To give it a try, create an account on their website by providing your phone number, nickname, birth date, and of course, password. For music fans, the second step is perusing through the list of bands in your chosen genre and texting a band’s listed keyword from your phone to Mozes (66937). You’ll receive an immediate response with directions to join a mob and more info on what the incentive is for doing so.

Here is something else to keep an eye on; it looks as though Mozes is expanding from music to sports and live events content and updates via text too. Keep texting!
–Cloud

Papa John’s offers an interesting service which we previously wrote about in June (article here). Their service is based on user-created “Favorites”. By setting up a customized meal as a favorite in their online Papa John’s profile, users can save the legwork of going through a menu and picking out the food that they want. Papa John’s appears to aim for speed in their offering, underscored by their focus on the Favorites aspect of the service. Papa John’s also offers mobile coupons and savings to their customers which they provide in a convenient location in their front menu.

Domino’s service is relatively simple, and seems to be more based on variety than Papa John’s service. Domino’s offers choices of Pizza, Chicken, Bread, Drinks, Salads, and some Extras (sauce, dressing, etc). While the choices of food are relatively limited, Domino’s offers a great variety within each kind. Beyond bulding their own pizzas, users can choose between multiple toppings and styles. Like Papa John’s they offer coupons to the user on the front page of the mobile menu, which is a great service and encourages customers to save money.

Pizza Hut’s mobile ordering service is chock full of options and choices for delivery. Users can choose from Pizza, Pasta, Wings, Sides, Desserts, and Beverages. Similar to Papa John’s SMS offerings, users can also set up logged Express Checkout choices on the mobile website, so that they can simply refer back to a previous order for inspiration in a pinch. While Pizza Hut offers such a huge variety of different kinds of food, it can be somewhat of a drawback, as they don’t successfully show how easy it is to order using SMS on their website and seem to focus only on online ordering. Also, when signing up as a member, Pizza Hut forces you to sign up for coupons, rather than simply presenting the option. Contrary to Domino’s, they offer a great variety of different kinds of food, but they also lack a variety of selection within each kind of food.

These three companies still have bugs and shortcomings to fix within their SMS delivery services, but with time and with new ideas, SMS could transform the way that we think of delivery. In the meantime, it serves as a fast, easy way to get a delicious pizza.

- JPK

MoQpon also just released an EPK, which is available here as a Google Document.  

- JPK

“Your mobile phone is such a personal device – you carry it everywhere with you,” Ms. Crook said.

“Our IKEA Mobile program has allowed us to communicate one-to-one with our customers about store sales, events and activities, but it’s the bCode solution which has allowed us to drive customer traffic into the store,” she said.

Read the rest of the article here.

-JPK

Q: Tell me why Coupons, Inc. got behind a mobile couponing program. Do you think the time for coupons on the phone has finally come?
A: There’s no question that mobile distribution has an important place in the future of couponing. In fact, Coupons, Inc. has had a platform for mobile coupons in SMS and WAP and mobile browser formats ready for a while. Because of our experience with online coupons, we feel we are the right company to make mobile couponing really efficient and attractive for the coupon issuers and merchants as well as for mobile consumers. Partnering with Yahoo! Mobile brings a large group of mobile consumers and advertisers into the launch of a really national mobile couponing solution. We think this is the right combination to create a full scale program that can grow quickly and meet the needs of national brands.

Q: What have are the special challenges of managing a mobile coupon campaign compared to online and print format coupons?
A: All the issues we addressed with online coupons apply to mobile, along with some new challenges. The industry as a whole has to agree on the technical standards and the security and audit processes for mobile coupons. I have been participating in the Digital Coupon Task force of the Coupon Professional Association Processing to work out some of these issues. Since mobile coupons are new in most markets, redemption processes and efficiency is a critical factor in venues like supermarkets and large retail stores. We have to look at where the coupon is likely to be redeemed and address redemption issues on a program-to-program basis for now.

Q: Will there be a direct link to the coupons.com web site or will your launch with Yahoo! be a separate mobile-only offer?
A: We expect to provide integration with coupons.com and will look at combined coupon delivery options –for example, with some campaigns and consumers, it maybe work best to have the first interaction on the mobile phone and then deliver a printable coupon via e-mail. The distribution method has to make things easy for the consumer. We will also deliver coupons to the handset with appropriate partners.

Q: Do you have any specific mobile launch dates and brand offers that you can mention?
A: We are already working with a number of national brands for mobile campaigns. I can’t give you any specifics right now.

–MJ

Registered customers can opt in to get special offers, discounts and mobile coupons from Papa John’s.  A store locater is also available (to find the Papa John’s closest to you, text a five digit zipcode to 47272). 

With their SMS ordering service, Papa John’s provides their customers with quick, easy text based ordering and the inside track on sprecial deals.   For more about Papa John’s SMS ordering service, visit their SMS website.  

Mycokerewards doesn’t exactly need any more publicity – it has already signed up more than 9 million members (including me) and according to a May 2008 article in Promo Magazine (www.promomagazine.com) 12 new users register for mycokerewards membership every minute of every day. That’s a lot of Coke sloshing around the web.

And mycokerewards manages to hold on to its members, despite serving up a pretty intense (and often painfully slow-loading) stream of marketing messages, opinion surveys and come-ons with every click. The site attracts about 155 visits per minute and once they land, visitors spend an average of 9 minutes. Would you sit through a 9 minute TV ad for Coke? Me either. So what keeps us all coming back?

Since the clock was running out on my point balance, I checked out every single one of the rewards on offer at mycokerewards again today. Not counting the free (0 points) audition clips from American Idol and wallpaper downloads featuring not-so-enticing bathing suit models drinking Dasani, there were just over 200 items on offer, ranging from one digital issue of CosmoGirl (30 points) to a one-year subscription to Oprah O magazine (280 points) to a Coca-Cola Garmin pedometer (3704 points –track shoes not included). It wasn’t very inspiring.

But mycokerewards has my number (actually they have every member’s prize seeking DNA pretty well figured out, since they track every move that we make on their web site). As soon as I entered my latest 12 pack rewards code, up popped a suggestion to enter another amazing sweepstakes. Fabulous prizes! Only 3 points per entry! Who can resist? I am not alone in this sweepstakes addiction. According to the brand director for My Coke Rewards, members who visit most often are 10 times more likely to use their points entering the sweepstakes. More competition for that 5 day trip to Hawaii – and I haven’t won anything yet, but I still can’t resist.

Talking mobile codes, the best thing about mycokerewards is that you can enter all those Coke brand bottlecap codes with your mobile phone just by texting the code to 2653. So much better than stuffing them all in your pocket to take home from the game or the lunch room (if you are a mycokerewards addict yourself, you know what I’m talking about…..).

Side note: Much as I hate to admit it, MyPepsi Stuff has much cooler rewards and their own daily sweepstakes on offer over at www.pepsistuff.amazon.com . But they don’t let you text in your codes. If I were a Pepsi drinker, I would be protesting.