Category: Digital Marketing Blog

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

A new study was just published recently out of the University of Kansas School of Medicine that looked at physician’s preferred method for “brief communication” while on the job.  The results prove that text messaging is increasingly becoming the favored choice.

The University polled 106 physicians and found that 27 percent named texting their preferred method, compared to 23 percent that favored hospital-issued pagers, and 21 percent that said face-to-face conversation was preferred.  Among the survey pool, 57 percent reported sending or receiving work-related text messages, though it’s important to note that a majority of those polled were younger physicians — with 62 percent only having practiced medicine for 10 years or less.

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It’s no secret that digital marketers must take into account mobile usage these days when preparing and sending email marketing campaigns, but you may be surprised by just how quickly usage is being skewed towards the mobile channel.

Thanks to the folks over at emailmonday.com, it was revealed that mobile email will account for 10-35% of total email opens by 2013, depending on your target audience, product, and email type.  In addition, it was revealed that more than one-half (56%) of US consumers who have made at least one purchase using their smartphone have done so in response to a marketing message delivered via mobile email.

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Join us tomorrow, April 17th at 9am PDT for our latest webinar on the topic of casino marketing using email and SMS.

Our Director of Casino Client Services, Darren Withers, will discuss how to use an email and SMS digital marketing strategy to not only keep new players and guests coming through the door, but also retain active Players Club and Hotel databases through engagement to maintain loyalty to your property.

You’ll learn the ins and outs of using email and SMS marketing separately, as well as how to boost performance and ROI by integrating the two channels for maximum exposure and effectiveness.  Following the presentation, we’ll also be holding a Q&A session to answer any casino marketing -related questions.  We hope to see you there!

Register here to reserve your spot.

If you’ve ever wondered what the mobileStorm platform is like — or how thousands of organizations large and small use it everyday to message their audience through email and SMS — tomorrow is your lucky day.

We’re holding an in-depth webinar as a walk-through and demo of our digital marketing platform, where we’ll be discussing everything from creating and uploading lists, using targets and setting up text-in keywords, to creating and sending email and SMS campaigns from start to finish.

Join us tomorrow, April 12th at 10am PST — you can reserve your spot by registering here.  If you’d like a personalized one-on-one demo of how our platform can be used for your specific situation and/or organization, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We’re proud to announce our latest webinar dedicated entirely to how businesses can begin leveraging the power of SMS marketing today.

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned mobile marketer, this webinar will detail how to build and carry out a variety of SMS marketing campaigns from start to finish.  From planning and building your initial SMS database, to showing various campaign examples such as mobile coupons, and even real-world examples and case studies, we’ll show you how to start leveraging SMS today while also showing you the ins and outs of using it to grow your business like never before.

Join us tomorrow, March 20th, at 1pm PST to learn how to become a mobile marketing master using SMS!  Sign up here.

As the 2012 HIMSS conference steams ahead in Las Vegas this week, new data out from Compass Intelligence suggests the market for healthcare IT will reach $78B in 2012.

Looking ahead, the market is expected to maintain a 5% CAGR over the next five years to reach $92B by 2016, according to the research.  These numbers include expenditures on telecom services/equipment, IT personnel, mobile applications, computer hardware, network hardware, and third party services and outsourcing among other things.

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No company is too big to avoid strict SMS spam laws, as evident with Nokia who’s being forced to pay a $55K fine for violating Australia’s Spam Act.

According to Australia’s communications regulator, Nokia “sent or caused to be sent CEMS (commercial electronic messages) with an Australian link, without the consent of the recipients.”  In addition, it claims the spam messages didn’t contain “clean and accurate sender information” or “functional unsubscribe facilities.”  All of which are huge no-nos when it comes to sending SMS messages — no matter which country you’re in.

At mobileStorm, following digital messaging best practices and guiding our clients through the many rules and regulations associated with SMS is always a top priority — no matter how big or small the campaign is.

A new report out from mobile analytics firm Flurry shows that the audience reaching for their mobile devices and firing up apps during this year’s super bowl nearly rivaled the total TV audience — which is impressive considering this year’s event was the most watched TV program in history.

Flurry estimates that the number of users who launched applications in the United States between the hours of 3:15 PM PST to 7:15 PM PST on Sunday, February 5 totaled 98M.  The total television audience, according to Nielsen, reached 111M.  What’s most interesting is the mobile app engagement shown throughout the game.  Looking at the overall trends reveal a highly correlated, inverse relationship between app usage and game, halftime and commercial events.

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It’s always exciting when movers and shakers from two different sides of a given industry decide to get together and form strategic initiatives that clearly matches made in heaven. That’s why it was great to get the press release on Monday that announced the new initiative between telecommunication powerhouse Verizon and healthcare technology investment giant Health Communication Partners.

Advanced healthcare solutions made mobile by Verizon’s award winning wireless network = next generation solutions that can really move the needle in terms of our nation’s overall health.  We’re very excited to see what might come out of this.

Read the full release HERE.