The Mobile Marketing Blog - TellMyCell

New Trends Due To The Popularity Of The Mobile Phone

In recent polls, people have said that they would rather lose their wallets than their mobile phones. And now, with numerous smart phones on the market, people can do just about anything with the click of a few buttons. Here are some new growing trends due to the popularity of mobile phones.

1-Bargain Hunting: “Bargain hunting has become extremely popular with apps like RedLaser that allow users to scan product bar codes and discover its various prices at different retailers.”
2-Mobile Ticketing: “Mobile ticketing transactions are expected to exceed $100 billion world wide by 2012, according to a study released this month by Juniper Research.”
3-Marketing: “Text message marketing, where customers opt-in to receive news about deals or offer coupons, has been a widely adopted practice as it’s a direct way to engage with consumers that has a high likelihood of being read.”

Want to learn about more mobile trends? Read the entire article here.

To learn about mobile marketing, visit TellMyCell.

Memo To Marketers: Texting Is Best Medium To Reach Teens

Mobile Marketer reports on the results of a recent survey by ChaCha - teens and young adults were asked how they like to communicate. If you're relying on email, well, you're in big trouble:

The company polled about 1,500 teens and young adults on their favorite way to communicate. Sixty-eight percent responded that they prefer SMS, as opposed to 10 percent who chose mobile calls, 9 percent who opted for Facebook, 3 percent selected instant messaging and 0.3 percent liked email.

If you haven't launched your first SMS marketing campaign, maybe now would be a good team to learn a bit more :)

Read more about the study @ Mobile Marketer.

STAT: Smartphone Traffic Is Up 193% In A Year

If anyone doubts that smartphones are the future of mobile in the United States, consider this:

In this month's report, AdMob compares February 2009 with February 2010 in the three categories of mobile devices it serves. The bottom line:

• Smartphones (like the iPhone): Up 193% year over year in absolute terms as their share of AdMob's traffic in an expanding market grew from 35% to 48%
• Feature phones (like most Samsung, Nokia and LG phones): Up 31% in absolute terms as the mobile Internet space expanded. But their share of AdMob's traffic fell from 58% to 35%
• Mobile Internet devices (chiefly the iPod touch, but also connected game systems like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi): Up 403% in absolute terms as their traffic share grew from about 7% to 17%.

Check this graph out:

Read more @ Fortune Brainstorm Tech.

Forrester Reveals How To Calculate & Optimize Mobile ROI

Dan Butcher at Mobile Marketer picked up on an excellent research report put together by Forrester. Let's start with the lede:

“How do I justify the cost of building out our mobile services?” is a question that Forrester is fielding with increasing frequency. Here is the research firm’s advice to brands and marketers.

Why are they fielding the question so often lately? Because business owners know that 2010 is going to be another huge year for mobile. The questions are: How do you get started? How do you calculate the ROI on your mobile spend?

The first part is easy. You can learn more about mobile coupons, SMS marketing, and more at TellMyCell. See our pricing plans and try the service for free :)

So how do you calculate ROI? Read what Forrester has to say:

In the study, Forrester broke down the process of calculating the ROI of brands’ mobile initiatives into four key steps—identifying benefits, estimating the value of the benefits, calculating costs and building a model—to help justify the resources they need for mobile without getting lost in the details.

...

Calculating the ROI of emerging technologies and services that depend on consumer behavior is challenging. Some argue that it is part art and part science.

Ms. Ask provided various tips and pitfalls to avoid that should help marketers through the process of obtaining the resources they need to build their mobile services.

First, do not let ROI alone drive decision-making.

There are a wide range of qualitative reasons to invest in mobile services.

Learn more at Mobile Marketer. Ready to get started right now? Check out TellMyCell's SMS Marketing Plans & Pricing.

SMS Advertising To Reach $3.2 Billion Dollars In 2010

If J.P. Morgan's Imran Khan is correct, spending on SMS Advertising is going to lead the mobile marketing industry by a huge margin this year. The numbers are astounding:

Turn to 2010, and mobile advertising is, according to Kahn, forecast to grow 45 percent to $3.8 billion ($3.2 billion SMS advertising, $253 million mobile display, and $31 million mobile search.)

$3.2 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2009. That would 39% growth in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. So, does your business have a mobile marketing plan in place? No. Well the good news is, you can launch an SMS text messaging campaign on your own, at an affordable cost - even for the smallest of businesses.

Check out our SMS marketing plans at TellMyCell, which start at only $10 per month. Sign up in 60 seconds and try our service for free.

Wall Street Analysts Review The Google Nexus One's Prospects

The Wall Street Journal's Market Beat blog has rounded up some major Wall Street Analysts reactions to yesterday's unveiling of the Google Nexus One:

Susquehanna Financial: “As computing shifts from the PC to the phone, Google wants to remain an advertising leader. With its own phone, Google assures the device is Google-friendly, supporting its applications and advertising network, and optimized for Internet-usage. We note Google has had a history of developing competitive products with its customers, spurring their innovation and time to market (i.e., shopping, travel, and other vertical search efforts). By launching its own device while mobile advertising is still nascent, it has an opportunity to shape the future.”

