Archive for July, 2009

TextMe has just received major updates to two of our most popular campaign types: sweepstakes and voting. On these two campaign types, we’ve replaced the 4 page creation process with a single page. We think that a single page makes the setup process quicker and easier.

Having a single page also allows us to implement duplication functionality. Sweepstakes and voting campaigns can be duplicated using the “Duplicate Campaign” link in the left action menu. This will take you to a screen that is pre-filled with the details of the campaign being duplicated. You can edit anything on the screen, such as the start and end times. Advanced configuration like age requirements and AMOE forms are also copied. You can edit those options after you create your new campaign.

I don’t have a formal writeup for this prepared, but heads up – we’re looking for another engineer to join the Interactive Mediums team. You’d be helping build out our mobile marketing platform (Ruby/Rails, MySQL, CouchDB, RabbitMQ, etc) as well as getting your hands wet with mobile applications (primarily iPhone). Competitive salary, health and dental insurance, 401k, and pre-tax transit benefits. Our office is located at 656 W Randolph (three blocks from Ogilvy station).

If you’re interested, please send an email to me at jeff@interactivemediums.com.

UPDATE: As of 7/24/2009 this position has been filled

We’re excited to sponsor the next MoMo (short for Mobile Monday) Chicago meetup on July 20th, 2009.

Mobile Monday is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers and influentials fostering cooperation and cross-border business development through virtual and live networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends from global markets. MoMo Chicago is the local chapter dedicated to Chicago and surrounding area (which is chalk full of mobile companies).

This month’s topic is “Niche Mobile Marketing.” As mobile marketing continues to mature, organizations are finding themselves looking for more personalized ways to engage target segments. In this month’s event you will learn key strategies from two mobile marketing veterans on how to effectively message to the growing Hispanic and Youth niche markets.

MEETING DETAILS
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Date: Monday, July 20, 2009
Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Topic: Niche Mobile Marketing
Presenter: Ana Arredondo (Senior Consultant), Hugh Jedwill (Mobile Anthem)
Location: Acquity Group, 500 W Madison St, Suite 2200, Chicago, IL 60661
Location Notes: Participants can sign-in at the reception desk on the 3rd floor (picture ID required)

MEETING AGENDA
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6:00pm – Sign-In / Light-Dinner
6:10pm – 6:20pm Quick Industry News Updates
6:20pm – 6:40pm Mobile Marketing to the Hispanic Demographic
6:40pm – 7:00pm Mobile Marketing to the Youth Demographic
7:10pm – 7:30pm Marketer Roundtable
7:30pm > Beer / Networking

REGISTRATION
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To attend, please register at http://momochicago-07-2009.eventbrite.com/

Our latest addition to TextMe, the Campaign History Report, provides you with an overview of all campaigns that have ever been created for your account.  This one stop shop lists the total and unique messages for each campaign for the time period you specified, as well as for the life of that campaign.  In addition to the totals, the report also breaks down how many messages were received via SMS, and how many messages were received via the web (through a web voting widget, or an alternate means of entry sweepstakes form).

Using the controls at the top of the page, you can narrow down the campaigns you would like to see by specifying a start and end date, the type of campaign, the keyword (or partial keyword) of the campaign, and the status of the campaign (active, future, past, or deleted).  Once you’ve entered your criteria, you can either click “Display Report” to see the results in a nicely formatted table, or click “Export Report”, which will prompt you to save a comma separated value (CSV) file containing the results that you can then open in your spreadsheet application of choice.

The report table offers a few features of its own.  First, all of the columns are sortable in ascending or descending order.  Simply click the header of the column you would like to sort.  Clicking the keyword will bring you straight to the details page of that particular campaign.  Also, if you hover the mouse over the keyword, you will see the full description of the campaign.

Enjoy!

We’re looking for someone to join our team and lead up all things marketing. A writeup of the job responsibilities, requirements and benefits can be found below – if you are interested or know anyone that fits the bill please visit http://interactivemediums.com/jobs to apply.

Marketing Director – Chicago, IL

Responsibilities:

• Formulate unique market positioning, brand messaging, and elevate company profile and exposure
• Drive market research and competitive analysis; perform target market analysis and develop marketing strategies for aggressive target penetration
• Direct media relations and manage PR strategy
• Manage copywriting / content development (online copy, user documentation, media kits, whitepapers, collateral, press releases, case studies, presentations, blog posts, customer communications)
• Coordinate with creative resources to develop effective online and print marketing campaigns to support sales / awareness efforts.
• Manage redesign of corporate website (interactivemediums.com) and continuous iteration
• Manage TextMe (textme.net) product marketing efforts
• Manage SEO / SEM
• Lead creative client services practice and assist with ideation/program development

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience driving research, competitive analysis, launching new products, building brands, and developing growth strategies
• 3+ years of agency experience required
• Ability to complete project tasks individually or delegate /coordinate with internal or external creative resources when appropriate.
• Knowledge in creating national marketing plans, executing integrated campaigns and managing external / internal communications with press, analysts, employees, and customers
• Clear knowledge of the principles of integrated marketing and communications
• Creative thinker and problem solver
• Demonstrated responsibility, follow-through and ability to generate results
• Strong analytic, strategic, and business reasoning abilities
• Entrepreneurial, enthusiastic, collaborative professional
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Must be equally comfortable with identifying high ROI marketing projects and strategies as they are in personally performing the tasks necessary to complete projects.
• Marketing experience for companies providing technology enabled services and web software products.
• Experience in the following a plus (direct marketing, digital marketing, mobile marketing, brand promotions, CRM solutions, software as a service, technology / online products)

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing related field required. Masters degree preferred.

