Weekly Health Update
Week of: Monday, July 4th, 2011
Courtesy of:
Josh Ferrell, D.C.
(618) 628-4488

"Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever." ~ Lance Armstrong

       Sharing the Wealth – of Knowledge

Welcome to Parkside Bed and Breakfast

The Parkside Bed and Breakfast is located at 203 E. Roosevelt Street, in the heart of historical DeKalb, IL. The B&B is just one mile from the campus of Northern Illinois University and within walking distance to downtown DeKalb. Parkside is a contemporary BnB cottage featuring a fully equipped kitchenette, walk-in shower, queen-sized bed, with both a dining area and living room; it is the perfect place for a romantic retreat, reunions, celebrations, business travelers, or families visiting students at the university. We feature gourmet, multi-coursed breakfasts that feature local seasonal fruits & vegetables served right to your door. 

Please add the address for Parkside Bed and Breakfast's mobile site to your mobile device’s browser.

Bob & Pam Snow

Parkside Bed and Breakfast

203 E. Roosevelt St.

DeKalb, IL   60115

815-787-9526

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RTS News

As RTS Mobile continues to build relationships with businesses and Chambers of Commerce in Southwest Missouri, the RTS Mobile team is mobilizing your local businesses!  Whether you're interested in a Bed and Breakfast or looking for restaurants or something to do, you need to check out http://www.swmomobi.com/!  Just find http://www.swmomobi.com/ on your cell phone browser and enter the mobi community built around you! You don’t know which websites are viewable and mobile friendly or what the specials are in your community.  Now you do!  http://www.swmomobi.com/

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RTS News

At BLACK BARN winery, located just three miles from the main entrance to the Kentucky Horse Park, we craft one wine -an award winning Bordeaux style blend made with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc grapes from California's Sierra Foothills region.  We conduct tastings by appointment at BLACK BARN Winery located on Ashwood Farm, 4200 Newtown Pike Lexington KY. Call 859.552.2525 to schedule a tasting. Remember you can check us out on the go on any cell phone.  We are mobile
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RTS News

Welcome to The Speckled Hen Inn

The Speckled Hen Inn, a Wisconsin bed and breakfast in Madison, WI is the manor house for a 50-acre estate located at 5525 Portage Rd., just outside the city of Madison. The B&B is just 7.5 miles from the Capitol Square and the campus of the University of Wisconsin and near the Dane County airport and MATC. This country inn with 5 eco-elegant guest rooms featuring whirlpool tubs, king-sized beds, and fireplaces is the perfect place for a romantic retreat, reunions, celebrations, business travelers, or families visiting students at the university. The bed and breakfast is well known for their outstanding breakfasts that feature local and sustainable fruits, vegetables, meats and Wisconsin dairy products.  Please check out the Inn’s reviews on TripAdvisor and add the address for The Speckled Hen Inn’s mobile site to your mobile device’s browser.

 

Patricia Fischbeck

The Speckled Hen Inn

Madison, Wisconsin

http://www.speckledheninn.com/

877-670-4844

 

        

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RTS News

Illinois Bed and Breakfast annual convention concluded Tuesday, 1 March 2011.  The reception for going Mobile is creating  an energy and business buzz that is unmistakable.  We are experiencing a significant growth in the Bed and Breakfast industry going mobile. The Professional Association of Inn Keepers has examined the web and concludes every Bed and Breakfast Inn should consider having a mobile web site. RTS Mobile is leading the industry creating low cost, high quality, mobile web sites that offer superior capability for every business. More importantly, every mobile business is being populated in regional MOBIs (mobile only business registries), linked to our national MOBI: http://www.myusamobi.com/     GO MOBILE and join a MOBI near you COME JOIN    http://www.rtsmobile.com/

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CTS Technology Solutions, Inc. provides exceptional valuethrough managed services that assures a fixed cost for our business partners.Our highly trained and motivated professionals constantlystrive to offer proactive Data and Voice services that maximize the profits,productivity and competitive advantages of those partners. We are now excitedabout utilizing today’s mobile technology to assist our customers’needs. Mobile clearly highlights our desire to serve our customers anytime,anywhere.

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Peg Taylor  http://www.zexton.com/farmhouseinnbb

Description:

The Farm House Inn at Good Spring Farm , is surrounded by the natural beauty of the Daniel Boone National Forest. Several miles of trails take visitors through a diverse woodland to waterfalls, cliffs , wildlife areas and fishing ponds. Or to watch farm life and wild life from the Inns porch. Voted one of the best Bed and Breakfast Inns by readers of Kentucky Monthly Magazine, The Farm House Inn, located near Cumberland Falls and the Big South Fork National  Recreation Area is a dream destination for those wishing to renew or discover the artist, the photographer, the writer , the reader, the musician or just the observer in themselves.  We are excited about sharing our beautiful location nationwide through www.myUSAmobi.com

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RTS News

Chris Boyer, proprietor of www.Madisoncountypest.com was interviewed by SVP of RTS mobile Alex Lind. “Chris, why go mobile today?”

“Simple, I am looking for any advantage in today’s economy, especially in the winter months.  Termite and pest control is a great business, however the need for effective marketing is obvious to business stability and success.”

“Chris, do you understand the value of www.STLmobi.com?”

“Sure do, go on your Blackberry and go into Google….you have no idea what is mobile and what is not.  Now you do…STLmobi.  Brilliant idea!”

 

RTS Mobile Completes State-of-the-Art sports center website.  The wave of legislation and penalties for security for their customers has many companies scrambling to improve the security of their web sites. Since most web sites are a mixture of HTML and Flash media, they offer no or limited security for their customers.

