This people-based measurement partnership will help marketers better understand the effectiveness of their digital campaigns and drive greater returns from their marketing investments.

Neustar says that its integration with Facebook signals that marketers “are now able to better understand Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network digital campaign attribution and can combine these results with their marketing mix modeling to understand the holistic influence across offline and online.”

Neustar is working with leading advertisers to integrate Facebook exposure into the advertisers’ Neustar MarketShare advanced attribution models. As a result, advertisers are not only able to gain deeper insights into how Facebook drives conversions along the customer journey and across mobile, desktop and other devices, but also how to predict future marketing performance to drive better business outcomes and return on investment (ROI).

“In a world where brands need to connect both online with offline, understanding how to build a connected customer experience across people, places and things is more complex than ever. With the proliferation of devices, the fragmentation of media, and the dizzying amount of content consumers are exposed to, it is no wonder marketers struggle to accurately identify their customers, measure, and optimize the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns,” said Steven Wolfe Pereira, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Neustar. “Marketers who invest in understanding their own customer graph and employ a people-centric view across media, devices and channels, are much more likely to drive business results than those who do not. We are thrilled to be partnering with Facebook to improve how marketers build connected customer experiences as we continue to drive the next generation of advanced attribution solutions forward.”

The post Neustar Announces Advanced Marketing Attribution Analytics appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Using Neustar’s Omnichannel Onboarding, an industry-leading data onboarding solution, advertisers and marketers have the ability to move beyond simple onboarding of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) audiences to also onboard audience segments derived from transactions, such as point-of-sale data, credit card purchases and more.

Neustar’s Omnichannel Onboarding is verified with its authoritative identity platform, which is responsible for collecting, corroborating, and validating consumer and business identities for marketing purposes.

Neustar’s Omnichannel Onboarding now will benefit from integrating with Experian Marketing Services’ new digital data cooperative, as well as Experian’s data quality, matching logic and partnerships across the world’s largest media companies.

“Marketers know that they need to be data-driven. They also know that it’s time to move beyond simple CRM customer file matching. They want to use more meaningful data, like customer transactions. They want to use all the tools in their toolbox — especially omnichannel tools,” said Ted Prince, senior vice president of corporate development at Neustar. “Together with Experian Marketing Services, we are offering an end-to-end omnichannel solution from onboarding to activation that will give advertisers the best ability to utilize their data to deliver the best connected customer experiences to real audiences across multiple channels and devices. We’re excited to see what clients can do with the power of our partnership.”

The post Experian, Neustar Offering ‘Best-in-Class Omnichannel Onboarding’ with omnichannel Activation appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

What to do? A Mobile Marketing Association webinar will provide both answers and insight. The webinar — “FCC Proposes New TCPA Laws – What Every Retailer Needs to Know About The Telephone Consumer Protection Act” — is set for Wednesday, August 5 from 1 to 2 p.m. (CDT).

It’s especially timely.

“On June 18 the FCC issued new requirements for those engaged in text and telemarketing,” reports the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), sponsor of the free webinar. “What do these new rulings mean to your company? Is your company at risk when making automated outbound calls or sending texts? Is your company taking the right steps to mitigate TCPA risks?”

The MMA is working with partner Neustar, a good source of authoritative information. Federal Trade Commission veteran and Neustar Chief Privacy Officer Becky Burr will be one of the presenters. She’ll be joined by Neustar’s Adam Russell, who will discuss how authoritative consumer intelligence is helping to mitigate risk while also driving operational efficiencies.

Webinar topics include: what retailers need to know about the FCC’s new regulations under TCPA; best practices for mitigating TCPA compliance risk; why verifying consumer data is critical to both risk mitigation and operational efforts; and how the constant change in consumer data requires the most extensive, up-to-date, and accurate data.

To register or to learn more, click here.

The post What Every Retailer Needs to Know About the TCPA, Reducing Litigation Risk appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Retailers face considerable challenges in complying with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA),” reads the webinar overview. “Over the last few years, the cost of non-compliance has risen dramatically due to the rapid increase in the amount of litigation around TCPA and the very large settlements associated with class action litigation.”

If you’re not familiar, just last week the FCC issued new requirements for those engaged in text and telemarketing.

What do these new rulings mean to your company? Is your company at risk when making automated outbound calls or sending texts? Is your company taking the right steps to mitigate TCPA risks?

