Situational Marketing

Wireless Amber Alerts

The Ad Council is sponsoring a series of commercials about Amber Alerts, the community response system in place for children who have gone missing.

The first three hours after a child abduction are the most important, and the Amber Alert system takes advantage of the eyeballs in the community to help law enforcement track down the abductors.

It's a great system, and one that works with citizens, rather than against them.

Which is why the latest technology upgrade to use SMS text messaging for Amber Alerts is such a great idea.  In addition to radio, television, and press releases, you can sign up for Amber Alerts on your phone, which means that driving around, you might be in the position to help save a child.

https://www.wirelessamberalerts.org is the site, and I urge you to join.  Just Text the word "Amber" followed by a space and your Zip code, and you'll be enrolled. You can stop at anytime, but it's a valuable service, and mobile bloggers can make a difference by writing about it and  linking to the website.

GIMA Meeting, Starring Chris Torbit!

Over 82% of the US population has a cell phone thus liberating our audiences from their computer screen and opening up to new ways of targeted marketing. This month, our panel of experts will discuss how to get started in mobile marketing, along with reviewing some of the most successful strategies they have encountered in the space.

Our panelists:
Rob Sprungman, Director of Sales, Midwest, AdMob - the world's largest mobile marketplace for advertisers while offering a surgical level of targeting through content, device, carrier, etc. Rob most recently was the Midwest Sales Manager for Electronic Arts (EASports.com, EA.com, and POGO.com) and has been in the interactive space for nearly ten years. Prior to interactive, Rob was a media manager and buyer for Montgomery Ward.

Chris Torbit, President and Founder, Blast Companies -  offering emerging communication applications and marketing services in text messaging, email marketing, mobile marketing and voice broadcasting that enable clients to effectively communicate with their target audience.

Steven Kelley, CEO and Founder, MessageBuzz - an innovative solution provider of choice to advertising agencies creating mobile marketing campaigns and strategic mobile communication solutions for their clients.

Join us and interact with the fast-growing St. Louis interactive community!
When:  Wednesday, April 16, 6-9 p.m.
           6-7 Networking - refreshments and heavy hor d'oeuvres
           7-8 Presentation
           8-9 More networking
Where: Monarch Restaurant, 7401 Manchester Rd, Maplewood, MO 63143, (314) 644-3995

To register at the GIMA site (Gateway Interactive Marketing Association)

No cost to you, thanks to our sponsors:

                                          

Selling Capacity For The 2008 Political Campaign

The calls have started coming in about voice broadcast, e-mail marketing, and text messaging for political campaigns.  Most political consultants are focused on the cost of robocalls, but there's more to an online campaign and messaging that voice broadcast. 

The smart campaigns are taking advantage of the internet to drive political messages, organize volunteers, and in the case of the presidential campaigns, raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

Don't get left behind.  Yes, you can contact us at Voterblast to talk about  your voice broadcast needs (it's cheaper now to reserve capacity), but be thinking about how you can use text clubs, e-mails, and blogs to affect your local district and state races.

What Do Mobile Customers Really Want?

It seems to be a question keeping a lot of us up at night:

Ewan takes some thoughts down from actual normobs (normal mobile users).

One of his commenters says it's predictability (I agree with that)

Kim lays it out in her blog series, and says it's location.

This is the no-brainer category of information to provide for your customers via mobile. Location-specific knowledge is the number one reason that people access the mobile web for mobile search.

That's true today - but I was at the Apple Store thinking about the upcoming uses for mobile phones.

I felt pretty cool, but now that we have smart phones and the iPhone and web access with cheap data plans, the possibility of doing live shopping without the help of someone at home is really going to take off. In addition to shopping at retail stores, we can comparison shop with friends, setting location against location, and pitting both against online versions.

Opt-In Complaints In SMS Messaging

Clients often call or write in asking us for list management, or wanting to broadcast marketing messages to people's cell phones and e-mail addresses.  In the rush to drive value from their marketing campaigns, far too man companies forget to address both legal and common-sense requirements in messaging.

Spam is not just Viagra e-mails and online poker rooms.  It's actually very easy to be categorized as a spammer, and if you aren't conducting a valid compliance check on your e-mail and mobile lists, you can run afoul of the law with heavy penalties.  And that's if you're lucky.  Worse than the penalties is the danger of broadcasting a message that has a negative effect on your intended audience.

Spending money that makes prospective customers actively work against your company should be the number one concern of online marketers.  Like Doctors, the goal of your marketing firm should be first, do no harm.

Mobivity addresses this point in defining what opt-in means.  It doesn't mean spam your customers and tell them to opt-out.

SMS marketing has clearly suffered from the email SPAM epidemic, and we work really hard to keep it honest and respectable.

What really gets to me is receiving unsolicited emails from SMS vendors all over the world that are clearly not directed to me personally. If you want me to consider your services, at least find out my name and email, and send me a note. Don’t throw our INFO email address on your list and start the spam stream!

It's a simple thing to understand. Don't take actions that require your customers to perform your data cleansing for you.  Those customers have access to the web, and may not be happy with you.  Which means you'll hear about it from them.