During the course of the game players use their own cell phone to receive text messages that give them intelligence (aka clues) to accomplish top secret spy missions in the game.

How totally cool is that? I love this idea. The messages are standard rate, so there is no additional cost to play with the SMS feature. (As long as you have a good text messaging plan. Which you do, don’t you?)


You may be wondering what this has to do with mobile marketing. It is an indication of how integrated mobile is becoming in our daily lives. The more aspects of daily life that are intertwined with mobile the more open consumers will be to communicating with businesses via mobile. It will just be completely normal to use your phone to interact with websites, companies, appliances, games, TV, radio and print media. And businesses that don’t have some sort of mobile interaction will feel old fashioned and get left behind in marketing. Just like any business now that doesn’t have a website feels positively ancient and out dated.

SIDE NOTE:
Be sure to also see my YouTube video about Woman’s Day Interactive – an example of a mobile interactive magazine.

I will let you know soon how much fun using text messaging with CLUE is. Don’t tell my daughter but this will be one of her birthday gifts this weekend. I will also let you know if there is a marketing aspect to it as well. I am hoping for a double opt in opportunity to stay on an SMS list for additional value. Fingers crossed. Oh and I also hope I complete the most missions before being discovered by Agent Black. My Palm Pre and I are ready.

Disclosure: The links to CLUE on Amazon are affiliate links. If you decide to purchase CLUE from Amazon using these links it will add a small amount to my affiliate commission from Amazon which I use to buy books from Amazon.

Last week Chitika, an online advertising network, released a study of mobile vs. non-mobile click through rates on their advertising units. You can read their press release about the study here.

Based on 92 million ads shown (1.3 million of them seen with mobile browsers) they reported that the desktop ads got a click through rate of 0.83%, while the “mobile ads” as a whole pulled a mere 0.48%.

I added the quotes on the words “mobile ads” because these were not mobile ads at all. Rather these were the exact same ads that were built for desktop computers but shown on mobile devices.

The conclusion drawn by Chitika and dozens of bloggers and writers who covered the story is that mobile ads don’t get the same click through response as desktop ads.

Here’s the flaw in the logic of this…

The Chitika study actually reveals that mobile users are not likely to click on desktop ads shown on their mobile device. That is an entirely different thing than saying that mobile users are not clicking on mobile ads.

These are different devices and require different strategies. You cannot simply force desktop ads onto mobile devices and then cry out that no one is clicking on them. It doesn’t make sense.

That would be like airing an audio only ad created for radio on TV and then claiming that radio ads don’t work as well as television commercials. Or like running a black and white ad designed for newspaper in a four color glossy magazine and stating that newspaper ads don’t work as well as magazine ads.

Mobile and desktop Internet use is completely different. Mobile advertising is not just desktop advertising made smaller. Mobile advertising is a different media channel than Internet advertising.

What the Chitika study really taught us is not that mobile users don’t click on ads, but that mobile users require ads specifically created for mobile use in order to click on them.

Mobile Marketing Association
www.mmaglobal.com/resources/case-studies

Mobile Marketer
www.mobilemarketer.com

Not exactly case studies, but they have great coverage of mobile marketing.

Text Messaging by Ez Texting
www.eztexting.com/case_studies.html

Text to Screen
www.locamoda.com/partners/case_studies/

Smart Reply
www.smartreply.com/Pages.aspx/Case-Studies

Do you have case studies that you would like listed?
Please send me the link and I’ll get them listed.

Ready to see your message here?
It’s super easy. Just Text @wif6414 + your message to 87884.
Or you can tweet and include the words “mobile marketing” in your update and it will show up here as well. (Keep it G rated or it will not show up.)

If you want your actual name to show up, you will need to set up an account, edit your profile and link your phone to your profile. Otherwise you will show up as something random like GoldenPoodle1, which is what happened to me before I figured out the profile trick.

