- Category: February 2013 - Multichannel-Marketing
Smart phones are a part of the daily lives of half of all cell phone owners around the world and are rapidly increasing their penetration rates. Cytech‘s new capabilities provide great opportunities for creating Multi-Medium Mobile Marketing Campaigns.
The Cytech SMSP Platform is a white-label software solution for Mobile Marketing Campaigns, with international installations in Europe, America, Africa and Asia, that has now even a redesigned user interface, besides bundled tools, available as Mobile Applications for Android smartphones.
The new platform comes along with advanced web opt-in features and enables keeping up with the latest trends in the mobile market since it can combine different mediums in one campaign.
CyTech software supports four opt-in methods: Web Forms, QR codes, Near-Field Communications (NFC) and of course the standard SMS Opt -In.
Web based opt-in
Web based opt-ins enable consumers to join in a campaign through a web based form and build a list of customer contact details - quickly and efficiently. In addition, online banners or text links will increase the size of the online leads database, which is a cost effective way for companies of all sectors to build up new prospect lists or expand their existing database and increase their revenue, utilizing the new mobile marketing opportunities provided by today’s smartphones.
QR Code opt-in
A QR Code opt-in enables consumers to join in a campaign by scanning a QR code, which is easy to use and provides a rich media experience. Given the overall increase in the adoption of web-based enabled smart phones, QR codes are a great way to enhance customers' experience since they connect offline to online and make the information portable. Embedding a QR code in your marketing strategy offers a great amount of possibilities for placing online and in print added value to a campaign.
The Cytech Mobile Marketing Platform even supports a double opt-in procedure, so the users cannot insert a mobile phone number other than their own. This is accomplished by sending an SMS to the submitted mobile phone with a code that is required to fill out the opt-in form.
NFC opt-in
NFC opt-in enables consumers to participate in a campaign by tapping an NFC tag. Near Field Communication (NFC) is gaining a great deal of attention because of its interactivity and is nowadays a powerful mobile marketing tool that provides an interactive engagement opportunity for the mobile user, as well as data collecting opportunities due to its ability to bridge off-line and on-line media and transfer customers from a printing medium (newspaper, product package, poster etc.) into an interactive environment such as a web page.
Employing NFC in marketing campaigns is still relatively new to the market. The NFC opt-in method provides better targeting options, since it provides the customer with location-based information delivery at the appropriate time for purchase and decision making.
SMS Gateway
The SMSP Suite of tools comes bundled with a robust enterprise-level SMS Gateway software, which routes incoming and outgoing SMS, using a powerful rule-based system. It provides inter-connectivity with third parties for delivering and receiving SMS, too.
In a dynamic environment of constant change - varying credibility and pricing of the different SMS routes - it is important to be able to quickly switch routes and use fallback ones, where available. When SMS are being sent in the thousands per minute, changing the route just in time before the SMS messages have being dispatched, can make the difference between a positive and a negative balance sheet at the end of the month.
Cytech offers dynamic routing, defining new handlers, starting/stopping current handlers, and changing the routing are all on-the-fly operations that take effect within a couple of seconds after saving the new configuration. Cytech also offers flexible routing which decides on a rule-based system, and makes use of virtually any criteria when writing rules and tweaking many details, meaning SMS traffic can be separated.
Cytech recently launched two mobile applications created for the new version of its SMSP Mobile Marketing Platform.
SMSP Inbox App - SMS gateway Mobile Application designed to run on Android smartphones. Its main function is to relay SMS messages between the consumers and the Mobile Marketing Platform. The phone number of the device that it runs on is automatically registered in the Platform when the user logs in and can be used as a long code.
This provides a cost-effective way of having a personal long code, making it possible to set up 2-way SMS Services using one‘s own phone number, or using it to send bulk SMS. Advanced Filtering options of incoming messages are provided through the application in order to preserve private SMS.
SMSP NFC App - an Android application that solves the problem of the personalization / creation of your NFC tags, allowing the easy and cost-effective creation of the NFC Tags needed in promoting Mobile Campaigns. NFC is the most powerful marketing tool on the mobile horizon and provides interactive engagement opportunities for the mobile user as well as data collecting opportunities due to its ability to bridge off-line and on-line media and transfer customers from a print medium (product package, poster etc.) to an interactive environment such as a web form.
SMSP NFC utilizes the advantages of NFC technology and enables the easy creation of multimedia and interactive campaigns. In addition, it enables the downloading of the matching QR code so that it can be used in advertising material. Participants can opt-in via different channels and an interactive experience.
The SMSP Platform along with the new mobile applications comes with a fully redesigned user interface that focuses on 1-way SMS campaigns. Main features like the Contacts List Management and other Bulk SMS features have been dramatically re-engineered, based on consecutive rounds of usability testing, now allowing the user to quickly and easily create, view, search, filter and modify contact information, as well as import contacts from file and group them together for performing group SMS dispatches.
To check out the new mobile applications and redesigned UI, login with your Google or Hotmail account into http://demo.smsp.gr.
By MediaBUZZ