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A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were invited to attend the Hakkasan Restaurant & Nightclub’s grand opening in Las Vegas. Angel Management Group (who manages Hakkasan) is a client of ours, and to this day I have never received an invitation to a nightclub even remotely close to the sophistication of Hakkasan’s grand opening invitation. I mean, I have received some pretty neat wedding party invitations where it must have been a $500 per head, but those invitations did not come with a wireless bluetooth speaker.

I read reports that it cost $200,000,000 to completely open up the club (from construction to DJ contracts). At least $1,000,000 was spent on these invitations. I am very grateful to have a client like AMG and cannot thank them enough for putting us up at the MGM Grand, getting us a table and some bottles. Here is to AMG! You are doing it right guys.

Most Amazing Invitation In the World from mobileStorm on Vimeo.

Recently I took my almost five year old daughter to a father/daughter dance. One of the fun activities was a whole table full of glasses, hats, jewelry, and a whole bunch of other funny props you could wear. You then lined up, and a photographer took your picture. KK and I had the best time posing for the camera while dressing up in all of these funny outfits.

One of the pictures of myself I thought came out pretty funny. I had slipped on this really odd hat and tilted it backwards, put on some Porsche Carrera sun glasses and of course looking as gangster as possible, threw up “westside!”.

I thought I looked pretty hip hop (but minus the street cred), so I knew with that combination I had a pretty good Facebook profile picture. After posting it I had the usual amount of comments and smart alec remarks one would get from friends and family, after posting a ridiculous picture of themselves.

Last week mobileStorm had an announcement of a new, really important feature, on our “mobileStorm for Healthcare” platform. I had completely forgot that your profile picture on Facebook is not private and can be accessed thru an API. Well that is exactly what happened. Apparently a friend of mine wanting to keep update-to-date on some of the things that were happening with me at mobileStorm, and was using an RSS alert news reader (like Google alerts) to do just that. This RSS technology grabs the person’s profile picture and then slaps it on the news feed with whatever news is being scanned for the keyword he was trying to keep track of, in this case “Jared Reitzin”. He forwarded me the email to congratulate me on the announcement, and I immediately realized I was a part of my own Onion story.

(Original photo taken at Father Daughter Dance Jan 2013)

Healthcare is a pretty conservative industry so I really hope our clients or potential clients will get a kick out of this as opposed to worrying about whether or not they should do business with mobileStorm and it’s “wanna be gangster” CEO. I cannot say there is a silver lining to all of this because it just happened, but who knows; maybe it gives mobileStorm some  ”wall-street” cred?  I definitely feel that when you want your data on Facebook to be private, everything should be private. Who knows what other bits of information they are willing to offer up publicly, or what policies they will change without telling anyone as they have done in the past?

Nice lesson learned on this one.

Cheers,

Jared ReitzinHip Hop CEO

Working closely with the Kony Solutions team, we rented a boat during the 2012 mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. The boat pulled up to the back of the hotel where we had our group load in for some dinner, drinks and dancing. There was a lot more talking then dancing going on. We held a contest and gave away prizes like the Kindle Fire HD and Apple TV. People had to answer ridiculous questions like “what decade was Madonna born in”. All-in-all it was a fun night and anytime someone asked me “where is your booth”, I just said “our booth is floating out back. Our booth is a boat”.

To check out the pictures, go here.

There’s perhaps no better time than now for the healthcare industry to enter a vast paradigm shift.  With the nation in a recession, healthcare costs skyrocketing and overall quality of care decreasing, even the government is stepping in to force reform on one of the most complicated industries in the world.

Improving care and reducing costs go hand in hand in regards to healthcare.  When patients receive the care they need the first time, it reduces the potential for additional office visits and perhaps costly hospital admissions among other things.  It doesn’t stop there, however, as improving overall care also means extending care beyond the initial office visit.

