Posts by John Wood

We have just finished adding support for user data attributes to our Subscriptions API. The list and read methods have been enhanced to display all of the user data attributes that have been collected for the given subscriber, along with their corresponding values. This includes the default user data attributes (first_name, last_name, city, etc) in addition to any custom user data attributes that you have defined for your account. The create and update methods have been enhanced to allow you to specify user data attribute values for your subscribers. Storing data for your subscribers allows you to segment your subscription list, targeting messages only to users whose data matches the criteria you define. This means you no longer have to worry about troubling your male customers with sales offers for woman’s apparel. You can see the changes in our API Documentation.

Non Backwards Compatible Changes

Unfortunately, some of the changes are not backwards compatible with previous versions of the Subscriptions API.

Some attribute names will be different in the new version of the API

Previous versions of the API returned very basic information about the subscriber. Some of that information was re-structured when we added support for custom user data attributes. We would like future APIs that also interact with custom data attributes to use consistent names for the attributes. So, we’re biting the bullet now by making this change. The API name for all data attributes, which is the name to use when referring to a given attribute in the API, can be found in the User Data section of the application.

Result from the list method will now be paged

In previous versions of the API, there was no way to limit the number of subscribers you would get back with a call to the list method. If you had 100,000 subscribers, calling the list method would return an XML response approximately 1,500,000 lines long. That can be quite a bit to swallow, and could choke some applications running on machines with limited resources. Now, the list method will return 250 subscribers at a time, and allow you to iterate through your subscribers by specifying a page attribute in the request. For example, not specifying the page attribute would return subscribers 1-250. Specifying page=2 in the request URL will return subscribers 251-500. Specifying page=3 will return subscribers 501-750, and so on. This should give you more control over the API response.

User data attributes with no value for the subscriber will not be displayed

In previous versions of the API, we returned all of the user data attributes, all of the time. Even if the subscriber had no data for that particular attribute. This wasn’t too big of an issue when we were working with a fixed set of attributes. However, you now have the ability to create as many user data attributes as you wish, which could dramatically increase the size of the API response. So, we’ve changed the list and read methods to only list the user data attributes that have corresponding values for the given subscriber. If you don’t see a particular data attribute for a given subscriber, it means that subscriber has no value for that particular attribute.

Testing The New API Methods, and Migrating Your Code

The new API methods are in production, and ready for testing. The create, update, and delete methods are completely backward compatible, so you should be able to continue using them as you were. To access the new versions of the list and read methods, simply add ?new=true to the end of your request. For example, /api/subscription_campaigns/{campaign_id}/subscriptions.xml will invoke the old list method, and /api/subscription_campaigns/{campaign_id}/subscriptions.xml?new=true will invoke the new method. This will allow you to test the new and old API methods side by side, and switch to the new version of the API methods at your convenience.

In a few weeks, after everybody has migrated to the new version of the API, we will make the new versions of the API methods accessible without the ?new=true URL parameter, and you can remove the ?new=true URL parameter at your convenience.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@interactivemediums.com.

We are now offering a 14 day free trial of our customer engagement platform. So if you’ve checked out the website, read about the product, read this blog, and still aren’t convinced, then the free trial is a great way to convince you that the Interactive Mediums platform is the way to go for you and your business.

The free trial includes access to all of the features available on the platform. You can create up to ten fully functional campaigns, create up to three user accounts to share with your colleagues, and interact with up to three mobile phone numbers. Best of all, is that when you decide to sign up, you can keep all of the campaigns that have created during the trail.

There really is nothing to lose. Click here to get started!

Couch.io, the start-up founded by the creator and core contributors of the CouchDB database, has just published a case study on how Interactive Mediums uses CouchDB to provide quick access to various statistics for your mobile marketing campaigns. Before migrating to CouchDB, getting access to your campaign statistics was often a very time consuming operation. But thanks to CouchDB’s data indexing strategy, that data is now only a couple of seconds away.

To learn more about CouchDB please check out http://couchdb.apache.org/, and for information on Couchio, the company that provides services for CouchDB, please visit Couch.io.

This case study is just one example of how we’re always looking to improve the user experience of the Interactive Mediums platform.

