2008 October

Major brands are now looking to invest in innovative and effective mobile marketing campaigning over the next few years, according to a new independent survey conducted among large brands in the retail, manufacturing and financial service sectors. The survey was commissioned by O2.

The O2 survey concludes that mobile marketing budgets of the top brands are set to go up by a whopping 150 per cent in the next five years or so. The survey also reveals that the brands do not think the economic slowdown will hugely affect what is allocated to mobile marketing and communications. In fact, the percentage will keep on increasing owing to its inherent benefits.

While online advertising is currently more popular compared to mobile-based marketing, nearly two thirds of businesses surveyed stated that the latter (mobile marketing campaigns) are already generating a higher response rate than other traditional methods owing to the more personal way in which they can reach and address their customers.
In a nutshell, mobile marketing campaigns comprising SMS marketing are getting more popular with marketers. According to the survey, almost sixty per cent of marketing directors favour mobile marketing owing to its highly targeted nature.

In today’s world the ability to communicate and co-ordinate faster is a must. Modern gadgets and software have made our lives simpler and better-connected. In businesses there is a need to stay connected – for example, companies offering technical expertise. Such companies need to be on their toes when dispatching their technicians or engineers. The web to text service is ideal for such businesses. This invaluable service has helped deployment managers keep in touch with their staff who are out in the field. Information can easily be transmitted to the mobile phones of the engineers from head office. It is that simple.

The web to text service allows you to send and receive text messages using a standard web browser, with no need to install any other software. You even get a delivery report. The ‘email to text’ and ‘receive text’ services are equally useful. All of these services are designed to make life simpler for many organisations that need to stay connected 24/7.

You can find many companies offering SMS text message services. But it is advisable to opt for the service from a renowned provider. You might even be able to take advantage of discounts on your bulk SMS.

2008 has seen more phenomenal growth in the number of text messages that are being sent. The Mobile Data Association (MDA) published its research findings for July -September 2008 yesterday.

The figures show that in Q3 2008 there were 38% more texts sent than in the same time last year.

Interestingly, MMS is still a very small fraction of all the texts that are sent – we’re now sending 1.5 million MMS’s per day,  compared to 217 millions SMS’s. This growth is being driven by new devices and services, adn is expected to continue as strongly for the foreseeable future.

According to Berg Insight, the number of machines that have a connection to one or more mobile networks will grow by over 34% this year.

This will mean that over 14 million machines will be connected by the start of 2009, and this number is set to grow by 33% each year to 2013.

“The total number of mobile network connections used by machines now equal that of a medium-sized European country. While the market for personal communication has reached its saturation point, the machine communication market will continue to grow for many years to come.”, commented Tobias Ryberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight.

There are a few efficient SMS text message service providers with years of experience. So if you are confused while opting for a service provider all you need is to register. Service providers can help you evaluate your requirements in order to work out how their SMS gateway can be comprehensively adapted to meet your business needs. These service providers offer free consultancy to help you to integrate your systems into their text messaging gateway. The best part of it all is that their systems can be customised, if necessary, so that your requirements are fully addressed. In case you are looking for Oracle database consultancy it would not be a hassle.

SMS text message service providers operate a full development, integration, test and validation service so you can be confident the system is operating properly before it goes live.

You will be backed with customer support 24/7. The service providers are constantly developing and enhancing their products to offer you the best of services. With technology and innovation being prime these SMS service providers tend to put you at ease in turn offering you some of the best options to choose from.

Mobile phones have become indispensible these days. No one had ever thought that a small electronic device could find a place in everyone’s pocket and change the way the world communicates. It is very difficult to imagine our day-to-day lives without mobile phones. A mobile phone is no longer about just receiving or making calls but also popularly used for sending and receiving text or SMS.

Business organisations find it very convenient to stay in touch with their employees or keep them informed about events in the organisation.

Now as there have been numerous developments in technology, they can get more feature rich services at an affordable rate.

