Mobile marketing offers a wealth of possibilities and with a bit of creativity and forward planning you can create a fantastic mobile-based ad campaign that creates a real buzz.

We have given some tips how you can create better SMS marketing campaigns but now we would like to share some of the best mobile marketing ads of all times. You might learn something from these brands and use it for your own business.

Here are our five favourite ad campaigns from the marvellous world of mobile marketing:

1. Adidas Lights Up New York City

The goal of this campaign was to encourage mobile users to visit New York City’s Penn Station to view an Adidas ‘Light You Up’ promotional light show – an event featuring Argentinean footballer Lionel Messi, who was promoting the launch of the new Adidas Adizero F50 football boots.

In an ingenious piece of marketing, Adidas targeted all mobile users within a 3-mile radius of Penn Station in the hours leading up to the event with an ad that read ‘Adidas and Messi – After Dark Tonight’.

Clicking on the banner lead consumers to a landing page where a promotional video described the event’s location and time. The event was a huge success thanks to the mobile campaign drawing in thousands of interested onlookers.

2. Starbucks makes grabbing a coffee even easier

Giant coffee chain Starbucks recently used mobiles to make a coffee on the go even quicker for its US customers. By downloading the Starbucks Card mobile app, customers were able to charge it up with credit and then pay for their drink by simply having their mobile screen scanned at the checkout.

It proved to be a resounding success, with customers excited to have access to a new, faster way to pay and, after launching the app on iPhone, iPod touch and BlackBerry, Starbucks quickly extended the scheme to Android users

3. Heineken Hits the Back of the Net with Dual Screen Game

In 2011, UEFA Champion’s League sponsor Heineken introduced an innovative ‘dual screen’ app that let fans interact via their mobiles as games were taking place.

Using the StarPlayer app, viewers were able to react to what was happening in the game by pressing buttons to predict the outcome of set pieces such as corner kicks, penalties and free kicks. Options included a goal, a miss, a save or a clear and if you guessed right, you won points. Bonus questions about the teams were also posted throughout the game and the faster you answered, the more points you scored.

The Heineken marketing team were onto a winner with this one. It tapped into the surging popularity of dual-screening, where you use mobile devices to play along with live sporting events and shows, but also the competitive nature of the app meant that people were sharing across social media and forming leagues to see who got the best score, guaranteeing huge exposure for the beer brand.

4. Text it like Beckham

This marketing masterpiece from Motorola was aimed at people taking flights from Hong Kong airport and used two of the most well known names in Asia – footballer David Beckham and musician Jay Chow – to enhance the experience of saying goodbye to friends and family.

This worked in two ways – mobile users could either take a picture on their mobile and send it along with a text message, or have a special message recorded by David Beckham and Jay Chow, which were then played to people at the airport via large digital advertising screens.

The campaign was a huge success and had a dual effect – it massively increased the popularity and sales of Motorola and meant that advertising space at Hong Kong airport was suddenly selling at a premium.

5. BMW

This astonishingly effective example from 2008 saw BMW launch an innovative mobile marketing campaign designed to sell snow tyres to its German customers.
The company used data it had on file – car model and wheel type – to determine which sort of winter tyre would work best on each customer’s car. Attention was focused only on those BMW customers who had owned their car for less than a year and had purchased it in the summer or autumn, as older cars older would already have winter tyres purchased during the previous year.

On the first day of snowy weather in Germany, all the targeted customers received a text message showing an image of their car type with the recommended snow tyres. It also included a call to action – a link to a site that enabled the customer to experiment with placing different BMW tyres on their virtual car before making a purchase.

This campaign combined great timing with clever targeting of a section of BMW’s customer base that was most likely to buy snow tyres. The results were impressive to say the least – with a conversion rate from messages sent to actual tyres purchased of 30%, whilst the campaign earned a staggering $45m in new business.

These are just five examples from the wide world of mobile marketing, but they all used the medium to deliver a strong sales message that engaged with consumers effectively and led to excellent results.

Have we missed some out? If so, please leave a comment and let me know about your favourite mobile marketing moments!

I mentioned that we will be freshening up the look and functionality of TextMagic. Below is a list of the new features that will soon be released for TextMagic.

Estimated release time: February-March 2013.

Some of the main feature changes we’ll be implementing…

1. Dedicated inbound SMS numbers – businesses will be able to buy their own two-way inbound SMS numbers. This way businesses can promote their number in marketing material for better conversions and improved communication. Previously TextMagic only offered shared reply numbers. Numbers will be available from many countries like: UK, Germany, Finland and many more.

2. Simpler pricing – simpler and clearer pricing. Balance shown in cash and not credits, one flat price per country.

3. Auto recharge – pay once, thereafter subsequent recharges can be automated. Works with credit cards and Paypal.

4. Longer messages – we will increase the maximum length of a message people can send. Increase from 495 characters to 918 characters.