Broadpoint.AmTech: Android head Andy Rubin indicated that while there is an opportunity for GOOG to make some margin on unit sales of the Nexus One, profit is not the primary objective of this effort. (We believe that GOOG would like to see its mobile hardware business grow into a large business, but will not state that as an objective for fear of damaging the Google brand if it does not work.)

Citigroup: We don’t believe selling SmartPhones will be a new, material source of revenue for the company. And since Google gives away the Android OS for free, we believe there is limited channel partner risk. In our opinion, Google developed its own SmartPhone to 1) Help accelerate mobile search, which will increase as SmartPhone penetration increases; 2) Showcase new technologies on the Android OS; and 3) Allow users to have more control over their own devices by customizing their mobile web and mobile apps (and not being governed by carrier or OEM restrictions) experiences.

Barclays Capital: “We believe Google could sell 5 - 6 million units in 2010 generating incremental revenue of $2.6 billion–$3.2 billion. We expect this revenue to be booked in Licensing and Other, but we are not updating our model at this time … However, given our assumption that Nexus One revenue would have low or no margins, our overall 2010 EBITDA margin for Google would come down from our 62.2% current estimate to ~55%.”

Goldman Sachs: “We do not view Google’s new device as a near-term threat to the iPhone 3GS as: 1) the price tag of the Nexus One does not seem aggressive enough to entice potential iPhone buyers;
2) Apple’s AppStore, which has over 115K applications and over 3 [billion] cumulative downloads to date, remains far ahead of competing app platforms; and 3) internationally, Nexus One’s availability seems limited at this point, with the unlocked version only available in three countries and Vodafone’s UK subsidy not starting for a few months.”

BofA Merrill: “We expect that Google will record $500+ in revenues per phone, and a low gross margin after subtracting the hardware costs. Therefore, hardware sales could be about EPS neutral (after software R&D), while additional search and applications activity could contribute to operating profit. A big potential side benefit for Google is that search and advertising on a Nexus One phone will not require revenue sharing with carriers or manufactures (such as Apple).”

Head over to the MarketBeat blog to learn more.

Report: Over Two-Thirds Of Parents Would Like Their Children's Schools To Text Them

FamilyFirst Alerts is one of the leading providers of text message notification services to schools across the country - and they recently upgraded their platform to work off of TellMyCell. While our focus here is SMS-based mobile marketing, we want to share an important news story that shows just how pervasive texting has become.

According to a survey by Becta over two-thirds of parents would like to be kept up-to-date about their child’s progress though text messages and email – as this would give them a more frequent overview of their little ones development.

Due to the busy working lives of many parents the request to communicate with schools in this way is influenced by the way people can find out their bank balance, as many find it more convenient to receive information via txt or email.

Seventy-four per cent of parents said they monitor their bank balance online or on the phone at least once a month whereas only 15 per cent of parents surveyed were informed of their child’s progress once a month – a shocking 85 per cent say they are updated four times a year or less.

What's even more interesting is when this news story was published - September 2008. Since then a couple million more moms have gotten iPhones. The time for your school district to deploy a text messaging system, for information, or for emergency alerts, is now. Visit FamilyFirst Alerts to learn more.

Mobile Marketing Association Says SMS Marketing To Dominate 2010

We built TellMyCell to allow businesses to deploy cost effective, enterprise class SMS marketing campaigns. We know how well SMS text message marketing campaigns work; we're glad to see that the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) agrees:

SMS is one of the oldest wireless technologies still in use, and for good reason: It is nearly ubiquitous in terms of device and network support, enjoys wide consumer awareness across all demographics and is relatively inexpensive for consumers, brands and marketers.

All of those benefits make SMS a highly effective way for a mobile marketing campaign to reach the mass market – far more than, say, smartphone applications, which have a rapidly growing yet still small addressable market.

That is why in 2010, SMS increasingly will serve as the glue that cements multichannel campaigns.

More campaigns that span print, direct mail, digital signage and broadcast will use SMS to enable calls-to-action, e-coupons and metrics such as the number of people who view an advertisement.

Read more @ Mobile Marketer.

Learn more about SMS marketing at TellMyCell.

10 Wireless Predicitions For 2010

2009 was quite a year for the wireless world. This fall was especially busy (read some analysis about why fall 2009 was so important for the future of wireless). If Juniper Research is right, 2010 is going to be even more exciting. They're predicting all sorts of interesting developments:

1. Mobile Data Traffic Explosion to put strain on 3G Networks

Though 3G is less than ten years old, 2010 could be the year when 3G networks begin to fall over under the burden of mobile data, due largely to some 33.8m IPhones that have been sold since launch.

6. Mobile Social Networking to Integrate with other Applications including M-Commerce

With mobile access to the likes of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter commonplace, adding commerce capability is the next step. And its development will start in 2010.
Viral marketing is something that marketers aspire to achieve and there is no better way of reaching that goal for those younger than 35 than through social networking on the move, featured already in many phones.

9. Smartphones to Get Augmented Reality Makeover

Augmented Reality (AR) is still in its infancy on the mobile: until Q2 2009, just a single AR app – Wikitude – was available for a single handset (the G1). However, with a raft of new Android handsets fitted with the key AR-enablers – cameras, Internet, GPS, accelerometers, digital compasses – and with the launch of the similarly-equipped iPhone 3GS and Nokia N97, new AR apps are emerging every week.

Read all ten predictions here.