RTS Mobile develops in ASPX, the same programming the banking industry relies on for security. Besides security, ASPX offers advanced functionality including managing large and multiple information data bases. ASPX should be what you select for your web site security. The question is: Can your webmaster produce your web product in ASPX?

RTS Mobile takes no chances for our customers. All web and mobile websites are developed using ASPX.  See http://www.rtsmobile.com/ to view our programming capability.  For an example of our latest developed site for advanced functionality and security, see:  http://www.wheatonsportscenter.com/

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Can you be found in our Mobi Networks? Go Mobile to be Mobi

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RTS News

Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.41)

Description:

The old is new again, thanks to mobile

Yesterday we blogged about how a family-owned movie theater used mobile technology to help them compete against the chain theaters. The owners now offer the on-the-go conveniences their customers expect without compromising the quaint customer experience of an old-time movie theater. RTS developed a cost-effective and fully serviceable solution to put their family-owned business functionally on par with the big guys. Such provides a real-world case for the axiom that technology does indeed level playing fields, both in the personal as well as business arenas.

In a previous post, we wrote about how Clorox made their tried and true brand relevant to the 21st century by creating an iPhone app that positions their brand as the go-to source for all matters related to stain removal. This app also provides a social forum for busy moms everywhere to share information with one another.

But what about a company like the publishers of the Yellow Pages? Subsequent to the advent of another disruptive technology—the telephone—the Yellow Pages were the go-to source for information on just about any business or service one would need. Invented by Reuben H. Donnelly in 1886, he formed a company and a partnership with American Telephone & Telegraph (including its merger with Dunn & Bradstreet in 1961 and the countless divestitures and consolidations that followed) which would last for over a century.

And then along came the internet to disrupt them. By 2006, Nielson and ComScore reported that 85% of all business-related searches were done over Google, Yahoo and other search engines. By 2009, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading on the company due to insufficient market capitalization and Donnelly filed for bankruptcy. In February 2010, R.H. Donnelly emerged from bankruptcy as DexOne Corporation, still a subsidiary of AT&T.

So how did the company re-tool itself to compete in today’s environment? Online and mobile applications, of course. After a series of mergers and acquisitions including Buzz.com, PlusMo.com, AnyWho.com and Keen, the Yellow Pages are now known as YP.com, DexKnows.com and YPMobile.com.

Want to know the best places to go or businesses to call? Visit m.buzz.com on your iPhone® or Android™ browser and tap your social net for recommendations from the people you trust most - your friends and family.

• See which restaurants, shops and services your friends are buzzing about
• Who's the best mechanic in town? Ask your friends for recommendations.
• Answer your friends' questions
• Search for local businesses
• Get business details and add comments
• View your questions, favorites and friends
• Find and invite new friends to buzz

For sports fans, you can get access to mobile apps that track play-by-play updates, scores, stats and breaking news, all with stunning game-time visuals from the NBA, the NFL, MLB and the NCAA. And all applications connect to your social networks, all from your mobile device. In fact, if you have AT&T U-verse in your home, you can bring the power of all these search functions right to your TV screen.

The Yellow Pages are now relevant again. Instead of “Letting our fingers do the walking” over dead-tree telephone books, we’re now letting them tap their way to the information we want faster and more efficiently than ever before. Perhaps it IS possible to teach an old dog new tricks.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.42)

Description:

Why Facebook matters to business in a mobile world

In Tuesday’s post we blogged about the commercial relevance of social networks Facebook and Twitter to businesses, even assigning a dollar value to each “fan” or “follower.” We wrote about the importance of creating a virtual place where your loyal customers can convene, share information, recommend your company to their social networks and why it’s crucial for businesses to listen, engage, collaborate and ultimately influence those conversations in real time. After all, there’s no marketing trick in the world as impactful and cost-effective than a personal recommendation.

Mobile technology is kindling for the wildfire that is social networking because people access information on mobile devices at all times, wherever they are, rather than only during those periods where they’re at their desktops. In fact, due to personal budget choices and 3G mobile internet speeds, many are scrapping the desktop all together. Because most websites aren’t easily viewable on mobile devices, if your company doesn’t have a mobile solution, it is only available to some of the people, some of the time. That’s simply the math of it.

Even the face of email is rapidly changing in this environment. At the Nielson 360 conference for marketers in Las Vegas last week, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg provocatively stated, “E-mail--I can't imagine life without it--is probably going away." She followed by saying, “If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today," where only 11% of young people email daily and increasingly rely on texting, Twitter and yes, Facebook to communicate with one another. Unfortunately for Constant Contact, theirs is primarily a desktop application.

But this transition will be good for businesses and brand marketers. Why? Because while it's very difficult to gain access to a consumer's email address, connecting with them via social networks is quite simple. Indeed, with Facebook's 400 million members and 100 million daily mobile users, the network enables brands to connect with more customers than ever before--or, as Sandberg explains, "On any given day, you can reach twice as many people in the U.S. as watch American Idol--and that only makes up 30% of our global audience."

Regardless of Facebook’s recent privacy issues, people use their real identities and authenticity on the Web certainly means better word-of-mouth communication for brands. Sandberg cited one study which showed that people who receive product recommendations from their friends are 400% more likely to buy that product. On Facebook, this is encapsulated in the site's "like" feature. The study also revealed that friend-recommended products have 68% better product recognition and 200% greater memory of brand messaging.

