The Mobile Marketing Blog - TellMyCell

Standing Out With Mobile Marketing

Now that most businesses are catching on to using Mobile Marketing as part of their growth strategy, it's become extremely difficult to stand out and avoid being lost in the crowd. If you're not careful about how to use this powerful tool, you can easily get left behind.

According to industry experts, mobile has long-suffered from the “promise of mobile” being far ahead of actual consumer impact. However, in the last three to six months, it has become a detriment for a brand or retailer not to have a mobile strategy.

To stand out, linking mobile marketing with actionable mobile commerce is key.

Many times, marketers worry about consumer engagement, as well as social media “Likes” then they do about anything else.

While that is still important, marketers also need to measure mobile and look at data to better understand who it is they are reaching.

But how do you stay ahead of the game?

With new technologies entering the space, including augmented reality and the much-anticipated Google Glass, marketers are seeing a lot of experimentation with more sophisticated forms of virtualization. 

“While this is going to remain ‘in the lab’ during 2013, it’s certainly on the mind of forward thinking marketers and an impending next phase in the opportunity bucket,” said Shuli Lowy, marketing director. 

“In the remainder of 2013 we are likely to continue to see more creative forms of mobile ad units as well as smoother ad experiences,” she said. “Marketers are aiming to transform the mobile ad experience into a more appealing and seamless experience.

Learn more and read the rest of this article at MobileMarketer.com!

Google Glass And Mobile Marketing

Marketers are always looking for new tools to boost their efforts. With the unveiling of Google Glass, it's interesting to see what ideas people are coming up with to use it as a business or marketing tool. Is Google Glass a new tool for mobile marketing? 

“Google Glass is the first piece of wearable computing tech that has a real shot at making it,” said Matt Karolian, social media strategist at Arnold Worldwide, Boston.

According to Mr. Karolian, Google Glass is a technology that marketers should watch for this year.       

“It is going to be very interesting to watch how the public reacts to more and more people showing up in social situations wearing Glass,” Mr. Karolian said. “I predict much of the fear of the device being creepy and voyeuristic is going to dissipate.

“There is going to be increased pressure for marketers to be respectful,” he said. “If you run a bad banner ad, you will see lackluster results, while a bad Glass experience is literally in someone's face.

Since the product is only offered on a limited basis at the moment, a lot of marketers are jumping to be the first to use it creatively: 

Many marketers and consumers want to get their hands on the sought-after device.

“Google Glass may not necessarily be a breakout success this year due to several limiting factors, including pricing, fashion implications and the learning curve around its usage,” Mr. Pietrzak said.

“However, it has created more buzz in the last few months than most tech products this year because it is truly breaking new ground and helping people re-imagine the role of technology in their lives,” he said.

“More than anything, it reinforces the hugely important role of mobile in our lives.”

Check out the rest of this article at MobileMarketer.com!

 

Fall Update: Recurring & Drip Campaigns + New APIs

We've been extremely busy at TellMyCell this fall, rolling out lots of great new features (like Inbox folders). We've been moving so quickly we haven't had the chance to keep you up-to-date with everything, so that's exactly what we're going to do:

• Recurring Message Campaigns - Need to send the same message on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly)? Need to send it 3 times? Or every 2nd Wednesday until February? Whatever the frequency or duration, recurring message campaigns can handle it.
• Drip Campaigns - Drip Campaigns are another way to automate your text message marketing campaigns. A Drip campaign allows you to send a time series of text messages to anyone in a connected Group of Contacts. You simply create the messages and set the number of days to wait to send each one after a Contact joins the Group. Once the campaign is created we handle the rest
• Inbox APIs - If you use TellMyCell's API we're glad to let you know that we've added a series of new API calls that allow you to manage the contents of your Inbox (and its new folders). Check them out by viewing the REST API Docs.

Want to build a drip or recurring campaign? Login to your TellMyCell account now!

New Feature: Folders For Your Inbox

For anyone who has a lot of incoming messages (like replies, Keyword opt-ins, and poll votes), sorting through all of those messages had gotten to be a bit overwhelming. So, we're excited to let you know that if you login to your TellMyCell account right now, you'll be able to start creating folders and sorting messages into them!

Check them out now @ https://app.tellmycell.com/incoming-messages

Your Mobile App Collects A Wealth Of Data. Use It!

Dan Frommer of SplatF has an interesting write up on ShopKick - which was one of the earliest location based deal services. That they've somewhat pivoted is nothing new for a tech startup; what's interesting is the process itself:

Shopkick — an app that lets you earn points by walking into stores, shopping, etc. and then redeem them for gift cards, etc. — just launched a totally rethought version of its app. Beyond a facelift, it’s also changed a lot conceptually. Instead of just being useful for when you’re actually shopping, it’s now an app-sized catalog for partner stores, designed to plan shopping trips in advance.

