Posts by Julian Rockwood

Tonight Lang Lang will perform a song in Central Park chosen by all of his fans.

This an example of mobile crowdsourcing. He’s asking his fans to pick his finale performance, offering them a chance to vote via their mobile phones.

He has promoted  this on his twitter, and his facebook.

If you’re going to be in NYC, the show starts at 8 PM in Central Park with the New York Philharmonic. It should be a blast.

“Vote on Lang Lang’s Encore for July 13th with @NYPhil -Text FOLK (traditional chinese song) or KEY (Chopin “Black Keys”) to 839863 (US ONLY)”

We posted a few weeks back about using Augmented Reality as a utility and not a gimmick.

It seem’s Vodafone, Europe’s largest carrier, has caught on. They’ve just partnered with developer Junaio to offer an augmented reality channel “Wo guckst Du?” dedicated to live game stats and public viewing places for upcoming soccer matches in the World Cup.

People in Germany wondering where the nearest public viewing place is to watch a game, can hold up their phone and get immediate locations of the nearest public viewing places and the games that are playing.

Those lucky enough to be in South Africa can get live streaming of game statistics right on the field. Anyone at the game who is watching can access real-time statistics such as goals, shots on goal, corner kicks, off-sides, penalties, time of possession, passes, fouls, etc., or simply review the team line-up directly overlaid onto the football field. All statistics and game data is from Impire.

Having real-time statistics and information about players displayed on the real playground is only a glimpse into the future of watching sports. Think of what this will do to the recruiting industry. Imagine scouts visiting college games and getting live data on each and every breakthrough player right on their phone! With more education the competition will only get trickier to find the next Lebron.

Interactive Mediums needs an intern.

We’re looking for a brilliant, charismatic, motivated, and curious intern for the remainder of the summer.

Are you that somebody?

Reasons to Consider The Internship:

1. You’ll learn a lot and get paid to do it
2. You’ll get to solve problems w/ technology
3. You’ll do work that has an impact
4. We’ll teach you about product development, software, and mobile technology
5. It’s in Chicago’s cool West Loop neighborhood
6. We go out to lunch every Friday

This position will gain experience in product management and marketing. You will have the ability to sit in on product meetings, develop resources, assist in marketing efforts, launch a product and show your skills.

Check the website: http://www.interactivemediums.com

Hit us with your resume: jrockwood@interactivemediums.com

Tweet it: @im_corp / @julianrockfish

Now everyone using our platform can take advantage of our new “shorten URL” tool that is integrated within the message box. We’ve simplified the process of creating these shortened URL’s by putting them right where you schedule your messaging.

Once you shorten your URL you gain the advantage of getting real-time convenient click data right in our application.

This tool is great for anyone who needs to fit a lengthy URL into a 160-character SMS message.  It is also a great tool for pushing users to a mobile website, whether it be for information collection, to give them a coupon, or to push them to your mobile online store.

Once you’ve got a long URL in place, simply click the “shorten URL’s” text on the bottom left hand corner and voilah! You now have reduced your text, included a link, and can track the number of clicks it receives over time.

When you are ready to check up on the success of your links, go to our “tools” section and scroll down to “short urls”. Here you will have a page covering all of your links with their statistics.  It also gives you the ability to edit links in the event URLs change.

Last but not least we offer a customized QR (quick-response) code for you to download and utilize in your marketing needs. This acts as a visual representation of the shortened link, and sends the user to the same destination URL when scanned with a mobile phone’ camera. It is great for business cards, POS and magazine advertisements.

For more on QR Codes check out this Wikipedia entry: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code>

Questions? Write us: gettingstarted@interactivemediums.com

Being someone who has always worked in a small agency environment, I was recently inspired by this article on AdAge.com.

Phil Johnson of PJA makes a case for small agencies to quickly adopt a mobile strategy.

He points out that the three ingredients for successful mobile marketing are now all in place, making it the perfect time to adopt. Those 3 elements according to Johnson are the mobile audience, the advertising infrastructure, and the media channels.

These 3 elements when examined are quite convincing. Certainly the mobile audience is ripe with over 270 million mobile phones just in the US.  The advertising infrastructure has quickly solidified with Google acquiring AdMob, and Apple purchasing Quattro (both for hundreds of millions of dollars.) And lastly, the channels are growing exponentially, with over 1.5 trillion texts last year in the US, and over 4 billion dollars in mobile App revenue.

So how can my little agency take advantage of this?

In the article, Johnson points out that mobile is a great way for you to immediately augment your current marketing campaigns and grow your exposure, allowing you to reach consumers in more places.

Johnson points out that the advantages for small agencies to adopt a mobile strategy lay in the fact it can be scaled to reach virtually any audience large or small. In addition, getting started is a very quick process and your messaging can be crafted in real time, in comparison to traditional marketing efforts such as running a magazine ad, which must be planned and placed months before it reaches newsstands.  Small agencies also benefit from a less time-consuming corporate approval process, and can provide solutions to their customers in a much faster, more affordable fashion.

Identified in the article are 4 main areas of integration that small agencies should focus on helping their clients step into mobile with, those are Text, Mobile Web, Content, and Mobile Advertising.

Should you decide to take the leap into mobile, Interactive Mediums is a great partner to help you achieve success. If you’re a small agency looking to take advantage of mobile with your customers today, take a look at our “Mobile Imperative” webinar, or feel free to shoot us a question.