Want your own text message board?
Also super easy. Head over to Wiffiti, sign up and create a board. It is free. Enjoy!

Text messaging is a mandatory opt-in marketing channel. It is never smart or ethical to send text messages that are not explicitly requested. And in many places around the world it is illegal to do so. This explicit permission is not granted simply by being a customer or giving a business a cell phone number for other purposes.

Opting in has very specific criteria. You have to get someone to text in to opt in, sign up online with using a fill in the blank form or reply “Yes” when you have gotten verbal permission to add them to your mobile list. None of these can be done without having a mobile marketing campaign going.

The good news is that everybody starts at zero. Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike all start with no one in their mobile marketing database.

Even better news is that it only takes a smart marketing strategy and powerful marketing implementation to get people opting in like crazy. Give people a good reason to sign up and make sure they know all about it and your campaign is underway. Your text message database is being built.

Waiting to start mobile marketing until you have a mobile database is impossible. You cannot build a mobile marketing database without doing mobile marketing.

Shout out to my friend Chris Torbit with SmartReply who coined the phrase “everybody starts at zero.”

In today’s market, consumers are thinking twice before they buy almost anything.  “How much do I need it?” “Do I need it all, or do I just want it?” “It is on sale?” Questions people ask when they’re uncertain about their own economic futures.

This “Is it on sale?” thinking presents an ideal opportunity for mobile marketing to worried consumers.  For example, if a consumer has a genuine need and desire for a purchase more complex or higher value than an impulse buy – anything from an upgraded mobile phone to a new car – they may repeatedly pass up that item at full price, or even with some discounting.  Stretching their spending dollars by waiting for a better deal is a safer move in a tight economy.

But what if that same consumer were to receive a coupon on their mobile phone while they were out shopping? Not a printed coupon sitting at home with the unopened mail, or an email coupon waiting in a distant inbox to be printed out and stuck in a purse or a pocket.  Rather, a targeted offer made to the right consumer at the right time, in the right place.

This sort of precision targeting has been the promise of mobile marketing for many years, but few companies have yet to fully leverage such a strategy today.  Confusing opt-in/op-out rules for commercial SMS messages, platform compatibility issues with sending MMS coupons to different families of smartphones, divergent carrier support for standards and commercial traffic – all of these factors and more have served to discourage corporate involvement in robust mobile couponing.

Yet there are best practices and design solutions which can work with all of these impediments to transform them into success factors.  An inbound mobile marketing campaign driven by point-of-sale signage and advertising placements combines the consumer opt-in process with the marketing contact.  Use of well crafted standard SMS messages (text-only) sidesteps MMS and barcode compatibility issues to reach all SMS-capable phones.  Even minimal integration between the messaging gateway provider and your own retail management systems can provide end-to-end accountability and realtime program ROI.

You as a mobile marketer need to keep the following things in mind when pursuing this kind of program:

1. How will the consumer become aware of your campaign?
2. How will you obtain their permission to interact?
3. How will the offer be redeemed at the point of sale?

By offering consumers mobile coupons, businesses can create stronger customer relationships while giving consumers what they want, resulting in increased satisfaction, and increased profitability.

Here’s what I need help with:

1)
Put sales letters onto WordPress page

I will provide you with a written sales letter that I will ask you to put on a page in WordPress. You will need to create a product-specific sales letter page and also put the product on the Products Catalog page. I will provide you with a template you can use to easily design the page using WordPress HTML Editor. You do not need to create any graphics, just be able to use the ones already available.

2)
Create product delivery page

I will provide you with a selection of downloadable files (MP3s and PDFs) and you will create a password protected page on my WordPress site where customers can go to download their product after purchase. I have a basic design you can follow, but I would love it if you were able to upgrade the look and feel of the product delivery page.

3)
Set up 1Shopping Cart to deliver products

I need you to set up a product in 1ShoppingCart and the corresponding autoresponder that ensures clients get immediate access to the downloadable products they purchase.