Any business owner who brazenly suggests that Facebook is for kids is missing most of the market, most of the time. Why? Because of its mobile-centric platform, it is both the swimming pool and the water consumers swim in. Without a mobile solution from Rubicon Technologies that links back and forth between your mobile website and your Facebook community, these efforts loses nearly all their impact and relevance.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.31)

Description:

Mobile Matters (vol. 3.1)
June 21, 2010

Mobile Access and Commercial Cross-pollination

The origins of the internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States government created a secure network that linked computers, its military agencies and some universities for various research projects. This research, plus additional civilian funding from the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation and the development of new networking technologies in the 1990s, which led to its commercialization. While Al Gore didn’t “invent” the internet, he was indeed instrumental in this effort.

The development and commercialization of the internet represents what venture capitalist John Deorr once described as the Second Great Wave of Technology Change, the first being the development of desktop PCs in the 1970s. It is estimated that 25% of the world’s population uses the internet on a daily basis. According to Deorr, we’re now experiencing the Third Great Wave in the mobilization of these technologies, where their access and use move from the desktop to the palm of your hand.

You’ll find no better example of these evolving technologies and their everyday use than the Tourism Bureau of Southwestern Illinois: http://www.thetourismbureau.net/. This very deep site was developed by Rubicon Technology Systems and it effectively links the user to events, activities and all participating businesses in the local tourism industry, where these businesses are then cross-pollinated via the site. The Bureau and this site generate millions of dollars of revenue to the local economies. While one might normally associate tourism with larger economies such as Chicago, these tools brought big-time power to what was once a small and fragmented marketplace.

What is completely unique about this enterprise site is its 100% mobile functionality. A visitor who might be enjoying a bike tour of the region can simply pull up the Bureau’s website on his mobile device and search for local merchants, restaurants, lodging and even the next day’s events or activities. This enterprise solution effectively bridges both the Second and Third Waves at once. Such is the power of this Third Wave—mobile access to information.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.32)

Description:

Independents vs. The Chains: Technology helps them compete

When technology makes tasks more efficient, consumer behavior changes. One of the most striking phenomena over the past decade has been the on-demand experience and the shift in consumers’ expectations as a result. From cable TV to airport check-ins to soda dispensers at fast food restaurants to ATM machines, technology has provided convenience and consumers have come to expect them. Such is how ubiquity is accomplished.

The same can be said for customer service. While consumers have complained for years about “not being able to get through to a live person.” When they have a simple question or require a routine service, self-service channels have flourished over the past decade and customer experience scores have soared in the process. With a few clicks of a mouse or taps on your phone’s handset, one can get the information they want more efficiently. This also has made it easier for companies to qualify their customers’ needs more quickly so that customers reach a live customer service agent when problem resolution is required, often with a specialization in the exact problem that needs solving. And usually, these technologies provide cost savings for these companies along with their convenience.

If one thinks about it, who wants to call a movie theater for shows and screen times anymore? The big chains have provided self-service kiosks, web and mobile solutions to their customers for years. Nowadays, the only live people a film fan has to encounter is the snack counter clerk and the kid who scans their e-ticket or mobile phone.

But what about the small, independent theater operator? The Lincoln Theater in downstate Belleville, Illinois approached RTS Mobile with just that question. RTS developed a cost-effective and fully serviceable solution to put their family-owned business functionally on par with the big guys. Visit http://www.lincontheatre-belleville.com/ to view the site. Look at the upper left hand corner and you’ll find “click here for mobile version.” The owners now offer the on-the-go conveniences their customers expect without compromising the quaint customer experience of an old-time movie theater.

Customers can view this week’s film offerings, show times, trailers and buy tickets online or right from their mobile devices. As we’ve written in the past, technology has been a great leveler of playing fields. They can also efficiently book private group showings or presentations and even send out an e-Blast to their customers with updates. This is where technology converges with convenience to provide an exceptional customer experience at a price the little guy can afford to compete in today’s rapidly consolidating marketplace.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.21)

Description:

Technology Advances + Consumer Behavior = Mobile Revolution

We have written in previous posts that the confluence of several market conditions have created a mobile revolution:
• The faster speeds of 3G networks made mobile search a viable way for consumers to obtain information on the go
• Mobile platforms and the devices themselves have become more feature-rich by opening them to independent developers who create hundreds of thousands of new applications via their app stores
• Record corporate productivity levels have demanded more from their employees, leaving consumers stretched thinner than ever before, often outside the confines of traditional desktop environments
• Single purpose devices have become less relevant—why buy an iPod, a Garmin and a PDA if a single device will do it all?
• Lower mobile service pricing plans have brought the mobile internet to millions of new consumers, many of whom choose to use their mobile devices as their sole means of accessing the internet, rather than spend money on home-based internet data plans—one device does it all

If you have any doubts about these phenomena, just check Google Analytics and it will tell you how many people are attempting to access your website via the mobile channel.

If you have a Flash website, it will also tell you how many people are being turned away from your site because their mobile devices simply cannot read them.

Regardless of whether your site is Flash or not, can you afford not to mobilize your site? Rubicon Technology Systems provides a solution for this at a price point not previously available, one that works on all mobile devices.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.22)
 
Description:

Social Revolution made more relevant by the mobile channel

Businesses across nearly all industries, from hospitality to consumer products, have engaged social networks by posting Facebook and Twitter pages. Why?

