Author Archive for 3CinteractivePage 3 of 15

Mobile Platforms Driving Growth for Marketers and Companies (AC Growth)

Published
by
3Cinteractive
on April 27, 2010
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

AC Growth Blogs
Mike Cooke
April 27, 2010

Over the past several years, we have seen the Mobile Marketing space grow with many companies entering the mobile marketing SMS (short messaging services) space. Being a mobile platform or mobile marketing company is a lot more than just saying you have a mobile platform or service — there are a number of areas and expertise that a company needs to offer beyond just features and functionality in order to support a client in launching a mobile initiative, such as: working with government agencies, producing and providing documentation to wireless carriers, managing compliance, as well as providing 24×7 client and technical support.

One such company, 3Cinteractive (www.3Cinteractive.com), with close to 100 clients, is a pure-play mobile platform firm. Unlike other companies who are just getting into the mobile marketing arena like Exact Target and Lyris (and these companies do offer outstanding capabilities in email automation and marketing), 3Cinteractive’s entire focus is helping their clients grow revenues and cut support costs. Clients like Walgreens and Cracker Barrel are showing real business results by developing a relationship with their clients through something that is always with them — a mobile phone.

Continue reading ‘Mobile Platforms Driving Growth for Marketers and Companies (AC Growth)’

Text Me to Reach Me: Texting is how to reach clients, colleagues fast (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Published
by
3Cinteractive
on April 21, 2010
in Media
. 2 Comments

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Marcia Heroux Pounds
3:35 PM EDT, April 21, 2010

I recently received a text from a phone number I didn’t recognize, so I ignored it. But more recently, it worked. The text got my immediate attention because it was someone I needed to reach for a project.

How essential is texting for business? Texting may be the new lifeline to clients, customers and colleagues you need to reach — now. More businesses owners and professionals are using texting to reach people who are too busy to check e-mail or disinclined to answer the phone.

“It’s the fastest, quickest way for my clients to reach me,” says Fort Lauderdale career coach Debbie Benami-Rahm. When clients spot a job posting and needs her to review it, they text her with a link and she tells them whether it’s a match.

She sends “confidence boosters” via text before clients go on job interviews and later messages them to find out how the interview went.

Jason Welch, managing partner of R.I.C. Search in South Florida, says his recruiting firm limits the use of instant messaging. He may send a text to let a job candidate know he needs to talk to them or request they read a time-sensitive e-mail.

But some businesses find that texting is becoming essential to reaching their workers in the field.

At Interim Healthcare in Sunrise, nurses receive text messages letting them know about staffing opportunities. “They can send a text message in real time to potential candidates as opposed to picking up the phone and calling one by one,” says Mike FitzGibbon, president of 3Cinteractive, a Boca Raton firm that provides the texting system.

Without the texts nurses working in home healthcare might not know when a patient is being discharged from the hospital, might miss policy changes, and could lose a chance to fill an open shift, says Linda Schaub, who heads marketing at Interim Healthcare.

Continue reading ‘Text Me to Reach Me: Texting is how to reach clients, colleagues fast (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)’

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) Now Available on AT&T Network

Published
by
3Cinteractive
on March 19, 2010
in Industry News
. 0 Comments

3Cinteractive is pleased to announce immediate availability of Multimedia Message Service (MMS) on the AT&T network. With our partners at OpenMarket, you can now provide richer, more personalized mobile content such as images, audio, short video, and rich text to AT&T subscribers and accept photos and other content from subscribers to your application.

MMS represents an additional method for delivering downloadable content on the AT&T network of 82 million subscribers. AT&T accepts premium and standard rate programs for MMS traffic, such as ringtone, wallpaper and other content downloads. Both MT and MO based programs are accepted. With MMS, the 160 character restriction of SMS does not apply.

With 3Cinteractive and OpenMarket MMS you can:

 ·   Deliver binary content to over 210 million AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, Sprint (CDMA) and Cricket subscribers
 ·   Deliver longer text messages
 ·   Launch innovative programs like social networking applications and games
 ·   Increase success rates with handset discovery capability
 ·   Sell secure DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected content that prevents piracy of your offerings
 ·   Provide enhanced consumer experience via automatic content downloads
 ·   Get transaction level reporting of messages via the OpenMarket Message Activity Report (MAR)

To launch your MMS campaign, please contact your Account Manager or 3Ci Support to get started today.

3Cinteractive Partners with A Child Is Missing to Power Text Message Alerts

Published
by
3Cinteractive
on February 26, 2010
in Press Releases
. 0 Comments

Nationally Regarded Non-Profit Alerts Organization Expands 13-year Targeted Call Program by Leveraging 3Ci’s Switchblade® Platform for SMS

3Cinteractive, an industry-leading mobile marketing and technology firm, announced today that it has partnered with A Child is Missing (ACIM) to expand their traditional telephone calling program to include text messages. A Child is Missing Alert Program is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), organization that assists law enforcement in the early stage search and recovery of missing children, the elderly (often with Alzheimer’s), college students, and the disabled.

Today, the alert phone calls are made to the geographic area the person was last seen in by use of a satellite mapping program and the area’s zip code. The 3Ci mobile messaging platform will supplement the existing phone calls by sending geographically targeted text messages to cell phones in the area a missing person was last seen. The 3Ci platform can support up to 48,000 outbound text messages per minute. This additional capacity, along with the 1,000 phone calls per minute that are currently sent out to alert citizens of a missing person, provide greater coverage for the program.

