Being in mobile for a decade, I have heard it all, especially from those who think mobile marketing is stupid. There is a common theme among companies that believe mobile marketing is intrusive. I speak with prospects all the time that have either tried mobile and said it was not successful or won’t try it because they feel their customers will get upset. After asking a number of questions about what went wrong or drilling down to what their fears are, I almost always come to the same conclusion:  there is a big misconception about how mobile should be managed and, guess what, it all starts with email.

SMS costs money, and 95% of SMS messages are read within four minutes–two facts that can bring together a horrible user experience if not executed properly. Almost every company looking at mobile is an email marketer, and I know email marketers are jaded because of their experience with email and realizations about spam. 72% of the 320 billion emails sent on a daily basis are spam, so who could blame them? Most companies don’t understand email best practices and, as a result, they have felt the burn of user complaints, poor open rates, getting blocked, and ending up on blacklists. Legitimate companies are not spammers; they are generally just ignorant. They don’t realize that you should not upload a list that has not been sent to in two years or fail to confirm an email address upon opt in.

So back to those who think mobile marketing is stupid. Mobile is very different from email and it has to be done right. I like to help people understand that if your strategy was to build the largest email database possible, then mobile needs to be about building a database of your best and most loyal customers. Mobile is about loyalty–period. Those who are willing to have their day interrupted as their pockets buzz are going to be your best customers. If you have the email marketer mentality of “batch and blast,” mobile is going to be a disaster for you. However, if you learn to treat mobile as a totally different type of channel, it can be truly successful. With mobile, there is a new set of best practices and they are different from email.

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Generating Casino Revenue with Mobile Marketing

It’s that time of year, again, when the biggest names in the gaming world converge on Las Vegas for the Global Gaming Expo from November 17th – 19th and, you got it . . . we’ll be there.

Casinos in general have taken a pretty hard hit during the downturn in the economy which, not unlike any other industry, has forced them to pursue new cost effective yet results driven and engaging solutions to revive the lure of the casino life.  mobileStorm has been working with Casinos for years to help them make better decisions and lay out new marketing strategies for targeting their audiences and bolstering their brand.

At G2E, mobileStorm and some of the biggest Casino’s in Vegas will show how mobile marketing will change the way Casino’s do business. We’ll be blanketing the Strip, A large Casino and the show with a “real-time” demonstration of our mobile marketing platform doing customer acquisition for one of the largest Casino’s in Vegas. We’ll be tackling one of the biggest challenges facing Casino’s today:

“how to turn people into players”

So between November 17th and the 19th, keep your eyes peeled up and down the strip and come visit us at Booth #858 in the Central Exhibit Hall.  Come visit with our team of mobile marketing team that will make 2010 your year of growth.

We’re looking forward to showing you how 2010 will be a year of growth.

Directions to our booth:

1. Enter through any entrance at Central Exhibit Hall
2. Immediately walk to the right
3. Follow the signage to the Technology Pavilion
4. At the Technology Pavilion turn left on the first row
5. We are booth #858 on the right hand side, just before you turn the corner at the back of the Pavilion

(click the image below to expand it)

Click To Enlarge

Read the full article here: http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/1425/get-out-that-rake

“Dog Whisperer” Cesar Millan had a problem. With an abysmal delivery rate of 81.29 percent, his email campaigns weren’t getting through to many of the people who wanted them. “The company was constantly getting complaints from its subscribers,” explains a mobileStorm case study. “Consumers claimed they hadn’t received Cesar Millan’s once-monthly newsletter or that they only received it sporadically.”

Analysis by mobileStorm revealed the likely cause:

• When subscribers signed up, their addresses were not verified.
• The list—which dated back to 2005—contained inactive and invalid addresses, making it especially vulnerable to spam traps.

To clean up the list, mobileStorm used tactics like these:

• Identifying subscribers who had never opened or clicked on an email message
• Removing obviously non-engaged subscribers
• Sending the rest a message asking them to confirm their subscription, and letting them know their address would be removed if they didn’t respond by a certain date

Finally, the case study reports, “confirmed users were added back in along with known good addresses. Suspect addresses, opt-outs, and non-respondents were removed.”

After the company cleaned the list, the delivery rate shot up to 99.7 percent. ‘Nuff said.

The Po!nt: Time for some fall raking. To help ensure your holiday emails get the most response, clear your lists of “fallen” addresses. A timely clean-up could pay off.

Source: mobileStorm. Read the full case study here.

You’ve gotten a sales pitch from every e-mail marketer on the planet . . . but what should you really be looking for in an effective e-mail marketing campaign?

Hear it from the experts on Jeremy’s Desktop, Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 2pm PST.

CEO and founder of mobileStorm, Jared Reitzin, will make a special guest appearance on Jeremy’s Desktop, to demo mobileStormGo, and answer questions from the audience about how to get the most out of e-mail marketing.

Log on to www.technewsla.com to see the live demo, and to learn ways to optimize the performance of your e-mail marketing campaign.

Register for Jared Reitzin’s guest appearance on Jeremy’s Desktop today – space is limited. Click here to register now: http://bit.ly/DPz3p

* Jeremy’s Desktop is the online edition of Tech News, powered by Make It Work, which airs on KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO every Saturday 1pm – 2pm Pacific. It is hosted by Jeremy Anticouni, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Make It Work, Inc., and renowned radio talent, Tim Conway, Jr.