Ez Texting SMS Marketing News

At Mobile Marketing Watch we're reading about a new Juniper Research study:

Ad funded MMS is an interesting model, that surely will grow as MMS standards converge among carriers.

Read more @ Mobile Marketing Watch.

The future of Mobile Marketing is in jeopardy. Frivolous lawsuits have been moving through our nation's courts, and one closely watched case, Satterfield v. Simon & Schuster, Inc, has reached a critical moment. On June 19, 2009, The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court ruled against Simon & Schuster, and in doing so, has twisted the meaning of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 in a way that imperils the entire mobile marketing industry.

The Mobile Advocacy Coalition is asking the FCC to find that the TCPA does not reach underlying technology providers and that the "sender" for TCPA liability purposes is the user of the mass texting technology, not the technology provider.

They need your help. Read more @ http://www.mobileac.org

Mobile Marketer has a story up today about a recent District Court ruling that threatens the livelihood of mobile marketing. This is serious stuff:

The Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has reinstated a $90 million class-action lawsuit against book publisher Simon & Schuster for an SMS promotion related to author Stephen King’s “The Cell” horror novel.

Announced Friday, June 19, the decision holds that text messages were under the purview of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act that makes it unlawful to generate automated calls to mobile phones.

So what does this mean for mobile marketers?

1. The TCPA generally prohibits the use of an ATDS to place “calls” to a mobile number without the “prior express consent of the called party.” 

An ATDS is equipment that has “the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator and to dial such numbers.” 

The district court had held that the system used to send the messages was not an ATDS because the system did not actually store, produce or call numbers using a random or sequential number generator. 

The Ninth Circuit, however, held that the proper question was whether the system had the capacity to do those things.  There was no evidence in the record on that point. 

2. Simon & Schuster had argued that the sending of text messages did not constitute a “call” under the TCPA. 

Although the district court did not rule on that point, the Ninth Circuit disagreed with Simon & Schuster’s argument. The term “call” is not defined by the TCPA.

However, the Federal Communications Commission has noted that the statute encompasses both “voice calls and text calls to wireless numbers including, for example, short message service (SMS) calls, provided the call is made to a telephone number assigned to such service.” 

The Ninth Circuit found this interpretation to be reasonable and, therefore, that the text message campaign was subject to the TCPA.

3. Simon & Schuster had argued, and the district court agreed, that Ms. Satterfield had consented to receive text messages when she signed up for Nextones. 

The Ninth Circuit noted, however, that the term to which Ms. Satterfield had agreed specifically referred to promotions from Nextones “affiliates” and “brands.” 

The Ninth Circuit found that Simon & Schuster was not an affiliate of Nextones because Nextones neither owns nor controls Simon & Schuster. 

Moreover, Simon & Schuster was not a brand of Nextones. Therefore, the consent that Ms. Satterfield provided on the registration form did not apply to the messages sent by Simon & Schuster.

Head over to Mobile Marketer to read the entire article!

Mobile marketing is expected to grow by by 26% in 2009, as overall marketing budgets will fall by 8%. This statistics is even more dramatic when you consider that we are living through the deepest recession in 70 years. Clearly things are moving quickly in the land of mobile marketing. As such, everyday brings another big story from the world of mobile marketing. Yesterday we heard about the new iPhone 3Gs, which will allow transactions inside of Apps. Two weeks ago, Mobile Marketer profiled UAS Properties, an Ez Texting client - they are doing awesome things with text messaging, on the marketing side, and on CRM. Just keeping up with the latest stories - large and small - isn't easy. How do we cut through the clutter? By following these five mobile marketing blogs:

• Mobile Marketer - The coverage at Mobile Marketer is unmatched. They are as close to the bible of all things mobile marketing as you can get. We check their feed constantly. You should do the same.
• Mobile Marketing Watch - The coverage here is a bit lighter, but the quality is high. You'll want to check in at Mobile Marketing Watch at least every couple of days. The stories are in-depth and well written.
• textually.org - Textually is a bit different than the previous two blogs. It isn't exclusively a mobile marketing blog - their slogan is all things texting, SMS and MMS. You'll want to check in here though to learn about all sorts of innovative uses of SMS from around the world. Some of them marketing related, some of them aren't, but they're all good to know.
• GoMo News - We haven't been reading GoMo News as long as we've been following the other blogs on this list, but we've been seeing more and more of their stories linked to on Twitter and on some of the other blogs we follow. They are European based, so the stories tilt to the other side of the Atlantic, but that doesn't make them any less relevant. This is definitely a blog to keep on your radar.
• Twitter Search: Mobile Marketing - OK, so this isn't a blog, but one of the best ways to keep tabs on the pulse of the mobile marketing community is to keep a search up for "mobile marketing" in a client like TweetDeck. You're going to see a lot of the same stories retweeted over and over again, but fight through the clutter...it's definitely worth it.

Bonus: The Boy Genius Report - BGR isn't about mobile marketing; instead you want to check in to follow every last rumor about new mobile phones and other related devices.

Want more? Check out our growing list of Getting Started with Mobile Marketing Guides @ Ez Texting.

You can always follow us on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/eztexting

Did we leave out your favorite mobile marketing blog? Let us know in the comments.

In honor of today launch of the iPhone 3Gs (s is for speed), we wanted to let you know about this awesome pictorial history of all things iPhone over at The Telegraph.

And if you forgot, this is how it all started:

Popular URL shortening service bit.ly (recently made even more popular by becoming the default shorting service on Twitter) has rolled out a mobile friendly site. Media Bistro reports:

I prefer to use the bit.ly URL shortening service since its click tracking helps me figure out which links I mention on Twitter (you can find me there @toddogasawara) are interesting to other people. I typed...

m.bit.ly

...to see if it led to a mobile friendly version of their website and found that it did! Once you login to the site, you can see links you recently shortened using bit.ly. From there you can select a link to view the referred page on your mobile device or email the link by tapping on the envelope icon.

I don't know how long this mobile friendly website has been available. But, it is just one more reason for me to continue using bit.ly URL shortening service.

Keywords power successful mobile marketing campaigns. President Barack Obama sent one of the most famous text messages of all time back in August 2008, announcing his pick of Joe Biden for Vice President. Keywords played an essential role in promoting this succesful campaign. At rallies, in commericals, and on the web, Obama and his campaign encouraged supporters to join their Vice Presidential pick alert list by texting the keyword VP to their short code, 62262.

Keywords serve many functions - allowing people to subscribe to your messages (whether they announce Vice Presidential picks or monthly sales) is just one example.

Ready to learn more? Then check out our new white paper, the Ez Guide to Mobile Marketing with Keywords.