In certain cases where you have a user who is not sure how to opt-out of your subscription or loyalty list and they contact you to remove them manually these are the steps you follow as a program administrator.

1) Login, click on Lists.

2) Click on the keyword of the list your managing.

3) Click on the Subscribers link on the left hand side.

4) Click on the Add/Remove Subscribers link and then put the number into to form field at the bottom of the page.

When you are in your “Lists” overview and you have selected the subscription list you would like to request data from, select that list.

Now that you have select to “broadcast a message” from here you will highlight your list, or a list segment, which we discussed previously in the blog post “How to Broadcast a Message to a Segment of Your Subscribers”.

Next select the time you would like to schedule your message, and input your message description. You can call this “Birthday Message”.

From there go ahead and type your message, and make sure it relates to the data you will request from your customers.

I will suggest something like:

“Here at BIGBOXRETAILER we want to make sure we’re targeting you with the best deals based on your interests. Please respond with your birthday in XX/XX/XXXX”

next check the box that says “This message requests data from the participant”

From there you will see a dropdown of data attribute options. In this use case you would select birthdate.

You are also given the option to select an invalid & verified data response message.

For invalid you can say “ sorry we don’t recognize that as a birthday, please repond in XX/XX/XXXX format”

And for verified data you can say “thank you for helping us market to you more effectively”

You hear it everywhere, Geofencing is on it’s way. SONIC, North Face, Old Navy, American Eagle & REI are said to be already embracing it.

Companies such as Placecast, Wavemarket, and Xtify are VC backed, and ready to power it in scalable ways.

The statistics make a marketers’ mouth water:

“Placecast has reported consumers reacted positively with 79 % saying these messages increased their likelihood to visit a store and 65% made a purchase as a result of a ShopAlerts message.”

The Starbucks example makes plenty of sense.

“Imagine the message as your walking to work past your favorite Starbucks location on the way to work, “Vanilla Latte half price until 10am!” If you take action on this coupon, it’s a win-win situation; both the customer & Starbucks are happy with the result.

You would think that this new technology would be an instant hit for the real estate industry, retail shopping, government services, & restaurants.  You would think that consumers would be excited about the opportunity to get deals sent to them from their favorite brands when they are already near shopping centers.

However, a very large portion of the feedback on blogs is coming from consumers who say they feel like this is another potential opportunity to be spammed & that it will surely negatively impact their relationship with the brands (see here).

Given the design of LBS mobile services, I would think consumers would only opt-in to brands they are truly interested in, and that those brands would act in a respectful manner.

The relationship should revolve around improve customer satisfaction, offering more relevant deals, & thus increasing sales.

If a brand says, “we can send you more relevant, highly contextual messages about deals, etc. if we know where you are.” Then users will have to decide for themselves whether it is worth participating.

From what I have read I disagree with the skeptics. I don’t cut out coupons, and at the same time I don’t like receiving Target Brand text coupons weeks before I am going to Target.  I know I would find convenience in receiving coffee coupons when I am near a coffee shop, and North-Face coupons when I am near a Northface & I would likely be one to opt-in.

Only time will tell how this extremely young industry develops, and what features are enhanced to ensure customer participation.  One thing is for sure, if companies like Wavemarket and Placecast are raising millions of dollars from VC backers, it might be worth betting on.

For more on this topic I recommend this article: http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2009/12/why-location-based-couponingadvertising-wont-work-in-its-current-form/

For those interested in how it applies to real estate in more detail: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/property-management/searching-for-real-estate-made-easy-geo-fences-plus-mobile-phones-1030410/

We will be down for system maintenance Monday April 19th between 1 and 2 AM Central Time. We are going to be updating our servers. Please plan accordingly & do not schedule any messages for  this time.

Regards,

The Interactive Mediums Team.

We’ve heard a lot of fodder that coupons sent directly to mobile devices are going to be the next big opportunity for CPG brands & retailers to ensure loyalty, but we have yet to find out what method of mobile couponing will emerge as the most effective.

Although, paper coupons, FSI’s, e-mailed & web-printed coupons represent the vast majority of coupons used, the transition to mobile is starting to unfold quickly. Currently CPG brands as well as retailers are deploying various types of mobile couponing programs to help fight the private label threat.

We have heard many reports of technologies being deployed that vary from a numeric code delivered via SMS text message through actual digitized bar codes that render on a mobile device for scanning at the point of sale.

Unfortunately these types of mobile coupons are often very laborious, and take too much time in the checkout lane. Delivering coupons via mobile or handheld device should represent a timesaving convenience for consumers, not add more steps to the money saving process.

The purpose of mobile couponing is indeed designed to eliminate the need for clipping and sorting, and help retailers & brands cuts costs on coupons that frequently head straight to the trash bin.

What we see at A&P and a few test market Krogers is different. It is a mobile couponing program that links directly to your loyalty card/account at the retailer.

This means all of those text codes, & screen capture bar codes can be eliminated. A customer can opt-in to receive SMS coupons on their mobile device, or browse a selection via application or mobile web, and when they find one they like, they just click save & it’s automatically saved to their loyalty card. Now when they are in Target this weekend they will get the deal on toilet paper just by scanning their card.

In this scenario, the consumer has received their savings in convenience, the retailer/CPG brand have sold a product through a targeted price-reduction approach, and cut the cost of one paper coupon in the process. Everybody wins.

This is exciting and the analytics & tracking capabilities will definitely make marketers happy. Only time will tell if this will emerge as the best shared practice, and how quickly this could be adopted industry wide.