Dear MMW – I’ve been trying to recieve collect calls from my boyfriend in jail.. and it doesn’t go threw can u plz help me.. thanks a lot!

While we’re solid in our belief that we know the mobile industry inside and out, collect calling from jail cells seems to fall just outside our area of expertise.  While we appreciate this individual reaching out in her time of need, I can safely say for once that I simply don’t know the answer….

Back then we were 100% service driven; somewhere along the way I realized that we need to create a product that we can sell over and over again. This is the only thing I knew would keep us around for a long time. We didn’t really start picking up steam till we released Stun! 2.0 (now called mobileStorm, check out the waybackmachine). You could come to the site, sign up for our service, upload a database and create a campaign. We focused first on email since that was really taking off and we could barely get anyone to pay for text messaging. We took off in the nightlife industry and became the dominate player within a year. We went from making $25,000 per month (starting at $0 each month) to making $100,000 repeatedly very quickly. We knew we had something important on our hands so we started to hire friends and family, the only people we could trust to give us 100% and take as little as possible.

I have been waiting for a long time for the “Year of Mobile” to be upon us. Every new year for the past 5 years people have said, “next year is the year of mobile for sure”. However the year would come and go and decided not to take mobile with it. I always thought the year of mobile meant an explosion in mobile services, applications and products. Sure one year ringtones went crazy and the next year video games were all the rage, but mobile still didn’t have that massive consumer adoption that everyone wanted to see to officially declare it the “year of mobile”. However my friends I think it is pretty safe to say 2010 is the official year. Why? Well for the most part we needed to have a fast mobile network to fully recognize mobile’s potential. 3G is here and in a big way. Heck Sprint has a 4G network. Because of the fast speeds a little company named Apple developed the iphone and just two weeks ago it was officially announced as the most popular device. As a result of how amazing this device is you are seeing lots of innovation. The innovation has sparked consumers to buy the device and other companies seeing how much money is being made are jumping into the smart phone game (i.e. Google).

2009 was certainly the first big year businesses spent money on SMS services. We feel this trend will continue and a lot of companies will embrace SMS as another important channel and not just part of their experimental budget. We also believe MMS is going to start to gain some traction. Two weeks ago AT&T just launched the largest MMS campaign. I think carriers will start to educate consumers more on how to use this and the cost will come down. Do we need to support this? Yes, but don’t ask when. More important than MMS, LBS or Location Based Services, will really start to take shape. Currently LBS is great for social networks and “checking in” so your friends know where you are. Moving forward it seems that the carriers are finally getting over their privacy concerns (or feel they can manage them better) and are allowing LBS for commercial use. It’s all finally happening, and what a wonderful thing to watch go down after so many years of waiting and wondering.

So as you start to think about what you want to accomplish in 2010, smile because its our year, the year of mobile.

Jared Reitzin
CEO
mobileStorm Inc.

Planet Funk took a look at its primary demographic of young, hip consumers who are never without their cell phones, and decided that mobile marketing was the appropriate channel to move forward with. By combining both brick and mortar storefronts with an online presence, Planet Funk needed something that would bridge the gap and work efficiently, while also being as simple as possible to use and highly trackable.

Planet Funk, who has a long history of using digital marketing very effectively, decided that mobile marketing, and specifically mobile coupons, would be the right choice. The retailer enlisted the help of mobileStorm, a digital marketing company with a long history of success, to aid in the development, distribution and tracking of a full-scale mobile coupon campaign. MobileStorm had been providing email campaigns for Planet Funk for quite a while using the mobileStorm 4.0 digital marketing platform, so the familiarity of the platform extended to the new mobile coupon system that was recently integrated.

In a matter of days, with the infamous “Black Friday” looming ahead, Planet Funk and mobileStorm compiled a mobile coupon campaign based on discount tiers, which offers more savings dependant on the total purchase amount at coupon redemption- $10 coupon for spending $100-$249, $30 coupon for spending $250-$399, and so on. “Discount tiers always have a successful psychological effect on consumers,” said Jared Reitzin, CEO of mobileStorm. “Most of the time they past the first tier in spending with the first few things they buy, and having the second and third tier really helps them go to the next level. You start thinking about buying just one more thing so you can get that next discount.”