• It’s free
• These virtual environments are where people now meet to share information
• By referring friends and family, these platforms create unprecedented opportunity for companies and brands to extend their reach to markets not easily accessible before
• People are more likely to trust a product, service or brand if it was recommended by a friend
• These platforms offer consumer intelligence about behavior and customer experience not previously available
• Spawned by the mobile revolution itself, social networks were created with the mobile channel in mind, allowing companies to reach consumers across all demographics

In a previous post, we wrote about how Clorox made their tried and true brand relevant to the 21st century by creating an iPhone app that positions their brand as the go-to source for all matters related to stain removal. This app also provides a social forum for busy moms everywhere to share information with one another.

So what is a Facebook fan worth to a brand in real dollars? Digital marketing firm Syncapse and market research firm Hotspex assigns an average value of $136.38 based on an empirical formula that measures additional dollars spent, loyalty, brand referrals to friends and earned media value for 20 of the worlds most recognizable brands. Facebook fans of top food & beverage brands spend more than twice as much on them as non-fans.

If your customers are commiserating on Facebook and Twitter and sharing information about your brand, your company and your competitors, can you afford not to be in on these conversations? First, you must mobilize your website as a pathway to these conversations but also create a means to circle them back to your website. If your loyal customers are recommending your product or service to their friends, shouldn’t they have a mobile-friendly place to get more information about your company?

RTS Mobile has a solution for this at a price point not previously achieved. Simply place a link from your mobile website to your Facebook fan page and a link to your mobile website from your Facebook fan page and see how it improves your reach, your web traffic and your bottom line.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.1)

Description:

Mobile Matters (vol. 3.1)
June 21, 2010

Mobile Access and Commercial Cross-pollination

The origins of the internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States government created a secure network that linked computers, its military agencies and some universities for various research projects. This research, plus additional civilian funding from the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation and the development of new networking technologies in the 1990s, which led to its commercialization. While Al Gore didn’t “invent” the internet, he was indeed instrumental in this effort.

The development and commercialization of the internet represents what venture capitalist John Deorr once described as the Second Great Wave of Technology Change, the first being the development of desktop PCs in the 1970s. It is estimated that 25% of the world’s population uses the internet on a daily basis. According to Deorr, we’re now experiencing the Third Great Wave in the mobilization of these technologies, where their access and use move from the desktop to the palm of your hand.

You’ll find no better example of these evolving technologies and their everyday use than the Tourism Bureau of Southwestern Illinois: http://www.thetourismbureau.net/. This very deep site was developed by Rubicon Technology Systems and it effectively links the user to events, activities and all participating businesses in the local tourism industry, where these businesses are then cross-pollinated via the site. The Bureau and this site generate millions of dollars of revenue to the local economies. While one might normally associate tourism with larger economies such as Chicago, these tools brought big-time power to what was once a small and fragmented marketplace.

What is completely unique about this enterprise site is its 100% mobile functionality. A visitor who might be enjoying a bike tour of the region can simply pull up the Bureau’s website on his mobile device and search for local merchants, restaurants, lodging and even the next day’s events or activities. This enterprise solution effectively bridges both the Second and Third Waves at once. Such is the power of this Third Wave—mobile access to information.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.12)

Description:

Mobile Matters (vol. 3.12)
June 21, 2010

Changing Consumer Behavior and Mobile Access

Bars and restaurants market themselves in many different ways. They advertise in various local media, participate in enterprise and promotional websites like Metromix in Chicago and of course, they develop their own websites.

For the last 15 years, establishments have been engaging web developers, often paying thousand of dollars to post information about their places of business. Since one might actually consider them to be in the entertainment business rather than just the hospitality industry, many of them built increasingly elaborate and animated sites by using Flash technology to further differentiate their brands.

Many of them were very successful in this objective, indeed creating brilliant, attractive websites. However, they unwittingly left themselves behind once the mobile revolution hit because mobile devices simply cannot read Flash technology and even non-Flash sites weren’t configured for the smaller screens on cellular phones. This became important when 3G mobile networks came of age, adding speed and efficiency to mobile searches.

Consumer behavior fundamentally changed, as they could search a restaurant and assemble their friends toward an agreed upon destination on the fly, without having to make a single phone call. Consumers now had the technology convenience to make these decisions and communications from the palms of their hands, wherever they are, no longer confined to their desktop computers.

Rubicon Technology Systems not only developed an elegant solution to mobilize these websites, but disrupted the industry by offering this solution at an affordable price point not previously achieved. RTS Mobile’s solution solves this issue and makes these websites relevant again given this fundamental change in consumer behavior, without these establishments having to re-do the entire site they spent thousands of dollars to build.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 3.13)
 
Description:

Active vs. Passive Consumer Engagement

We have written in past posts that consumer behavior has fundamentally shifted with the onset of mobile technology. No longer confined to their desktops to access the internet, they now make spending decisions on the go, from the palms of their hands. New technology is only meaningful when there’s a human purpose for it. Mobile communications and access to information brings convenience and often, savings that preciously didn’t exist for consumers.

In this changing landscape, websites that serve as one-way repositories of information are becoming less relevant. These technologies create exciting opportunities to engage consumers in new and different ways. The same GPS technology that gives one turn-by-turn directions to any destination one chooses offers location-based bargains and promotions, once thought to be science fiction in the Tom Cruise film, Minority Report. Facebook and Twitter not only allow people to connect in new and different ways, but they also promise more personalized advertising opportunities based on the consumer’s individual desires and tastes, eventually filtering out all unwanted information.

Rather than build a website and hope consumers find it, companies now have to engage their customers in a more active and personal way. The mobile channel offers unprecedented opportunity to do this efficiently and RTS Mobile brings them the tools to do it.

