Instant SMS marketing kit arrives

Effectively what the pair are doing is making it easy for budding entrepreneurs to set up their own text marketing businesses.

All you've got to do is persuade people to opt into your service. It can be used for non-commercial purposes as well, with clients such as government agencies and schools.

Available via Mobilesmsmarketing.com, participants need to come up with a unique keyword - such as 'Dragons' and get people to opt into you own database by sending a text message containing Dragon to 41513.

Once subscribed, you can send them a whole bunch of mobile based forms of content. It supports the full range of mobile messaging forms - WAP and XHTML - plus picture messaging (MMS), SMS coupons and games.

The pair are hoping to fill an obvious gap in the market. "SMS marketing has taken Europe by storm but is still in its infancy in North America," claimed Nick Blaskov, CFO with LiquidNet.

"There are less than ten companies offering such services in the USA and Canada," he maintained.

Liquidnet's expertise is in making it easy for its clients to brand their own services. The company's Resellerspanel offering enables its clients to become instant web hosting service providers.

The pair take care of all the operational costs. All the SMS resellers needs to do is set the prices high enough above the wholesale price they get charged to make their own profits.

Recruiting customers is a matter of publicising your keyword and the associated short code (41513) via web sites, posters, billboards, flyers and word of mouth.

Just to make matters more interesting the pair claim that over 80 per cent of all mobile phone users are willing to receive opt-in text messages.

Plus the Mobile Marketing Association claims that over 89 per cent of major brands are planning to market their services via mobile phones by 2008. µ

L'INQS
Mobile Marketing Association
Net Consulting
Liquidnet