To accomodate a fast launch, mobileStorm secured the keyword “Pfunk” for branding purposes, and utilized a shared shortcode to bring the campaign to fruition as quickly as possible. The campaign officially launched on November 21st, 2008, and utilized a variety of call-to-actions to drive traffic to the campaign. Signage was placed in all Planet Funk’s stores that showed the shortcode and corresponding keyword, and prompted a coupon as incentive to join the Planet Funk “mobile club.” In addition, Planet Funk pushed its mobile coupons via its Website, blog and the Websites of the malls in which Planet Funk stores are located. The key to the campaign, however, was the fact that the discounts could only be redeemed via the mobile coupon.

“It’s always better to use an array of marketing mediums simultaneously,” explained Jason Stith, Director of Sales Engineering for mobileStorm. “With an inbound mobile coupon campaign, you are not only delivering coupons and trying to generate revenue via coupons, but you’re also incentivizing your customers to text in and receive future offers. It’s very important to continually build your SMS database and coupons are a great aid in doing so.”

By limiting the end-discount to the redemption of the mobile coupon itself, it creates a massive incentive to sign up for future communication. In Planet Funk’s case, signing up for its “mobile club” was all that was needed to redeem the savings via the mobile coupon. Planet Funk benefits by adding mobile consumers to its all-important mobile database, and the consumer benefits by receiving the savings via mobile coupons.

By the conclusion of the campaign on December 31, 2008, Planet Funk realized they had created over 20% of their total December revenue via the mobile coupon campaign powered by mobileStorm. Roughly 2,000 coupons were generated, with a redemption rate at an impressive 91%. Even more impressive was the fact that Planet Funk realized an ROI at a staggering 377% based on the relatively low-cost of the campaign. Furthermore, 15% of those that redeemed the coupon opted-in to receive future mobile campaigns, which helped build Planet Funk’s mobile database.

“I don’t care what industry you are in or what you are selling, a 91% redemption rate is huge,” continued Reitzin. “Have we seen it before with mobile coupons? Yes, but it’s not a completely common occurrence.”

Using a form of digital marketing that is highly effective with their core target customers, Planet Funk was able to identify and develop a new, highly profitable marketing channel for its all-important holiday season. From just one inbound mobile marketing campaign, Planet Funk achieved amazing results, and now plans to expand their mobile strategy in the future.

“Mobile is a natural fit for our customers and being able to give them such coupons – both in store and online – that can be instantly received on their cell phones is a no-brainer,” said Kitri Lomaka of Planet Funk. “The results we experienced proved this and we look forward to continuing our partnership with mobileStorm to drive future mobile campaigns. We now realize that mobile marketing can not only be affordable for companies like ours, but also wildly profitable if handled the right way.”

Mobile coupons, and mobile marketing in general, has continued to prove itself in situations where ROI, targetability, and overall trackability are of the most important aspects. In a down economy when every penny spent on marketing needs to be accountable, no other channel out-performs the mobile channel.

“In June of 2008 before things really started to go downhill, Hitwise came out with a report showing that 6 out of 10 coupon searches online were for major brands,” explained Reitzin when speaking of the future of mobile coupons. “What this means is that people still want to stick with their brands even in a recession. They are going to actively seek out the brands they can’t live without, and there is no better way to get a discount than through a coupon. Furthermore, mobile coupons are digital, so not only are you saving the environment but your coupons can be saved, stored and accessed at anytime. Coupons have been around since the old Sears catalogues of the 1800’s because they are a successful promotion. Their evolution to the mobile phone is only natural and they will be around a long time to come.”