“3Cinteractive is very excited to partner with an organization like A Child is Missing,” said 3Ci COO, Mark Smith. “Our mobile messaging platform was built to support time sensitive, high throughput applications and we can’t think of a better way to utilize SMS technology than to help find missing children.”

“Expanding upon our already proven out-dial program with new digital technologies such as text messaging is very exciting for A Child is Missing,” said A Child is Missing CEO, Sherry Friedlander. “With nearly every American owning a mobile phone, having the ability to send tens of thousands of messages with information on a missing person in their area, within a matter of seconds, will make a big impact in helping U.S. Law Enforcement Agencies find missing persons.”

3Cinteractive Update: Mobile Marketing Webinar Postponed

Published
by
3Cinteractive
on February 25, 2010
in Events
. 1 Comment

Please note that that we are postponing the March 2, 2010 webinar in preparation for a later date. Regrettably, we are unable to make the broadcast date due to unavoidable scheduling conflicts with our presenters. We understand this may be an inconvenience to you; however, we are committed to ensuring that your experience with any 3Cinteractive event is a highly valuable one.

We should have our webinar due to air within the next few months past the original broadcast date and we hope that you can join us at that time.

We did want to inform you of this delay as soon as the conflict in dates arose to give you as much time as possible to make adjustments to your schedule, if necessary. We can assure you, however, that if you elect to participate in future events we will do our best to ensure timely broadcast.

Please accept our apology for this delay and thank you for your understanding. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about this or any 3Cinteractive event.

Compliance Note: AT&T’s 25%+ Refund Rate Policy

Published
by
3Cinteractive
on February 18, 2010
in Carrier Compliance
. 0 Comments

Last month 3Cinteractive sent a notice outlining AT&T’s new policy to address excessive refund rates. Additional documentation on this new policy and process, which became effective Sunday, January 31, 2010, is available for download (please note you will need Adobe® Reader® to view the document).

We ask that you review and familiarize yourself with AT&T’s 25%+ Refund Rate Policy.

Outlined below are the high level points of the 25%+ Refund Rate process. Further details are contained in the download document.

 ·   All short codes with a refund rate of 25% or more will be sent for a priority audit, which is an audit immediately triggered by the excessive refund rate.

 ·   All short codes with a refund rate higher than 25% and a failed priority audit (meaning, a score below 80) will be subject to the consequences outlined below.

Consequences of a breach in this new policy include:

 ·   Immediate suspension of short code for a minimum of thirty (30) days

 ·   No new purchases or subscriptions will be added to the short code during the suspension

    ·   Note: existing subscribers will continue to bill and receive their content

Please feel free to contact your Account Manager or 3Ci Support with any questions or concerns you may have, or to review the impact these new guidelines may have on your business.

More Merchants Embrace Mobile Coupons

Published
by
3Cinteractive
on February 9, 2010
in Marketing
. 1 Comment

More than 300 million mobile coupon users globally by 2014

By Arlene Satchell, Sun Sentinel
February 9, 2010

As cell phones become appendages that many people can’t live without, businesses are increasingly eyeing them as prime real estate for their marketing and advertising messages.

Whether it’s to build brand, boost business or reward loyalty, more merchants are adopting mobile marketing strategies to tap into the cell-phone’s power of immediacy.

“It’s cool,” said Kristen Palestis of Plantation at a Jamba Juice in Fort Lauderdale recently after she opted in to receive a 20 percent coupon on her cell-phone.

“I’m spending less money and it was real easy,” said Palestis, 25, who used the coupon to buy a smoothie.

Palestis received the coupon within seconds of texting a special five-digit code from her cell phone.

Retailers mobile marketing messages can include text-messages with numeric ’short codes’ that customers dial to receive a promotion, bar-coded digital coupons, Web page or website links and display advertisements.

“We know the most effective way to reach the customer is to be where they are,” Jamba Juice spokesman Damon Miller said. “For our customers this means both on the Internet and on their mobiles.”

Since September, Jamba Juice’s 20 South Florida locations – 22 statewide – have been testing a text-message campaign that invites customers to sign up for offers on their mobile phones.

Getting special offers quickly into the hands of the consumers who are most apt to use them is what Jamba Juice and others are striving for.

These mobile social users as they’re called — represent 11 percent of American online adults, but their ranks are growing, according to Forrester Research Inc. They’re more likely to respond to ads on their cell phones, buy mobile content and services such as ring tones and access the mobile Web.

“We’ve seen fantastic results both in opt-ins and redemptions of follow-on offers,” Miller said.

Jamba Juice, a national chain of more than 700 smoothie stores, plans to roll out the campaign to other markets early this year, he said.

Companies that embrace mobile marketing know they have to be careful not to abuse the access consumers have granted, so permission-based text-message offers are becoming the standard.

Trade groups like the Mobile Marketing Association in New York have set guidelines for marketers that are designed to protect the consumer, said Jeff Michaud of 3Cinteractive in Boca Raton, a mobile technology firm.

These include opt-in, opt-out and message delivery frequency standards , he said.

Continue reading ‘More Merchants Embrace Mobile Coupons’