For instance, many bars and restaurants have developed lists of their customers’ email addresses to send them newsletters about events and promotions. Given the deluge of information the average consumer encounters, they are usually reticent about giving this information indiscriminately, often simply refusing to do so.

RTS Mobile understands this and advises its clients to offer and incentive to do so. We’ve also written in previous posts the exploding popularity of coupons sites and their offspring, mobile couponing.

While Constant Contact is a fine tool for sending monthly newsletters, they simply can’t be read efficiently on mobile devices given their small screens. Constant Contact is a desktop application and shouldn’t be thought of as more than that. RTS Mobile’s e-Blast maximizes the intimacy of the mobile channel and allows businesses to reach their customers with relevant promotions, events, specials and discounts with an immediacy not previously possible. When paired with RTS Mobile’s Auto-responder, an application that immediately sends a mobile-friendly email that confirms sign-up, welcomes them to the community, it allows the establishment to efficiently follow through on its incentive to sign up by offering them a relevant discount.

Perhaps even more exciting is that these messages and discounts can be forwarded to your customers’ networks of friends, effectively turning them into your brand advocates. The same scaling effect can be achieved by linking your company’s mobile site to your Facebook and Twitter pages, adding impressive commercial value to your communities. The commercial purpose of all these tools is to circle everyone back to your brand in a convenient and efficient way. After all, marketers have long told us that it costs considerably less to retain an existing customer than it does to acquire a new one. This punctuates the intimacy and immediacy of the mobile channel.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 2.51)

Description:

Achieving Critical Mass via Mobile

One of the great tech stories over the past couple of years is Chicago’s Groupon, where a very simple, good idea reached critical mass and disrupted the marketplace. For those unfamiliar, Groupon started as a platform called The Point developed by University of Chicago Public Policy grad student Andrew Mason. The original idea was to solve problems using the internet to marshall enough people to solve them. For instance, if one has an issue with a utility company and enough people are experiencing the same problem, that person has considerably more leverage to solve it with collective mass than one does individually.

Chicago tech veteran and investor Eric Lefkofsky committed to provide seed capital to The Point under the condition that Mason quit grad school to develop the idea further, to which he agreed. However, they struggled with the question of how to monetize the model for months until Mason was on an architectural boat tour with his father and the revelation came to him that he could help people secure better bargains by utilizing the collective buying power of the group. The company would earn half the savings as a commission for helping the businesses promote their products and services.

They created Groupon in November of 2008 and quickly expanded the service to several cities by using the speed and efficiency of the internet to reach its own tipping point. Groupon operates in 65 cities domestically, has millions of online subscribers and is now worth approximately $1.5 billion after two rounds of mezzanine funding. Achieving this level of velocity was simply not possible before the internet. The takeaway here is that your business can benefit by these very same dynamics. After all, the internet is a very democratic place.

Interestingly, Groupon was founded within 60 days of the biggest economic meltdown since the great depression. FedEx was founded during the late 1970s recession and Apple effectively began the mobile revolution by introducing the iPod during the recession of 2001. Your business can offer bargains and achieve critical mass, too because the internet belongs to everyone. As we wrote in a previous post, from the printing press to the internet, technology has always been a great leveler of playing fields. So this begs the question: how will you use these resources to achieve your own critical mass?

While Groupon’s business model has certainly not been harmed by the recession’s bargain-hungry environment, there is considerable evidence that these consumer behaviors will persist well beyond the economic downturn. In fact, the entire coupon industry has blown up over the last two years. Call it “the new frugality” if you will, and it will be driven by the reality that the easy access to credit over the past 15 years will likely never return to those levels. People have accepted that they’ll have to live within their means and stretch their dollars further to achieve a modestly affluent lifestyle. To wit,

• One-third of online shoppers surveyed in Compete’s recent “Online Shopper Intelligence” survey said they generally use coupon sites while shopping online, MarketingCharts reports. In April 2010, 35 million consumers visited coupon sites
• More than half of the consumers (57%) who used a coupon code during their last online purchase said that if they had not received the discount, they would not have bought the item(s).
• When asked how much they spent on their most recent online purchase, consumers who used a coupon spent an average of $216. This figure is 56.5% higher than the average of $122 spent by consumers who did not use a coupon on their most recent online purchase.
• When asked about their overall online shopping experience, satisfaction was about 4% higher for consumers who used a coupon (92%) than for those who did not (88%).
• Consumers who used an online coupon said they are 91% likely to buy from the retailer again, about 5% higher than the 86% likelihood for consumers who did not use an online coupon.

In yesterday’s post, we shared the story of Chicago’s District Bar, who used RTS Mobile’s e-Blast and Auto-responder to populate their promotional database to 1,300 people within a week and thanks to a sponsorship from Absolut vodka, it didn’t cost them anything. Thanks to RTS’ mobile solution, they were able to offer a bargain, populate their database and engender loyalty, all at once. In a ferociously competitive environment, District Bar is now able to keep these loyal customers informed of events, promotions and specials. All for $275. And as everyone knows, it costs considerably less to keep your old customers than it does to generate new ones.

The mobile channel offers unprecedented opportunity for businesses to achieve critical mass, while reaching people with an intimacy and immediacy not previously possible. It all begins with the simplest of tasks, by mobilizing your website and engaging your customers on their terms, rather than yours. This is the essence of pull vs. push marketing, indeed the new mantra of 21st century commerce.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 2.41)

Description:

Relevance, impact and finesse over the mobile channel

While some technologies like mobile music players might isolate us from one another, for the most part, others have brought the opposite affect over the past decade and mobile communications is among them. Location based GPS phones help parents keep track of their teenagers and web communities have exploded, connecting us in new and different ways during a period where personal time has become more elusive than ever.

