The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Archive for May, 2009
SMS Text Service Proves a Hit for the Holiday Season
May 7th
Leading SMS marketing firm www.txtlocal.co.uk have witnessed a growth in the number of hotels and holiday parks using their SMS text service to deliver last minute special offers and promotions to holiday makers in the lead up to summer.
With holiday budgets being squeezed many UK households are looking for last minute deals to UK destinations. and caravan and campsites are proving a popular choice as families who generally opt for European destinations stay in the UK to save money and avoid costly Euro.
According to Txlocal MD Darren Daws, UK holiday businesses are taking advantage of the “stay at home” trend by sending out last minute text promotions to pull more visitors to their site. Daws, believes that text marketing is ideal for hotels and holiday parks. “Text messaging is ideal for hotels and holiday parks needing a quick fix to fill last minute availability. Any entertainment or leisure venue that has customer data should use it, whether it be for sending out sales promotions, meal deals or relaying news, there is no quicker, easier or direct route to customer pockets than by text.”
Malmaison Hotel, Manchester have had huge success using SMS text messaging to target guests with personalised special offers and promotions, designed to increase hotel and restaurant bookings. Alistair Hargreaves, Malmaison IT Director claims that the highly targeted text approach provides “An easy, cost efficient way to attract more guests with an excellent response.”
Mobile numbers are collected from the website booking form and from the hotel wifi service. Hargreaves is delighted with the response to the text campaigns claiming that “SMS marketing has produced a great response, much higher than had been originally expected.”
It isn’t just hotels experiencing success with text messaging. Cosgrove Park in Milton Keynes sell holiday homes to reach a database of 700 customers. Assistant Manager Mark Wilson, says that each campaign usually generates a few leads which when converted result in an excellent ROI for the business. Wilson says that “Text is an ideal way to communicate instant messages and not just for sales and marketing, but even for sending out urgent weather warnings.”
Regents Leisure Park also use text messaging to send out special offer deals and promotions to existing customers and to generate interest in new holiday homes. Jonathon Hodson of Regent Leisure Park believes that the service is very handy for keeping in contact with anyone who doesn’t have an email address. “We send a quick text to generate interest and entice people to contact us with offers and promotions.”
Hodson concludes that text is an ideal low cost marketing tool “It only costs a few pence to send a text and the response can be good.”
Txtlocal MD Darren Daws has witnessed a number of other companies experiencing good responses “A fraction can be spent on mobile marketing campaigns compared to other marketing mediums and yet the response from mobile can be much higher.”
Daws continues “Virtually everyone in the UK has a mobile phone that they carry everywhere, therefore it makes sense for businesses to use the mobile as an alternative way to communicate and interact with people.” Daws concludes “Businesses should concentrate on using mobile data to build databases of consumer who have opted in to receive targeted offers, alerts and information from marketers.”
Other Hotels using Txtlocal’s SMS service include Hotel Du Vin, Ramada, De vere and a number of other venues who send out bespoke text promotions on a regular basis.
Bell Mobile buys Virgin Mobile Canada
May 7th
Canada’s largest telephone company has been shopping – and spent $142m on the remaining 50% stake of Virgin Mobile Canada that it didn’t already own.
The deal includes an exclusive long-term licensing agreement with the Virgin Group which will allow the Virgin Mobile brand to continue in Canada.
According to George Cope, the Chief Executive of BCE – Bell Mobility’s parent company, the purchase would help Bell’s wireless division grow more quickly. The group also announced today first quarter operating revenues for the Bell Wireless division have grown 3.5% to CAN$1.8 billion (around £1.02billion).
Telmap appoints Motti Kushnir as Chief Marketing Officer
May 7th
Telmap, the global leader in mobile location solutions, has today announced that it has named Motti Kushnir as Chief Marketing Officer. Motti brings with him a proven track record of developing, implementing and managing effective product and marketing strategies in telecommunications, mobile advertising and location based services.
He will be responsible for leading Telmap’s product and marketing strategy moving forward with a particular focus on pioneering the growth of Telmap’s platform to move beyond navigation to supporting additional innovative applications and services such as advertising. Telmap has seen tremendous growth in the recent years and Motti will be responsible for building on this success to drive the continued development and adoption of Telmap’s solutions particularly across EMEA, the US and APAC.