5. Analytics & Reporting – customers will be able to get a better overview of their usage,  campaign results, delivery quality, response rates and more. Reporting will be available for viewing in an online interface.

6. Default country code option – users will be able to define their default country code. This way customers can submit messages to their locally formatted numbers and TextMagic will understand where to send the messages. At the moment TextMagic insists all numbers are formatted in the international format.

Making our online interface more user friendly and mobile/tablet compatible…

1. Mobile Friendly – introducing a new website with responsive design. It will work on all screens: mobiles, tablets and desktops. Our long anticipated mobile website will be released.

2. Online inbox & Two-way chat – better two-way conversation feature in an online chat like environment. Streamlined way to have better two-way conversations with mobile recipients like field staff etc.

3. Attachments & Pictures – it will be possible to send attachments and pictures. Files and pictures will be hosted on the TextMagic server and recipients will see a link in the SMS to click through to a mobile site to view/download files.

4. Contacts management upgrade – simplified and improved contacts management online.

5. Scheduling & Recurring messages – improvements to the popular send later feature.

6. Sound – optional sound alerts when new messages are received in inbox

How will Email to SMS change?

1. Group Email to SMS – the old TextMe service will be discontinued and replaced with a simpler to use group email list feature. Customers will be able to select their own TextMagic email address and link mobile phones to that address. All messages sent to that custom TextMagic email will be forwarded to mobiles specified.

2. Optional Out of hours message queuing – messages sent during anti social times will be queued in the TextMagic system and delivered first thing in the morning at a more suitable time.

Will Sign-Up Forms be different?

1. Auto Response to New subscribers – marketers will be able to write a custom auto response text if someone signs-up to receive SMS alerts via their website.

And what about Bulk SMS API, will that change too?

1. Retry logic for callback URLs – new retry logic will be introduced for API callback URLs. Now the system will keep retrying if the customer’s own server is having difficulties accepting the calls from TextMagic API.

Now that we have all the festivities out of the way and have renewed our New Year’s resolutions, I trust that you are all charged and ready to take on 2013 with great vigor and gusto! That’s the spirit.

The TextMagic Team is back together after a well earned break, spent overindulging and stimulating the retail industry.

No apocalypse yet!
Thankfully for most, and perhaps unfortunately for some, the World did not end in 2012. I always wonder where the pessimists and doomsdayers hide after a non-event. Perhaps they are the masters of disguise as they go undercover and work on the next tragic prediction.

Earth may have gone into a wobble or changed its tilt. Inter-planetary alignment and changing magnetic fields may make you feel a little queasy – but the important thing is that we are still here and life goes on for the foreseeable future. Until the next foreboding prophecy is unveiled… people must have something to worry about, otherwise what would we talk about? And what reason would I have to stock up on baked beans!

What the Mayans really predicted…
Here’s my divine intuition for the year ahead… The apocalypse was nonsense, instead the Mayans predicted that we will now have 5,000 years of peace and prosperity, as the third age draws to an end. Not sure about the peace bit… but I do believe there will be prosperity for those that embrace technology and communicate with their customers regularly.

Indeed, those that use affordable bulk SMS to connect with their client base, will have richness beyond their wildest dreams. Look at any Mayan calendar, you can see the prosperity gained through mobile marketing clearly

So let’s knuckle down and make it happen! Sure we will have some challenges in the next 5,000 years, but humans have never been better positioned to deal with challenges. We have the means, adaptability and capability to deal with the obstacles that come our way.

Changes ahead
On the subject of challenges, we will be unveiling a few changes here at TextMagic, all for the better and to make you prosper! First of all we have decided to rejuvenate our blog, to lighten the content a bit and engage with our followers. I have organised some interesting interviews with some TextMagic clients, in order to hear how using Bulk SMS for business has changed their customer contact and businesses.

Over the coming months our website will see some freshening up with a redesign. So, please don’t be surprised by the changes, we will tell you when they are happening and everything will function just the same, it might just look a bit different.

Buckle up, 2013 is here and galloping along already, enjoy the ride. Forget the apocalypse, let’s prosper!

SMS is one of the oldest mobile technologies; it’s been around for over a decade and is still actively used to this date. In fact, it has changed the whole gamut of communication. However, all of a sudden, text messaging has come under serious threat from newer technology because of the explosive popularity of smartphones and apps. There is every chance that text messaging as we know it will change a great deal in the next few years. The ‘old way’ of texting still has some very strong advantages; for instance, it enables cross-platform communication using a cell phone number and does not require usernames.  Most importantly, however, carriers still make a lot of money from text messaging, so they are not going to give up on it without a fight. Let’s review the latest shifts in the global text messaging space.