These are the questions posed. The answers will come during the July 14th webinar presented by the MMA and Neustar.

FTC veteran and Neustar’s Chief Privacy Officer, Becky Burr, will address the current regulatory landscape. Also, Neustar’s Vice President Dorean Kass will discuss “how authoritative consumer intelligence is helping to mitigate risk while also driving operational efficiencies.”

To learn more or to register to attend, click here.

The post MMA Webinar to Focus on FCC Proposal of New TCPA Laws appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Together, the companies will help extend the reach and targeting capabilities of Fiksu’s already massive set of data, audiences and intelligence.

Fiksu’s pool of intelligence comes from more than 8.2 trillion mobile marketing events tracked on behalf of more than 1,000 brands and apps, including Coca-Cola, Disney, Topps, Dunkin’ Donuts and Groupon.

“With the massive growth of the mobile advertising industry comes a massive desire for more data and more audience targeting,” said Micah Adler, CEO of Fiksu, in a news release. “By partnering with industry leaders like eXelate and Neustar, we are able to scale up further and faster to meet the mobile audience-buying needs of top brands and advertiser clients.”

The post Fiksu Expands Data Integration, Mobile Intelligence appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

So says John Koetsier in a compelling commentary at Venture Beat. “In fact,” Koetsier posits, “Using your own data makes you up to 98 times better at driving conversions.”

98 times?

“Digital identity and data provider Neustar released its second-quarter 2014 digital advertising report today. It’s based on 220 billion digital actions inside 1,800 companies’ campaigns, and if it shows one thing, it’s that data is probably now the single most significant corporate competitive advantage,” says Koetsier. “Using offline, first-party CRM data to target advertising dramatically improves effectiveness at driving actions,” the report states.

Koetsier notes that entertainment companies using their own private data to target advertising “saw average conversion lift of a staggering almost 10,000 percent — the 98x you see above.”

Though retailers were only “half as good” at achieving these heights, Koetsier says they still saw a 5,400 percent (55x) lift.

“Telco companies — don’t we love getting marketed to by them — achieved 19x average conversion, or 1,800 percent improvement, by using their data to drive digital marketing campaigns,” Koetsier says.

There’s a reason, of course.

“A big part of the improvement, of course, is using data intelligently,” he explains. “When you’re targeting known users who have completed known actions at known times, it’s much easier to anticipate demand or need — and timing of that need — accurately.”

There’s a lot more to take in — as well as nifty graphics. Be sure to read the whole commentary here.

The post Koetsier : Data is the Key to Huge Marketing Successes appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company is rolling out Omni Measurement Solutions, a suite of measurement products designed to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of mobile campaigns.

The new solutions will combine Millennial Media’s extensive first party data with best-in-class third party data sources to show the impact on key advertiser metrics driven by a campaign.

“Measurement is one of the most important issues in mobile advertising today,” says Mollie Spilman, EVP of Global Sales & Marketing, Millennial Media. “Brands need to feel confident that the dollars they are spending in mobile advertising are truly moving the needle, and our Omni Measurement Solutions represent the most comprehensive, data rich solution at this scale in mobile advertising.”

For every measurement product in the Omni Measurement Solutions suite, the company says, Millennial Media partners with a third party, and matches mobile IDs against exposed and control groups to judge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns with target audiences.

Data analytics company Neustar and location analytics firm Placed are among the launch partners.

Millennial Media will offer end-of-campaign reports that will accurately show the impact on advertiser KPIs, and give advertisers credible and qualified insights to use for future marketing efforts, today’s announcement asserted.

The post Millennial Media Introduces New Mobile Measurement Products appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

I must admit. I got a lot of flak from colleagues for using the word “scam” in my previous post, “Short Codes are a Scam and SMS Marketing is Dying. Is There Hope?“. But let’s face it, controversy captures attention. If you are a mobile marketer, short codes are extremely important to you. It’s critical to the future of my company and hundreds more like mine, that we can engage in a debate, and hopefully change the way things are done. I need my message to reach as many people as possible, and one of the ways to do that is to say something that will get people to listen.

Do I think short codes are a scam? No. And if you read my entire article, you understand that is not my argument. Short codes are valuable and profitable, but they are not managed correctly. My four biggest issues:

1. There is no competition. You have one place to go if you want a short code. As a result, the system is expensive and slow. Competition would force price down and service up.
2. You have to pay to license a code, months before you can actually use it.
3. Codes cost $500 to $1,000 a month, but there is no evidence supporting why they should cost that much; and nobody has told us why.
4. Short codes take months to set up, causing major delays in conducting business. I have seen an entire business plan on hold waiting for a code that took 6 months to be provisioned. An investment could be made to automate this process.