Common, but sometimes elaborate tasks like assembling friends and deciding on a restaurant has never been easier. Thanks to these new and interactive tools, one can search restaurants by type and location, check their hours and specials, look over customer reviews, text everyone the links associated with these choices and even get GPS-enabled, turn-by-turn directions to bring your party safely to its destination, all without making a single phone call.

It’s become more apparent every day that websites that serve merely as one-way sources of information are quickly becoming a thing of the past. In today’s on-demand environment, consumer expectations have shifted toward more intimate and personal engagement. It’s no longer enough to build your company website and hope people visit. Given that people now get more information from their mobile devices than their desktops, these websites must now operate efficiently on a smaller screen. One wouldn’t ask a business card to do the work of a company brochure, right?

In yesterday’s post, we discussed SMS and RTS’ e-Blast’s greater relevance than traditional email marketing strategies in today’s on the go marketplace. Companies must reach people where they are on their terms over a medium that’s compatible with these sensibilities. Given today’s privacy concerns and people’s general sense of information fatigue, we’ve learned that they’re often hesitant to share personal data. What’s the appeal of another “Sign up for our mailing list”?

We’ve found that sign-up response is considerably better if there’s the promise of some incentive involved. For instance, “Sign up for free member-only discounts, promotions and offers” or something to that similar affect. One of RTS’ more successful case studies in this regard has been District Bar in Chicago: http://www.zexton.com/districtbarchicago/. If one clicks on “Free Drinks,” the visitor is redirected to the sign-up page, where in exchange for their information, patrons are offered a free drink sponsored by Absolute vodka.

District reports that it populated the company’s promotional list with 1,300 people in their first week and have designs on growing it to 5,000. With a list like that, who needs Groupon and their 50% commissions? RTS Mobile’s Auto-responder offers full couponing functionality by sending an immediate e-Blast confirming the offer, and these promotions can be timed to increase traffic on slow nights. Not only has this establishment’s numbers improved dramatically, but its management is also more empowered in their promotional efforts.

Case studies such as this demonstrate the immediacy and intimacy of the mobile channel.
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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 2.31)

Description:

Chickens, eggs and technology evolution

As we’ve written in previous posts, the mobile revolution can best be described in terms of behavior as much as technology. Generally behavior begets technology, rather than the other way around. From the first stone tools, man has always adapted his technology to meet his ever changing desires for survival and a better life.

But one could also argue to the contrary. Guttenberg’s invention of movable type resulted in the revolutionary printing press, allowing knowledge to reach the masses like never before. Within 200 years, revolutionary winds of the political variety were blowing throughout Europe, from Ireland to France to the American colonies and over the century that followed, aristocracies all over the world began to crumble to the people’s newly educated will.

The internet presents a very similar phenomenon. Whether we’re searching a baseball player’s stats or director Francis Ford Coppola’s more obscure film credits or Einstein’s theory of relativity, the information we seek is at nearly everyone’s fingertips. Where we once spent days in the library scouring documents for a single term paper, today’s students spend mere hours on the internet where the content of a thousand libraries is but a click away. This indeed represents the new media democracy. What’s strikingly different about what we are experiencing now is the sheer warp-speed of these advances. We have consumed more data over the past 20 years than the sum of all human history. And no, I’m not making this up.

There are sweeping consequences to these conditions. If you are feeling stretched further than ever before, it is not just your imagination. As commercial interests generally rule the day in modern American culture, worker productivity, which measures output per man hour worked, has grown at a historic pace over the past few years, while real wages for 99% of the workforce have remained flat since 1980. Technology has allowed companies to adapt just as the cavemen did with stone tools, where they have learned to do more with less. The rank and file worker has adapted to meet these demands as well, with their GPS systems and smartphones, processing more information than ever just to keep up.

Why is this relevant to our conversation? Because mobile technology has become indispensible for nearly everyone just to keep their heads above water. People are getting less information for their desktops and more from their mobile devices. 3G was the game changer, as folks could get the information they needed at speeds that no longer felt like watching paint dry. In fact, it was reported by The Neilson Company last month that people use their phones more for data than voice communications. This is a crucible of sorts, where Rudder Finn Public Relations reported that Americans spend 2.7 hours per day on average using the mobile internet.

This may explain your bewilderment about why less than 5% of your Constant Contact mass emails get opened. This is why RTS Mobile’s e-Blast is a more effective tool for reaching your customers in a way that’s simply more relevant to these new behaviors—an impactful subject line and no more than 3 or 4 sentences of witty, informative text, usually involving a bargain of some sort, that can be read clearly on their mobile devices. You’ll find it to be a more personal and successful way to reach your people, bump your numbers, and it’s free. In this case, behavior begets the technology and the technology drives the behavior, at once.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 2.21)
 
Description:

Is Apple the center of the mobile universe?

Perhaps one might think we’re fixated on Apple if you’ve read our last couple of postings. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Our mobile solution can be viewed clearly and function efficiently from any mobile device and does so at the lowest price in the marketplace. However, it appears that the marketing and developer communities are quite fixated. While Goggle’s Android platform, one of the iPhone’s main, if not principal competitor has over 10,000 apps in their Android Market, Apple has more than ten times that in their App Store.