The past few months we’ve been working on some very big changes to how our platform manages web forms. As you may already know, web forms let your customers interact with your marketing campaigns via a website, which can be a nice addition to the SMS support the platform provides by default.

In the past, web form support varied greatly from campaign type to campaign type. In addition, there was limited support for customizing how those forms looked, and how they behaved. The newly revamped web forms fix that by providing a consistent experience across campaign types and by giving you complete control over how the forms look and behave.

Introducing Web Form Themes

The new web form functionality introduces the concept of a web form “theme”. A theme contains an HTML template, as well as images, css files, and other resources that define how the web forms look. You have the ability to create, customize, and upload a theme that looks just the way you want. Web form themes can be uploaded and modified by navigating to Tools -> Web Form Themes.

Once a theme has been uploaded, it can be used by any of your campaigns. At the moment only Voting, Sweepstakes, and Subscription List campaigns are supported. But, we plan on rolling out web form support to the other campaign types very soon.

Default Themes

The platform provides a default theme that you can use to get your web form up and running quickly. The default theme is optimized to look great on a desktop web browser AND a mobile browser (on a smart phone). If you just want to get up and running quickly, and don’t need the ability to fully customize the look of your web form, then the default theme is a great choice.

Creating Your Own Themes

If you need more control over how your web forms look, then creating your own theme is the way to go. Web form themes are like any other web page. They consist of HTML, CSS, images, etc, and can be created and modified using the web authoring tools of your choice. However, the platform does enforce a few rules. First, your theme must include a file named template.html. This file serves as the template for all of the web forms using this theme. Second, the template must include a few placeholders that tell the platform where to insert the campaign’s header text, footer text, captcha, data collection, and campaigns specific content. Third, all images, css files, and other web resources must be located in a directory named resources. More information on these requirements can be found here.

Creating a new web form theme from scratch can be a little intimidating. So, the platform allows you to download any of the existing themes as a zip file, giving you a great starting point for creating your own theme. Simply download an existing theme, and start customizing it to suit your needs. When you’re finished, simply zip up the files, and upload them as a new theme.

Creating a Web Form For Your Campaign

To create a web form for your campaign, click on the Web Form option on the side when viewing the details for that campaign.

If a web form doesn’t already exist for that campaign, you will be prompted to create one. Creating a new web form is as simple as giving it a description, and selecting the Web Form Theme that it will use. After clicking Create, your web form will be live if your campaign is active.

After the web form has been created, you can customize it to fit your needs. Several configuration options are available, including the ability to use a custom domain (vanity domain), a custom URL, captcha, data collection, custom messaging per campaign, redirect to a specific website after submitting the form, prompt user to subscribe to a subscription list, and more. All configuration options are described in detail here.

More Information at the Resource Center

You can read more about the new web forms at our Resource Center. As always, please don’t hesitate to email us if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.

Do you have an existing database of customers that you would like to start marketing to via the mobile channel? If so, TextMe makes it incredibly easy to utilize the information that you have already collected to start interacting with these customers via the mobile channel immediately.

Please note that the Mobile Marketing Association requires you to first obtain your customer’s permission before marketing them via SMS. There are several ways this can be accomplished. Please contact us for more information.

To get started, you first need to tell TextMe about the data you wish to store about your customers. You can check out this blog post to see how this can be accomplished.

Once your user data has been defined, you can start uploading your existing customer data into TextMe. There are two ways to do this.

The first is by selecting the Upload Contacts option under the Contacts tab. Upload contacts will upload your customer data into TextMe without associating your customers with any subscription list. Hence, it can be done without first obtaining permission from your customers to contact them via SMS.

After uploading your data file, which can be a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, an Open Office spreadsheet, or a comma separated values (CSV) file, you will be brought to a screen where you can map the data in your data file to the attributes that you have defined in TextMe. If there is a column in the data file containing data you do not wish to upload, simply click the Ignore this column check box for that attribute.

After verifying the data mapping, TextMe will begin processing your data file in the background. An email will be sent to you when the upload is complete.

The second way to upload existing customer data into TextMe is by selecting an existing subscription campaign, clicking Subscribers, and choosing Upload Subscribers from the list of options. Upload subscribers will upload your customer data into TextMe as well as add them to the list of subscribers for this particular subscription campaign. If you have not already obtained their permission, TextMe will send an opt-in message to your customers asking if they would like to opt-in to your subscription list. If you have already obtained their permission, let us know, and we can help you get setup without sending the opt-in message.

