Reach Consumers Anytime, Anyplace with MOBILE

EDITOR'S NOTE: Publishers - Give Advertisers a mobile Web presence by featuring them on your own private-labeled APP4ADS, available in standard version for Global use and also with SMS text messaging for use in the USA.

Here is further proof that messages and media on cell phones reach consumers absolutely anywhere, anytime. A recent Samsung Mobile online survey asked people about the ubiquity of the cell phone.

For the professional take on the survey's respondents, 79 percent immediately respond to a work email on their phones no matter what time of day; and 89 percent say it’s important to be readily available to colleagues, supervisors, and clients at all times.

Marketers who wish to have their websites optimized for mobile need to do so if they hope to reach certain consumers at all. Seventy-two percent of respondents say their dependency smart phones has reduced the frequency they use computers; 40 percent feel most productive working from a smart phone outside the office rather than at a desk on their computer; and 32 percent say their smart phones are more important than their computers.

All this falls in line with a report on smart phones and prosumers, conducted by IDC on behalf of Unisys Corp, that we wrote about in June. The Samsung survey takes it further: 29 percent of respondents say they can envision the day that office computers become obsolete, with smart phones taking their place. And 71 percent of office workers with smart phones think companies should automatically supply the phones freely to all employees rather than laptops.

As to the times of day and where they are when they communicate on their mobiles, the salacious details include the following: 72 percent of respondents take cell phone calls while using the restroom; 32 percent, during church; and 10 percent, while in the throes of passion.

For marketing experts, the questionnaire also includes information on the professional uses of smart phones which, thanks to the devices, expand well past business hours.

Revised | Mobile Marketing Watch

Red Cross Haiti campaign attracts 3M unique mobile donors

The American Red Cross received donations for its Haiti earthquake relief campaign from 3 million unique donors, of which 20,000 opted in to receive ongoing email communications from the nonprofit organization.

The American Red Cross is used to harnessing online, print and broadcast media to raise funds for disaster relief, but the Haiti earthquakes showed that another channel was equally adept at winning quick response from donors: mobile, and specifically, SMS.

“Last year around this time the American Red Cross put together a mobile team focused on disaster services and marketing, so when the earthquake in Haiti struck, it gave us an early edge,” said Jana McAndrew, manager of online fundraising at American Red Cross, Washington.

“We had incorporated mobile into our marketing and fundraising efforts, so we weren’t starting from scratch,” she said. “We had already integrated mobile into our strategy planning and formulated our thought process on how to use mobile for fundraising, and that helped with our quick response to the Haiti earthquake.”

In addition to its SMS initiatives, the American Red Cross is in the process of mobile-optimizing its Web site and has launched campaign-specific applications.

Why Haiti changed everything for mobile
Thanks to SMS-savvy consumers and support from partners, the Red Cross raised more than $32 million to help victims and survivors of the earthquakes that devastated this Caribbean nation.

Incredibly, 95 percent of the consumers who texted in to the Haiti campaign were first-time donors to the American Red Cross, per Ms. McAndrew.

Many industry executives and analysts believe that the response to the Haiti disaster was the mobile giving tipping point.

In fact, the success of the American Red Cross and other nonprofits organizations in fundraising and outreach via SMS in the wake of the Haiti earthquake showcased the power and potential of the mobile medium as a whole.

While the American Red Cross ran a Text2Give mobile giving initiative in response to Hurricane Katrina, the organization received exponentially more mobile donations in response to Haiti.

“What changed from last year and the previous year compared to now is having millions of dollars coming through this channel,” Ms. McAndrew said. “The explosion of mobile phones among the general public is obviously a huge factor.

“We expect that mobile giving will become an increasingly significant venue for raising funds, but mobile is also a key enabler of how we communicate with the public,” she said.

Texting opted-in donors
In addition to fundraising, SMS is invaluable as a communications channel that nonprofit organizations can use for outreach and CRM, to issue calls for volunteers and to collect data about their supporters.

Ms. McAndrew said that approximately 20,000 donors responded to the call-to-action by sending a text message with their email address, giving the Red Cross the go-ahead to contact them via that channel as well.

While SMS donations are currently capped at $10 per text, there is no limit to online donations.

“Capturing that additional contact information from this audience is key, because we’re going to use the email channel to convert them into repeat donors that hopefully give bigger gifts,” Ms. McAndrew said.

-Dan Butcher

Mobile coupon iPhone app sees 50K downloads in first three days

EDITOR'S NOTE: Cash in on the Mobile Coupon trend by creating a Coupon App for your local area. See our Adking.com for more info.
Mobile Coupons are becoming big business, as one German marketing company can prove.

Kuffer Marketing GmbH recently announced that its iPhone mobile coupon app, dubbed “Gutscheinbuk” or “Voucher Book", was downloaded 50,000 times in the first three days after launch — or an average of once every 15 sec. In no time at all, the app rose to become one of the Top 5 apps for Germany in the Apple App Store.

To be fair, “Voucher Book” was already a wildly popular coupon-based Website in Germany that offered a simplistic approach to offering money-off coupons, but its mobile success is still worth mention. The site had been around for the past four years and currently boasts over 7,500 active coupons that are now available via its iPhone app.

The simplistic nature of the app both from a retailer’s point-of-view and the end-user is what’s helped catapult the app to the top. A retailer that uses Voucher Book can manage its own coupons using a variety of metrics –- selecting distinct offers to be sent at different times of day, or in different cities for example. As a user, you can simply open the app and select what kind of voucher you’re interested in and Voucher Book delivers anything that’s useable within a short distance of them.

