TV Episodes on BlackBerry soon

RIM is planning to announce a full-episode television service for BlackBerry users as early as next week at CTIA. The service is part of RIM’s effort to turn itself into an attractive multimedia option. It will be on a monthly subscription based model. Multiple broadcast and cable networks have licensed content for the service. Read More here.

Mobile Coupons

Mobile phone is the most economic and ideal medium for communicating promotions to targeted consumers these days in wake of global melt-down and continually increasing cuts in expense by companies world wide.

In the west, advertisers are increasingly launching campaigns that include mobile coupons, driving retail traffic and increasing sales. Mobile phones are always with the consumer at checkout.

For that reason, mobile coupon redemption rates today exceed print coupon redemption – on average 5 to 6 percent versus paper’s 2 percent.

Effective approaches to mobile coupons

Mobile couponing is evolving in many forms, each with its own strengths and limitations. Some of the are:

• Landing page coupons : In many cases, a mobile coupon itself is not an actual coupon, but rather a promotional communication displayed on the consumer’s mobile device.
• A simple text message alert offering discounts and promotions. For example, “Flat 10 percent off on all goodies. This weekend only.” A major advantage of text-alert campaigns: They reach a mass-market audience across virtually all phones, and are relatively easy to execute.
• A uniquely coded offer that requires validation at point of sale. Advertisers often want to offer unique promotions to select customers through a conventional coupon.In this case, only consumers who opt-in to receive mobile promotions get the offer. Consumers simply display the offer on their phones at the point of sale, validating their discount or promotion.
• An alert containing a link to an advertiser’s promotional offer. A mobile text message can be sent with a link that, when selected, opens to a page with a coupon image (for example, “$100 off on first 100 earlybird registrations”).
• A mobile coupon tied to a retailer’s loyalty program
• MMS-based mobile coupons. Mobile alerts can be delivered to consumers via an MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), which can contain multimedia objects such as images, audio, video and rich text. They are good and attractive, however, they are much costlier to send then simple text messages.
• Coupons within branded mobile applications. A mobile coupon can be packaged as a feature within a retailer’s mobile Internet (WAP) site or downloadable handset-resident application. The coupon appears as one of several menu choices. For example, WAP sites and applets might display a menu item such as “Alerts and Coupons.” Consumers who click on “Alerts and Coupons” can opt in to receive periodic text messages for store specials, promotions and discount offers. Coupons delivered within a mobile application give advertisers the ability to track and capture the behavior of consumers. They understand, for example, how often particular offers are viewed and how many are forwarded to friends. 
• Coupons within branded mobile games. This one comes as an extension to the above. In this consumers play the games like car races etc. where racig track is surrounded by various brand banners inside the game. Incentive for the consumers winning various stages of the game are given discounts on various purchases or sometimes even free goodies for crossing all stages.

[Excerpts from Mobile Marketer]