Blogs

Mobile Coupons Take Off With Marketers

June 30, 2009 — Club Texting

Mobile Marketer had a great roundup yesterday of the plethora of recent mobile couponing campaigns:

Brands including Firestone, Hollywood Video, Popeye’s, Borders and OshKosh B’gosh are distributing coupons via smartphone applications.
...
Bridgestone’s Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. distributes various mobile coupons’ via Mobiqpon’s applications, including a “Buy 2 tires and get one free” offer.

Similarly, Hollywood Video has run a “Rent 2 movies, get another movie free” promotion using Mobiqpon’s mobile couponing apps.

Quick-serve restaurant Popeye’s tapped Mobiqpons for a mobile couponing campaign offering free two-piece chicken dinners.

Bookstore chain Borders regularly offers 20 percent discount coupons via Mobiqpons’ apps, as well as special birthday offers for regular customers who share specific data.

OshKosh B’gosh, a children’s apparel company specializing in bib overalls, has distributed various mobile coupons via Mobiqpons, including “20 percent off your next purchase of $50 or more.”

Palm Pre App Store Closing In On 700,000 Downloads

June 23, 2009 — Club Texting

It ain't one billion downloads, but the Palm Pre App store is off to a solid start:

On Saturday, June 6th, the Palm Pre launched nationwide after roughly two years of development. Two years isn’t a whole lot of time when you think about the fact that they not only created a new device, but a new operating system and app store at the same time. The device has a sharp design (literally and figuratively), a stunning user interface, and a lot of potential to grow into a competitive platform in the smartphone market.

On May 29th, 2009, 9 days before the device officially launched nationwide, the Palm Pre App Catalog went live with 4 apps (Classic, Sudoku, Today Show, and WHERE). By launch day (6/6/09), this number grew to 18 apps total and then jumped to 30 at the end of the first week (6/12/09), and has remained unchanged since. Compared to the other app stores we’ve seen so far, this number is a mere fraction on what we’ve experienced at launch, but there are a few factors that paint a picture as to why this isn’t an issue.

Check out this nice graph, courtesy of Medialets:

Read more @ Medialets

Mobile Industry Review Looks At Canadian SMS Aggregators

June 16, 2009 — Club Texting

Mobile Industry Review received a query from a reader, wondering who were the best 'tier 3 SMS aggregators in Canada.'

They're opening up the question to readers, so you'll have to head over and check out the comments to find out who has been getting the nod.

You also might want to check out this list of sms aggregators.

McDonalds Launches Mobile Marketing Campaign To Introduce The M Burger

June 8, 2009 — Club Texting

When McDonald's decided to roll out a new burger in France, they turned to the mobile channel:

The launch of the McDonald’s Corp.'s M Burger in France stood out for its innovative use of mobile advertising.

The fast food franchise ran banner ads on the Microsoft Advertising Mobile Media network. The brand used animated banner formats instead of traditional mobile banners.

The goal of the campaign was to drive awareness of the new McDonald’s M Burger among 25 to 44-year-old men and stressed the premium ingredients used to create it.

Is The Housing Market Bottoming? It Looks Good On The Mobile Marketing Front

June 4, 2009 — Club Texting

This week brought some more of the much talked about 'Green Shoots,' this time in the all important housing market:

The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in April, rose 6.7 percent to 90.3 from a reading of 84.6 in March, and is 3.2 percent above April 2008 when it was 87.5.

At Club Texting, in the last few weeks, we've also seen a giant uptick in the number of real estate brokerages signing up for our mobile marketing services. What can mobile marketing do for real estate brokerages?

Club Texting's Real Estate Text Messaging Software System allows house hunters to request and instantly receive property listing information using their mobile phones. Home sellers reach more buyers, agents close more sales, and home buyers, presented with unprecedented access to information, generate more leads.

You also might want to check out our sister company, Ez Texting's profile of UAS properties, a Chicago development firm that uses text messaging to generate leads and manage internal collections, saving over $100,000 dollars a year by their estimate.

New From The Mobile Marketing Forum: MGM Grand's Mobile Marketing Strategy Revealed

June 3, 2009 — Club Texting

Lots of news coming out of this week's Mobile Marketing Forum. Here's a big story from MGM Grand:

MGM Grand Hotel & Casino revealed its mobile strategy to attendees of the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Forum.

The hotel chain plans to continue to use the mobile channel as a means of data acquisition and to use information collected to expand upon its existing on-property SMS offers. An MGM executive revealed some of the company’s plans and even gave the audience tips in terms of using the mobile channel.

Holographic Text Messages - Whoa!