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I wanted to share with the public an email I sent this year to our company and Board.  I did change some of the copy to have the correct narrative.  I think this group will enjoy reading about how mobileStorm views the importance of a killer UE in healthcare.  I started mobileStorm in 1999 and have seen mobile, SaaS, and healthcare all make dramatic changes (some faster than others).  I also think you will find this article interesting if you want to share my thoughts as to where I see the market and mobileStorm headed.

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It may sound like a contradiction for the CEO of a digital communication company to say this, but let’s face it, in today’s digital world it’s easy to forget that face-to-face interaction with customers and colleagues is still at the heart of any business.  Whether closing sales transactions, presenting new ideas or just building on an existing relationship, the added value associated with circumventing the barriers of digital communication can go a long way in how your business is perceived.

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Why is SMS so powerful? Well, quite frankly, the adoption is here and in a huge way. Ninety-eight percent of cell phones in the U.S. have text messaging capabilities, and 78% of people are text messaging. Heck, I have my grandpa sending text messages now. It blows me away that most businesses still think SMS is for a younger demographic. Sure, it started out that way, but those kids taught their parents and grandparents how to use text messaging. Actually (and if you are a parent of a teenager, you probably would agree), if you are not sending text messages you probably are not communicating with your kid as much as you would like to. I have often pointed out that shows like American Idol and President Obama’s Vice President announcement have significantly advanced the understanding of what a short code is and how to interact with it, which is the backbone of SMS marketing.

Let’s look at all of the options other than SMS that companies have available in their mobile marketing quiver:

1. Mobile Advertising: Using a platform like Admob, you can place ads on mobile sites and mobile apps to get your word out. Google and Apple (and Microsoft soon to follow) are headed heavily into this space.
2. Mobile Apps: Mobile apps are a great way for people to interact with your brand, getting content, information, and promotions. People can also show you their location, allowing the marketing to become more personalized and timely.
3. MMS: This is also known as SMS 2.0. It converts SMS messages to multimedia, allowing for images, video, pictures, and sound.
4. Social Mobile Gaming: Platforms like Foursquare and Gowalla are leading the charge when it comes to consumers checking into their favorite locations to unlock badges, deals, and specials.
5. Bluetooth: You can use Bluetooth to find people in the area and deliver content and information to their mobile devices.
6. NFC: Also known as Near Field Communication, we are just in the infancy of this technology that will become the new way of doing proximity marketing in the future. Apple already has patents for a mobile ticketing platform, and they will most likely start selling tickets through iTunes.
7. Email: More and more people are checking their email on mobile devices, and email marketing platforms are giving businesses avenues to make sure their emails are optimized for these devices.

Disclaimer: If I left any other methods out, let me know. I wrote this article in 30 minutes, so I had to have missed something. I would love to receive your feedback.

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We didn’t invent the term multi-channel marketing, but I can assure you mobileStorm was a first mover in this space. I can say for certain we were the first company in the U.S. to launch a self-service platform that provided six ways to communicate through the same interface (email, sms, video, voice, fax, and rss). We still provide six ways, but you need our mobileStorm Pro service.  At one time we even had a partnership with the now-defunct Mailersclub.com and offered the ability to create postcards, so you could say we went to seven. I would ask my developers if we could go to 11, but I guess they haven’t done a Hindu translation of Spinal Tap yet. That joke will make this a hard segue to the next section, but if you laughed you might as well keep reading.

Communication has grown over the years. First there was the carrier pigeon, then the telegraph, then mail, then the telephone, then email, then bulletin boards, then sms, then IM, and now social and mobile apps. Think about this evolution of communication, and ask yourself one question:  “Have you ever witnessed more modes of communication available to people than you have in the last ten years?” I think there is a resounding “no” (and yes, I purposely left off Blackberry Messenger and cave paintings).

