are no longer relevant, but rather it’s creativity (or the lack of it) which is responsible for holding back the medium…”

Read the rest

Share This

Mobile sites focused on the Beijing Olympics are springing up like daisies. Yahoo! has a mobile site for the big games, as does NBC, of course and I’m sure there are dozens, if not hundreds more in the works. When I first saw this I was pretty excited both as a consumer and as mobile marketer.

But as soon as I logged into the Yahoo mobile site I realized something interesting – I won’t need to use the mobile site to keep up with what’s going on because of the time zone difference. When it is daytime here in Denver (when I am most likely to be mobile and want to check in on the latest goings-on in the games away from my PC and TV) it is the middle of the night in Beijing. Nothing will be happening live for which I’ll need immediate access on my mobile.

Read the rest

Share This

Almost 24,000 Canadians have signed an online petition at RuniediPhone.com to protest the high priced iPhone plans announced by Rogers. The 3G iPhone is set to debut in 22 countries around the world on July 11th. Evidentially in Canada it will not be a purely joyful introduction.

The Rogers iPhone plans start at $60 per month for 150 weekday minutes, include only 400MB of data and 75 text messages. To get 800 weekday minutes, 2GB of data and 300 text messages the plan costs $115 per month. There are additional iPhone Value Packs for $15 and $20 that include additional text messages and other features, but no add-on data.

If I were Canadian I would sign the petition in a heartbeat – even if I didn’t want to get an iPhone. These rates are sky high and configured ridiculously for a device as powerful as the iPhone. It would be like buying a Ferrari but not filling it with gas. What good is having a beautiful machine that can’t go anywhere?

It is no wonder that Canada’s mobile adoption rate is only near 60% - while Europe and Asia are often 100% or more per capita. Here in the U.S. we have an 80% adoption rate. The reality is that mobile marketing can only take off if consumers are using mobile. Consumers use mobile when it is affordable and powerful. On July 11th, Canada gets one of these.

Share This

It was announced yesterday that the July/August edition of Men’s Health Magazine will feature interactive advertising with help from SnapTell’s image-recognition-based mobile marketing solutions. The issue features enabled or “live” ads for readers to receive real-time promotional information from advertisers.

Using SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get(TM) mobile marketing technology, readers can simply snap a photo of any advertisement in the issue with their camera phone and send to SnapTell to receive an instant promotional message on their mobile device. The technology is compatible with all camera phones, does not require special software for downloading advertiser images and is an opt-in solution for the reader. We covered SnapTell in greater detail here.

The issue features over 100 advertisers that are all participating in the innovative mobile campaign. Companies such as AT&T, Anheuser-Busch, Honda, Louis Vuitton, Quaker Oats, The Coca-Cola Company, Procter & Gamble and Unilever USA are all utilizing the interactivity to communicate with readers. All advertisement images had to be uploaded to a main server at SnapTell, and when readers snap a photo of a particular advertisement and send back to SnapTell, the image is compared to the main database to search for a match. Read the rest

Share This

In a weak economy, few things are more popular than coupons. In fact, ABI Research says that 63 percent of consumers “feel a coupon is the best incentive for them to respond to a mobile marketing message.” Coupons are indeed big business, as they are expected to help generate sales of almost $87 billion by 2011.

The folks at mobileStorm want to help advertisers capitalize on the coupon gold rush with their new 4.0 Coupon Management system, a premium product that helps clients create coupons for digital distribution.

mobileStorm Inc., a well known and respected provider of digital marketing solutions and services, is making headway with their latest flagship product. mobileStorm 4.0 is the only on-demand application that offers businesses six different ways to communicate with their subscribers.

According to mobileStorm, the coupon management system:

• Allows you to send out as many different coupons as you want. For example, if you own multiple store brands, you can send out a coupon for each store name.

• Enables you to offer different discount types such as flat dollar-amount or percentage discounts.

• Lets you choose how you want coupons to be created and redeemed.

“It’s no longer enough to just have one or even two types of communication channels with your customers. If you evaluate what makes up your database, chances are it’s a blend of many different kinds of people,” said Jared Reitzin, chief executive officer of mobileStorm. “With mobileStorm 4.0, our clients can reach their customers in more ways than have ever been possible, and track the results of their success. We want those in the SMB space to play with the big boys and with mobileStorm, they can.”

For more information, check out www.mobilestorm.com

Share This