June 2, 2009 — Club Texting

This viral video has got to be about the coolest text message we've ever seen:

Holographic Text Messages will rock your world. With 1.5 million views in just a couple weeks, this viral video proves it. The video, by Inha Luke Yoo describes the concept as HoloText Messaging. The kicker of course, is that this sort of technology isn’t yet available. But this concept video does a great job of showing you what holographic text messages will be like.

And the video:

(via textually.org)

Safeway Supermarkets To Offer Mobile Coupons

May 27, 2009 — Club Texting

MediaPost's MediaDailyNews reports that Safeway has jumped into the mobile couponing game:

Two more supermarket chains are introducing mobile coupon services for shoppers, marking another advance for this increasingly popular marketing channel.

Tom Thumb and Randall's -- both owned by Safeway -- are currently cooperating with packaged-goods manufacturers General Mills, Unilever and Kimberly-Clark to offer shoppers 21 coupons for goods like pre-packaged tossed salad and children's cereal.

Read the entire article @ MediaPost.

Head over to Club Texting to learn more about mobile coupons, or read our white paper, the Club Texting Guide To Mobile Couponing.

To The Skeptics: A Persuasive Case For Mobile Marketing

May 21, 2009 — Club Texting

Mickey Alam Khan has written an editorial @ Mobile Marketer titled 'How to answer skeptics of mobile marketing.' You should read the whole column, but here's an excerpt:

One way to persuade marketers who aren’t convinced about the merits of mobile marketing is by holding other channels to the same light.
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Mobile, for some strange reason, encourages armchair gurus of all persuasions to pass judgments on the channel, sometimes without the immediate benefit of facts at hand. So let’s make a case for mobile by asking the same question of other channels that is asked of mobile.

You'll have to find Mickey's analysis by clicking here, but suffice to say, the man makes a strong argument, coming at the skeptics from a novel angle.

Hyatt Launches A Very Useful Mobile Website

May 19, 2009 — Club Texting

Hyatt jumps on to the mobile web in a big way:

According to the official announcement from the hotel giant, Hyatt guests can now visit the mobile site to take advantage of the following features and more:

· Find and book a hotel by location
· Hyatt special offers
· View or cancel a reservation
· Web check in and check out
· Access Hyatt’s Yatt’it travel tips by country
Hyatt and its affiliates own, operate or manage hotels in 45 countries worldwide.

You can visit the Hyatt mobile site on a regular browser to get an idea of what they are doing.

Depeche Mode Launches Very Cool iPhone App

May 13, 2009 — Club Texting

Mobile marketing watch has the details on a very cool iPhone app courtesy of Depeche Mode:

Available for the iPhone and iPod touch. iZotope’s iDrum apps let users “create music by tapping the touch screen and rearranging simple shapes and color combinations.”
...

iDrum: Depeche Mode Sounds of the Universe is available for $4.99 on the Apple App Store (eat your heart out Nine Inch Nails) and includes “ten customizable kits” with sounds from songs on the album.

For those who love something to literally play with, you’re in luck. iDrum: Depeche Mode Sounds of the Universe also allows users to manipulate album sounds to create music by:

* Tapping the touch screen to play and record musical patterns
* Taking control of the rhythm of every drum sound and sample
* Remixing rhythmic patterns from the album or starting from scratch to make new musical creations
* Bringing sounds in and out of the mix to change the music
* Customizing patterns to create unique new beats

Read the entire story @ mobile marketing watch.

Pandora Sells 1 Million Songs A Month; 20% Through Their iPhone App

May 8, 2009 — Club Texting

The Pandora iPhone app is a must have for every iPhone user. It's one of our favorite websites to listen to and discover music at our desks. And when we're on the street their iPhone app supplies an unlimited playlist. So it makes us happy to hear this:

Pandora is a company that mainly makes its money through advertising deals on its streaming Internet radio service. But a growing portion of the business is also affiliate downloads of songs that users hear on Pandora and want to buy on either iTunes or Amazon’s MP3 service. And the biggest mover accelerating growth in that regard are downloads taking place on the iPhone.

Users are buying about a million songs a month now from these affiliate links on Pandora, CTO Tom Conrad tells me. Of those, a solid 20% are coming directly from Pandora’s iPhone app, which includes an easy link to open the iPhone’s iTunes app, and buy a track. That’s really impressive considering that it’s just one phone that a relatively small percentage of their users use.

Read the entire article @ TechCrunch, which includes some out of this world revenue projections.

Improved Threaded SMS Chatting On Windows Mobile Phones

May 7, 2009 — Club Texting

To those Windows Mobile powered smartphone users wanting a better threaded SMS chatting experience look no further:

VITO Technology has recently released an updated version of its popular threaded messaging client for Windows Mobile - SMS-Chat. Version 1.2 of the application now has 3 skins (dark, clear and light), SM backup function, and is more stable than ever thanks to Vito’s efforts to fix some of the known bugs. Moreover, the updated app sports an “enhanced look and functionality,” ensuring great experience when using the app.