The best part about uploading subscribers with the information that you have already collected about them is that you can immediately start segmenting your customers into groups and targeting groups of subscribers with custom messages.

We hope you find this capability useful. As always, let us know what else we can do to help!

Subscription campaigns are unique.  They don’t quite fit in with our other marketing campaigns, such as the Sweepstakes campaign, the Voting campaign, or the Survey campaign.  Subscription campaigns are are long running (typically never ending) campaigns that collect a list contacts that wish to learn more about your product or service.  These campaigns give you the unique ability to directly reach your customers based on all sorts of information that you have collected about them.  In reality, the Subscription campaign is more of a living “list” than it is a “campaign”.

Introducing the Lists tab

Recognizing their uniqueness, we have recently updated TextMe to treat Subscriptions differently from the other campaigns.  First and foremost, we have removed “Subscriptions” as a sub-item of the Campaigns tab, and given Subscriptions their own tab, called Lists.  The Lists tab is your one-stop-shop for managing your Subscriptions.  Upon clicking the new Lists tab, you will be brought to the new Subscription lists dashboard.  The new dashboard gives you a nice, high level summary of your active Subscription lists. It shows you a graph of your current confirmed subscribers, which contains a breakdown of the subscribers for each list if you have less than ten active subscription lists.  The dashboard also displays your active Subscription lists, any broadcast messages scheduled to be delivered, and a short list of recent messages sent to your subscribers.  The “Lists” sub-tab will show you a detailed list of all of your subscription lists, regardless of whether they are active or not, and the “Messages” sub-tab will show you the message activity across all of your Subscription lists.

Sending a message now more intuitive

We have also recently changed the “Send / Schedule a New Message” screen to be simpler to understand and easier to use. The new screen gives you three options to identify the recipients of your message.  The first option, “Lists”, allows you to select one or more of your subscription lists. If you choose this option, the message will be sent to all subscribers in the selected lists.  The second option, “Segments”, allows you to specify a list of filters, or segments, to narrow down the list of recipients based on some criteria. If you choose this option, the message will be sent to the subscribers, in all of your lists, that match the filter criteria.  TextMe customers can login and read more about filters here.  The third option, “All subscribers”, will send the message to all subscribers in all of your active subscription lists.

Choosing whether to send the message now or to schedule it for future delivery is now handled by choosing a time. You can either choose “Now” to send the message right away, or choose “Future”, and specify the date and time you wish to send the message.  We feel this is much more straight forward than the previous, multiple button approach.

Finally, in the “Message” section, you specify the description of the message, and the message itself. The message section also allows you to specify an override message for a single carrier (allowing you to send AT&T customers a different message, for example), or to collect data from your customers, if your TextMe subscription plan supports data collection.

When everything has been specified, click OK to be brought to a screen to review your message.  If everything looks good on the review page, clicking “Submit” will schedule your message for delivery.

Where did the Messages tab go?

The new Lists tab does much of what the Messages tab used to do.  But, there are a few functions, such as Message Search and Message Stream, that are not accessible in the Lists tab.  Message Search can now be found at the top right of the page, right next to the My Account link.  For customers with the Message Stream feature enabled, a new “Stream” tab will appear, right next to the “Lists” tab.

Questions/Comments/Suggestions?

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, about this change or anything else, we’d love to hear from you.  Please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@textme.net.

*(Cross-posted with John Wood’s personal blog)*

The mobile industry is exploding. In just a few short years, everybody will have a smart phone. A tiny, internet connected, mini computer right in their pocket. As each month passes, we learn more and more about what the future of this industry holds, and what the mobile handset landscape will look like. If one thing is for certain, it’s that nothing is for certain.

As it stands right now, Apple is king with consumers. Though not the first ones to market with an internet connected mobile device (the Blackberry has been around for a long time, and still holds the majority of the smartphone market share), Apple appears to be the first to really understand what the average, non-corporate consumer wants. A true mini computer. An open device that can play music, run applications, take photos, and provide a pleasant web browsing experience. And they did it in true Apple fashion, making the device extremely easy to use. As a result, the iPhone has become extremely popular with consumers, and is widely considered ”the device to have”.

