3Cinteractive recently visited the Miami Dolphins at their training camp facility and Sun Life Stadium, to power the mobile messaging component of the team’s interactive “Fins on the Clock” draft event. Integrated with the Dolphins’ broadcast (television and radio), Internet, and social media draft coverage was mobile polling on every facet of the draft, as well as the charity drive for volunteer hours for the Miami Dolphins Special Teams. In addition, fans were able to text in their comments and questions to the Dolphins’ broadcast crew using 3Cinteractive’s Shoutbox™ platform. The text calls-to-action were also promoted to fans enjoying the draft at watch parties at Bokamper’s and Duffy’s, where Dol-Fans were encouraged to text in their shouts and to vote on a variety of questions about the Miami Dolphins, the NFL draft, and general NFL topics.

Along with using the Shoutbox application, the Dolphins also leveraged the intuitive, easy-to-use features of the Campaign Manager and Campaign Designer features of our Switchblade® messaging platform. The mobile aspect of the event not only made the draft a more interactive experience for fans, but the organization itself enjoyed a significant increase in web traffic and a huge huge spike in hits on their social media properties.

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.

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Throughout the Miami Dolphins’ Fins On The Clock draft event, our hometown team will be asking Dol-Fans to vote on a variety of questions about the Miami Dolphins, the NFL draft and general NFL topics. The Dolphins want your opinions! Take part via the Dolphins Draft Text Poll, powered by 3Cinteractive. All you have to do is check MiamiDolphins.com for the latest poll and then text in the key word shown on the Dolphins Draft Text Poll page to 36500 on your mobile device. You will receive back the current poll question. Just respond with your answer (A, B, C, D, or E) via text message. It’s that simple! Don’t forget, message and data rates may apply. Thanks Dol-Fans and GO DOLPHINS!

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.

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As part of this year’s homecoming festivities, Florida Atlantic University (FAU), the first public university in southeast Florida and the first university in the nation to offer only upper-division and graduate level courses, is using 3Cinteractive’s Shoutbox™ text-2-screen in-venue application. 

Shoutbox will be featured at the Annual Freaker’s Ball Concert, held at the Carole & Barry Kaye Performing Arts Auditorium. The show is co-headlined by Pitbull and Fabolous and tickets are still available for the 8:00 PM concert on October 23rd. The show is for ages 16 and up. Student tickets are one per Owl Card, valid at the box office only.

Shoutbox will also make an appearance at the 2009 Homecoming Comedy Show, presented by the Program Board and the Homecoming Committee. The comedy show features Pablo Francisco with Kevin Hart and Christian Finnegan. 

The show will be held at 8:00 PM on October 29th at the Carole & Barry Kaye Performing Arts Auditorium. The show is for ages 16 and older and tickets are available — student tickets are one per Owl Card, valid at the box office only.

3Cinteractive was pleased to offer the Shoutbox application to FAU as part of our November Promotion. The not-for-profit promotion gave FAU a $2,500 savings on bringing our interactive, text-to-screen solution to the Freaker’s Ball and the Homecoming Comedy Show.

Using your credit card to make purchases over mobile just became safer and easier. 3Cinteractive has partnered with mobile commerce provider Billing Revolution to offer secure credit card transaction processing on mobile phones. With the addition of the award-winning Billing Revolution platform, 3Cinteractive is able to offer a comprehensive enterprise-grade mobile payments platform. Our platform includes Premium SMS (PSMS), direct and WAP billing, as well as our proprietary Loss Prevention System, the industry’s first fraud and risk management system for mobile payments.

By partnering with Billing Revolution, 3Ci can now seamlessly process mobile credit card transactions for our clients and we’re able to reach further into a multi-billion dollar mobile commerce market (it’s expected to reach $13 billion globally by 2013).

Jeremy Martin, 3Cinteractive’s Vice President of Business Development, said, “We’ve experienced tremendous success with our mobile payments offering thus far, mostly around Premium SMS and direct billing. As the mobile commerce space matures, there will be more and more instances where PSMS and direct billing will not be feasible to facilitate transactions, and this partnership allows us to service this high growth sector.”

MINT Magazine, a company that publishes full color, direct-mail savings publications with an annual distribution of over 17.3 million homes, recently partnered with an American-based, multinational casual dining restaurant chain to run a test campaign for interactive SMS marketing. The call-to-action was promoted on the cover of the magazine and offered a free entree at any five city-specific restaurant locations. During the two-week campaign, the call-to-action reached an approximate 400,000 household circulation in the metro area.

The results of the interactive marketing campaign demonstrated the value of mobile text messaging. Over 10,200 total unique customers texted in to get the restaurant entree offer, with over 3,500 of those unique entries opting in for future Mint offers in the metro area. The response rate was 2.5% of the 400,000 household circulation and the campaign generated an average of 2,042 potential covers per local restaurant.