Adam T. Sutton

SMS Marketing for Impatient Teens

October 24th, 2008

I’m going over my notes from an interview with Mike Howard, Chief Operating Officer, Kiwibox, today and I’m impressed with his team’s mobile marketing strategy and content management skills. Kiwibox is a teen-based network for user generated content and socializing.

Howard and I mostly discussed interesting ways he’s building Kiwibox’s teen-based membership (keep an eye out for the article). But we also touched on his team’s plans for integrating its website, WAP site and SMS messages.

Basically, one piece of content will be featured three ways:

o Full length on the website

o Trimmed down for the WAP site

o Cut way down for an SMS alert

The SMS messages will alert members to new content and social interactions (such as a message from a friend). The WAP site will have information for them while they’re on the go. The website will feature the full length content.

That’s a very interesting strategy, particularly the use of SMS alerts for the I-need-this-information-immediately consumer. Barak Obama’s campaign used the same SMS strategy for announcing his selection for vice president.

What do you think of this strategy for integrating SMS, WAP sites and websites? Do the platforms fit their roles? Let us know in the comments…

A few other quick notes on Kiwibox’s upcoming launch:

The SMS service will be extremely customizable. Users will be able to select which events trigger alerts, the time of day they want alerts and the number of messages they’re willing to receive, Howard said. These features should help drive more satisfaction with Kiwibox’s SMS-obsessed audience.

“We found that somewhere between 80% and 90% of teens are using SMS to communicate with their friends, and in a lot of cases get content off the Web,” he said.

Adam T. Sutton

About Adam T. Sutton

Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam generates content for MarketingSherpa's Email and Inbound Marketing newsletters. His years of experience in interviewing marketers and conveying their insights has spanned topics such as search marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, email and more. Adam previously powered the content behind MarketingSherpa's Search and Consumer-marketing newsletters and carries that experience into his new role. Today, in addition to writing articles, he contributes content to the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa blogs, as well as MECLABS webinars, workshops and summits.

Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Adam was the Managing Editor at the Mequoda group. There he created content and promotions for the company's daily email newsletter and managed its schedule.

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  1. November 24th, 2009 at 00:06 | #1

    It’s amazing how such a young group could effect the marketing world.

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