I thought this article by Tim Jemison of iMedia Connection is a good overview of how mobile marketing can be integrated into any type of marketing campaign. The article, How to integrate mobile into all your campaigns, theorizes:

…mobile needs to be viewed as an additive component of every marketing program. Mobile has the unique ability to drive interaction and brand engagement from traditional advertising activities and to connect consumers with the brand, offers, and promotions with a unique sense of individual attention.

Using text messaging and mobile marketing gives you the ability to instantly understand how well your marketing is performing, and allows you to interactively communicate with your customers or prospects.

To read more about smartphone usage, see my previous blog post:

The 2012 Inbox: Mobile’s Impact – SMS May be Better

Mobivity’s text messaging platform offers resellers the ability to brand our dashboards with the logos of their choice and allow individual customers the ability to review their results in real time.  Text messaging and SMS is also cost effective and should be incorporated into all mobile marketing campaigns.

To learn more about our reseller program contact us at sales@mobivity.com or check out our website at www.mobivity.com.

I know a lot of  marketers are still getting into the groove on how to use mobile effectively.  I came across this report done a couple of years ago from the Mobile Marketing Association.  It’s a great primer for those who are looking to start using SMS text coupons in their mobile marketing programs.

Mobivity’s system can handle all types of couponing. You can choose from the ease of our on-demand dashboard, or for those wishing to develop their own applications or tie in with a company’s back end systems, our API gives you unlimited options.

Check it out at www.mobivity.com or contact us at support@mobivity.com.

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending May 2010 compared to the preceding three-month average. The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the U.S. according to their share of current mobile subscribers age 13 and older, and reviewed the most popular activities and content accessed via the subscriber’s primary mobile phone.

Interesting to note amongst Mobile Content Usage (towards the bottom of the report) that texting is still the largest share with 65% of the usage.  Trending up are web browsing and apps. The report gives you a good overview of the market and the most recent, freshest stats.

I came across an interesting article by Derek Harding from ClickZ about mobile inboxes saying usage and progress will be slower than the industry thinks.  His predication is that SMS is and will be the preferred  delivery vehicle for mobile-specific, time and location sensitive communications:

In 2012, e-mail marketing will still be used for non-mobile focused communications, much like it is today. With SMS and MMS used for mobile-specific, time and location sensitive communications. SMS adoption had been slow in the U.S. but it has taken off in recent years. In 2009, the U.S. became the largest producer of SMS messages worldwide. Furthermore, SMS usage does not have the same barriers to adoption as e-mail with support on virtually all existing handsets. Finally, it doesn’t have the same mobile/stationary complications since it’s unused on the desktop.

So basically, you may want to rethink the use of email to communicate with your mobile audience. SMS gets the job done better because your text message will be opened and read 95% of the time, unlike e-mail. Just saying.

Right now, there are various primary elections in progress as a precursor to the November elections. More and more, text messaging is becoming an integral component of the campaigns. 

Even the politicos know that mobile technology is a great campaign tool to update their supporters on rallies or appearances because it will  likely be opened and read by the recipient.  Don’t forget that 97% of mobile phone users open and read text messages after receipt and most of them do it within the first five minutes!

Carly Fiorina is a Republican candidate for the United State Senate in California. Visit her site at http://carlyforca.com/.

Roy Barnes, a democratic candidate running for Govener of Georgia in the upcoming primaries, uses text messaging in his television advertising. You can find the commercial at his site: www.Roy2010.com.

Many states are still working to completing their primaries by September, and with the general elections in November of 2010, there’s still plenty of time to pitch mobile marketing to those in the running.

Since Apple and Steve Jobs’ have made it “Crystal Clear” that they do NOT want analytics data stored on a third party service, we have decided to move away from the shared hosted model completely, except for demo, development and free trial purposes. It will not be used in production applications.

AppClix standard can be installed on either a Windows server, or under Linux running Mono. Using one of the Cloud providers such as Amazon EC2 or GoGrid, you can get a server for less than $100.00 per month. You can also get physical servers from The Planet and other providers for close to that.

Using AppClix on your own controlled infrastructure is no different that having your own application that keeps track of your users and how they use your app. Apple would have a hard time saying otherwise. We are simply a software vendor, and do not have access in any way to your data.

What is bothering Apple is the fact that free analytics providers are harvesting your users’ data and using it as a product to sell to others. They are creating reports and getting trends from your data that is shared with companies completely unaffiliated with you. Announcing that the iPad was showing up in their analytics was purely a way to bring more attention to Flurry and get free PR. Unfortunately it backfired. They got too much attention. http://blog.flurry.com/bid/30019/Apple-Tablet-The-Second-Stage-Media-Booster-Rocket

This is why those services are free. You can be sure that since Apple has specificall banned there developers from using a service that does this, that companies like Flurry will start to charge for their service. Well when you start paying for it, you realize it’s not really worth the price compared to other paid solutions such as AppClix.

And all this is assuming that Apple lets developers use the service that stores their data at all.