A flood of new technology, compliments of the interwebs (for those still using IE6, that’s slang for “Internet”) made it happen.  I saw this coming when I was working for a decent-sized interactive video game start-up in Santa Monica in 1998. I was making more money in one week day trading ebay with my Datek account than my entire month’s salary (big apology to the CEO for wasting company time). I just knew the Internet was going to change the world and even more so become mobile, which is why I started mobileStorm in October of 1999. We first got into the mobile business, but we were too far ahead of the curve. Nobody wanted to pay us to send SMS messages because the consumer adoption was just not there yet. However, at some point email took off and we decided to integrate an email and sms marketing platform that you could sign up right on the spot as long as you had a credit card. Long story short, as new technologies came out, I made it our mission to create a communication platform that allowed businesses to reach consumers in as many ways as possible. Why? Because people are different and different channels have different adoption rates depending upon age, ethnicity, geography, and savviness. I figured if we covered the spectrum of communication, then companies would flock to our services. Well, I was right and I was wrong.

Yes, mobileStorm has seen killer growth over the last few years, but initially the way we sold multi-channel marketing was confusing. On top of that, we had no money to make a splash in the industry; we built the company with no VC backing. It’s great to see how many larger email service providers (ESPs) are starting to add channel after channel, because it tells us we were right all along. However, it sucks that our competitors are adding channel after channel because now we need to truly compete and differentiate ourselves.  And, we are still without the millions of dollars our competitors have raised in venture funding.

Nevertheless, please don’t take this the wrong way. I am not trying to gain your sympathy; I am just relating the facts. Here is the part where a big smile comes across my face: we have been doing this for so long and with so many different types of businesses that patterns have emerged. We have gathered a major pool of intelligence about what businesses need when trying to promote and sell their products and services in a digital world, and we have had enough time to get inside the mind of the consumer and understand how he would like to be communicated with. We are already arming our clients with this knowledge and, from a product perspective, are working on the next big thing.

Having a multi-channel marketing platform is one thing, but having an integrated communication platform is another. This is where we see the market going, and this is where we are headed. Let me explain:

Usually digital marketing service providers focus on one channel and if they do decide to adopt another, they develop it out separately and say, “Here you go; start using this way to reach your audience.” As new ways to communicate like email, sms, and social are adopted by consumers, service providers (like mobileStorm) create products to allow businesses to take advantage of these new communication mediums. Historically, these platforms only allow channels to be managed in a single silo. Single silos mean multiple locations for campaign management, separate reporting, and even different lists (example: one list for email addresses and another for cell phone numbers). Integrated multi-channel marketing means truly integrating channels of communication so that they work in unison, seamlessly forming a powerful conversation with customers. To me, the word “integrated” means we can stop saying “multi-channel” because not only does it mean multi-channel, but it means getting rid of these silos and truly combining the channels. It’s one stone, two birds. I am going to take this a bit further and get rid of the word “marketing” and turn marketing into “communication.” Why? Because to me, marketing is a one -way conversation, like advertising. But marketing is morphing into a two-way conversation; it’s truly becoming more about communication than anything else. Besides, do consumers want to be marketed to or communicated with?

Integrated communication means one location to manage the channels, timing, and actions of campaigns, as well as one interface for reporting on the effectiveness of a customer’s integrated communication. If I were to tell you any more than this (and get into the features), then I would have to kill you so I am going to stop here because I would be really popular at Pelican Bay.

If there is one take-away from my column, it is that the world is changing quickly and businesses need communication tools to grow their businesses. Consumers don’t want to be marketed to–they want to be communicated with. There are a lot of choices out there when it comes to digital marketing platforms, but most are stuck in single silo purgatory (mobileStorm included). On the other hand, that is changing, and I imagine the smarter organizations will get this and do something about it.

Cheers,

Jared Reitzin

For those who care, I created a tour of mobileStorm’s new headquarters here in Los Angeles. It’s a bit lame, and there are times I bumble over words or cannot complete a proper sentence. On top of that its in HD so you can see every single pore, and no I did not have time to see a makeup artist. But hey, I did it all in one take and if you are gonna make fun of me, then either have a really hilarious thing to say or be prepared for my sharp wit (which I gained back after making this video) to humiliate you.

Love,

- Jared Reitzin CEO

A number of sales reps have come to me lately and asked how they win a deal when the prospect tells them, “I don’t need to do SMS marketing because I am doing Twitter, and it has an SMS component to it.”