4)
Put product Autoresponder series into 1ShoppingCart

I will provide you a Word document with a series of autoresponders that I will want you to input into 1 Shopping Cart. You will also need to set it up so that when a client purchases a product that they are moved off that product’s sales autoresponder and placed on the customer one for that product.

5)
Set up Affiliate Program

Set up 1ShoppingCart affiliate program in such a way that when affiliates send people to my site that they get tagged when someone signs up for the free offer and then earns affiliate commission on any purchase made at any time. An affiliate program is already created, it is just not working exactly the way I want it to work. Currently, I’m having to manually adjust things when sales are made.

TIME FRAME:

During the month of August I will have 6 products that I will need each of the tasks done for. It is likely that most of the work will fall into the last 2 weeks of August.

I will make a decision about who to work with over the weekend, so please respond by Friday, July 31st if you are interested.

MUST HAVE SKILLS:

WordPress
1ShoppingCart
English speaking

PLEASE RESPOND VIA EMAIL WITH:

• Your rates – do you have hourly rates, package rates or retainer rates
• Time estimate – if you are hourly, please give an estimate range
• Your availability – do you have time in August to devote to this work?
• References – at least three clients (Past or current is fine) I can contact to ask about your work
• Other services you provide

MY CONTACT INFO IS HERE:

http://mobilemarketingprofits.com/contact-us/

Watch the video real quick and then go check out his review. I hope they make this app for the Palm Pre to break me out of my Budweiser in a bottle and Pinot Grigio rut.

Awesome review on Attention Digital:
Drinkspiration should provide other major brands with mobilespiration
(I even love the title of review!)

Sadly, some people are taking advantage of today’s economic news and fraud is reaching an all-time high. Crimes such as online identity theft, credit theft and so forth are all peaking. No matter what the economy is doing, this problem impacts consumers and companies of all economic cohorts and business domains.

If the worst does happen and someone steals your credit card account information to go on a buying spree, the consumer protection department of your credit card issuer will attempt to contact you, most commonly through voice, as that is the default for most consumers, especially older consumers. Email is also frequently used.

However, both voice and email introduce delays into a process where timely outreach is critical. If the number of record is a home landline, the message may not be picked up until well into the evening. Even if a business line or cell phone is being contacted, people often defer calls from unknown numbers to a more convenient time. Meanwhile, the fraudulent transaction which triggered the alert process may still go through. Even if it is declined, the identity thieves are free to try again. Conversely, if the transaction is legitimate and the account holder is unavailable to confirm it, the desired purchase may be stalled or declined.
This opens an opportunity for mobile messaging to become a value-add to consumers experiencing account fraud. SMS delivered to the handset is not just a fun way for friends to stay in touch — in cases like identity theft alerts it provides a valuable business benefit.

Many users who have adopted SMS as an ordinary communications channel will typically check their messaging as soon as possible – at a stoplight, on a meeting break, walking down a hallway – even in situations where they may not be willing or able to take a voice call.

The consumer whose account information is suspected to have been stolen can receive a text message to contact a fraud hotline immediately. Valuable time is saved in a fraud management process where minutes can count – minutes that can prevent further damage to the consumer’s credit.

Opt-In Strategies
The sticking point with commercial SMS messages in the U.S. is getting consumers to opt-in to receive such messages in the first place. A multichannel media strategy for garnering opt-ins can provide big payoffs for both lenders and consumers. Examples include SMS opt-in opportunities at the end of agented or automated voice calls, point-of-sale messaging at branch banks or lending offices, Web-based check-box options within the customer’s account profile, statement messaging or inserts and print advertising campaigns.

When consumers are given the opportunity to opt-in for fraud alerts via SMS, businesses can create stronger customer relationships through protecting everyone in the transaction chain – consumer, merchant, processor, and lender – while improving profitability through a more efficient fraud management process. A simple mobile messaging campaign, delivered in these difficult times, reaps dividends for everyone involved.

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