Motti joins Telmap from Amdocs where he served as VP and GM of the company SDA (Search and Digital Advertising) unit. He has also served as AVP Marketing for the Mobile Internet Solutions Division at Comverse. Prior to Comverse, Motti held the position of Director of Business Development, Value Added Services, and Products for Mirs Communications, Motorola.
Motti has a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Business Management from the College of Management and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
About Telmap
Telmap is a world leader in location solutions, the company has established a solid reputation for providing its customers with innovative, value added mapping and navigation solutions that open new business opportunities and generate new revenue streams. Telmap has a unique end-to-end solution including a mobile location companion, a complementary web companion, robust location platform with a set of APIs to support its customers in delivering a strong LBS strategy. The company’s flagship product, Telmap5 is the world first personalized location companion integrating innovative and patented technologies like Telmap Active Interface, Telmap Active Search and Telmap Active Widgets.
Telmap is the #1 choice of location solution and its technology has been chosen by leading industry players Orange FT Group, Vodafone, Vodacom, SFR, O2, AOL, Pelephone, Carphone Warehouse and more.
For more information, please visit www.telmap.com or http://telmapnavigator.com
Update once for Twitter and Facebook with new GyPSii CONNECT
May 7th
GeoSentric Oyj’s GyPSii business unit, developers of the award-winning GyPSii mobile social networking application (www.gypsii.com), today announced the launch of GyPSii CONNECT - a web-based service that allows GyPSii users to automatically update and share their status, newly-created places and friends in real time across other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
“GyPSii CONNECT gives us time to manage our lives instead of our social networks,” explained Shane Lennon, SVP Marketing and Product Management at GyPSii. “It’s easy to set up, use and manage, and will undoubtedly open up and help spread the GyPSii community globally. With more network connections in development, we plan to mobilise access to an open eco-system for consumers.”
At launch, GyPSii CONNECT integrates with Twitter and Facebook. The company said other social networking sites would also be introduced in the coming months. Using the service, http://www.gypsii.com/connect.cgi, GyPSii community members can synchronise their core social networking activities directly from their GyPSii profile, including:
• Status Updates – A change of status on one of your profiles – whether on GyPSii, Facebook or a new Tweet on Twitter – will automatically update in real time across all your other networks.
• Place/ User Content Creation – Any new place that you create on GyPSii is automatically added to your profiles on other social networks. For Twitter, this means a URL within a Tweet that links directly to the GyPSii Place. In Facebook, your friends can view a thumbnail of your tagged place: they can then find out more by clicking on the thumbnail, and view it on GyPSii. Upon signing in, they are free to navigate the entire GyPSii community and create, share and connect with other GyPSii members.
• Friend Additions – let others see your latest friends who have joined you on GyPSii via GyPSii CONNECT on Twitter and Facebook.
GyPSii members can experience mobile lifestyle services and a broad range of location-specific social networking functions – including user generated content to create and share from your phone, viewing and locating friends and their content, and sharing information on nearby points of interest, such as restaurants, bars and clubs. Content can be contributed by friends, fellow GyPSii members and GyPSii’s third-party content partners, all of which is available to view on a map – within a single easy-to-use experience.
GyPSii’s Business Partners – such as Samsung, LG, Nokia and China Unicom – can also take advantage of GyPSii CONNECT through OpenExperience (OEx), GyPSii’s recently announced Application Programming Interface Service. OEx allows GyPSii partners to build users, content, experiences and communities of their own, which are then integrated across GyPSii and other social networks to form larger communities.
A full list of devices that support GyPSii can be found online at www.gypsii.com, or at http://gypsii.com/m from a mobile phone browser.
Vodafone Mobile Clicks contest deadline extended
May 6th
The deadline for UK entries to the Vodafone Mobile Clicks contest has been extended to 22nd May (it was 14th May) – so if you want to be in with a chance of winning €150k it’s time to get motoring..
As previously posted, Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2009 is a joint Anglo-Dutch competion to inspire start-up businesses and individual developers to create and deliver a new mobile site or service. Run by Vodafone’s UK and Netherlands subsidaries, the the final will be held in Amsterdam in September and will feature three finalists from each country. The first three winners will be awarded a total sum of €150,000.
Last years’ Mobile Clicks’ winners included Nulaz, a location-based social networking service merging Google Maps and Facebook to allow people to see where their friends are, share locations and view local information, Tipspot a new online city guide service and Map the Gap, an idea-sharing application for mobile phones.