So far, my article has received the most amount of comments any article as ever generated since MMW was founded in 2007. It was re-tweeted 100 times and posted on more websites than I was able to count, including features on MobileMarketer.com and MobileCommerceDaily.com. I also received more personal emails than any other article I wrote, and had 3 powerful people in the mobile space call me to talk with me off the record.

In other words, I just strummed an Emajor7.

If you read the comments its clear why; people want change. All we are asking for is a conversation to take place, and a promise that the people behind usshortcodes.com will listen to us and give change a fair shot. The reason two antitrust lawsuits have been filed is because the current system is not fair. There is no competition and as a result, there are consequences that we have to live with.

When you have no choice, it’s going to cost you. When you have no choice, then you will pay for service you cannot use. When you have no choice, you will wait until someone is ready to help you. I have some great ideas on how we can see explosive growth in mobile marketing, but nothing will change if the people we want the change from, can’t even start out by commenting along with everyone else. There has been no official response from Neustar or the CTIA, even though we are currently in the era of the social web. You almost cannot, not, say anything nowadays. Especially after someone comes out with the type of headline like I came out with. Get mad, get angry or at least tell me that using “scam” as a choice of words is not fair; I can admit when I am wrong. I can apologize and be transparent in a public forum. This behavior is expected of us now. Silence is the worst thing you could do. When you won’t join in the conversation, it allows people to decide for themselves as to why you are not getting involved. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want is a bunch of entrepreneur’s with 500+ connections on linkedin putting words in my mouth.

I googled “core values” for Neustar and the CTIA. In their defense, Transparency isn’t a value. However Neustar’s mission says “The nature of the functions entrusted to Neustar mandates that we operate fairly in the service of all communications industry stakeholders.” Just ask any customer who is leasing a short code if they feel that short codes are being operated fairly. Actually there have been a number of cases where the carriers shut down a short code because they didn’t like what the company who licensed the short code was about, or because the service infringed upon their business. Two that come to mind are Naral and Rebtel, respectively. Imagine Godaddy shutting down your domain name because they didn’t agree with your principles or they felt that you were competing with them? That is the danger of having the CTIA involved in the management of usshortcodes.com. If you are going to charge me $500 a month for a code that is impossible to remember, and I am not violating your terms like sending spam or porn, then at least let me use it how I want to use it.

I don’t know exactly how the short code ecosystem works. Is it one person, or different departments at different organizations that are responsible, and if how, do they manage the different pieces of the business? I know Neustar provides the technology to make short codes happen, as they are a huge web infrastructure company, but I don’t understand the hierarchy. I could be wrong about a few things as far as accountability, responsibility and technology goes. It’s unclear who we can come to with our issues. However this isn’t the first time I have argued the short code management topic and I have never received a response. I have been very vocal about bringing change for years writing articles about it here, here, here and here. I even shot a video rant on FunnyOrDie.com years ago. I am very glad to see that freedom of speech in this great country of ours still provides safety. No short code mafia has paid us a visit. No additional audits have been performed other than what we normally get (which is still too much), and nobody has sent me a letter asking me to cease and desist.

Let me leave the readers of this article with one final statement.

I want to thank the people behind short codes for creating them and I want to thank the people managing short codes for working hard to keep short code marketing and messaging running. You created an industry that has been able to employ people and drive revenue, and for that we are grateful. Now, the people that have taken the technology and run with it to make it successful, are telling you the changes that need to take place in order for this industry to thrive. If these changes do not take place, another technology will appear much sooner and this revenue stream will dry up. Let’s work together to make things better. It starts with transparency and breaking bread. The ball is in your court.

The post Short Codes are Not a Scam appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest post by Greg Hickman, a mobile marketing consultant and founder of MobileMixed.com.