Perks:

• Medical and dental insurance
• 401(k)
• Transit pre-tax enrollment
• Flexible vacation policy

UPDATE: As of 7/22/2009 this position has been filled

Documentation on our existing API functionality is now available at http://www.textme.net/features/campaign_api.  In the coming months, we will be working to enhance our API to support additional methods and campaign types.  If you have a need for a specific API, please let us know, and we’ll make sure to bump that method to the top of the list.

We’re excited to wrap up our first project with Classified Ventures and officially launch the Apartments.com iPhone app. You can find out more about the app at Apartments.com/iphone.aspx, and download it through the iPhone App Store.

If you’re looking for an innovative iPhone app, we’re here to help. Send an email to hello@interactivemediums.com and we’ll follow up with you.

Lets face it, some of us love numbers.  Pretty charts and interactive graphs are nice, but sometimes you just need the data.  When working on the new subscription list charts, we took it upon ourselves to make all of the data that back those charts available in a new subscription list details report.  The new report, available in the “Subscriptions” tab in the “Stats” section of TextMe, works much like the new charts.  You select the time frame you are interested in, and the subscription list you would like to see the data for.  Then, you could either click “Display Report” to see the data right there in your web browser, or “Export Report” to be sent a CSV (comma separated value) file containing all of the data, which you can then open in your spreadsheet application of choice.

The report lays out the data in an easy to read table.  In addition, you have the ability to sort any of the columns in ascending or descending order.  Simply click the header of the column you’d like to sort, and watch the magic happen.  Enjoy!

We’ve just released some exciting new additions to the charting support for subscription lists. First and foremost, you are now able to select the date range that you want to see data for.  In the previous release, you were restricted to the past week, month, 6 months, and year.  In addition, you now have the choice between three charting views for a specific subscription campaign.

The summary view provides a great summary of how your subscription list has been performing over time.

As you can see, the summary view consists of three charts, and some additional statistics.  The first chart is a trend of people who have subscribed to the list.  The little black dots on the line indicate that one or more broadcast (or alert) messages were sent on that day.  If you roll the mouse over one of the dots, you’ll see a description of that message.

This is great for seeing the impact a particular message may have had on your subscription list.  Below that chart is one showing the total opt-ins, confirmed opt-ins (people who responded positively to the confirmation message), and opt-outs to your subscription list for day or month in the time frame you specified.  This new line graph replaces the bar graph that represented the same data in the previous release of TextMe.  This chart allows you to see any combination of the three metrics.  Simply check the box next to the metric you would like to see, and the chart will reflect that change immediately.  An interesting thing to point out is that the chart will adjust the X and Y axis to best fit the data it is currently displaying.  For example, here is the opt-in/opt-out graph configured to show only opt-outs:

The pie chart on the summary view shows a breakdown of how subscribers were added to your subscription list.  Each slice of the pie represents the keyword used to join the subscription list, and the number of subscribers who were added via that keyword.  If you have another campaign, setup to add people to this subscription list, like a vote campaign or a sweepstakes campaign, this chart will show you exactly how many people were added to your list via that other campaign.  One thing to point out is that this pie chart represents the breakdown of the subscription list at the end of the time frame specified.  In the image of the summary view above, the pie chart represents the keyword breakdown of the list on May 1, 2009.  This allows you to see the breakdown of your subscription list at any point in its life.

In addition to the charts, the summary view also lists the total number of subscribers, total opt-ins, total confirmed opt-ins, and total opt-outs for the list at the end of the time frame specified.

The growth view provides a chart showing two lines that represent the cumulative opt-ins and opt-outs over time for your list.  This is useful for seeing exactly how many people have subscribed, and unsubscribed to your list over some point in time.

The third and final view, the retention view, shows you how many people subscribed to your list on a given day, and how many of those people remain on your subscription list today.

In the example above there are two lines.  The light green line represents the number of people who subscribed to your list on that particular day.  Of those people, the dark green line represents how many people are still subscribed to your list today.  This view can be helpful in determining how many people stayed subscribed to your list after some promotion that was run over a time frame.

We really hope that the ability to visualize this data will make it easier to understand, and faster to process.  We have been making some major changes in the past few months to support the presentation of even more statistics for your campaigns.  We realize that in marking, statistics are key.  So, stay tuned for even more features allowing you to see exactly how your campaigns are working!