The following is a guest post by Greg Hickman, a mobile marketing consultant and founder of MobileMixed.com.

Hello and welcome to the phone company’s new business line setup department. We’re happy to help you get started and set up a new phone line for your business but even though you’re new here we’re putting you on probation. See, we want to make sure you understand the rules while on probation:

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The team over at mobileStorm is holding a new webinar with the aim of showing businesses how to begin leveraging SMS marketing.  From building your initial SMS database, to the various campaigns you can run using SMS, to the ins and outs of carrying out your campaigns from start to finish.

The webinar aims to provide a dead simple overview of what SMS marketing is, how it works, and how businesses large and small can begin leveraging it to their advantage to grow their businesses today.  The webinar is scheduled for tomorrow, March 20th, at 1PM PST.

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On Friday we told you about a new initiative by CTIA to audit all SMS short codes for regulation compliance.  While it sounds like an initiative aimed at the betterment of the industry in general, a closer look reveals just how unfair and unrealistic the audit really is.

To understand exactly what CTIA is trying to do and what it means for the SMS marketing industry, Shane Neman, CEO of SMS provider EZ Texting, wrote an excellent post entitled “CTIA’s Illegal Short Code Auditing – A Playbook to Kill America’s Wireless Innovators.”  In it, he details how EZ Texting was contacted in regards to CTIA’s new short code auditing process and why such audits are unfair, unreasonable and inherently “broken.”

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The following is a guest post by Paul Faherty, Managing Partner at Text2VIP, an Atlantic City based Text Message Marketing Firm.

I believe the foundation for growth and longevity in the SMS channel of Mobile Marketing is ensuring that content remains relevant, timely, respectable and informative.  It’s with this in mind, I would submit that a lack of awareness or knowledge on the part of some establishment’s sms campaign managers is under-delivering for many opted-in subscribers.  Thus, potentially diminishing the experience for mobile consumers as a group.

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The following is the weekly guest series by Derek Johnson, Founder & CEO of SMS marketing provider Tatango. You can text him at (206) 334-4012 or email him at [email protected]

There’s been a lot of noise lately in the mobile marketing industry about long codes, some are even questioning if these will be the death of short codes. I’m still bearish on long codes as the carriers have yet to come out publicly and give their approval for long code A2P (application to person) messaging. This post though isn’t about long codes being approved or not approved by the carriers, or even if long codes are a good substitute for short codes. This post is about why I feel text message spammers are on the verge of a mass exodus away from short codes to long codes.

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The 4th of July may be over, but major fireworks are ahead for the mobile payments industry according to a new report from Juniper Research.

Juniper estimates that he total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will hit $670 billion by 2015 – a remarkable jump from $240 billion this year.

These forecasts represent the gross merchandise value of all purchases or the value of money being transferred.

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AT&T and Sprint have effectively joined Verizon in their respective moves to suspend SMS campaign codes that are affiliated with Jawa, one of the controversial companies cited by Verizon Wireless in a lawsuit accusing Jawa of SMS subscriber fraud.

Verizon claims Jawa (and two additional companies: Cylon and EyeLevel Holdings) have been actively defrauding Verizon Wireless by misappropriating approved short codes for unapproved “shadow” campaigns that did not comply with Verizon Wireless’ consumer protection and disclosure policies.

“Verizon Wireless recently became aware of the possible fraud and immediately launched an investigation,” the company said in a prepared statement.

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