It is now possible to send online text messages using the internet. You can easily send SMS to hundreds and even thousands of people at the same time. For this, you just have to visit the online text messaging website and follow some simple steps.

You are required to enter the recipient’s mobile phone number in the field provided. Care should be taken that you do not use dashes or any other characters. Only enter the number with the area code. The next step to do is enter the message that you want to send, and you are done. Sending online text messages is the most convenient and efficient way of communicating with your employees or customers. Online text messaging is very cost effective as compared to normal SMS from a mobile phone. It is also easier to type your message using your keyboard rather than the mobile phone’s keypad.

A new study has highlighted the importance of SMS when it comes to reaching out to today’s tech-savvy consumers. The new ExactTarget study has outlined six distinct personas while measuring how each of them interacts with different media. Here are highlights of the research report:

Wired Users – About 20 percent of them subscribed for various marketing communications via SMS (importantly, more so than any other group), but they wish to receive texts for urgent customer service issues only. These include key travel updates or financial alerts.

Young Homemakers – Over half of them make use of social networks as well as SMS during the day. Direct mail and e-mail are also among their preferred marketing channels or avenues.

Retired – About 94 percent of them have been influenced by some kind of direct marketing.

College Students – Being very tech-savvy, they are finicky about private communication channels like SMS and social networks from a marketing point of view.

Teens – They are more likely to buy from direct mail, and then followed by e-mail, SMS and social network sites.

Established Professionals – Women, within this group, are more likely to use digital media channels such as IM, SMS, and networking to communicate with family and friends. But men use these media more to shop online.

Are you looking for a bulk SMS service? Are you aware of bulk SMS services online? Well, in this modern age, there are a few efficient SMS text message services catering to thousands of customers worldwide. You can take advantage of email to text, web to text and many other services as per your needs.

An SMS text message service provides a fast, secure and reliable SMS gateway that allows you to send text messages from your desktop by email, or fully integrated with back-office applications or servers.

Let’s take the sports therapy business for example. Many companies in this industry have realised the potential of SMS text message services. Today’s sports therapy experts are using email to text to contact their large teams of mobile staff members. When a request from a customer is received, the appointment co-ordinator can easily text the staff to check their availability and subsequently send them the name and address of the customer.

Well this is just a simple example of the great features of SMS text message services. You can even take advantage of ‘receive text’ services or bulk SMS services.

Bulk SMS and internet SMS services are in abundance. But choosing the right service provider is still a task. This modern messaging service has revolutionised the way people communicate. In fact it has helped many organisations to stay connected. Here is a lowdown on the services on offer.

Email to text
This form of messaging gives great freedom and connectivity. The email to text service allows you to send and receive text messages from any email application, for example Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Lotus Notes, or anything else. Ideally designed for businesses, the service provides text messaging facilities to everyone in your organisation. The best part is it is easy to use. You even get replies and delivery reports sent directly to your inbox and it can be easily integrated with your existing address book.

Web to text
This text messaging service gives you the option to send messages using your own mobile number, so replies go straight to your phone. It is easy to use and you can be up and running in minutes. You can even access your messages in the online address book offered by the service provider for easy reference. The Web to text service is ideal for sending bulk messages.

A standard text message can contain up to 160 characters. With toText.net it’s possible to concatenate messages together so that longer ones can be sent, but in priciple the 160 characters is what most people consider to be a text message.

One problem with the 160 characters though is that it assumes that the sender is only using ‘English’ characters – see http://www.developershome.com/sms/gsmAlphabet.asp for a list of the supported alphabet. Therefore, people wishing to use east european or asian character sets, for example,  have been largley unsupported.

The good news is that with toText.net we have full support for virtually all characters. For the techies amongst you, we can encode all text messages as UTF-8, which means we can send almost anything. The slight downside is that the number of characters in a message drops from 160 to 70, but it’s still possible for us to join texts together as usual.