As it turns out, mobile marketing is performing rather well.

When it comes to how mobile marketing is performing overall, 78 percent of respondents said the medium met their campaign goals, while an additional 9 percent said mobile performed “beyond our wildest expectations.”  Nearly one third of respondents stated that mobile has become an “indispensable” part of their media mix, while another 67 percent ranked mobile as “somewhat valuable” and only 2 percent said it wasn’t valuable at all.

I am excited for the 87 percent of respondents who said that their mobile marketing campaigns have met or exceeded their goals.  But at the same time, I am wondering what the other 13 percent did differently.  Maybe their marketing agencies simply didn’t “get” mobile...

Businesses today can learn from what eHow is offering.  Much time and money is invested when developing a business website, but many miss out on a great opportunity to showcase their expertise.  When it comes to adding multi-media on their site, some just post their TV commercial and call it a day.  Instead, they could explore the variety of needs their customers have and create online video content that addresses it.  For example ... let’s say you own a greenhouse or flower shop.  Sure, you can create a video message telling people about all the different types of plants and flowers you offer, what hours you’re open and so on.  B-o-r-i-n-g!  Instead, showcase your knowledge and experience by producing a series of videos featuring some gardening tips.  Show customers which plants grow better in the sun or what type of tomatoes taste better in salsa.  The list of ideas is endless and it will give your customers a reason to come back to your site and your store, while building trust along the way.

1) Do they understand how mobile marketing differs from e-marketing?
If anyone tells you that a mobile campaign is just like an email campaign, only on the phone instead…run.  Don’t walk, run.  First of all, SMS/MMS marketing reaches people on a more personal level, is subject to stricter regulations and laws, and has entirely different constraints in terms of message size and content.  Second, SMS/MMS marketing is just one of MANY kinds of mobile marketing available (although it is the most popular and farthest reaching with 95% of cell phones being able to accept SMS messages).

2) How did they handle the transition from traditional marketing to e-marketing?
When Al Gore invented the internet, some marketing agencies shunned e-marketing, saying that it would never be able to do what traditional marketing does, or reach the same size audience.  Others saw e-marketing as a replacement for traditional marketing.  However, the most successful agencies realized that e-marketing was neither a competitor nor a replacement for traditional marketing, but rather a complement to it.  It became another tool in the marketing arsenal.  Mobile marketing is the same way.  It is not going to replace traditional marketing or e-marketing.  But it can become another powerful tool for us to use.

3) Do they offer expertise in both e-marketing and mobile marketing?
Since mobile marketing and e-marketing are different animals (see point #1), and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive of each other (see point #2), a successful marketing agency should have expertise in both.

Adina and Jared Reitzen are right - some e-mail marketing agencies don’t get it.  Make sure yours does.

Formerly sold to banks as a REWARDChecking product to be private labeled, BankVue has since modified that business model to offer a new suite of bank products nationally, marketed to small community financial institutions under a single national brand, Kasasa.  The offerings include:

-Kasasa Cash – A checking account that pays a higher-than-average interest rate.

-Kasasa Saver – An interest-bearing savings account where ATM refunds and interest earned in the Kasasa Cash account are automatically deposited.

-Kasasa Giving – A high-interest checking account that directs earned interest to the accountholder’s selected charity. In addition, extra money is donated with every qualified debit card purchase.

-Kasasa Tunes – Every month consumers earn free iTunes downloads, usually in lieu of earning interest on their checking balances.

In this time of fierce competition for customers and deposits, it may seem odd that small financial institutions would actually team up. But analysts suggest that cooperation like this on a national scale will allow smaller banks to compete big time with bigger banks.

While some may question this business model and the brand’s name, don’t tell that to the 11 participating financial institutions, who may just be laughing all the way to the bank given the early results.

As outlined in The Financial Brand, participating financial institutions are reporting positive numbers thanks to Kasasa:

-First Arkansas Bank & Trust increased gross new checking account openings per month by 150%.

-Countybank doubled accounts and deposit dollars in an expansion market in less than four months (which took three years prior to launching Kasasa).

-Legence Bank reported an 81% increase in accounts per month, 70% of which are new customers.

Oh, what about the name Kasasa? BankVue CMO Susan Sierota said, “They wanted something with fun energy that could be either a noun or verb…one that had no meaning so Bancvue could build its own meaning behind it.”

If early results are any indication, “Kasasa” to a small bank may mean, “Hey Big Bank, eat my virtual dust!”

Lee’s work for Apple includes one of the most famous TV commercials of all time: 1984. He was also responsible for the dancing-figure motif in the popular iPod commercials, and most recently for the Mac vs. PC commercials. His goal when he launched Media Arts Lab was to create not just commercials, but culture. I would say Apple is a worthy testimonial to that aspiration.

