Well, this just might be a bit overdue, but we just felt the need to share some of the positive buzz and enthusiasm we experienced at biZbuZZ conference that took place in Niš, Serbia last month.

biZbuZZ is a annual conference dedicated to internet commerce, and it pretty much gathers most of Serbian internet ‘scene’ – and some of prominent bloggers, entrepreneurs and internet folk from the region. This year, we had the pleasure of participating with a keynote on mobile and micropayment in general, with a special focus on Fortumo’s take on the topic (you can see the English language version of presentation and video footage in Serbian after the brake).

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You know that Premium SMS services are the best tool for making the payment process as easy as possible. No credit cards or account number is needed, not even any personal information is revealed in this way. That is why it’s only natural that a great service as Textango has been created.

Textango have been founded in 2007 and since then follow one of the most attractive models among all sites selling songs. Their main principle is 1song – 1 SMS. Just by sending 1234 to 5678 you receive a code to redeem the favorite song. It’s so easy.

A good marketing trick of theirs Read the rest of this entry »

No matter where you live – US, Denmark, Romania or China, you’ll hear words like ‘recession’, ‘global crisis’ and ‘decline’ several times each day. And although most of the industries have felt the harsh bite of the economy winding down, there are some good news, especially for those involved in mobile and web services.

According to a new report released by Magna last week, the market for mobile advertising will grow by 36%, rising from $169 million in 2008 to $229 million during 2009. The numbers represent US market only, but judging by several key factors, such as the extend of recession in the US compared to Europe, and the user’s habits (Europeans tend to use text/SMS and advanced mobile services more than customers in the US), we definitely have something to look forward to.

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I am a big fan of those them-specific magazines and for years now I have been using Zinio Reader in order to read my favourite ones. A lot of them are not available globally and that’s yet another reason to choose the digital ones.

For those of you who have not used Zinio – this is the digital issues  reader used by all larger magazines and newspapers. It allows subscription at far lower price than the one at the cover and the digital issues are created by the publishing houses themselves. The content  is the same, as other extras are included, too.

The new initiative of Zinio is called Go Read Green. The reader offers free One year digital subscription for a magazine of choice,  as the idea is to save paper ad thus save the nature (by not killing trees). I must admit, that in the offerings list I was not able to find even 1/3 of my favourite magazines, yest I am sure that everyone will find one to his/hers liking. Try them and tell me here if you are pleased by the magazine. Who knows, you may be the next one paying for digital subscriptions.

Hi everyone. As today is the 24th of December it’s a perfect time for some Christmas stories from the business world. I will begin with many people’s favourite McDonald’s. I have already told you a story about McDonald’s SoCal and you can read it again if you want in order to compare the strategies.

The name of the campaign that I am telling you about is “Merry Xmas in The Restaurant”. Read the rest of this entry »

Another week – another post on Mobile Marketing. I hope that you’re enjoying these posts and I will appreciate it if you leave your comment below.

This week we’re going to have a look at MTS Russia’s SMS game that brought them a lot of satisfied customers, tons of money and base for future marketing researches. And what exactly have they done?

This year (and more exactly in the period 19th of May – 31st of August) MTS Russia – the largest mobile phone operator in Russia and the CIS, with a total consolidated subscriber base reaching 86.3 million users (not only Russians) – launched a really intensive ad-campaign. It was a text-messaging quiz-like game that consisted of 2000 interactive and more than 300 marketing questions (for future reference). It was targeted at ladies in the range 24-55 years.

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Hi everyone! Excuse me for being two days late with this post. Here I am with another case study on Mobile Marketing. Today I am going to introduce you the case of SoCal (South California) McDonald’s that were reaching their customers through text messages.

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Hello, hello. Welcome this week for another issue of the History of Marketing postings. Today I am going to introduce another interesting idea that was implemented in Australia.
The Edge 96.ONE is Sydney’s leading hip hop and R&B station. It is an RnB radio that has a lot of new artists presented at the radio air. The radio staff wanted to develop a user-friendly interactive SMS service, allowing the listeners to request the name of the song that is on air and the performing artist by just sending a short message by their phone. This allowed them to reduce the phone call that they were receiving and added one more way for connection with their customers. Back at the radio there was constant work on the update process – the database with songs and artists has to be always up-to-date. Each time a new song is played, the DJ is announcing: “To find out what is playing, just SMS SONG to 1975 7777 and we’ll SMS ya back the name of the song and artist!” Finally, for only 55c the sender receives the requested information.

Did you get new ideas? As this article shows, no matter how simple an idea is, if implemented at the right place it can help you achieve a lot. So be creative, risk but be realistic, too.

As of today we will start a new weekly topic. It’s called “History of Mobile Marketing” and here we will present successful SMS-based campaigns from the first written SMS till now. Some of them are not so creative, and some of them are a real work of a genius but all have contributed greatly to the ones that ordered them. They can help you create your winning idea and take you to the top…who knows?

Today’s case will be about Dunkin Donuts.
In 2002 Dunkin Donuts, Italy started an SMS campaign that was based on interaction with their customers and aimed at increase of the revenue of 7 of their retail stores and finding new local employees. They wanted something different that will attract people’s attention as they were new to the market in Italy where Sweet & Co was already the local ruler there. The results were stunning – 9% increase in sales for Dunkin Donuts and a lot of interested customers. But what have they done?

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