This is the first year the contest has been open to UK entrants – and whilst there’s already been plenty of entries from our colleagues across the North Sea in Holland it’s time to show the world what the UK can do – and grab that cash for Blighty.
Reckon you’re up to the job? Head over to http://www.vodafonemobileclicks.com pronto – and register your entry.
MAXroam’s A1GP team win World Cup
May 6th
Team MAXroam Ireland principal Mark Gallagher, Pat Phelan CEO MAXroam and World Champion Adam Carroll
MAXRoam, the global roaming SIM card and official partner of Ireland’s A1GP Team were delighted to watch Ireland’s Adam Caroll win the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport™ this weekend. Sponsors of the team MAXRoam and BPI Telecom were there at Brands Hatch to see Team Ireland clinch the title and they used MAXRoam data technology to update people around the world on what was happening.
Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom, the creators of MAXRoam, used his mobile phone and QIK video streaming (a partner of MAXRoam) over the MAXRoam data network to record his and the crowd and crew’s reaction as Carroll came first during a tense and nail-biting finish.
Said Phelan “Being so close to the team and watching Adam do so well was an enormous rush and it was great to see the live reactions from Irish people around the world show up on my phone too as I streamed the reactions at the track. Adam is now a superstar and deservedly so and we’re proud of him and Team Ireland for working so hard to achieve this.”
Carroll, a 26-year-old from Portadown, claimed a double pole-position on Saturday and continued on Sunday with an incredible one-two finish in both Sprint and Feature races to win the world championship.
Telstra Selects SurfKitchen to Power Innovative New Mobile User Interface
May 5th
SurfKitchen today announced that Telstra, Australia’s leading telecommunications and information services company, has deployed the SurfKit Mobile Internet Platform to support the launch of TelstraOne Experience. This innovative, new mobile user interface gives subscribers 1-click access to the applications and services they regularly use on their mobile phone. Telstra selected SurfKitchen’s mobile Internet platform technology to deliver integration to the idle screen on feature phones, allowing users to easily discover and launch mobile widgets, Internet applications, native applications and Web links.
“We know mobile users want a navigation experience that is intuitive and allows them to get to their favourite features quickly without having to hunt through endless submenus,” said Mr Ross Fielding, Executive Director, Telstra Product Management. “TelstraOne Experience delivers on our one-click vision, giving customers greater control over the services they want to use on their mobile phone. This means fast, easy access to the most popular applications and services like phonebook and calendar and social networking and search.”
Successful mobile application stores have proven that an intuitive user experience combined with compelling mobile services enables mobile operators to attract new customers and drive wireless data revenues. To extend this combination to mass market feature phones, Telstra selected SurfKitchen to deliver the TelstraOne Experience. Utilising SurfKit Home, SurfKitchen’s idle screen technology, Telstra is able to deliver a branded and highly intuitive user experience enabling customers to quickly and easily discover, launch and customize mobile services on the home screen of mass market devices.
“Revenue from mobile Internet services is now a critical element of operators’ growth strategies and has the potential to significantly expand if data service usage can be increased on mass market devices.” said Michel Quazza, chief executive officer, SurfKitchen. “Telstra has always been at the forefront of innovative wireless products and services and the launch of TelstraOne Experience sets another industry milestone. Combining a diverse range of mobile Internet services with the personalization, discoverability and usability that mobile subscribers are increasingly demanding will help attract new users and drive mobile data revenues.”
TelstraOne Experience utilizes the SurfKit Mobile Internet Platform to provide a highly personalized, seamless user experience. The experience is surfaced to the idle screen using SurfKit Home, and integrates SurfKit Launcher to provide a customizable launch pad for the range of services the mobile subscriber has selected. SurfKit Storefront streamlines the purchasing and installation of the mobile services, and SurfKit Widget Runtime provides a range of on-device widgets such as news and weather. The culmination of these products delivers an unrivalled 1-click, 1-touch, highly personalized user experience.
SurfKitchen has been working with Telstra since 2004 and its technology is installed on over 1.5 million devices covering almost 60 different device models. Telstra selected SurfKitchen technology to support the launch of Telstra Downloads, an on device retail solution for mobile content downloads. Based on the success of that deployment, Telstra extended its relationship with SurfKitchen in 2005 to launch its Next G mobile services and applications portal, Telstra MyPlace.
easyCar.com opens new mobile phone car hire service
May 5th
easyCar.com has developed a bespoke transactional mobile phone platform to broaden their digital distribution strategy.