Why? Because user data suggested that might be a good idea. Shopkick CEO Cyriac Roeding tells me:

In January, we took a step back and looked at what we’ve learned from our users, from data, and from feedback in over 1.5 years. [...] There’s a lot of information that comes together in 1.5 years. So we looked into the data and found out some really interesting patterns. For example, the average Shopkick user opens Shopkick on 9 days out of 30 per month. And 6 days out of those 9 days turned out to be not at the store. People were at home on the couch or at work.

So we wondered, what are they doing with the Shopkick app? Because it was built to be mostly for in-store. Turns out, they’re using the Shopkick app to look at what’s hot at stores, what’s cool there, which offers they have, which products are new, what’s on sale, and so on. And we thought, wow, that’s really interesting, because our app makes it anything but easy to see those things today. So, there is a really interesting opportunity for us to prepare people at home for their next shopping trip. And that is intent generation par excellence, at its best.

When your active users are using your app twice as often for something it wasn’t designed for as for what it was designed for, and only three times a month for what it was designed for, sounds like it’s time to take a fresh look at the product.

You should really go read the entire piece at SplatF!

SMS Marketing Campaigns Lead 1 in 4 Consumers To Purchases

MarketingCharts has a good take on a recent study commissioned by Placecast:

Among consumers who have signed up for text alerts from retailers and merchants, 26% say that the information they received has led them to purchase the promoted product in the store, while 25% say they have purchased a different product from the store, according to [pdf] May 2012 survey results from Placecast.

 

A QR Code Concierge!

Marriot's Courtyard hotels recently upgraded their 'virtual concierges' to display QR Codes. We have mixed feelings about the usefulness of QR Codes, but this is a case where they make perfect sense:

The hotel chain has been renovating its lobbies as part of a strategy to better meet the needs of business travelers. The new lobbies feature 55-inch LCD touch screens showcasing information about local restaurants and other attractions that can be saved to a guest’s phone by scanning a QR code.

“QR codes allow Courtyard to better serve its busy on-the-go guests,” said Janis Milham, vice president and global brand manager at Courtyard by Marriott, Blacksburg, VA. “Instead of having to get paper and pencil, it can download automatically onto their mobile devices and they can have it handy  for future visits.

So how does it work?

The new touch screens are called the GoBoard, which guests can navigate to find restaurants, see current weather and local news as well as to download information to their smartphones.
Guests who approach the GoBoard will see several different tabs, including news, money and sports.

In the right hand corner, there is an area for local attractions such as restaurants and points of interest.

Guests can click on restaurants and the names of the restaurants pop up. When users touch the one they want, the contact information shows up with directions and a QR code.

By holding their phone up to the QR code, the information is downloaded to the guest’s phone.

Read more at Mobile Marketer.

Welcome To The Latest, Greatest TellMyCell!

If you've logged into TellMyCell since this morning you've already seen the brand new release of our SMS Marketing platform. Some great new features include:

• XLS/XLSX Uploading - No more CSVs!
• Updated Contacts - Sort, segment and browse your contacts with ease
• New APIs - Manage your contacts and Groups via the API
• New Interface - We've cleaned up TellMyCell's UI so it is even easier to use!

Login now to see all of the changes.

A Man So Distracted By His Texting He Walked Into A Bear!

Here's a quick PSA from everyone at TellMyCell: if you must text while walking, try to keep an eye on the street in front of you. If you don't you just might wind up walking into a bear. Yes, seriously:

 

More @ KTLA

Follow The Venture Capital Dollars To Mobile Marketing

2011 was a big year for the mobile marketing industry, and if investments made in 2011 pan out, expect an even bigger 2012:

Venture capital investments in mobile marketing and advertising grew from $128 million in 2010 to $592 million in 2011, according to a new report from research investment bank Rutberg & Co. Investment levels in  mobile commerce and payments companies was also up significantly, growing from $276 million to $558 million during the same period.

Overall, venture capitalists invested $6.3 billion in mobile in 2011, up from $4.5 billion in 2010. The Venture Capital in Mobile 2011 Review report found that investment in mobile by venture capitalists as a percentage of overall technology venture capital grew from 30.4 percent in 2010 to 42.4 percent in 2011.

“The numbers are tremendous,” said Rajeev Chand, managing director and head of research at Rutberg & Co., San Francisco. “Mobile is quickly becoming ubiquitous.

Read more at Mobile Marketer.