Five Super Ways to "Mobilize" Your Marketing

It is predicted the number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide will hit 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The world's 6.8 billion people that means about seventy percent of the world's population have mobile phone! More interestingly, the fastest growing segment of mobile phones are smart phones, that is, iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, and Palm ago along with many others. Smartphones are basically little computers that also happen to make phone calls and they are finally at the stage where they are browsing on a small screen bearable. That said, for at least 80% of the total number of mobile phones on the market right now can browse the web, some just do it better than others. Achieving potential and existing clients via mobile channel is now an important medium and the proliferation of mobile powered transactions (mCommerce) will add fuel to the fire. Soon your mobile phone can also replace your wallet. But, is not allowed in front of you because you probably want to know what basic things you can do right now to take advantage of mobile channels.
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It is predicted the number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide will hit 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The world's 6.8 billion people that means about seventy percent of the world's population have mobile phone! More interestingly, the fastest growing segment of mobile phones are smart phones, that is, iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, and Palm ago along with many others. Smartphones are basically little computers that also happen to make phone calls and they are finally at the stage where they are browsing on a small screen bearable. That said, for at least 80% of the total number of mobile phones on the market right now can browse the web, some just do it better than others. Achieving potential and existing clients via mobile channel is now an important medium and the proliferation of mobile powered transactions (mCommerce) will add fuel to the fire. Soon your mobile phone can also replace your wallet. But, is not allowed in front of you because you probably want to know what basic things you can do right now to take advantage of mobile channels.
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Capture customer cell phone numbers. Since half of all phone connections in Canada are now wireless and nearly 90% of metro residents have a cell phone, gather cell phone numbers is required. This is pretty easy to achieve and you can encourage customers / prospects to volunteer this information by offering exclusive coupons and promotions to mobile subscribers. Once you have a list you can use the campaign via email or SMS alerts generated short codes. The simplest of the campaign is sending text messages, and this can be achieved only with your e-mail program. As long as you have a number of carriers, and I know there are e-mail format for mobile numbers that can be used to send SMS messages directly from your computer. For more advanced campaigns using SMS short codes will need to partner with a company that is affiliated with the Gateway provider phone companies. Gateway and platform providers have connections with the phone company to make a short code campaign (ie the text "win " in 5429 to enter the contest). There are two types of short code campaigns, non-premium and premium. The latter is much more expensive to set-up, and is required for each campaign in which they hope to generate revenue from text messaging (ie American Idol text voting). For non-premium campaign, you can get a set-up relatively quickly and using services for contests, coupons, text alerts, support, etc. There are guidelines about the use of mobile short codes for marketing purposes, so be sure to review them before embarking on a campaign.
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Capture customer cell phone numbers. Since half of all phone connections in Canada are now wireless and nearly 90% of metro residents have a cell phone, gather cell phone numbers is required. This is pretty easy to achieve and you can encourage customers / prospects to volunteer this information by offering exclusive coupons and promotions to mobile subscribers. Once you have a list you can use the campaign via email or SMS alerts generated short codes. The simplest of the campaign is sending text messages, and this can be achieved only with your e-mail program. As long as you have a number of carriers, and I know there are e-mail format for mobile numbers that can be used to send SMS messages directly from your computer. For more advanced campaigns using SMS short codes will need to partner with a company that is affiliated with the Gateway provider phone companies. Gateway and platform providers have connections with the phone company to make a short code campaign (ie the text "win " in 5429 to enter the contest). There are two types of short code campaigns, non-premium and premium. The latter is much more expensive to set-up, and is required for each campaign in which they hope to generate revenue from text messaging (ie American Idol text voting). For non-premium campaign, you can get a set-up relatively quickly and using services for contests, coupons, text alerts, support, etc. There are guidelines about the use of mobile short codes for marketing purposes, so be sure to review them before embarking on a campaign.
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