As the AdAge article states, he was also the man behind the Energizer Bunny and the Taco Bell Chihuahua ads.

Duncan Miller, an executive creative director with TBWA for 19 years, will be stepping into the lead creative role for the Apple account.

Thanks Lee for giving your clients and the buying public some of the most effective and iconic advertising over your many years at the helm of the Apple ad campaigns.

An early adopter of social communities, Sears Holding Company launched their first community site in June of 2008 under the web site sk-YOU.com. Fueled by its success, they launched more feature rich mysears.com and mykmart.com sites earlier this year.

According to Rob Harles, Sears’ vice president of community, the driving force behind development of the sites was to get to know their customers better and to create a place where they could get people talking so they could better understand their motivations. The new sites contain customer reviews, discussion boards, consumer guides, polls and coupons. An “Ideas” area was recently added and allows users to share ideas, vote on ideas and even see what ideas Sears has taken to heart and implemented.

A community site is nothing without regular involvement from its members. Sears rewards their community members for participation. The Recognition Rewards Program recognizes members for their contributions to the community. Members earn points by participating in various activities such as uploading a profile picture, writing a review, or gaining Fans in the community. All the earned points then contribute to an overall point total. The points have no monetary value but are used to show others their level of commitment and contribution to the community. Harles believes community members want to be seen as experts and helping each other.

In July, Sears implemented OpenID. The OpenID universal login standard enables visitors to consolidate their Internet identity by providing them a single login for all of their online interactions. This is the first step toward enabling customers to log in to Sears communities using their social IDs rather than set up new accounts. This covers the most popular, familiar web sites such as Google, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo! and Twitter.
“We’re constantly looking for ways to stay innovative in our online initiatives by identifying and implementing technologies that help our users navigate our communities with ease,” says Rob Harles.

So while others chase the crowds on Facebook and Twitter, Sears is quietly building loyalty with their customers by keeping them close to home. With 330,000 registered members and 1.3 million visitors a month, the combination seems to be working well.

bCode is a SMS Coupon technology that sends mobile coupons to consumers via encrypted SMS messages.  The coupon can be easily scanned by bCode’s POS system.  Here is an example of what a bCode coupon looks like:

Right now, the major roadblock to SMS and MMS coupons is having the technology at POS systems to redeem the coupons.  bCode solves that with its POS system that is designed to scan the mobile coupon text, access its database (so it can track individual coupons and campaigns) and offer the discount amount to the retailer automatically.  And the analytics are collected and stored nicely for future analysis (read - ROI).  Right now the technology is going into over 500 movie theaters nationwide, and if it becomes popular, you can look for more POS systems popping up around the country.

With the full support of the biggest players in the electronics field Adobe has made the biggest step to fend off Silverlight, and critics.  Adobe list of partners is mind-blowing, representing the foremost players not just on the web, but also mobile (Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Verizon, LG, Sony Ericsson,Toshiba, RIM), telecom providers (Comcast, Cisco, Chunghwa (Taiwan), Qualcomm), the largest media providers (MTV, Conde Nast, BBC, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Disney, Atlantic), and even the technology manufacturers (LG, Intel, Toshiba, Samsung, NVidia, Texas Instruments).  A list of corporations that under any other guise would be subject to anti-trust laws, have joined and invested in a single platform to be supported by all of their products.  That platform is Flash. 

“Customers want a richer experience without compromise, and a tremendous amount of that experience is in the Flash format. And as we fully support Flash Player 10, that just makes the rendering and the access and the experience on a Blackberry that much more exciting.”

-Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, RIM (Blackberry)

This ubiquitous support helps the Flash community in several ways:

1. Each iteration of Google’s attempts to accurately parse Flash sites, has improved, but ultimately fallen flat. (1, 2, 3) SEO has long been the largest knock against using Flash as a solution, and it’s great to see that Google and Adobe haven’t stopped trying.
2. Adobe has long been adding new and enhanced features to allow screen readers and the such to easily read the content of flash sites for visually impaired viewers. This ubiquity in technologies natively supporting Flash will only further enhance the options for content authors when addressing this problem.
3. Finally! A counterpoint that goes beyond aesthetics in response to the hundreds of hardcore javascript and even Silverlight advocates!

“The Open Screen Project is the next step in the evolution of Flash. [...]  When we built Android, we built Chrome we knew we had to support Flash to show off the best of applications that were available on the web. 

-Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google

Adobe’s new Open Source Project means that Flash will be around for a long time, lending a strong showing of support for many of us Flash developers who have seen this medium as the future of Rich Media for many years.  As Dr. Sanjay Jha, Co-CEO of Motorola has said, “You simply cannot have the full web experience on mobile devices without Flash.”