Source: IDC

While mobile messaging profits may continue an upward trend, the market isn’t immune to recession pains. A new report from IDC’s predicts a major slow-down for the mobile phone market in 2009, but smartphones are apparently just too cool to follow the unflattering trend.

The mobile phone device market has grown sharply for years, with double-digit growth rates to show for it – the last downturn was in 2001, when they declined 2.3 percent. But in 2009, IDC predicts that we’ll see a downturn in mobile phone volumes by 1.9 percent.

More interesting for mobile marketers is that IDC expects an 8.9 percent growth of the smartphone market in 2009. We welcome this growth, as smartphones offer more ways to reach your target audience on the go.

IDC’s report follows a series of announcements from mobile phone device companies and chip makers led to the report. Qualcomm Inc., Texas Instruments Inc. and MediaTek Inc. are among the chip suppliers who have announced cutbacks in manufacturing for next year.

The mobile-phone market has seen double-digit annual growth during the last several years due to a focus on emerging markets, but growth in those markets has been slowing as the markets mature, IDC said. The research company said it now expects worldwide growth of just 7.1 percent this year.

IDC predicts that the global mobile phone market will return to an upward trend in 2010 as world economic markets recover. In the same year, smartphone shipments will increase by 28.2 percent in the U.S. and 24 percent globally.

Not all sites get these, I don’t know why; I just know that I don’t always see them. Search for your Company or Blog name to see if you have them.

I checked a couple of blogs I follow to see if they have em. MobileStorm does, and theirs are all nice and neat. How’d you guys do that? Darla Mack has em too and so does MobHappy.

Do you have them?

Though, I’ve not used the site; Blogged, according to their About Page provides a blog discovery service and employs Editors to rank Blogs. Why do they do this? To filter out spam, low to poor quality, severely outdated or completely irrelevant blogs from their index.

Thanks Blogged!

I got an email today asking how much I would charge for a link in the links section on my navigation bar.� Truth is, I don’t sell links and never have. Those sites all earned links by simply writing a good blog that I thought warranted a recommendation to MMW readers. So, that’s how you get there… write a good mobile blog and if I come across it and like it then your in, free of charge.� If I don’t come across it email me.

I actually read several mobile related blogs daily but I don’t list them all in my Links area. Not that there’s a criteria, I just haven’t listed them all. Here are a few others that I follow and like:

• Mobile Insider
• Mobile Tech News
• Mobility Site
• Wireless Moves

What mobile blogs are you following?

Website: xobni

Update: I’m all out now.

New Update: I have 1 more!

Update: I have 5 more. 3 are taken for BZ, Venu and MarkN.

Update 2/11/2008: 5 more xobni invites appeared this morning, so I’ve sent them out to folks on my list. Enjoy!

After I left the mall I mozied on over to Best Buy to get my wife something that I can’t print because she might read this post. There must have been over 500 people in the store, it was just nutty but fun. Me being a gadget nut I was able to suppress the urge to shop for myself. Maybe I’m not feeling right or something because last night I went into one of the CompUSA stores that is shuttering and I walked out with nothing there too. Though, that mostly had to do with their cruddy prices.

One observation that made an impression on me today. Staff. Best Buy knows how to staff the store. They had plenty of folks on hand to handle the volume. I wasn’t standing in front of the widget I wanted to buy for more than 2 minutes before someone was there to help. I had the exact opposite occur at the Disney Store where they were clueless about Jojo from Jojos Circus, a program on their own Network.

Tonight, I realized that page 1 was achieved! Naturally, I’ll be on page 2 tomorrow. But hey, I’m there now so it’s going in the time-line. Do you keep a time-line of accomplishments for stuff that you do or goals that you accomplish? I like to, here’s a sample… I know, I’m a nerd but without my time-line I would have totally missed the fact that over 100M results have vanished from Google since August. That’s a ton-o-stuff man, I wonder if the big G purged some spam?

I saved the SERP here for your viewing pleasure. That doohickey sticking out in the results to the left is my WACOM Tablet tool-pad Panel.