With TeleSign’s SMS app, Dynamics 365 for Marketing users can seamlessly send SMS-based marketing campaigns including alerts, reminders and notifications to increase engagement, usage and brand awareness.

TeleSign’s SMS app allows anyone to build real-time communications into new or existing web and mobile applications, and scale their usage as needed. These messages can take the form of alerts, reminders, notifications, invites, two-way communications, promotional campaigns, and other marketing messages sent directly from TeleSign’s SMS add-on within Dynamics 365. This differentiated customer experience leads to increased user engagement, higher satisfaction rates, stronger customer lifetime values (CLV) and faster growth.

“It’s projected that 80 percent of business will be communicating with customers via cloud communications by 2020,” said Aled Miles, Chief Executive Officer at TeleSign. “Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers now have the power of TeleSign SMS to easily add messaging capabilities and connect with their customers the way they want to be engaged.”

Sona Venkat, General Manager, Microsoft Corp. added, “We’re excited to have TeleSign offer businesses the ability to provide timely, personalized information to their users via SMS, enhancing the customer journey and enabling digital transformation. We’re confident these scenarios will drive tremendous value for our mutual customers.”

With TeleSign’s SMS app, Dynamics 365 for Marketing customers can communicate more effectively with their audiences and provide a critical customer touchpoint throughout their lifecycle using SMS.

To learn more about TeleSign and its communications offerings, click here.

The post SMS Messaging Innovator Integrates with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Nicknamed “Adventurrito,” on July 13th Chipotle kick-started a twenty day long puzzle scavenger hunt where participants compete in online puzzle tournaments for a chance to win Chipotle burritos for the next twenty years.

In exchange for mobile phone numbers, Chipotle began offering up clues to a fun new promotion related to the company’s massive 20th birthday celebration.

Not surprisingly, text messaging is playing a key role in the campaign, not only in doling out clues for the puzzles, but also in providing general restaurant information that is helping to increase interest and foot traffic for the restaurant.

The Clues

The receipt is where this adventure begins for consumers. On the bottom of the paper is a message stating that if you text a keyword to Chipotle’s number, you will be sent a hint for the daily puzzle. Of course, there is the disclaimer that if you do this, your number will be added to the SMS program.

The keywords and numbers are changed day by day, as are the puzzles.

The game, which is still ongoing, also drives users to Chipotle’s social media sites. As a result, the company is seeing increased traffic on Facebook, Twitter, and even Google+ (they are wisely using these platforms to distribute clues, too).

Every twenty-four hours until August 3rd a new puzzle is unlocked. Each participant has to solve all previous puzzles in order to unlock the next.

Fittingly, there are twenty puzzles in all. Chipotle has also provided the option for users to “opt-in” to daily alerts when the new puzzle opens.

Of all the people that complete the twenty puzzles, only twenty will be chosen, based on their overall score and how quickly the puzzles were completed.

Mobile Ordering

Mobile, as it turns out, is nothing entirely new for Chipotle, as the company has been pushing mobile for almost four years when they first launched a mobile ordering application in 2009.

Each mobile effort has been designed in a way that encourages customer participation.

And it’s another exceptional case study to illustrate how text messaging is the ideal communications resource for restaurant chains that want to extend brand interaction and awareness well beyond the confines of their physical stores.

The post Chipotle Finds SMS Marketing Success with ‘Adventurrito’ appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Dubbed TatangoPlus, the new version of its popular SMS platform comes with a variety of enterprise-level features such as dedicated Strategic Advisors.  These Advisors, given to each TatangoPlus client, work one-on-one with customers on things like planning, dedicated short code provisioning, campaign setup, training, execution, report analysis and more.

In addition, TatangoPlus offers enterprise clients exclusive features such as advanced data collection tools, advanced SMS subscriber segmenting, enhanced analytics/reporting, custom message routing capabilities, design services, and priority access to Tatango’s technical support team.  The company has provisioned 10 new dedicated short codes for use with enterprise-level accounts, and is in the final stages of provisioning a shared vanity short code (33733) for larger clients not yet ready to provision their own dedicated codes.

“When I first started looking at the players in the enterprise SMS marketing space, I realized rather quickly that most SMS providers gave their clients the needed technology, but not the industry expertise to turn that technology into a successful SMS campaign.” says Derek Johnson, CEO of Tatango.  “Now with the launch of TatangoPlus, enterprise level clients can get the best of both worlds with enterprise-class SMS marketing software, accompanied by industry leading expertise through our dedicated Strategic Advisors.”

Tatango has seen impressive growth since its founding in 2007, growing well beyond the group-SMS focus it began with five years ago.  It’s last financial quarter saw revenue up 112% over Q4 2011, and launching an enterprise offering was the next logical step in it’s growth.  “We thought long and hard about expanding into the enterprise market, and finally the demand became too great for our team to ignore. We’ve already started work on SMS campaigns for a handful of Fortune 1000 businesses, and our team is excited to bring both our industry expertise and creativity to these and many more enterprise campaigns to come.”