The move follows a review of the car hire company’s distribution channels, which has shown an increasing number of easyCar customers accessing easyCar.com from their mobiles, and has the potential to broaden customer accessibility to the easyCar.com car hire site.
Bill Jones, CEO of easyCar, said “we want all our car hire customers to have a great online experience, just taking your website and expecting it to work in a mobile environment was never going to be effective, we wanted a relevant and credible solution for this channel.”
“You just have to look at the adoption of next generation phones and rapid growth of phone applications on devices such as the iPhone or Blackberry to see the potential there now is here, and we wanted to ensure that easyCar was at the forefront in developing this as a viable distribution channel. However, in developing this, we also wanted a solution that was usable retrospectively on earlier models of phone, and not just the latest devices.”
Working with mobile travel specialist Handy Group, who provide a seamless managed service, easyCar have a new strategy around mobile that enables customers to search, book and pay for car hire while on the move.
The mobile easycar.com car hire site can be accessed by simply entering www.easycar.com in a mobile browser, and background technology auto detects the mobile device and serves the easyCar.com mobile website – optimised for that device. As an added option, users can text ‘easycar’ to 61177 from any UK phone, and a free SMS message reply includes the link to the new mobile website.
Jones added; “The potential for this is much more than an alternative to browsing on a static PC, this will also give us access to new segments in the car hire market. For example there is a significant leisure market that will decide on car hire whilst overseas on holiday, they mostly do not have access to secure computing in their hotels, so customers tend to rely on the car hire recommendations from their hotel front desk or Holiday Representative – which are both going to offer car hire that is vested in their own commercial interests. Now customers have an alternative option of booking with easyCar.com car hire from their mobile phone wherever they are.”
easyCar.com is also considering the potential for a B2B roll out of their new mobile site to other travel organisations under a white label basis. The car hire company already has a sophisticated white label website product, that is also being actively offered to travel related partners.
Jones concluded; “Mobile has real possibilities and we wanted to provide our customers better access to easyCar.com through a simple application, that’s good to look at, intuitive and fast to use – whatever handset they have, network they’re on or wherever they are”.
Michael Lacy, CEO of Handy Group, who operate the service for easyCar.com said “easyCar were clear in what they wanted to achieve and the Handy managed service supports every element of their requirement, not just in the technical deployment but also in the commercial terms. Typical of the easyGroup they have been visionary and early adopters of our technology and services and we’re already seeing some fantastic results”. Lacy also commented on the fact that consumers who are serious about using their mobiles for internet access have a handset that handles the internet in an easy way. “just under fifty per cent of phones being used to access www.easycar.com are iPhones, 12% are Sony Ericsson’s, followed by Nokia at 10% and the T-Mobile Android phone 4%.”
UK’s Palringo wins Webby People’s Voice Award for ‘Best Use of GPS or Location Technology’
May 5th
Newcastle, UK-based Palringo has won the Webby People’s Voice Award, voted for online by the global web community, in the Best Use of GPS or Location Technology category of the 13th Annual Webby Awards.
Hailed as the “internet’s highest honour” by the New York Times, the Webby Awards is the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet.
Palringo’s founder and CTO, 23 year old Martin Rosinski, said: “The People’s Voice Awards are voted for by ordinary people, people who use the services or products concerned. To win one suggests we have developed a mobile service that people not only use, but love.”
Virgin Media post mixed bag of Q1 results
May 5th
Virgin Media’s Q1 2009 results hit the doormat this morning – and amongst all the talk of digital TV and broadband there’s some interesting stats on the performance of their UK mobile division.Revenue in the quarter reached £135.3m, down from £141.1m in the last quarter and £139.5m from Q1 2008. Whilst a lot of this could be put down to the credit crunch, the company claims this decline is mainly due to their cull of pre-pay subscribers – of which they disconnected 157,200 in the first three months of the year. They say that their decision to move away from prepay is due to “higher churn, low tariffs and lower overall profitability”.
Meanwhile, over in post-pay, VM added 62,900 contract customers in Q1 2009 (compared to 70,800 in Q4 2008, and 59,400 in Q1 2008). This is a rise of 63% in the last 12 months, with contract customers now making up 18% of the total subscriber base.
ARPU for the quarter was £10.64, down from £10.75 last quarter but up year on year compared to Q1 2008′s £10.06, mainly due to the aforementioned increase in contract customers.
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