Hello and welcome to the phone company’s new business line setup department. We’re happy to help you get started and set up a new phone line for your business but even though you’re new here we’re putting you on probation. See, we want to make sure you understand the rules while on probation:

1. You can’t buy your number or service directly from us. We’ve selected a small group of resellers that you can choose from but they all have the same ridiculously high prices because we force them to charge the same thing to everyone. What? You want competition? Forget it, we’re the phone company!
2. Your new phone number costs $500/month plus usage fees (and, no, that’s not a typo). Of course, that’s only for a random number that we assign – if you want to pick your own number it’s actually $1000/month. Ridiculous, you say? You want another source to buy your service from? You must have skipped ahead, be sure to read #1, above.
3. Now, while you’re on probation, before you use this number to call anyone we have to approve what you’re going to say in advance. You can’t say what we don’t want you to say. And don’t accuse us of censorship – we are the PHONE COMPANY, silly.
4. Oh we almost forgot… you actually have to file an application telling us in advance what you intend to say on this phone line. We’ll review that and have to approve it in advance. Each review costs about $500, by the way. We advise you to be really careful about this application, though, because if you decide to say something different, well, you’ll have to cough up another $500 in order to update what you want to say.
5. (Did we forget to mention that it takes about 8-12 weeks for us to approve your application before you can make your first phone call? Yeahhh – sorry about that, that’s just how it works.
6. You’ll probably want to publicize this business number so that your program is a success. That’s totally fine, but please note the subparts to this rule:
   • Anywhere the number appears, whether in a print ad, a brochure, your web site or even the awning in front of your business, you have to add a line underneath it that reminds people they’ll be paying for a phone call when they call you. We don’t care if they already know that – you’ll have to remind them each and every time they see your number. I know, very frustrating BUT we have our little idiosyncrasies. Oh, and you don’t have a choice, this is just how we do things.
   • You’ll also have to tell people in advance how many times each week or month you’re going to call them. We don’t care whether you know that or not – you’re just going to have to guess, but don’t guess wrong – you might get slapped with a fine.
7. There is just one final, small condition: If you violate any of these rules at any time during probation we can turn off your number without warning, fine you about $10,000 and irreparably damage your business. And there’s no recourse – if we shut you off you have to do what we say or you won’t get turned back on. No exceptions, please.

Ok, great! Now that you understand all of the rules, how many lines would you like? How long are you on probation you ask. You will actually be on probation as long as you’re a customer. Yup, that’s right. You have to follow all these rules all the time.

This is ridiculous right? This is America, after all – this can’t be real. Well, that’s true in the world of “regular” phone numbers and service but in the world of text messaging and “short codes” (the 5-6 digit numbers used for business text messaging) this is unfortunately, exactly how it works. How would you like to run your business under these Draconian demands?

Given the restrictions, it’s practically a miracle that some text messaging companies are able to remain in business. In fact, many such businesses fail each year. The costs, limitations and tenuous existence imposed by the phone companies on businesses that use short codes for legitimate, important and in some cases life-saving services strangles the innovation and growth of the industry while enriching the few aggregator resellers that the phone companies have designated as their chosen partners.

Incredibly, the phone companies get away with this because they have set up a monopoly such that there is no other way to deliver an emergency alert, an authentication key or a promotional offer (which customers have requested to receive) to a cell phone via text message without going through this process.

It’s enough to make even the most litigation-averse companies sue the carriers and their self-enriching trade association.  So some have done so.

Last month, TextPower, Inc., Club Texting, Inc. and iSpeedBuy LLC filed class action complaints in federal court in Manhattan against AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, and “aggregators” that the carriers have designated as the sole distributors of short code numbers and messaging services.

That’s right – these companies are taking a stand. They don’t think it’s fair market practice to force pricing down everyone’s throat, demand pre-approval of the content to be sent, and be subject to losing their business at the whim of someone deep within a phone company who decides they don’t like what someone has tweeted or posted on their web site about their text messaging service.

And that’s no exaggeration – some of them have nearly been shut down because of what customers have innocently posted on their web sites or Twitter streams about their text messages.  And the case seems to be having some effect already, as the CTIA this month has announced a relaxation of some of the rules being challenged. This is a step forward but more change needs to come.

If your company uses or plans to use text messaging to communicate with customers, alert people to emergencies or deliver essential information, you might want to learn more about this case, which seeks to break the monopolistic hold that the wireless phone companies have over the text messaging industry. It’s time we got off probation.

About the Author

Greg is a mobile marketing consultant and recently launched the blog & web show, Mobile Mixed. Check it out for mobile marketing strategy tips and interviews with mobile marketing pro’s. Greg help businesses avoid the biggest mistake in mobile marketing.

