Mobile Marketing and Email Marketing by mobileStorm

In the novel 1984, novelist George Orwell predicted a future where the government had complete control over the populace, monitoring their every move through technology. An enduring classic, the book introduced the concept that “Big Brother is watching you.” In fact, it proved to be such a seminal work that the term “Orwellian” became synonymous with technologies that are used in such invasive matters of privacy.

Of course, in today’s society we really are in the era of Big Brother, except that the monitoring technology is (or at least supposed to be) designed to protect us, not control us. Opponents of the infamous Patriot Act might disagree but that’s an issue for another day, or blog for that matter…

In some cases, marketers have implemented monitoring and tracking ideas that are almost as nefarious as those Orwell wrote in 1984. This has been exacerbated by online technologies. While for the most part, being online is relatively safe, the proliferation of viruses, Trojan horses and other applications designed to extract information about consumers has caused many to be a lot more cautious. Unfortunately for digital marketers, this skittishness is hurting the burgeoning use of what is being called behavioral targeted messaging.

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As I was skimming through technology articles this week, I noticed a company that has put what seems to be a new twist on email. But unlike a subject I am typically familiar with, email marketing, this product hits a different topic regarding business email. For those of us who have struggled with Outlook to manage our email correspondence, a new software plugin called Xobni has created an interesting approach on good old business or even personal email. Xobni, which is “inbox” spelled backwards, provides a robust analytics tool for your Outlook inbox.

While I haven’t tried Xobni myself, as an analytics aficionado, I am interested in anything that attempts to bring a story to numbers. The plugin extracts contact information (telephone numbers, addresses, etc.) automatically and provides an enhanced inbox search feature. Xobni uses a social network approach by giving Outlook a nice dashboard showing who is connected to whom. Some of the coolest features promise to display patterns regarding the time of correspondence, frequency of contact, and also social/business groupings of related contacts turning your regular inbox into an intelligent inbox.

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Note: mobileStorm does not, in any way, condone the sale or use of illegal substances.

By now, everyone’s heard of the frat-boy drug busts at San Diego State University. Most people were shocked at the scope of the narcotics networks. Not to mention the homeland security aspirations of one arrestee—which kind of underscores the folly of the “wars” on drugs and terrorism. But the silver lining here is for digital message marketers: It’s a chance to see how SMS marketing can be effective for the widest variety of, er, industries.

According to investigators, the accused dealers sent out at least one mass text-message to their database of satisfied customers, offering a special sale on cocaine. Said the SMS message (exact grammar/punctuation/spelling intact): “Attn faithful customers both myself and my associates will be in vegas this coming weekend bad news is we will not be here to complete sales good news is from Now to until midnight thursday gs are 35 eights 110 quads 210 so stock up, we will be back Sunday night.”

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Rightly or wrongly, Americans are often stereotyped as lazy, obese couch potatoes. Outside The Inbox: Video Edition does nothing to dispel the mythos.

This week, mobileStorm CEO Jared Reitzin calls out U.S. online users for not generating content like they do in other countries, pointing to reports that say they prefer downloading to uploading. He also notes how the American Idol generation would rather vote for president the way they do their favorite crooners—via text-message.

For those of you who haven’t seen Outside The Inbox: It’s an online spoof news show, hosted by our fearless leader and meant to be like a The Daily Show for digital marketing.

Check out the latest episode here; see mobileStorm’s entire video collection here.

Eydie Cubarrubia
Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm
“I’d rather you text me”