The TatangoPlus platform is currently available to clients in the US and Canada, with plans to expand internationally in early 2013.

The post Tatango Launches TatangoPlus, An Enterprise Version of its Popular SMS Platform appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The most important aspects to note are the two methods the FEC approved in terms of SMS donations.  The first method requires a person to send an SMS keyword to a short code registered to the political campaign.  Once submitted, that person would receive a text message response asking them to confirm their intent to engage in the transaction, and to certify that the’re eligible to make a contribution under the Act and Commission regulations.

The second method would require a person to enter their mobile phone number on a political campaign’s website in lieu of a credit card number.  Before submitting the mobile phone number, they’d still be required to certify their eligibility to make a contribution under the Act and Commission regulations.  After that person confirmed their eligibilty, and submits their mobile phone number, a text message is sent to their mobile phone with a PIN number.  The user would then enter that PIN back into the political campaign’s website to confirm the transaction.

In addition to these basic requirements, there’s several other rules and regulations that affect the SMS providers used in sending the text messages, as well as regulations governing the content of messages and the conduct of the political campaigns sending the messages, among others.  Instead of outlining all the rules, regulations and best practices presented by the FEC here, head on over to this post on Tatango’s SMS Marketing Blog — they did an excellent job summarizing the news and providing all the details you need.

The post Federal Election Commission (FEC) Approves Proposal to use SMS for Political Fundraising: What you need to Know appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest post by Endre R., a freelance writer and occasional guest blogger on many topics related to advertising and marketing.

Mothers know it: If you want your grown-up kids to devote some attention to you, you have to get them on their cell phones when they least expect it. Most certainly, you will not get the full-fledged conversation you aimed for, but at least you reminded them of your existence. In this case, parental logic is not too far away from entrepreneurial thought. Naturally, an unexpected call from a perfect stranger advertising for a product is a nuisance. Luckily, mobile devices allow for much less obtrusive ways of connecting with potential clients. Implementing the use of SMS platforms and text messaging methods into your communication strategy can vitally improve your outreach to customers. Here are five suggestions of how to incorporate this technique into your business:

Alerts

Instant and immediate communication with your clients is a vital element of success in business. Maintaining contact with all of your customers, keeping them up-to-date regarding new products and alerts, and sharing information of interest with them will often seem like a big challenge if you take into consideration the annoying abundance of newsletters and spam mails nearly everyone in possession of an email account has to deal with these days. SMS messaging is an alternative worth keeping in mind when it comes to making sure that your updates and alerts reach your customer and have a few moments of his or her attention.

Mobile Marketing

With today’s media and IT landscape becoming ever more diverse and unpredictable, it can be a rather tough task to predict whether the internet, TV, print, or radio is the right marketing medium to communicate your message and your product to your target demographic. Again, mobile messaging provides an alternative solution to conventional marketing approaches. Efficient in cost, international in reach, and immediate in customer-connection, SMS marketing can prove to be just the right tool for your business. At present, there is no other marketing technique that gets your message as quickly as close to your potential client.

Field Communication

Organizing multitudes of people who are operating simultaneously and independently in different locations is a demanding job. A frictionless, structured process in everyday dealings needs to be ensured, while at the same time the capacity of sudden spontaneous action must be retained. Successful coordination of a large body of employees crucially rests on the right communication methods. Using bulk SMS, just one click will bring all of your co-workers into one line of action. While manual calls decrease your team’s reaction time, SMS messaging may be the right mode for you to propel your efficiency to a new stage.

One Time Passwords

Security is undoubtedly the major issue when it comes to dealing with account information and the transfer of passwords. SMS messaging provides your customers’ data with the right degree of protection, while at the same time accelerating the entire process of retrieving time-restricted passwords and acquiring access to accounts, no matter where the clients may be. The immediacy and flexibility of this method will guarantee customer satisfaction. As always, the mobile way of dealing with this kind of data transfer is efficient regarding both cost and time.

Machine2Machine

Introducing SMS messaging in the sphere of machine to machine communication can help to increase the smoothness of monitoring processes in any of your business areas. No matter whether you are searching for a new way of dealing with device control, remote monitoring, supply alerts, data backups, or wake up calls, mobile messaging is apt to improve your reaction time and performance in every of these and many more fields, as you are the immediate recipient of the information in the very same instant that the respective event takes place. In this way, you can initiate the right response from wherever you are and benefit from this method’s flexibility.

