A mobile services company dubbed Grapevine Interactive has developed what they’re calling MMS Lite, a hybrid SMS/MMS solution that aims to fill the niche between simple text-based SMS and more complex and expensive MMS.

Created for mobile marketers, Grapevine Interactive CTO Cliff Court states: “Mobile marketers, in particular, have been asking for a product offering more than text-only SMS but with less of the complexity and high cost of MMS.”  To answer that need, Grapvine’s “MMS Lite” solution combines a notification message with a larger rich message.  This rich message includes a heading of up to 500 characters of text plus two images with optional captions.  In addition, recipients can send a 250-character reply at almost zero cost.

An example of when MMS Lite could be used instead of SMS or MMS is when a company or brand would like to attach a simple logo or graphical brand name to a marketing message.  This obviously isn’t allowable with SMS, and would normally render poorly on most handsets with MMS.  Think of it as an SMS with very limited graphical capabilities.

Details are still somewhat limited on how exactly it works, but my first impression is that it’s simply not needed.  If the solution would bring limited MMS-like functionality to handsets that can only facilitate SMS, than it could be very useful, but I doubt that’s the case.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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Visual search is a new concept aimed at making the overall search experience more user-friendly, interactive and quicker for the end-user.  While there are visual search engines on the traditional Web, the concept has been better received on the mobile Web- where quicker and more visual search results are more welcomed given the nature of the devices used.

To heed this trend, Searchme has been busy introducing mobile applications that bring mobile visual search to the various mobile platforms.  While an iPhone, Android and even Nokia Ovi Store version already exist, the Windows Mobile platform has lacked an app.  That’s now changed with Searchme’s debut of a beta version of its mobile app for Windows Mobile users.

Instead of a list of blue links, Searchme delivers images of web pages, videos, music and products that play right on the search result page making it easy to find and consume information on a cell phone.  Searchme offers significantly improved performance for searching on a phone because it runs as a native Windows Mobile application, rather than in a slow-rendering web browser.  Unlike other search applications, Searchme supports a full touch screen interface.

In the beginning, I have to say I wasn’t impressed with the idea of visual search.  It’s a slower process and I found it harder to find exactly what I was looking for given the plethora of media that’s presented with each search.  Text-based search results just feels more natural.  With the advent of bringing visual search into a separate mobile application, the idea seems much more viable.

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Most news surrounding mobile campaigns consists of telling how successful the campaign was overall and how much better they are when compared to other forms of advertising.  In reality, not all mobile campaigns are created equal, and have the results that were hoped for.

Case in point- a local Jiffy Lube in Ames, Iowa and its recent mobile coupon campaign that had less than favorable results.  The retailer was convinced by a local radio station to conduct an SMS-based coupon campaign where listeners were urged, at the end of Jiffy Lube commercials, to use their mobile devices to text the word JIFFY to a 5-digit number.  All participants received mobile coupons for various Jiffy Lube discounts and services such as oil changes, wiper blades, tire rotations and filters.

The campaign ran for the last two quarters of 2008, and garnered nearly 175 SMS messages per week- resulting in over 4,500 responses overall for the campaign.  The disappointing part is the fact that out of those 4,500 respondents, Jiffy Lube only saw about 30 digital coupons actually redeemed.  This seemed odd, given the fact that some coupons were for free oil changes and heavily discounted services- so what could have caused such a bad response rate? Read the rest

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I’ve been involved with affiliate, or performance-based marketing for a long time now.  More recently I’ve been interested in advertising models that utilize the benefits of performance-based marketing together with other forms of new-age advertising- primarily mobile marketing.

Taking the obvious benefits from today’s mobile marketing methodologies, and working them into a model that only charges advertisers for results would be a winning combination in my book.  Advertisers use affiliate marketing to drive sales, leads, clicks, etc, but only pay the publisher, networks, etc. when they produce results.  This takes a lot of the wasted ad-spend away, and significantly increases ROI in almost every situation.  This is the reason many small and large brands alike have been using the performance-based model for years and years.  Up until recently, however, it was only carried out online.