The post Dealing with Short Code Probation appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Think about it, what other industry or company do you know of that charges you for service every month but you cannot start using the service for 4 months? Go ahead, I will give you a few minutes, please add your comments below. Can’t think of any? It’s because if a company like this existed, nobody would want to do business with them, and they wouldn’t be around for very long.

However if you have a monopoly on the space and people really needed your service to grow their business, they wouldn’t have a choice. For mobile marketers this may sound like familiar territory. We all know that mobile marketing through a short code is ultimately the best way to go. I’m not sold on QR codes yet as the user experience isn’t that great.

I’ve been at the helm of mobileStorm, a top mobile marketing company since 1999, even before short codes really existed (and yes this link is strategically placed for SEO goodness). There was really one aggregator back then, Simplewire, and if you didn’t use them to send SMS messages via SMPP (Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol), then you sent your messages via SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) which is how email is sent. However, everyone knows that sending SMS messages this way is unreliable and doesn’t offer much in the way of analytics and reporting. I can’t remember when it happened but at one point Neustar, founded in 1996 to meet the technical and operational challenges that arose when the U.S. Government mandated local number portability, and the CTIA, the all-powerful carrier association, got together to create USShortcodes.com. USShortcodes was, and still is, the only service that would allow you to lease a 5 or 6 digit short code that either meant something (a.k.a. vanity short code), or was completely random (a.k.a. random short code). Two major events in the U.S. taught Americans how to text in to a short code. The first was American Idol, where you could vote for Sanjaya by simply texting VOTE to 4701, and the second was Barak Obama’s VP candidate announcement of Joe Biden via his vanity short code 62262, which spells OBAMA. The latest statistics from Pew show that 80% of Americans send text messages, with billions being sent on a daily basis. To say SMS is mainstream is an understatement.

SMS is a brilliant way to engage with potential customers and retain existing ones. Response rates dwarf other channels like email, IVR and direct mail. The average SMS is read within 4 minutes. If you’re still not convinced about the power of SMS, think about how it’s disrupting healthcare. Our client Kaiser Permanente proved they could reduce the number of no-shows by sending SMS appointment reminders. They saved close to $275k in 30 days at one facility. SMS is helping pregnant moms through pregnancy, smokers to quit smoking, and keeping those with Diabetes adherent to their medication.

So why does Neustar and the carriers make it so difficult to do business with them? Wouldn’t you think a technology that improves peoples’ lives, and has 80% of Americans engaged, could be as simple as buying a domain name? If I went to Godaddy.com and registered a domain name, it would cost me $10 for the year and I would immediately get to start using it. With USShortcodes, it costs me anywhere from $1,500 – $3,000 for the quarter depending on if I license a random or vanity code. Going back to my opening sentence, the average wait time to get your short code approved is around 4 months, and guess what; you’re paying for that code even though you can’t use it. Most people would consider this a scam, but this is how things are done and you don’t have a choice in the matter. If you want to do SMS right, you need a short code.

At mobileStorm, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year with USShortcodes.com because SMS is a wonderful channel — but it doesn’t mean we love the experience. The cost of the codes, the time it takes to get them working, and the audits performed each month with the “guilty before being proven innocent” method is beyond frustrating. I really can’t think of another industry that makes it so difficult to do business, other than maybe complying with city code when trying to build an addition onto your house.

Each code is hand approved by someone at the carrier, and they have a pile of applications sitting on their desk. When they go to test your workflow, if your application doesn’t match it seems as if you go to the bottom of the pile. Oh I almost forgot, you can’t talk to the carrier either, you have to work with your aggregator, so it becomes a game of telephone.

Recently Verizon wanted a client of ours to indemnify them of any litigation that would arise from their SMS program. Are you kidding me? How is SMS supposed to be the killer app in healthcare if the carriers demand indemnification clauses on a short code?

