If you’re like me, you should have expected SMS marketing to appear in droves during the Olympics, for a variety of reasons. With NBC gifted the sole rights to broadcast the Olympics in the US, they’ve selected SinglePoint, an interactive mobile marketing company, to handle the SMS side of things.
The 2008 Olympics “mobile alerts program” introduces the largest number of selections ever offered to a U.S. audience, and includes almost any type of information you can think of. From daily news alerts, real-time information, and breaking news, to athlete alerts, medal results, event reminders, and much more. Users can even elect to receive multimedia alerts, with things like video highlights and a photo of the day- categorized by sports category.
SinglePoint has admitted that this was the largest undertaking it’s ever been involved in. The amount of detail, coordination, and sheer amounts of data that have to flow through the system could create problems, but they say everything, so far, is running smoothly.
I was wondering who would come out with SMS alerts and combined marketing that aimed to ride the success of the Olympics and the sheer amounts of subsequent worldwide viewers, but I didn’t know how it would work out given NBC has the sole rights to broadcasting. Their selection of SinglePoint, while it’s unknown why they were chosen, was a great idea to extend their reach.