The first company to succeed in making a phone-specific messaging app was RIM with their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), which BlackBerry owners use to communicate with other such users over the internet. The prevalence of other smartphones gave developers an opportunity to create similar apps on other platforms, resulting in numerous cross-platform apps like WhatsApp, which automatically finds people in your address book that already use it, so you can send them IM-style messages, pictures, videos, files and your location on the map. The cost of such apps is a fraction of what you pay for SMS – for $2 a year you get unlimited messaging; however, it is only with people who also use this service, not everyone, and that’s the only show-stopper.

SMS is also under pressure from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, both of which are found more and more often on phones and enable text-based communication with your friends. Facebook even went as far as releasing a standalone app named Messenger that is simply a dedicated app for Facebook Chat. Upon release of the app, it quickly climbed to the top of the free app charts on both platforms it was on, but left the charts soon after.

While all those apps are proving to be extremely popular, they still have a long way to go to replace traditional text messaging. The biggest concern is fragmentation. As with instant messengers online, a person using BBM can’t send a message to someone using WhatsApp, which is a problem. So if you would like to use such apps as a primary means of text messaging, you will probably need all of them, as it could be tough convincing a person to switch to another platform once they are used to the one they started with. This way you may end up with a bunch of apps that you use for the same reason but need all of them because that’s the one the recipient is using. And when you get WhatsApp, Kik, Skype, KakaoTalk, Viber, etc, there will still be a need to use SMS from time to time because you won’t find every person you know on those networks.

Also, a lot of businesses rely on SMS for their marketing and it is not yet possible to do that with the messenger apps. Imagine a company asking if you have Kik installed and if they can message you there from time to time. Of course, businesses still prefer to know your mobile number, rather than a Skype handle, so they can send you their special offers via bulk SMS services.

Every sign leads to a world in which carriers, under pressure from free messaging apps and communication giants like Facebook and Skype Microsoft, will lower text message prices so that people keep using them, most likely bundling them with your calling plan at a cheaper price. This will fit perfectly with the future in which people pay not for texts sent and minutes talked, but for the amount of bandwidth they are actually using, which is more efficient and fair anyway. There are serious economic reasons for such a model to take place, and at this point the question is not if but when.

We are excited to announce that our new TextMagic Affiliate Programme is now open and taking new affiliates.

It’s been in the works for a while, we know. But, we really wanted to get it right and offer you, our customers, the best affiliate deal we could. We’re really happy with the response we’ve had so far, and we’re sure you’ll agree that this is best affiliate deal in the SMS market.

Take a look

As an affiliate, for each new customer you refer to TextMagic you will earn:

• 10% of all revenue we get from customers you refer to us – for the life of the customer
• £15 for each new paying customer you send our way

That means that when you refer someone from your website, application, blog, or email and they sign up as a paying customer, you will earn £15, plus 10% of their first purchase – and 10% of all subsequent purchases.

Great for developers

In addition to being able to integrate our bulk SMS features into your application through our  SMS gateway API or Email to SMS, you will also earn affiliate revenue from your apps when you sign up as an affiliate with TextMagic.

Using our text message gateway gives you easy and cost-effective bulk SMS messaging for your user base, including:

• Two-Way SMS functionality with SMS reply numbers so that recipients can reply to your text messages.
• Up to 459 characters in a single text – no more annoying message breaks for long texts!

How much can you earn?

Here’s an example of what you can earn from referring a new customer to TextMagic:

£15 (First purchase bonus)

+          £10 (10% of first purchase revenue of £100)

=          £25

After that, every time they purchase more credits, you’ll earn 10%. If they purchased £100 of credits every quarter, you’d earn a further £30 that first year – and just from that one referral!

Most of our customers make many purchases over several years, so you can earn a continuous income, even after the cookie expires.

How It Works

We’ve worked hard to keep this easy-to-use, just like our SMS services:

1. A visitor clicks your affiliate link.
2. When they arrive at our website, we log their IP and place a tracking cookie on their computer (this is so we can attribute the next part to you).
3. After browsing our website, if they order, it is registered as a sale for you.
4. We review and approve the sale. You get £15 + 10%.
5. Now that your referred customer has signed up, we credit all his or her purchases as your sales, even after years have passed and the original cookie is deleted.
6. You receive your commission payouts via PayPal on the 15th of every month (as long as your balance is at least £25).

You can join our affiliate programme today. If you’d like to find out more about it, check out the affiliate section of the site.

In this new video I will show you how to collect mobile phone numbers from your website’s visitors using our mobile marketing sign-up forms.

You can use these forms to collect contacts to you mobile marketing database. All contacts will be inserted to groups. Once your database has some contacts you can send a group SMS in a few clicks to all your contacts.