The system is completely inefficient. Let’s recap:

1. It’s expensive: Small businesses cannot afford the cost of a short code. Most have to resort to a shared code. But oh yeah, there’s rumblings that USShortcodes wants to do away with that as well. Soon most companies in the U.S. will not be able to use SMS. It’s as if the industry is forcing people towards QR codes.
2. The time to market seems like an inside joke, but it’s not:  If your business is built on top of SMS and you need to wait 4 months to get your business going, you might as well stop everything you’re doing and wait for the code to be approved. Just don’t pay any attention to the stat that most businesses fail within the first year, because you only have 8 months left.
3. The cost of doing business is high: The CTIA spends millions of dollars a year on independent auditing firms. Their entire goal is to find SMS programs that do not follow the original workflow and shut them down because spam is such a huge problem with SMS. Can you hear the irony in my voice? Think about email. Now think about how many unwanted SMS messages you get. Is there even a comparison? Keeping spam out is one thing the carriers did right. Unlike email they control the pipe and can shut someone down quickly. So if it’s not spam, why the audits? It must be the lawsuits they don’t want to be involved in right? When you get an audit, you have to stop what you are doing and respond. To say this disrupts your business is an understatement. Imagine having to manage and audit 20 clients. Now imagine trying to find every single location these clients have ever promoted their short code and add some copy that would further indemnify the carriers from a lawsuit. Our friends over at TextPower wrote a great article on this called “It’s Official: Cellular Carriers Have Gone Nuts.” Audits are nightmares that take important employee resources away from other revenue generating activities, like helping a client understand how to properly build and market to their database. It’s as if the carriers are looking for ways not to do business with you.
4. It feels like a scam, but supposedly it’s not: Why do we need to pay to license the code when it is not usable? Can someone please answer this for me? Now is your chance to tell the industry why they pay for a service they can’t use. If you give us a good reason we’ll forgive you, but we want our money back for the years we spent on codes we couldn’t use.

It almost feels to me like the carriers don’t want to provide short codes, but they have to. Why else would they make it timely, expensive, and wasteful?

There’s something else that doesn’t sit well with me. The carriers should be a lot less worried about the small businesses that occasionally send a coupon to their customers, and a lot more worried that legitimate companies are being sued because they were following the MMA’s consumer best practice guidelines. Let me repeat that, businesses are being sued for millions of dollars because they followed consumer best practices, as set forth by the MMA (and the guidelines were created with the carries input as well). I would laugh, but I feel bad. Sounds like these companies were just trying to do the right thing. Soundbite Communications, Redbox, and American Express were just a few of the companies blessed with lawsuits for sending a confirmation message to consumers after they’d opted out of their SMS program. These companies were sued under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) because they sent someone a message confirming an opt-out. This is a classic “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation. If they send the message they are sued, if they don’t send the message the carriers will audit them and shut down their short code. Oh the joy!

On April 5th and April 9^th of this year, two mobile marketing companies (Eztexting out of New York, and TextPower out of Los Angeles), filed punitive class action antitrust lawsuits in the Southern District of New York against the country’s major wireless carriers, the CTIA trade association, and various text-message (or Short Message Service) aggregators.

I know the CEOs of both companies and for years we’ve discussed how the squeeze is becoming more like a choke. In short, these entrepreneurs reached their breaking points and decided to fight back. All eyes right now are on these lawsuits. Will they bring the change needed to reverse the industry’s biggest problems? Or will they be crushed by the unlimited funds of the powerful association?

I personally don’t think the parties involved (the CTIA, Neustar and USShortcodes) are evil, I just don’t think they have a very good process for how things work and it’s too expensive for them to go back and fix anything. Maybe they don’t see this as that big of a revenue stream, even though it’s reported that the CSC industry brings in  roughly $2.3 billion a year in revenue.  Hey Neustar, spend 1% of this revenue and create a fully automated approval system. This would bring the cost of short codes down and get businesses up and running in the same day. Don’t you think SMS marketing would at least double in size?

My hope is that these lawsuits will wake someone up over there that has the power to bring swift and immediate change. If we continue down the path we’re on, businesses will be forced elsewhere; and we already see it happening. Push notifications and in-app messaging are already threatening SMS usage.

This is a warning to the carriers — if you guys don’t make changes necessary to make mobile marketing more attractive, you will lose billions in revenue a lot sooner. This isn’t a threat, it’s a fact. We know how much money SMS brings in revenue so I understand the need to protect it, but you’re guarding it the wrong way. The security team at Fort Knox isn’t packing squirt guns.

Please make marketers happy again about sending SMS. If you make it cheap, easy and free like the Internet is supposed to be, then you have a shot at the 88 million small businesses in America. I know we’ll need to add a couple more numbers to the short code, and maybe they’ll need to be called medium codes, but hey, that would be considered a good thing right?

The post Short Codes are a Scam, and SMS Marketing is Dying. Is there Hope? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.