With the majority of people still without a smartphone, much of the market remains up for grabs. Apple’s competitors are scrambling to catch up, trying to ensure that they they get a piece of the pie. But, one very important question lingers. What can Apple’s competitors offer that would give the average consumer a reason to buy their device instead of buying an iPhone? To me, the reasons are few, and becoming fewer.

(I’d love to hear your reasons in the comments. So please, chime in.)

A comparable feature set

This pretty much goes without saying. Any challenger to the iPhone crown must offer similar features to that of the iPhone. It is very unlikely that a competing device will lure anybody away from the iPhone if it is missing a feature that is now expected to be there. The device must be capable of running apps, taking photos, playing music, etc, for it even to be considered.

A better network

AT&T’s network leaves much to be desired. Having never been an AT&T customer, I can only relay the opinions of my friends and family who are AT&T customers. However, their opinions are one in the same. I’ve not heard a single word of praise when it comes to AT&T’s network. All of my friends and family with iPhones have expressed frustration that the device they love is frequently crippled by a network that is spotty and congested.

It’s no secret that Apple has an exclusive agreement with AT&T, and that agreement has an expiration date. Rumors have been circulating about a jump to another carrier, possibly Verizon, sometime next year. The more wireless carriers offering the iPhone, the less valid of a reason this will become for not purchasing one.

A comparable application ecosystem

Competing devices will need to have an application ecosystem that is at least comparable to the iPhone’s. This is no small task. There are over 100,000 applications in the App Store. Sure, several offer the same functionality, and many are of very poor quality. However, nobody can argue with Apple’s tag line of “There’s a app for that”. There really is an application, in most cases many, for everything you could possibly want to do with your iPhone.

Given their head start, beating Apple at this game will not be easy. Google’s Android OS currently stands the best chance of challenging Apple on this front, with over 10,000 applications already available. The Android OS is open, and capable of running on hardware from any manufacturer. In addition, applications written for Android are capable of running on any device that runs the OS (for the most part). Next year is going to be a big one for Android, with several new devices coming to market from many different manufacturers. Some analysts are even predicting that the number of Android devices in the hands of consumers will surpass the number of iPhones by 2012. This will no doubt attract more application developers to the platform.

However, Android has its own set of challenges awaiting. The fact that manufacturers are free to run Android on devices with very different hardware specifications (screen size, input controls, etc) poses a major challenge for application developers. Perhaps the risk of rendering thousands of existing Android applications useless by releasing a device with dramatically different hardware specs will be enough to convince manufacturers not to do it. Perhaps Google will provide a set of Android APIs that can help application developers deal with this issue. Perhaps a set of best practices will emerge as a guide for developers looking to tackle this issue. Perhaps we’ll see something similar to the PC application market in the mid-late 90′s (and the Blackberry application market today), where only certain devices will be capable of running certain applications. Only time will tell if these issues will prevent the development of the Android application ecosystem.

A killer feature

One wild card that is always in play is the killer feature. Apple’s competitors are only one, innovative, killer feature away from stealing the spotlight for themselves. By “killer feature”, I mean a feature so awesome that when you see it in action, you say to yourself, “I need one of those!”.

Version 2.0 of the Android OS took a stab at this with the introduction of Google Maps Navigation. A fantastic feature, Google Maps Navigation morphs your mobile device into a fully functional GPS unit, complete with a synthesized voice telling you where to go, real time traffic information, and several map overlays showing you the location of everything from ATMs to gas stations. But, is this a killer feature? Frankly, I’m not sure. But, its announcement was enough to cause a significant drop in the stock price of traditional GPS manufacturers, and it certainly has potential.

An incredibly easy to use device

Making devices that are intuitive and easy to use has always been one of Apple’s strengths. Look no further than the iPod for an example of this. Competing devices will need to be as easy to use as the iPhone is to appeal to the average consumer.

How do I get my music onto the device? How to I get the photos I take off? These operations should be simple and intuitive. Motorola’s new Android 2.0 device, the DROID, is seriously lacking in this area. Several steps are required to store data on or pull data off of the device:

For the iPhone, the list of steps is much smaller.