BlackBerry Recovers The Smartphone Throne

May 4, 2009 — Club Texting

The BlackBerry Storm hasn't exactly been the iPhone killer that RIMM was hoping for. Nevertheless, they managed to climb back to the top of the smartphone heap in Q1 2009. How? Discounts:

An aggressive “buy-one-get-one” promotion by Verizon Wireless helped Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve move past Apple’s iPhone to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2009, according to a market research report Monday.

RIM’s consumer smartphone market share increased 15 percent to nearly 50 percent of the smartphone market in the first quarter versus the prior quarter, as Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq:AAPL) and Palm Inc.’s (Nasdaq:PALM) share both declined 10 percent each.

Sounds like an excellent recession strategy.

Text Blasting - What Are We Talking About...

May 1, 2009 — Club Texting

Big-text-blast Some Friday thoughts: Yesterday, while reading a mobile marketing white paper, we came across the phrase 'text blasting software.' It was pretty obvious that they were talking about bulk text messaging software. Still, it was interesting to see some phraseological development in action...email blast to text blast. Our linguistic knowledge is a bit rusty, but perhaps it's time for a text messaging entry in the WordNet database?

More info about text blasting software from our sister.

Mobile Apps Revenue Set To Explode

April 29, 2009 — Club Texting

Text messaging dominates mobile marketing at the moment. But what does the future hold?

Revenue from mobile applications will top $25 billion by 2014, according to Juniper Research. The market researcher says this growth will occur because of "a raft of store launches targeting both high-end and mass market handsets."

As Apple has already distributed 1 billion apps for the iPhone, you can imagine how many impressions $25 billion dollars worth of apps could deliver if even a fraction of them were to include advertising.

"Bulk SMS" What Is It & Why Do So Many Companies Use It...

April 24, 2009 — Club Texting

Bulk SMS powers thousands of mobile marketing campaigns. There are other ways to do mobile marketing, but none of them offer the reach of simple, bulk sms text messaging.

What is the definition of Bulk SMS? It's actually very simple. When your company or organization needs to get the same information to hundreds (or often thousands) of people, whether clients or customers, the easiest way to do so is by sending them a text message. We've spoken with hundreds of customers who used to do this by hand. They would spend hours sending the same message out over and over again. Now, they type their message on the computer, select the groups of contacts that they want to reach...and hit send. In minutes everyone will have the message.

Club Texting is all about letting small to medium-sized businesses control their own mobile marketing campaigns. For thousands of companies, Bulk SMS is the answer. When you want to get your message in the hands of your customers, quickly, cheaply, and easily, Bulk SMS is the answer.

Want to learn more about Club Texting's bulk sms messaging platform? Click here to start reading.

Wondering how other businesses have succesfully leveraged the power of bulk sms text messaging? Check out our Case Study for PACHA, the international chain of nightclubs.

Is Android Turning Into A Viable iPhone Competitor?

April 23, 2009 — Club Texting

A new AdMob report seems to indicate the T-Mobile G-1 is starting to catch on (we also hear that they've sold 1 million of them)

According to AdMob, in the five months since the Android Market for applications launched in the US, requests from Android devices increased an average 47% per month. As good as that sounds, it's nothing compared with the traffic generated by iPhone; in the first five months after the iTunes App Store went live in the US last July, requests from the iPhone grew 88% per month.

Globalization, Blogging & SMS

April 22, 2009 — Club Texting

How would you like to follow SMS-powered micro-blogs written by your favorite NBA stars...in Mandarin:

MogoTXT, a start-up that operates public texting groups, has launched texting groups for a handful of NBA players. Initially, five pro basketballers have agreed to post daily text messages that their fans can sign up to receive.
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The initial players who'll be texting are Shane Battier of the Houston Rockets; LaMarcus Aldridge, Portland Trailblazers; Jordan Farmar, LA Lakers; Eric Gordon, LA Clippers and Spencer Hawes, Sacramento Kings.

What Recession? Mobile Marketing Keeps Going Strong

April 21, 2009 — Club Texting

A new report from Jupiter Research confirms what many in the mobile marketing industry know (and have read about in many other places):

It’s no secret that display advertising has seen the largest hit, but the recession is not all to blame for the steep decline. Other forms of more targeted advertising have proved to not only be more cost efficient, but much more effective. Mobile marketing is holding steady through these tough times because it holds these two attributes.

What’s more interesting is that mobile marketing in general is seeing the same amount of investment that it did before the economic crisis even began, according to the report. Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research, believes this could lead to the mobile advertising sector becoming more widely adopted by marketers than it otherwise would have without a recession.

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