While there aren’t many services available that take this model into the realm of mobile, they’re starting to emerge if you dig deep enough.  One in particular is a company called RevTrax.  They’re utilizing mobile marketing, and mobile coupons in particular, together with a performance-based model to drive results to the brands distributing digital coupons or using any form of “customer loyalty” programs.

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Tetherball, a mobile solutions company specializing in “mobile loyalty and rewards,” is testing a new RFID mobile marketing platform with Dairy Queen in the US that aims to combine mobile coupon solutions with location-based marketing and customer loyalty- all in one integrated platform.  

Tetherball’s approach aims at helping clients “tether” their brand to target audiences by identifying what their customers want and delivering mobile campaigns that interact with permission-based mobile coupons, mobile rewards, mobile sweepstakes and mobile notifications.  The new RFID platform works by integrating traditional marketing methods, such as in-store advertising, in hopes that customers are engaged to sign up for mobile loyalty rewards programs offering promotional discounts.  Upon joining, customers are given a “Tetherball Tag,” a tiny RFID chip that is affixed to their mobile phones, which uniquely identifies them through Tetherball’s platform.

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SecureSMS, a product from CellTrust that promises a secure mobile environment for “critical information,” has won the Communication Solutions product of the year for 2008 from Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC).

SecureSMS is designed to help organizations in healthcare, financial services/banking, government, education, travel and mobile advertising to have the ability to exchange critical information with customers in a trusted environment on the mobile device.  Unlike traditional SMS communication, SecureSMS adds a multi-layer level of encryption and security to messages that contain more sensitive information.

Among other things, SecureSMS adds control to manage confidential information exchange via mobile devices, accountability with recipient confirmation when SMS is received and opened, enterprise level compliance without costly development or server infrastructure investment, carrier-ready compatibility with more than 710 carriers in over 217 countries and security with end-to-end encryption across the mobile ecosystem (i.e. carriers, tower operators, infrastructure providers or aggregators).

Working in conjunction with CellTrust’s “SecureSMS Gateway,” SecureSMS works by utilizing a micro client that installs on the handset to communicate with the SecureSMS Gateway.  The application is similar to a regular SMS editor and encrypts outgoing secure messages as well as decrypts incoming secure messages received via the SecureSMS Gateway. 

As more and more information is being shared via SMS from business to consumer or vice versa, especially information that’s private or extra-sensitive, security and an extra layer of protection will be vital.  Products like this will only further the innovation surrounding SMS, so its no wonder they won the product of the year when it comes to mobile technology solutions.

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With paid mobile apps and content growing in popularity, and people becoming more comfortable with the idea of using their mobile devices for payments, Bango has introduced a new secure and low-cost method for integrating credit-card payments into apps and digital content.

With increased smartphone usage and the evolution of the mobile Web, Bango has created an ”easy on” ramp to selling content on the mobile web as well as a solution to give businesses a low-cost, easy way to capture revenue from the growing number of smartphone users- users that are getting a lot more comfortable purchasing items using their devices much like they would on their PCs.  

With the new solution from Bango, anyone can offer credit card payments to their mobile visitors and refine their product offer, pricing and consumer experience, with the flexibility to upgrade to operator billing through Bango when they’re ready.  “With the current rise in smartphone users, a lot of businesses who have never considered mobile before, are now looking at how they can capture revenue from this new market,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP Alliances & Marketing. “And many of these smartphone users, such as those with a Blackberry or Google phone, are used to using the web on their phones, and are familiar with credit card services.”

The solution works by offering a similar experience to purchasing via credit card on the normal Web, and cuts out many unnecessary steps such as entering the card type and a full billing address.  This speeds up purchases, leading to more successful transactions across all mobile devices.

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