Twitter is an important communication channel that businesses need to adopt as a strategy, but it is vastly different from an SMS marketing strategy.

Let’s take a look at the two channels side by side and begin with the similarities:

1. Limited Character Set: You need to be really good at making short, impactful statements. SMS allows 160 characters, while Twitter only allows 140. One could argue that you don’t even get 160 characters with SMS because of the standard “best practices” footer you need to have for unsubscribe and help.
2. Database Development: In both cases, you need to develop your database. In Twitter you get followers (i.e., Twitter handles), and with text message marketing you collect cell phone numbers.
3. Mobile Reach: In both cases, messages can be received on-the-go.
4. One-to-Many Broadcast: Both Twitter and SMS are one-to-many technologies that allow you to broadcast a message to a group of people. If you are not using a mobile service provider, you are limited as to how many text messages you can send thru your cell phone to your friends, and in Twitter’s case, you are going to reach anyone who follows you (hashtags and @replies aside).  
5. Link Sharing: Both channels are used to share links. URL shortening services like Bit.ly became popular on Twitter first; however, adoption rates for smart phones (which offer full HTML viewing) are quickly growing, giving link sharing traction over SMS.

Now let’s look at the channels side by side when it comes to marketing:

1. Database Control: SMS marketing is similar to email marketing in that you get to control who is in your database. You can upload subscribers, have a registration form on your site, or send someone a message asking them to join your list. With SMS, you can even set up a keyword on a short code and ask people to text in (Example: text JOIN to 99158). This can be promoting on everything from billboards to TV commercials. However, with Twitter there is only one way to opt into someone’s Twitter account and that is to follow them. You cannot upload Twitter handles. You can ask people to follow you, but you have no control over your database.   
2. Usage of Twitter vs. SMS: Ninety-nine percent of cell phones in the U.S. now have SMS capabilities, and 78 percent of cell phone users are sending text messages. There are now over 280 million people in the U.S. with cell phones.  SMS usage in the U.S. is growing at a staggering rate, with an estimated 1.36 trillion messages sent yearly. Compare that to Twitter, which is reported to have around 15 million users and only just sent its 10 billionth tweet a couple of weeks ago. While Twitter is an important service that is getting a ton of media attention, it dwarfs in comparison to SMS usage and popularity.
3. SMS with Twitter is Optional: SMS is an optional feature with Twitter. Most people who are following a lot of people do not have SMS messages sent to their phone as they want to avoid carrier fees that would bankrupt a small third world country.
4. Targeting: With SMS, you can segment out your database and target a specific group of customers. With Twitter, any message you post will be read by anyone following you. The only kind of segmentation you can have is by having multiple Twitter accounts, but this is not a very scalable solution.   
5. Adoption: Purewire (operator of tweetgrade.com) came out with a report in June of 2009 which shows that 80 percent of Twitter accounts have fewer than 10 followers. Compare this to mobileStorm’s average SMS customer database size of over 1500. There are many Twitter users that have massive followings, but this is not the norm. It’s not easy to build a large following on Twitter. You need to devote loads of time to tweeting and trying to find people to follow you.
6. Personalization: With Twitter, one message fits all. There is no way to tweet out a message that is personalized with everyone’s first name. When you send out a message on Twitter, everyone knows you are sending it to the world; it’s not personalized.  
7. Selling: People don’t want to be sold on Twitter. Asking for business over Twitter is a very fine line and somewhat of an art form. However, if someone opts into your mobile club, he expects that you are going to offer him incentives. He expects you to sell.

So the next time you think about choosing Twitter over an SMS marketing service because Twitter has SMS, think again. However, both channels are important to growing your business. I always tell my clients that no matter whether you are building a following on Twitter, growing a list of cell phone numbers, or gaining fans on Facebook, you need to be developing your database in as many channels as possible. People are unique, and the more ways you can communicate with them, the more you will have a leg up on the competition. Just remember, every channel comes with its own set of challenges, policies, and best practices. Partner with the right vendors to make your business stand above the rest.