The first preseason football game is right around the corner on August 8th — here’s the schedule.

I love mobile alerts – check out these sites offering tons of  mobile options for you sports fans: 

Mobile – NFL.com Wireless

Stay in the game all season long with NFL Mobile Live on your Verizon … Sign up for as many alerts as you like. Stop and restart alerts at anytime. www.nfl.com/mobile

ESPN – Alerts Signup

Season or single game scores for NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL, and College … Already have ESPN Alerts on your mobile phone? Sign in with your ESPN.com Member Name proxy.espn.go.com/mobile/alerts/alertmanager

Mobile – CBSSports.com

Whether you prefer a mobile web (WAP) experience, downloadable apps, fantasy companions, text SMS alerts, sports video on Verizon vCast and at&t Cellular www.cbssports.com/mobile

Are you ready for some football?

ABI Research just released a new white paper on mobile marketing strategies. It includes  the latest information on the market and forecasts mobile marketing spending will grow from $1B to $4B by 2014. 

According to Neil Strother, ABI Research Practice Director, Mobile Marketing Strategies

"Mobile Marketing is growing exponentially and advertisers can no longer afford to ignore this medium as a way to reach customers – especially in the most desirable 18-40 age range."

Click on the graphic to download the report.

From FierceWireless, check out the latest stats for the mobile market.

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.

Everyone has a smartphone these days and marketers are wondering? Should I do e-mail campaigns or SMS text messaging marketing to their mobile audiences. 

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.

The 2010 United States midterm elections will be held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 36 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate will be contested in this election along with 38 state and territorial governorships, many state legislatures, four territorial legislatures and numerous state and local races.

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.