We are offering the AppClix license as a one time purchase, or as a monthly lease for those developers that want to start off with a smaller investment. We are also offering “pre-built” Amazon EC2 AMIs that can simple be “turned-on” and used. All you need to do is setup an Amazon EC2 account for free, and you pay them a monthly fee for the server and our license. All billing is done through them, and you can be running in minutes.

For more info on our offerings, visit our iPhone Analytics Pricing page, or contact us.

How A Company Recovers After Pissing Off Steve Jobs

We found out today how a company regains its composure after infuriating Apple’s Steve Jobs: Concede as quickly as possible.

That’s what Flurry is doing after its high-profile stunt earlier this year led to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) changing the terms of its iPhone developer agreement and prompted Jobs to blame Flurry during his appearance at the D8 conference on Tuesday.

Ok, so they admit they were wrong and are making some changes.

Flurry said that well before the D8 conference, it was working on complying with the issues raised, and has since been taking steps to address them with the help of its 30,000 customers. Specifically in regards to “device data,” Flurry said it is updating their service to be in compliance and will no longer collect the data. All-in-all, it’s trying to fall in line as quickly as possible. “Regarding sharing some specific aggregated usage statistics, to which Apple is opposed, we will comply with their wishes. Our goal continues to be to add value to the developer ecosystem and be a strong partner to platform providers,” Farago said.

That’s all nice and wonderful, but does it really change much? Steve Jobs made it clear (but is it clear?):

His exact words are: “The use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited.”

Flurry also says it will not share device data. But is this enough? Will Apple change it’s policy “BANNING THIRD PARTY ANALYTICS”? I guess we will have to see when the next developer license agreement is drafted.

So I have 2 questions.

1. How will Flurry make money?? Raising capital is not the same as generating income. I had assumed all along they were selling the aggregate data and generating some income from that.
2. Will apple let developers track device info themselves? I assume so. Developers need to know so they can tailor the apps and their capabilities depending on which device it is running on. I assume this will be even more true as the next gen is released.

So for now we will leave the device reporting in AppClix since we are not considered a third party if we do not host the analytics app or the data. As always, the developer is responsible for complying with their aggreement with Apple. If the agreement changes, we will release an update that complies.

Oh and I love this graphic on Flurry’s home page.  It’s part of their “Privacy First” initiative. I’ll leave that one alone.

“We’re seeing  about 50 iPads and they are all coming from Cupertino, CA… Blah… Blah… Blah…” –

Jeez, what were they thinking letting Apple and everyone know publicly that they are combing other app developers data and that Apple is testing iPhone apps on iPads.

Blame Flurry, Jobs said at D8 on Tuesday night. That’s the analytics company that sent Apple (AAPL) “through the roof” when its software helped it peer into Apple’s iPad testing operations in January. So now, Jobs says, he’s cutting out Flurry and everyone who wants to track his customers’ gadgets by transmitting device-specific information. (Jobs was responding, by the way, to a question from First Round Capital’s Chris Fralic, a Flurry investor. Ouch.)

Take a look at the speech: http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/d8-video-steve-jobs-explains-his-iads-restrictions-and-blames-flurry/

Well here we are, and now that Pinch and Flurry are one company, they are both screwed!

So here’s my question. Can developers built their own analytics? Can developers track how theur apps are used?

Of course they can!

While Apple can easily block the ability to identify what kind of phone it is, they can’t, nor do they want to, block tracking how the apps are used.

While Apple can block third party analytics providers from sticking their nose in app developers data, they can’t, nor do they want, to block app developers from understanding who their users are.

Is it really that big of a deal if we don’t know what type of phone it is, or what version they are on? That’s what Apple is concerned about. That and developers / providers opening their BIG FAT MOUTHS and sharing information.

As we all know, Apple’s always had a non-disclosure with their beta software, etc… and it’s always been honored by developers.

So what’s the answer??

is the answer!

While I continue to be pissed at Flurry, I plan to write them a public thank you letter next. By pissing off Apple, they have opened the market and forced developers to install their own Analytics, Reporting and App Tracking!

And we have it!

We have created stand-alone versions of the AppClix software. It comes in 3 versions from single server personal to multi-server enterprise.

Simply install AppClix on your own server (or rent a turn-key one from us) and go! Connect your apps. You have control and only you have access, and your data is not being mined or looked at by third party reporting companies.

And here’s the kicker! We are developing interfaces so you don’t have to change ANY code in your applications. Simple replace the Flurry, PinchMedia, Localytics (and others coming soon) library with one single line of code and you are GOOD TO GO! You can be up and changed over in days.

And you can even IMPORT your existing data using the PinchMedia API or Flurry & Localytics exports.

So bring it on! Our AppClix free trial will be ready next week and we plan to work over the weekend to get the finishing touched on the installed.

Come and Get It!!!

Visit our site for more info and pricing. We will be offering a migration special shortly.

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to the summer season. With all of the outdoor activities kicking off, now is the time to get your mobile marketing programs in place for the summer. Whether you offer mobile coupons, contests or voting, SMS marketing is  perfect for  outdoor events, getting your attendees engaged and making events interactive.