Archive for August, 2012

We’ve spoken before about the decline of the use of the landline phone in America and how more and more households are switching their attention to being cell phone only.  In fact, the number of cell phone only households that have cut the use of their landline phone is now well over a quarter of Americans and growing by about 3% per quarter.

So, as a bit of nostalgia, we thought we’d show you the really cool phones from 1979 that AT&T was offering.  These cool landline telephones were from the era when AT&T was essentially a monopoly and it still rented phones to nearly every household in America.

“Wow! Look at this mobile coupon we got Mom!”

Perhaps, its because they are young adults, or perhaps they are just seeking any kind of adult interaction, but young parents are most interested in receiving your text message promotions and alerts.

Of parents with children age 6 and under, a whopping 50% said that they would like to receive text message alerts about coffee and beverage promotions.  Perhaps, they’ve been up all night and need the caffeine.  But, it’s significantly greater than those parents with children ages 6 – 12; only 34% of parents with older kids want to receive the text alerts.

When it comes to beauty and fashion, 38% of those with kids under 6, wanted the text messages, while only 34% of those with kids 6-12 wanted them.  Travel services skewed 35% to 26%.  Bars and nightclub texts were 31% versus 20%.  Health offers were 24% to 20%.

(Source — Harris Interactive)

2,262 adults age 18+ were surved for this study.

Jiffy Lube faces text message fines for violation opt-ins.

A franchisee of Jiffy Lube, Heartland Automotive Services, has agreed to pay $47 million to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from spamming millions of text messages to consumers.

If approved by the courts, Heartland will provide settlement claims of a $17 discount for any Jiffy Lube service.  The settlement also bans Heartland from future text message marketing.

The company sent 2.3 million consumers a discount offer in April, 2011, according to the claims.  Now, that should say something there.  Really?  Who has an opt-in list of 2.3 million consumers that have agreed to receive your  broadcast text messages?

Violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act can result in a liability of $500 per violation.

It seems like Heartland got off pretty easy here.  They will offer a $17 discount to those that accept it, but that is almost like a coupon in itself, isn’t it?  Especially, if they can raise their prices.

The people who made all the money?  The lawyers.  The lawyers representing the consumers will receive $4.75 million!

The Jiffy Lube case points out the importance for all of our 84444 customers to have a legitimate opt-in from consumers on your text message list.  That’s why we now require all new customers to first contact us prior to doing their first text message broadcast from an uploaded list.  We want to know that this is an opt-in list with proper verification.  This protects all of us.

Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign is taking a bit from the 2008 success of his opponent Barrack Obama who famously announced his vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden by text message.  It’s good to see that Romney is taking text message marketing more seriously than John McCain whose social media efforts in 2008 were an epic fail and helped give the election to Barrack Obama.

Mitt Romney’s text message leads you to having the ability to download his app.

For many years, Japan was seen as the country in terms of mobile advertising and mobile marketing innovation.

A recent study by eMarketer, however, shows that the USA’s ad spending on mobile nearly doubled in 2012, thus surpassing that of Japan.  The United States is now #1 in the world in mobile ad spending at $2.3 billion.

Mobile advertising in Canada is now $188 million.