Overall, the app’s success is a boon to mobile coupons in general, which are just now starting to catch on in a big way. Whether it’s a traditional method like Voucher Book or the “Groupon” model, mobile coupons are here to stay.

Mobile is best medium to get brand noticed

...Mobile is the best medium to get a brand noticed and achieve specific marketing goals during the holiday season...

Mobile calls-to-action featuring an SMS keyword and short code...can make holiday-themed traditional media actionable. Savvy retailers can get the word out about holiday sales via SMS, the mobile Web and branded applications, while brands can use various forms of mobile advertising to achieve their holiday-specific goals.

In the fourth of a series focused on mobile marketing during the holidays, Mobile Marketer’s Dan Butcher interviewed Paul Gelb, director and mobile practice lead at Razorfish, New York. Here is what he had to say:

With so much noise and holiday-themed advertising starting around Thanksgiving and even before, how can a brand use the mobile medium to get noticed during this period of very competitive media?

There are numerous ways mobile—more than any other channel—can really get a brand noticed.

The first thing we’re seeing with our clients this year is that we’re thinking about mobile and the holidays during back-to-school, driving downloads of branded mobile applications as a set-up to transition to the holidays, so the consumers have downloaded the app and the connection point has already started with a significant audience

When it comes to downloads of our branded applications, we take a multipronged approach, which is not necessarily media-oriented, such as having a branded app that is inherently valuable to the user.

The features, functionality and content of the app is key to driving downloads.

When creating an app, consumer insight is important, keeping in mind the business objective or value you want to communicate to users and finding how mobile can uniquely address that need so they keep it on their dashboard and won’t delete it.

Mobile is integrated and coordinated at every level with what we’re doing...

Another way we have seen brands capture attention during the holidays is to create in-store experiences that integrate mobile.

We’re seeing more and more that people are willing to pay more and go out of their way to shop based on experiences, which are more valuable at times than even the products themselves.

Everyone is increasingly time-constrained — time is the most valuable thing they have, so any way they can save time is important, especially around the holidays when the time crunch is even more intense.

Mobile has normally only one ad on a page, whether it is an app or a site, so it focuses more attention than other mediums where there is a lot of clutter.

Especially for publishers that are looking to maximize revenue during the holidays, on mobile you have more exclusivity and attention-capture due to the lack of ad clutter in mobile media.

As part of the shopping push during holiday season, we are seeing more and more luxury brands getting involved in mobile as well as social, where they may have been a bit slower to adopt it than other retailers.

Now luxury goods manufacturers that are not engaged in mobile marketing are the exception rather than the rule.

Given that many people are traveling and away from the TV and their PCs during the holidays, and the fact that people need to do more in less time, how can mobile address these types of general advertising challenges?

Given the travel behavior of consumers during the holidays, mobile is an extremely valuable medium for consumers, given that they may not be in front of their TV or interacting with traditional media, but they always have their mobile phone with them.

When the WiFi-only iPad first launched, we found 80 percent of ad impressions in hotels and airports, when on-the-go consumers are more likely than ever to interact with mobile media.

Why is mobile advertising significant/necessary for marketers during the holiday season?

We really live in a time of attention scarcity and time scarcity, and that is only amplified during the holidays.

Mobile, as the most functional device, can really provide incredibly valuable experiences, save consumers time and provide an incredibly favorable brand impression for those who leverage mobile marketing tools effectively.

It offers the ability to capture and pull people’s attention in via mobile media.

In 2008 during the holiday time, there was no viable data on mobile’s impact on shopping and sales, but in 2009, we saw an explosion of data and information about how consumers are really integrating mobile into their holiday shopping patterns.

It will be extremely interesting to see that trend continue this year.

-Dan Butcher

Win-100 Winner for August 2010

Congratulations to Nancy McNulty for winning our August 2010 drawing for Win-100. Win-100 awards one monthly winner $100 plus another $100 to a charity of the winner's choice. Winners are drawn from registered members of our App Users Network. Nancy was opted in to textc4c.com. Her comments about the app: "Love It!".

No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Note: Charity beneficiary for August 2010 is Sharing & Caring Hands, Minneapolis, MN. Click the headline for the link.

Win-100 Winner for July 2010

Congratulations to Todd Kobelenske for winning our July 2010 drawing for Win-100. Win-100 awards one monthly winner $100 plus another $100 to a charity of the winner's choice. Winners are drawn from registered members of our App Users Network.

No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Note: Charity beneficiary for July 2010still unidentified at this time.

Q2 Numbers Are In, Smartphone Shipments Grow 64% Worldwide, Android 886%

Now that Q2 figures are in, analysts at Canalys have taken a deeper comprehensive look to compile figures related to smartphone sales worldwide.

In total, smartphone shipments increased 64% worldwide compared to Q2 2009, with the U.S smartphone market growing by 41% year over year. Most interesting was Android-specific numbers. Device shipments sporting Android have increased an impressive 886% since Q2 2009, and in the U.S., Android represented 34% of the smartphones sold- an increase of 851%. Not surprising, the U.S. is the largest smartphone market in the world with 14.7M units sold during Q2 alone.

In terms of U.S. market share, RIM had 32.1% of smartphone sales in Q2, Apple had 21.7%, HTC had 14.4% and “others” accounted for 31.8%. iPhone shipments grew 61% during the past year, slower than the 64% total segment growth, but enough to put it right behind RIM as the third best selling platform with 13% for the quarter.