Flexibility, immediacy, and efficiency are the core advantages of text messaging in business. This method’s approach to customer communication can help you to build up an international base of clients, as well as improve internal business communication transcending hierarchies. Text messaging is an exciting way of increasing your company’s efficiency while being on the cutting edge of popular communications technology use in business.

The post 5 Viable Business Solutions for Text Messaging appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

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.

Learn more and register for the webinar here.

The post New mobileStorm Webinar Shows Businesses how to Begin Leveraging SMS Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Using original, primary research conducted by TextMarketer, along with supplemental data from ITU.int, Gartner and Juniper, the data shows which industries are leveraging SMS for business purposes — whether it be for mobile advertising & marketing, utility functions, alerts, and so on — in addition to which industries are currently sending the most SMS and how mobile advertising budgets are reflecting the use of SMS.

Interestingly, the graphic also covers the rise in “Application-to-Person” (A2P) messaging as well, showing that just revenue from A2P SMS alone is projected to reach more than $70B by 2016.  The data also suggests that A2P messaging will overtake person-to-person texting by 2016.

Be sure and check out TextMarketer’s last infographic that covered the “Seven Deadly Sins of Mobile Marketing,” available here.

The post Infographic: The Rise of Business SMS appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

On December 3rd, 1992, the first text message was sent from a man named Neil Papworth to colleague Richard Jarvis that simply read “Merry Christmas.”  From that day on, SMS has become one of the most ubiquitous forms of communication in the world — and one of the most effective marketing channels as well.

It wasn’t an overnight success, however, as Americans were only sending about 35 text messages per month in 2000.  Compare that to 2011 where Americans are now sending 357 text messages per month on average while generating $585B for operators worldwide.

Source: Tatango SMS Marketing

The post [Infographic] A Timeline of Text Messaging to Celebrate 19 Years of SMS appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The new platform, dubbed “3Seventy Local,” is designed to bring enterprise-level mobile solutions — including targeted SMS messaging in addition to mobile Web and mobile app solutions — to smaller organizations at truly affordable price points.  The company realized a larger issue in that advanced mobile solutions have been largely out of reach to smaller organization due to cost.

With a dead-simple user interface, the new platform was designed to allow users to create advanced mobile campaigns in only a few short steps — allowing them to “compete in the mobile space within minutes,” according to the company.

We’ve seen many mobile platforms go to market with the goal of simplifying mobile campaign creation using multiple channels, but most fail in terms of user experience, pricing or lack of crucial features such as reporting.  3Seventy Local provides one of the most comprehensive solutions we’ve seen so far that’s targeted at the SMB market.

“We see many big brands and advertising agencies realizing the importance of a mobile strategy as consumers begin relying on mobile as their primary means of engagement,” said Carrie Chitsey, Founder and CEO of 3Seventy.  “Until now, custom strategies and solutions were out of reach for many small businesses due to high cost or limited knowledge of mobile strategy.  We have built the technology to be very easy to use and we’ve developed industry templates, training tools, best practices and everything a small business needs to create and execute mobile solutions.  Our goal with this new product is to remove barriers, educate and help small businesses reach their goals.”

Monthly packages to access the new platform start at $64.95 per month, and the company is currently offering a free trial of the platform during its introductory phase.  In addition, new users can receive $50 off set up fees by entering discount code “SET50” at checkout through Friday, November 4, 2011.  Much more info can be found here.

The post 3Seventy Launches SaaS-based Multi-Channel Platform to Allow SMBs to Leverage SMS, Mobile Apps & the Mobile Web appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

CTIA has begun a new SMS short code auditing program that seeks to analyze all short codes for regulation compliance.  Scott Goldman of TextPower.com explained the new initiative perfectly in a post entitled “It’s Official: Cellular Carriers Have Gone Nuts.”  In short, SMS providers are now being held accountable by the CTIA for all advertised short codes, even though the providers themselves aren’t necessarily promoting these short codes.

So, for example, if a customer of an SMS provider is advertising a short code that’s found not to be in compliance by CTIA, the SMS provider is the one held accountable, not the customer who was responsible for the non compliant short code promotion.  “Behind the scenes, for the past 72 hours, businesses of all sizes have essentially stopped selling, helping customers, improving their systems and growing their businesses to attend to the demands of these auditors who are unaccountable to anyone other than the carriers they represent,” explained Goldman in his post.

What’s amazing is the fact that providers like Facebook and Twitter, who send more text messages than anyone, aren’t subject to these ridiculous audits, yet providers like EZ Texting, 4INFO and mobileStorm are.  For another in-depth write-up on the situation, Shane Neman — CEO of SMS provider EZ Texting — wrote an excellent blog post today.

A petition has even been formed for anyone or any organization that wants to fight back against CTIA, which can be found and signed here.

The post CTIA Now Enforcing Unfair & Unreasonable SMS Short Code Audits, Threatens SMS Providers appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.