New Look!

The informational side of MixMobi got a new look last night thanks to some great work by the folks at Livefront.  Over the next few weeks we will also be incorporating that design into the application itself along with some usability enhancements and other new features.  We’re very excited about all the new customers who found us via Mashable and other venues the last few days.  If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions please let us know!

—Kelly

MixMobi Featured: Mashable's Spark of Genius

Thanks to the Spark of Genius program at Mashable for our outstanding coverage today. The entire team is very gratified to get this recognition and to spread the word about MixMobi’s easy, fast, effective mobile promotions.

In addition to the Spark of Genius writeup, we’re talking to many people about our Enterprise and White Label programs, designed expressly for larger companies and resellers.  Please contact us for more information (info(at)mixmobi.com) and we’ll be happy to explore the advantages MixMobi can bring to your marketing platform, PR agency or advertising endeavor.

I want to particularly recognize partner Kelly Heikkila, MixMobi’s outstanding primary developer.  Kelly is not only brilliant technically, but is also an experienced, insightful business person who has brought the platform to life in every dimension.

Finally: We’re just getting started!  From internationalization to smoother SMS integration, our development roadmap is full of excellent additional functionality suggested by you, our customers.  Thank you for your ideas and for your support.

Testing... Testing...

Feeling confused about digital marketing?

You have every reason to be!

Digital marketing is at an inflection point not seen since the advent of the internet.  Social media and mobile are shaking up assumptions at a furious pace.  A marketer who has just started to feel comfortable with Facebook may be astounded to learn that he now must cope with not only Facebook Lite but the new, mobile, text-only Facebook Zero (announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona).

The urge to impulsively jump in and “Just do something!” is understandable.  Especially in the West, we are action oriented.  “Better to ask for forgiveness later” is the mantra for many.

But in new territory, scouting and assessing are more crucial than ever.  And it needn’t take forever.

Happily, testing is faster and cheaper than ever, thanks to those very digital tools you’re trying to leverage.  And you don’t need to be a lab scientist to take your digital show on the test track.

SaaS providers such as Mail Chimp, Ruxter, MixMobi and others, allow you to quickly devise, deploy and assess digital campaigns.  After demographic analysis, testing should be your next step in keeping up with new developments in digital marketing.

(Photo credit: Sergei Golyshev, Oct 2008)

"Mobile Coupons for All"

Thanks to Chris Harkin, Mobile Commerce Daily, for the “Mobile Coupons for All, not just Smartphone Users” in today’s edition.

Mobile Commerce Daily and its sister publication Mobile Marketer are an important part of of our daily updates here at MixMobi, and we appreciate the coverage.

MixMarts and More

We’re very excited to announce some significant enhancements to MixMobi that we’ve rolled out this weekend.  These include:

MixMarts

You can now create a unique landing page that will automatically contain all your current MixMobi offers.  This gives you an additional offer deployment method that will be especially useful for multiple location companies (franchises, chains, affiliate systems, resellers) — each location can have its own, permanent, mobile-friendly website.  You create MixMarts much the same as MixMobi offers, with no programming required. 
MixMarts can easily include a logo, location or staff photo, map to location, hours and one-click phone number.

Navigation Improvements

We’ve also changed our navigation to a two-tiered approach.  Offers are now front and center and easy to access and update.  We’ve also added a dashboard where you can quickly see the publishing schedule of all your current offers as well as MixMobi news and recent updates within your account.  These changes are getting the application ready for further usability enhancements we will be rolling out in the next few weeks.

Campaign Simplification

Campaigns will be easier to use than ever to group and track your offers.  We no longer require customers to enter campaign dates, the campaign simply inherits the dates of the offers grouped within.

Inline Help

We’ve added some inline help to many of our pages and will be adding more in the near future.  Just navigate over the circled question mark to get instant help and suggestions without navigating away from your current task

Customer Feedback

These features as well as others included in this latest release were all in response to customer feedback.  The MixMarts in particular are of interest to customers, and we were pleased to be able to add this service dimension at no additional cost.  We believe for both one-door-one-door small businesses that may not even have a website, to chains, franchise and affiliate systems, this will be a very attractive service.

—Kelly

Taking Twitter Everywhere

Although it’s not yet adopted at the “mass marketing” level, Twitter is increasingly being used by smart marketers to find and engage passionate fans.

I’ve been watching companies like Tasti D-Lite, where Director of IT and Social Technologies BJ Emerson has cleverly leveraged Twitter.  Noting that “People were already talking about Tasti D-Lite on these networks,” Emerson has built a customer loyalty program using social media as the foundation.

Because use of Twitter on mobiles grew 2,800% in 2009, and because mobile makes bringing an offer to retail so easy, consider using Twitter plus mobile to power your next promotion or event.  Powerful calls to action include:

• Current event-linked or -driven promotions.  If you’re wondering what to link to, listen to live chatter in a public place or monitor trending topics on Twitter.
• Links to charitable events or causes, especially if they’re in the news.
• Local or hyperlocal news, particularly events worth celebrating.

Twitter plus mobile puts exceptional, real-time communications and calls to action in your followers’ hands in minutes.  What’s your mobile-Twitter marketing plan?

"Mobile coupons...go mainstream"

We received great coverage from Howard Wilcox, Juniper Research, today:

“I think platforms such as this will help to develop the mobile coupon to become mainstream going forward.  After all, one of the most important advantages of mobile coupons is that campaigns can be personalized to suit the prefrences of the individual mobile phone owner and so have a greater chance of response than vanilla “everyone gets everything” marketing.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!  Our biggest vision for MixMobi is for marketers to customize messaging and offers to best suit their local customers’ needs and preferences with real time relevancy.

Read the entire Juniper Research blog post here.

(Juniper Research, based in London, specializes in identifying and appraising high growth opportunities across the telecommunications and media.)