The key to a good mobile campaign is to offer the user something that they can only get through mobile. Whether that be a coupon or an exclusive alert, the user should feel like they gained something of value.

The reason I bring this up is because I received another text message from the Barack Obama campaign yesterday evening (in fact, it was 6:53pm ET, which is a little late in my mind, but I’ll save that discussion for another day).

Here’s the value that the message offered:

Barack will announce his
VP candidate choice
through txt msg between
now & the Conv. Tell
everyone to text VP to
62262 to be the first to
know! Please forward.

That seemed pretty cool and valuable to me. The Obama campaign is giving its opted-in users something that no one else will get, or at least it’s giving them something before everyone else will get it: information. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a number of iPhone reviews on the Web; a good overview of the pros and cons of the device can be found here and here, and a very detailed breakdown of device features is available here. Rather than add to what’s widely available, this review of Apple’s 2nd generation iPhone caters to those considering switching from a RIM Blackberry. In my case, a Blackberry 8820.

I’ve been a heavy Blackberry user for about 5 years, long enough to grow forgiving of its shortfalls and fond of its quirks, like an old pair of tennis shoes you have every reason to throw away, but just can’t. I played around quite a bit with the first gen iPhone, but without 3G support and a bona-fide email client, it was easy to resist. The 2nd gen iPhone fixed these problems, and further resistance was futile. Read the rest of this entry »

Good morning everyone.

I was just catching up on my mobile marketing news this morning, and I ran across this.

According to eMarketer, “consumers who respond to mobile ads are most likely to engage with text messages, according to a survey of mobile users ages 15 and older in the US by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). Seven out of 10 respondents to the DMA’s study who had acted on mobile ads said that text messages for a product or service had prompted their actions. That was more than three times as many as responded to a mobile Web offer or coupon.”

eMarketer also reported that in a survey of US online marketers, more than two-thirds said they would dabble in mobile marketing this year.

Read the rest of the article at eMarketer.

At the risk of slinging mud at a nascent industry others might argue is simply going through normal growing pains, I am disappointed at the lack of creativity in mobile marketing. It seems there is a fork in the road to mobile, with one lane veering toward dizzyingly siloed custom applications for niche devices, and the other a path toward lowest common denominator, de rigueur mobile. (Full disclosure: my company has been at the helm for both (sigh), so I feel uniquely qualified to level the accusation at the industry at large.)

We’ve collectively lost sight of what is unique about mobile. Sure mobile coupons are neat, text to win is occasionally fun, and WAP ads have their place (though, when was the last time you clicked on a WAP ad? Or, a regular banner ad for that matter?), but do any of those applications do anything but move the needle incrementally? Are there any mobile marketing campaigns you know of that actually change gears? Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like Verizon will get to retain many more midcycle customers by next year because the carrier acquired 1.5 million new customers in Q2.

According to RCR Wireless, Verizon “ended the first half of the year with 68.7 million total customers on its network, with 66.7 million of those being direct, retail customers.”

For the rest of the article, check out RCR Wireless.

Verizon sent me a pretty cool text message on July 7. I would have written about it sooner, but I was, um, washing my hair…for, um, over two weeks.

Here’s what it said:

From: 900070003548
Free Verizon Wireless
Msg: We will give you a
$10 bill credit AND plant a
tree on your behalf when
you sign up for paperless
billing & autopay! Log on
to vzw.com/myverizon,
click profile, & update bill
options. Offer ends
7/13//08. To opt out of
future messages, reply X.

I thought that was a pretty cool offer, especially since I always view my bill online and never actually open the paper bill I receive at home. And a tree! Just for me? Just for getting rid of something I didn’t like anyway? Very cool. Read the rest of this entry »

Good morrow, mobileteers.

So according to FierceWireless and RCR News and probably every news site out there, Apple sold 1 million iPhones in the opening weekend.

I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet because I still have a year to go on my Verizon contract (and because I think I’d find myself in an identity crisis without my trusty RAZR). However, as Miss Mobile, I feel I need to have an iPhone. You know, just for the sake of research purposes. (Ahem, Air2Web, I’m dropping a hint here.) Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’ll be.

Verizon is giving its prepaid customers a bit of a break. For just $10 a month, it’s letting those subscribers send unlimited text, picture, and video messages to other Verizon users, and to non-Verizon subscribers, they can send 250 messages. (You can read the RCR article about it here.)

This comes just a few weeks after T-Mobile raised its charge for texting from 15 to 20 cents a message, just as Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T have done in the recent past. This raised quite a few dogs’ hackles. One in particular at CrunchGear.com had a bone to pick with AT&T when he did the math and realized that at $0.20 per 160 bytes, 1MB of data would cost $1310.72.

I suppose that Verizon got a whiff of the stink that followed that whole texting debacle and decided to throw us dogs a bone.

Woof.

So, I just had lunch at Pricci in Buckhead, and as I was waiting at the red light at Pharr and Peachtree, I saw an advertisement on a bus stop that said, “Text TAN to 38714.” So I did, of course.

After the initial confirmation message (”Hollywood Tans Alerts. No charge per msg but stnd rates apply. Up to 5 alerts per month. Reply YES to continue. Txt STOP to end or HELP 4 info.”), I received a pretty cool offer:

Show this text 2 any
Hollywood Tans - ATL
salon & get 1 FREE HT60
or a $10 spray tan. Call
404-240-3323 for info.

As a marketer I’m thinking, how cool is that! For the cost of one poster and some ad space, you not only put your brand-name in the palm of someone’s hand, but you also get that person in your store where you can sell them even more stuff. Read the rest of this entry »