Citibank recently released Citi Shopper, an iPhone application that will search local and internet retailers for better bargains on just about anything you want to buy…there’s over a billion items in their database from which to comparison shop. Both stores have been flooded with orders for apps related to the FIFA World Cup. Even an old, reliable company like Clorox has created an app that positions the brand as the go-to source for removing stains. In fact, it’s been a big hit among young and mobile moms who can share stain-removing tips with one another while the company refreshed its brand and made it relevant for the 21st century. There are thousands of case studies just like this. Such stories inform the potential scope of this burgeoning mobile arena.

Our last post reported that according to the market value metric, Apple is the most valuable technology company in the world. Yet, with all those programmers in the Apple shadow economy developing apps for the iPhone, people seem to forget that the iPhone only holds an 18% share in the world smartphone marketplace. That means 82% of mobile phone consumers use an entirely different platform! That’s Google’s Android or RIM’s Blackberry or Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, etc.

So why is the industry essentially ignoring 82% of the marketplace? Incentives are certainly part of the equation—app developers get to earn 70% of the revenues. Another factor is that both the iPhone and Android provide their own universal platforms. However, we think this is a fundamentally unsound way to market your company, your product or your service. We believe that your message ought to be accessible and fully functional on any mobile device. That’s what makes the simple, elegant solution RTS Mobile provides so relevant. Meanwhile, there are thousands of developers scrambling to either talk their clients into scrapping their Flash websites altogether or developing iPhone apps to only partially solve the problem. Unfortunately for their clients, both these approaches require considerable investment.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 2.22)

Description:

The greatest show on earth?

Okay. So we’ve dedicated a lot of space to Apple. Fine. But they sure do give us an awful lot to comment on, don’t they? And I don’t think there’s any doubt that Apple has been the principal catalyst in the mobile revolution, from the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad. These innovative designs, platforms and delivery systems are fundamentally changing the way people engage and use technology.

We stated in a previous post that Microsoft still creams Apple in overall market share, as well as revenues and profits. If Apple is the most valuable technology company in the world in terms of market cap, then we might surmise that much of that value is based on the market’s perception of its worth. Investors apparently are willing to pay an exceptional premium based on the company’s potential, rather than how much money it makes. One could conclude that we haven’t seen this degree of optimism since the subprime mortgage mess of 2007 or the dot com bubble of 2000.

Perhaps what we really have in CEO Steve Jobs is the best salesman the world has ever known. Or at least since P.T. Barnum.

For those too young to remember The Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus as anything but the dirty, smelly display of sad carnies, clowns, acrobats and questionable animal treatment practices, it was once truly “The Greatest Show on Earth.” A century ago, there were few entertainment options for regular folks in the days before the movie palaces, radio and TV. It was the equivalent of a U2 tour and Shrek rolled into one. We were a young, pioneering and rapidly expanding country with less than a third of the population we have today. Naivety was a common condition among these isolated populations and let’s face it—the west (meaning west of Pennsylvania) was settled mostly by folks who couldn’t get a better gig in the east or they held wildly romantic notions of their potential. Hustlers often prevailed in these conditions and Snake Oil Salesmen were actual people selling phony elixirs to the gullible. While P.T. Barnum indeed provided entertainment unrivaled for his generation, by most accounts, he was definitely one of these guys.

Barnum’s most famous quote was, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” later revised by the equally famous comedian and drunkard W.C. Fields, “Never give a sucker an even break.” However, the most salient and fitting quote I remember from Barnum was, “You’ll never lose money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Yes, he had vision and guile, but above all else, he was a salesman, and a very good one at that.

We read the daily stories about Apple, a closed platform where Mr. Jobs tells us what we want and in the case of Flash, what we can’t have due to “eating up too many system resources” and “compromising system stability,” and in the context of the patents Apple holds for its own video and animation platforms, I can’t help but to think of P.T. Barnum. I also think our current technology cycles coming at us faster than anytime in human history, and that we’re living in a variation of the wild, wild west ourselves where regulations and anti-trust inquiries can’t possibly keep up with what amounts to a technology land-grab.

To be fair, Apple most certainly has very real products, patents, sales and profits and there is a tangible value to these assets. It’s possible that what we’re really witnessing is true excellence. However, we think that it’s very important that we all remember to think for ourselves and look at each of our investments, whether it be an iPad, Apple stock or your company’s overall marketing and web strategy with an educated, yet jaundiced eye. That’s what this blog is all about.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 2.1)

Description:

The Third Wave

As I write this, CNBC is broadcasting “Planet of The Apps,” their original program about the mobile revolution and the sub-economies it creates. The eye of this hurricane of course, is Apple who introduced the iPhone in 2007. Apple’s app store currently generates over $200 million in monthly sales. Given that Apple keeps 30% of those revenues as a commission, this new, billion dollar industry offers a very nice living for legions of home-based programmers who develop and write code for all these cool application ideas. I’ll bet many of these jobs aren’t reported in the government’s monthly employment estimates.

You’ve probably heard of a few. Can’t remember the name of a song you’re listening to? No problem…there’s an app for that. Just hold your iPhone up to the speaker and it will tell you the name of the song, its artist, the release date and even connect you to iTunes where you can buy it for 99 cents. Pretty neat. And what about those who wring their hands endlessly fearing that Americans can no longer innovate in the global economy? Well, that’s a conversation for another day…

So what does all this mean? Fifty or a hundred years from now, historians may very well write that Apple engineered the mobile revolution. While this is factually open to debate, one thing we know is that Apple did not invent the mobile music player (remember the Sony Walkman?) or the mobile phone (remember the “brick” used by Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko in 1987?) or the tablet computer (remember Microsoft’s Tablet PC in 2001?) any more than Google invented the internet.

