SMS Marketing Still Very Much Alive
No doubt you have been inundated these past few months with news about this App or that, but SMS text message marketing is not dead, and in fact, remains the only type of mobile marketing that is platform independent – users can receive them regardless of whether they use an iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, or even a simple “dumb” cell phone with no Internet connection.
A new partnership between two mobile marketing firms, Placecast (www.placecast.net) and Location Labs (www.location-labs.com) extends the reach of location-based mobile marketing to over 180 million potential consumers in the US across multiple carrier networks.
San Francisco-based Placecast’s ShopAlerts are location-triggered mobile text messages sent from brands to consumers who have opted in to the service. The ability to reach up to 180 million via text is greater than the reach of any app on the market today, according to the company, reaching more than 60 percent of all US consumers. Its ShopAlerts service is a white-label mobile marketing solution that retailers and other direct marketers use to create a private label version of the service. Consumers double opt-in to receive notifications from brands of their choice via several channels – including at the store, online, via text-message, mobile Web site, or social network (like Facebook or Twitter). Once ShopAlerts is activated, the service automatically alerts the consumer about a brand’s local sales, special events, or other relevant information based on the consumer’s location.
Location Labs, an Emeryville, Calif.-based provider of mobile location-based services for developers, allows Placecast to locate phones using its “location-as-a-service” platform. The platform offers developer partners the ability to easily incorporate the real-time location of both smartphones and feature phones. Location data is sourced from Location Labs’ wireless carrier partners, and does not require the end user to download an app to a mobile phone to take advantage of the service.
The combination of these two services – intelligent location-based targeting and robust positioning -- allows brands to deliver highly targeted messages to consumers on any device based on place and time, without the need to download any apps.