Are the steps required to store data on the DROID too much to handle for an experienced computer user. No, of course not. But, there is still a large percentage of people out there who would struggle with completing those tasks. Believe me, I know. Many are family and friends of mine who I help complete “simple” tasks on their computers all of the time. These people make up a significant portion of the market. If you want them to buy your device, then you have to make it stupid simple to use.

Summary

Apple has set the bar high with the iPhone, very high. While I can think of several reasons why developers and techies would prefer a different device, I can’t think of many reasons why the average consumer would. And, there are a lot more average consumers than there are geeks.

But make no mistake, Apple’s competitors have the iPhone in their sights. The tide can shift very quickly in this market, especially since most people get a new phone every couple of years. Will the iPhone challengers be able make a dent in the iPhone’s market share? Or, will the iPhone be the de-facto standard for smart phones? Only time will tell.

Newly added to the Subscription Campaign is the ability to send timed messages to subscribers after they have opted-in to your list.

To get started, click Timed Messages from the subscription campaign’s navigation options.

You’ll then be brought to the timed messages details screen.  Click Add timed message to create a new timed message.

There are two different types of timed messages you can create.  The first is a timed message that will be delivered to the subscriber X minutes after they have joined the list.  Simply provide the message, and the number of minutes you would like to wait before sending the message.  Then, click Add timed message to save the timed message.

The second is a timed message that will be delivered at a specific time, up to three days after your customer has opted in to your subscription list.  This type requires a message, the time you wish to send the message, and the number of days to wait before sending the message.  You also have the option to deliver the message the next day if your customer opts in to your list past the set delivery time.

After creating a few timed messages, your timed messages details screen will now show a summary of your campaign’s timed messages.

We hope you find this feature useful for establishing a solid relationship with your new subscribers.  As always, let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

We’ve recently added the ability to specify a list of valid values for a given user data attribute.  This allows TextMe to not only validate that the data collected from your customer is valid for the given attribute type, but also to validate that the data collected matches one of the valid values that you have specified.

Let’s walk through an example to see how this works.  First, we’ll create a new user attribute called “Team”.  We want this attribute to contain the name of our customer’s favorite local sports team.

Click on the attribute’s name, Team, to be brought to the details screen for that attribute.

Since there are limited valid values for this attribute, we can use the valid values feature to prevent our customers from entering the name of a rival team across the state line.  Simply add a valid value for each of the valid options.

With the valid values in place, TextMe is configured to only recognize these values as valid values.  All others will be considered invalid, and if your customer tries to send something else, they will be told that their response was invalid and asked to try again.  Each valid value can also have an alias.  This is optional, but can make collecting multiple choice data much easier over SMS.  With an alias in place, your customers can either text the value (i.e. “Bulls”) or the alias (i.e. “a”).  If the alias is sent, TextMe will recognize it, and store the corresponding value (“Bulls”) in the database.  With aliases in place, your customers can make their choice by texting a single character.

We also made a few other changes to support the valid values feature.  First, when editing the details for a contact under the Contacts tab, you will see a “?” next to your attributes that have valid values associated with them.  Clicking that “?” will show you the value values for that attribute, so you don’t need to remember all of the possible options yourself.

Also, when building your campaign and specifying the data collection questions, you will see a new Insert valid value options link for user attributes that have valid values associated with them.  Clicking this link will insert the list of valid values directly into your message.

We’re always trying to make TextMe more powerful, and easier to use.  Please don’t hesitate to contact us about anything we can do to help.

The Sweepstakes campaign is the latest campaign type to benefit from our push to enhance TextMe’s data collection capabilities.  You are now able to collect data from your sweepstakes participants after they have entered your campaign via a SMS message.

The data collection flow is initiated after your customer’s first interaction with your campaign.  This would be after the entry message is sent for random at end and manual sweepstakes campaigns, or after the winning or losing message is sent for all other sweepstakes campaigns.

The data collection setup process is identical to the Survey and Subscription campaigns data collection setup process.  Please see these posts for more information.

In addition to collecting data via SMS, the Sweepstakes campaign continues to support collecting data through alternative means of entry web forms.  All data collected via SMS or the web can be obtained by exporting the sweepstakes entries via the Export entries feature.