What Apple did do was to apply the technology toward a better delivery system and a more user-friendly experience. While there’s much chatter in the blogosphere about their selling over a million iPads during its first month, whether the iPad will cannibalize Amazon’s Kindle and what will become of the anti-trust implications in the rift between Apple and the Adobe Flash platform that drives most video content on the internet.

What really matters is what venture capitalist John Deorr calls the Third Great Wave of Technology Change. The first was the PC era, the second was the internet and the latest is the mobile era. The most important technology product no longer sits on your desk but rather fits in your hand. It's mobile, interactive and immersive. It's about people, places, location, sharing; not websites on a PC. Consumer behavior has fundamentally shifted, and because of this phenomenon, so have expectations. It’s not the pool we’re swimming in that’s changed, but the water itself. The technology “water” we swim in is an on-demand experience, and it’s mobile.

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 2.12)

Description:

What is Apple worth?

There was much written last month when Apple released its most recent quarter’s earnings. The big news was that David’s Apple had slayed Goliath’s Microsoft in terms of valuation, what financial industry insiders call Market Cap, or the total value of a company’s outstanding shares. According to Wall Street, Apple is now worth more than Microsoft, undeniably a significant development. This represents a major shift in how the market views its technology investments. While Microsoft has a presence in mobile technology, nearly all its revenue is derived from desktop applications. In contrast, most of Apple’s revenue is derived from mobile technologies and products. As we wrote in our last post, the market has told us that most important technology products today no longer sit on a desk—they fit in your hand and you take them with you.

Of course, there has been considerable debate about what constitutes how much a company is really worth. After all, Microsoft’s aggregated market share of 87% dwarfs that of Apple’s 16%. But viewing this from a very macro perspective, for the market to consider Apple the second most valuable company in the world, second only to Exxon Mobil, it is newsworthy indeed.

But in an attempt to put this in perspective, do the math. Apple stock was priced at $266 in early May. And there are just under 1 billion of these shares in existence. At current prices, if you wanted to buy the entire company it would cost you about $240 billion. Author Brett Arends of MarketWatch reports:

To put that in context, for the same amount of money you could own Newmont Mining Corp., the world's largest gold-mining company. And E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., the chemicals giant. And Kellogg Co., whose products appear on every breakfast table. And Shrek studio DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. And H&R Block Inc., the company that does everybody's taxes. And The New York Times Co. And Molson Coors Brewing Co. And the Estee Lauder Cos Inc. And Tiffany & Co., the Hershey Co., Harley-Davidson Inc., Expedia Inc., Abercrombie & Fitch Co., American Eagle Outfitters, Burger King Holdings Inc., CBS Corp., Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., Whole Foods Market Inc., Starbucks Corp., Netflix Inc., JetBlue Airways Corp., NStar, and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc.

No kidding.
I have no problem with paying more for Apple than for any of these companies. But for all of them put together?
And so the debate rages. But we give Apple their due. They changed the game, and of that we can be very sure. Investment markets have fundamentally changed the way they value technology companies because consumer markets have fundamentally changed the way they use technology. Consider this: Google analytics reports that the number of mobile searches has increased five fold over the last two years. When consumers search for your company on their mobile devices, will they be able to find you?

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Title: Mobile Matters (vol. 1.1)
 
Description:

Welcome to our inaugural post of Mobile Matters!

We hope you enjoy our daily ruminations about all things mobile in this, our maiden voyage in the blogosphere. Our observations will be culled not only from the news, but also from our daily experiences as we bring mobile functionality to an increasingly aware and changing marketplace.

Mobile communications and the warp-speed evolving technologies that drive it, is a very big deal. Frankly, it’s changing everything. It’s not just changing how we communicate with one another, but how we obtain information and perhaps disquieting for some, how information finds us. If 3G was the subterranean tremor, 4G represents the game-changing tsunami that transforms how we communicate, inquire and learn.

There is more computing capacity in the simplest of mobile phones than what powered the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the moon. For those of us who actually remember Neil Armstrong’s one small step for man, this is indeed a shocking revelation. Look no further than our parents texting our own offspring for evidence. Sure, this is “gee-whiz” stuff, but we won’t just be talking about gadgets here. We’ll also be considering the commercial, social and cultural aspects of these emerging, yet fast maturing technologies. We feel it’s important for all us to remember that no technology exists, from the wheel to the supercollider, unless there is a human purpose for it.

We hope you not only find our posts informative, but thought-provoking as well. We hope that these conversations move from your monitor to the water cooler, both virtual and actual. After all, mobile communications weren’t developed to separate us, but to bring us closer together. From the printing press to the internet, technology has always been a great leveler of playing fields. Every day, millions of people are exploring the internet for the very first time from their mobile devices. The content of a thousand libraries is but a click away. Again, this is a very big deal.

While some of what you will read here are obviously opinion pieces, we will attempt to clearly distinguish our impressions from factual representations. You may not always agree with us, but we will endeavor to be accurate and we’ll dutifully cite our sources. We believe there is plenty of innuendo to be found elsewhere on the net…no need for us to tarry with that here.

And finally, we want to make sure we don’t forget our manners in all this excitement and thank you for reading. It is your engagement that renders this exercise purposeful. In time, we hope to offer space for your comments and contributions. Like mobile communications itself, we consider this blog to be a democratic platform, available to everyone. That said, we’d respectfully like to ask you to remember your manners, too. As our president has often been quoted, “We can disagree without being disagreeable.” Let’s not allow the anonymity of the internet to eclipse the free flow of ideas, indeed what this blog is all about.

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