The Mobile Marketing Blog - TellMyCell

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.

API Update & More To Come

Two quick notes to TellMyCell SMS API users:

First, We've updated our Keyword rental and Credit purchase APIs with new methods that all you to make purchases using a credit card stored in your account. Code samples are available in all languages.

Second, we'll be adding some great new features by the end of the month...we'll be sure to let you know.

Do Mobile Call To Actions In Store Windows Work?

The answer would be yes - your store's window is a great place to your mobile call-to-action, whether it's a keyword/short code combo or a QR code. From Mobile Marketer:

“Retailers are discovering that the store is one of the best locations to present a mobile call to action,” said Stephen Burke, vice president of mobile at Resource Interactive, Columbus, OH.

“There are more mobile calls to action because there are more and more mobile assets being created by retailers,” he said.

“The good news is that that technology works and consumers are embracing mobile calls to action.”

Read more at Mobile Marketer.

Text Messaging At The Pharmacy

We know that text messaging is popping up in all sorts of unexpected places, but every once in a while we come across a statistic that seriously surprisies us. Case in point - 2 MILLION Walgreen's customers are signed up receive text message alerts whenever their prescriptions are ready:

Called Refill Reminder Text Alerts, the new service delivers a specific text message to any mobile phone that accepts text messages, notifying patients when an existing prescription is due for refill. This goes beyond a mere notification, as the prescription orders can then be completed with a simple “refill” reply. And it’s free to users.

Early indications are promising, as more than 2 million Walgreen subscribers currently are signed up for its Prescription Ready Text Alerts–which simply notify customers when a prescription order is ready for pickup.

This is more than a matter of convenience:

The new Refill Reminder Text Alerts program aims to increase patient health by increasing the rate of prescription refills. The article mentions that for every 100 new prescriptions, only 15-20 percent are refilled as prescribed.

Read more @ iMedicalApps

New Feature: Alternate Auto-Replies For Your Keywords (And Sub-Keywords Too!)

If you're using a Keyword with your TellMyCell account (you are using a Keyword, aren't you?) you've probably noticed that if someone texts your Keyword to our short code multiple times we send your auto-response every time. While we are legally required to send a response whenever your keyword is texted to us, we can customize that response on subsequent opt-ins. Up unti now you need to use our API to do this...starting today you can do this with a few clicks inside the app.

See how it works:

Don't Place A QR Code On A Billboard If You Expect People To Scan It

QR Codes seem to popping up everywhere lately...but should they be slapped up just anywhere?

The placement of QR codes is very important. It is very easy to create a disastrous QR campaign just by selecting the wrong location, per web2mobile.

For example, placing QR codes on billboards is highly ineffective since consumers cannot reach or scan the QR code.

In addition, brands should monitor the mobile reception of the area in which they plan to place an out-of-home QR code ad. Using this mind-frame, subway ads would be a poor placement for QR codes.

Also, QR codes should not be implemented until a brand has a mobile-optimized site.

Leading consumers to a non-optimized site can cause frustration and lead to a bad brand experience.

As New Yorkers we know all about QR Codes on subway ads.

Read more about Mobile Marketer's Luxury Daily.

What Are iOS and Android Gamers Spending Money On?

Mobile analytics provider Flurry just published a study that examines the rapdily growing mobile gaming market. How fast?

Last month, we published two posts about iOS and Android freemium game revenue.  The first showed that, over the first half of 2011, game revenue in the App Store shifted dramatically from premium to freemium, with 65% of all revenue generated among the top 100 games now coming freemium games.  In fact, at the time of writing this blog post, all of the top 5 titles in the App Store top grossing category were freemium games, and 22 of the top grossing 25 were games.  The second post revealed that consumers spend an average of $14 per transaction when making in-app purchases in freemium games.

Today they're looking a bit deeper:

With in-app purchases in freemium games driving the bulk of revenue generation in the iOS and Android app economy, Flurry devotes this post to what consumers actually spend their real dollars on.  With over a year’s worth of data, Flurry categorized over 57 million purchase transactions across a set of freemium iOS and Android games that averaged over 2 million daily active users.

And the results:

The chart shows that over two-thirds of all items purchased in iOS and Android freemium games are consumable, goods that users deplete.  Measured another way, approximately half of all real dollars spent within all apps are for game items consumers don’t keep.  Based on our data, the most popular virtual purchase, consumable or otherwise, is for “premium” in-game currency

...

Next, durable items represent 30% of all in-app purchases in freemium games.  From a game design standpoint, it's important to have a good selection of durable items in a game as it offers important variety to the consumer with respect to the core gameplay, such as erecting buildings in a city.

For the entire report, head over to Flurry's blog.

Horace Dediu On The fate Of Mobile Phone Brands

The always interesting ASYMCO blog has some great insights (with charts!) on the mobile phone industry. It's well known that Apple takes the lion's share of profits when it comes to mobile phones - but what about marketshare? More specifically, what can we learn by look at the past few years:

The violence with which new platforms have displaced incumbent mobile vendor fortunes continues to surprise.

• Nokia’s Symbian platform has gone from 47% share to 16% in three years
• Microsoft’s phone platforms have gone from 12% to 1%
• Other platforms have gone from 21% to zero
• Although far less dramatic, RIM’s decline from 17% to 12%  is causing acute pain and anxiety

This while entrants have grown share in spectacular fashion:

• Android from zero to 48% (A two year period)
• iOS from 2% to 19%
• Bada from zero to 4% (two quarters only)

Head over to ASYMCO for more charts and analysis.

Send Text Messages Using Our REST API.

A few weeks ago we rolled out a new REST API. While we are always going to support our HTTP API we plan to release new features on the REST API. We've already added two new features that are exclusively available via the REST API.

• Mass Messaging - Pass us an array of phone numbers and a message and we'll deliver that message to every phone number in the array
• Message Scheduling - You now have the option of sending messages via the API immediately or at any future time and date you specify.

Want to learn more? Check out the new REST API documentation. Don't have a TellMyCell account yet? It's free to register.

Analyze Your SMS Marketing Campaigns With Our Reporting Tools

Looking to analyze your SMS Marketing campaigns? Our messaging and contact reports are the tool you've been waiting for. Learn more about the effectiveness of your campaigns; look for trends in your incoming and outgoing messages; See when you added contacts and how they joined your contact list.