Archive for October, 2011

84444.com is now the exclusive sponsor of the Fantasy Sports segment of sports talk radio show Spadora on Sports.  Listen as Pete Spadora interviews baseball legend Jeffrey Maier about his role in the 1996 American League Championship series between the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles. The Spadora on Sports interview segment includes information from the publishers of Fantasy Baseball Dugout and Fantasy Football Sideline.

ALOHA: Mobi PCS joins 84444.com

84444.com knows that your business success depends on your mobile programs reaching the largest number of American consumers.  That’s why we are constantly striving to add new carriers to our portfolio.

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of providing SMS short code services to Mobi PCS.  Formerly known as Coral Wireless, Mobi PCS is Hawaii’s largest local operator with over 60,000 subscribers.

Aloha Mobi PCS!

This article was first provided to iMediaConnection.

Less is More: The Long and Short of Text Message Marketing Copywriting

The best thing about text message marketing is the likelihood that your message will actually get read.  In fact, 94% of all text messages are read immediately upon receipt, even the promotional ones.

But, once you’ve got the readers’ attention, how do you keep it and make them act on it when you only have 160 characters, including spaces, to work with?

Here are some best practices to be the master copywriter for the short message.

• Get straight to the point.  With 160 characters, you really have no choice.
• Use short and simple words.  No need to impress anybody with your Ivy League vocabulary.
• Think in terms of teasers.  Those messages on the home page of Yahoo that just force you to open them.
• Talk about benefits.  You probably won’t have room for the features part.  How much weight they lose or how much better their car will handle with new tires.
• Use the shortened text format that is already acceptable in personal text-speak.  It will make your message seem more genuine and not a sales pitch.
• Adding an embedded URL or phone number for quick access via a smartphone is a great addition, but don’t sacrifice the basic understanding of your message to add it..

The day will come when open rates of text messages start to decline, but for now, they remain high, even among those who receive a lot of promotional text messages.  Take advantage of those high open rates by maximizing the effectiveness of your promotional text message copy.

That’s the long and short of it.

Bob Bentz is president of mobile marketing company Advanced Telecom Services which provides text message marketing, apps development, custom QR Codes, and mobile web sites.

In a tough economy, coupons are becoming increasingly important in the United States.  In fact, it isn’t just the struggling middle and lower class that use them.  In fact, according to a study by RedPlum, 96% of those surveyed said they would still use coupons even if they won big in the lottery.

Mobile Coupons

Here are some interesting statistics from the RedPlum study.

• 56% of teens use coupons.  They use them most often for clothing (25%), entertainment (19%), and beauty care (18%).
• Grocery coupons are most popular with 92% of coupon users shopping with coupons at the grocery store.  45% use restaurant coupons and 38% use them for clothing purchases.  35% use coupons for beauty supplies.
• 76% indicate that newspapers are still the primary source for finding coupons.  59% find coupons in emails and 33% find coupons during internet searches.
• In 2011, 22% of Americans have downloaded a mobile coupon to a mobile device.  This is a whopping 107% increase over the 2010 study.

Earlier today, eMarketer released a study that estimates advertisers will spend $1.23 billion on mobile advertising in the U.S. market in 2011. This year will be the first time the mobile ad industry has passed the one billion dollar mark. This unprecedented amount represents a 65% increase over the $743 million spent in 2010 on mobile advertising.

The study also estimated that by the end of the year the number of Americans with a smartphone will be 38% and 41% of mobile users will use mobile Internet at least one time per month. The increased number of smartphones and mobile Internet usage equate will equate to higher mobile advertising spend in the near future. The eMarketer study predicted that mobile ad spend, which includes ads viewed on both mobile phones and tablets, will grow according to the above chart.

The numbers include money spent on display ads, search ads, and mobile video ads, but does not include money invested in text message marketing on sites like 84444.com. The fastest growing mobile ad segment, mobile video ads, is expected to account for $57.6 million of the $1.23 billion mobile advertisers spend in 2011. However, that number is expected to grow at a 69% compounded annual rate through the year 2015. In fact, by 2015, advertisers are expected to spend approximately $395.6 million annually on mobile video ads.

Although advertisers have traditionally hesitated to spend large amounts of their budgets on mobile advertising, this study indicates that resistance is diminishing. With the number of consumers accessing the Internet through mobile devices steadily increasing and advertisers allocating more funds to mobile ads, there is no reason to doubt the data in this study.

Diana Chiafair Roberts has won the 4th Annual Baseball’s Hottest Wives competition sponsored by fantasy baseball site Fantasy Baseball Dugout.

SPOT ON: 84444.com helps crown Diana Roberts as Baseball's Hottest Wife.

2011 was a disappointing season for Brian Roberts and the Baltimore Orioles, but hopefully things are looking up a little for the Roberts family now.

In the closest competition in the four year history of the popular Baseball’s Hottest Wives contest, Roberts’ wife Diana Roberts edged Derek Jeter’s ex-fiancee and Charlie’s Angels star Minka Kelly to take home the coveted title. The vote went to the ninth inning with the margin of victory for Roberts, the ex-Deal or No Deal suitcase model, being less than one percent.

During the year, Baseball’s Hottest Wives nominated numerous wives and fiancees of professional baseball players. The fourth annual Baseball’s Hottest Wives contest registered over 29,000 votes from all around the world. Baseball fans, and fans of pretty women in general, voted via the web site Fantasy Baseball Dugout and via text message voting supplied by text message marketing site 84444.com and Advanced Telecom Services. While Roberts won the overall combined vote, Kelly actually received the most text message votes followed by Roberts, Emily Greinke and Lindsay Clubine (Clay Bucholz wife).

Final votes for Baseball’s Hottest Wives 2011 was as follows:

Diana Roberts — 15.03%
Minka Kelly (Derek Jeter) — 14.21%
Emily Greinke — 10.94%
Heidi Hamels — 10.33%
Heidi DeRosa — 7.67%
Laura Posada — 7.06%
Karina Smirnoff (Brad Penny) — 5.01%
Joanna Garcia (Nick Swisher) — 4.91%
Saeko Darvish — 4.30%
Michelle Damon — 4.28%
Amber Sabathia — 3.37%
Krystle Campbell (Ryan Howard) — 3.07%
Lindsay Clubine (Clay Bucholz) — 2.87%
Jamie Kotsay — 2.85%
Alejandra Tejada — 2.15%
Ashley Eckstein — 1.94%

Brian Roberts has been with the Orioles for 12 seasons and is the longest tenured current Baltimore player. Diana Chiafair married Roberts in January 2009. The brunette beauty was born on Long Island and raised in South Florida. Diana’s resume includes photo shoots for FHM, Sports Illustrated, and Vanity Fair. She has appeared in commercials for Herbal Essence, Dasani, and Virgin Mobile. Brian and Diana Roberts are also active sponsors and regular visitors to the University of Maryland Children’s Hospital.

Previous winners of Baseball’s Hottest Wives were two time winner Heidi DeRosa in 2008 and 2009 and Saeko Darvish in 2010. Heidi is the wife of Giants utility man Mark DeRosa and Saeko is the wife of Nippon Ham Fighters pitcher Yu Darvish.

Baseball’s Hottest Wives has been featured in major newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and Houston Chronicle. The staff of Fantasy Baseball Dugout has a regular sports talk radio segment that covers fantasy baseball and fantasy football and airs on many ESPN Radio stations on the weekends.

Fantasy Baseball Dugout is a fantasy baseball tips and information site published by Olympic Internet. Text message marketing for the voting is supplied by text message marketing company 84444.com and Advanced Telecom Services.