In an earlier blog article we discussed the usage of MMS for a number of “inbound” or “incoming” MMS use cases.

So the application here is that the customer or consumer takes a photo on their smart phone and sends the MMS to a suitable destination.

A number of business-focused use cases were discussed in our earlier blog article – however, this type of technology can of course be used in consumer-facing mobile services.

An interesting consumer service launched in South Africa last year by Cointel in association with LuckyMobile called Rate ‘n Date, allows interested people to send in an MMS photo of themselves and have their photos rated by other users on a scale of 1 to 10.  Granted, this is not the type of application for everyone, but an interesting use of MMS nonetheless!

Once the subscribers send in their MMS, they receive a WAP link enabling them to log into Rate ‘n Date to view their current scores.

The LuckyMobile Rate ‘n Date MMS service is detailed in the South African ITWeb Telecoms newsletter here;

http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=114394:cellphone-cellphone-in-my-hand-whos-the-fairest-in-the-land&catid=260

If you are an agency or reseller wanting to send MMS campaigns then please contact us for more information and rates. We offer the best MMS rates in Australia.

If you are an existing SMS or mobile provider looking for wholesale MMS A2P capability via our MMS gateway – to offer your own customers then please get in touch via our contact form.

To request a copy of our MMS API documentation, use our request page here.

If you have any other comments or questions, or would like to share your own successes with MMS, then free to leave a reply in the comment box below.

We have explored some interesting industry sectors who are adopting MMS in our earlier blog articles, including automotive, fashion and beauty brands, property and more.

Another industry which is perfectly suited for MMS messaging and for instance, the delivery of coupons, is the fast food industry.

It is a wonder why more fast food restaurants are not adopting this medium more widely – as it allows you to directly target consumers on the go, around meal times or slower days; to keep a steady stream of customers through the door.

Fast Food outlets are already producing enticing advertisements for meal deals, freebies and discount offers.  You typically don’t need to look far when you walk inside your nearest fast food outlet as the ads displayed on walls, digitally on signboards and pretty much everywhere else!  Not to mention the mass channel marketing they do across other mediums like print and social outside of the stores.

One such Mexican Fast Food Restaurant in the U.S. Taco John’s run a “TJ Awards” club whereby you can text into a short code to join the program.  Subscribers receive a MMS welcome message along with their first MMS coupon.  Each coupon has a unique promo code and finite expiry date.  Once subscribed, customers receive up to 4 messages per month.  It is a great use case for the fast food sector and a great means of attaining repeat business.

Tatango, a leading SMS and MMS provider in the U.S. detail the TJ Awards program for Taco John’s in their blog post here;

https://www.tatango.com/blog/taco-johns-goes-loco-over-mms-coupons/

If you are an agency or reseller wanting to send retail MMS campaigns for the fast food sector please contact us for more information and rates. We offer the best MMS rates in Australia.

If you are an existing SMS provider looking for wholesale MMS capability via our MMS gateway – to offer your own retail customers then please get in touch via our contact form.

To request a copy of our MMS API documentation, use our request page here.

If you have any other comments or questions, or would like to share your own successes with MMS in the fast food or restaurant industries, then free to leave a reply in the comment box below.

Unless you’ve been disconnected from the Internet for an extended period of time, no doubt you will have heard some of the buzz about Chatbots.  Chatbots are big news right now.

A Forbes article published recently, refers to a Forrester Research Report citing that nearly half of marketers and digital business executives surveyed for their H2 2016 Global Mobile Executive Online Survey, are currently using, testing or planning to use chatbots.

The same article goes on to talk about brands that have been experimenting with bots since 2015 and discusses some great examples from the likes of Estée Lauder to AmEx who are using the technology in customer service applications (for example).

Another interesting Forbes article on Chatbots, details some of the potential use cases, the benefits of having natural language conversations with customers – and the types of benefits to both brands/businesses and consumers.

I have read plenty of articles like those above.  Many of them discuss the use of Facebook Messenger, other messaging platforms like Kik, WeChat, WhatsApp and more, as well as SMS in Chatbots.

For marketers and digital executives, or indeed those organisations who are providing Chatbot capabilities, MMS should form a part of your strategy.

As discussed in one of our earlier articles, MMS is one of the simplest and purist forms of mobile communication. If you are engaging consumers via SMS, then you should also support MMS. And as we detailed in our article just last week, MMS is not just about broadcast – picture messages can also be received.  If you are going to support SMS in your chatbot experience then you ought to support MMS as well.  Indeed, your customers might respond to a SMS Chatbot conversation with an MMS anyhow so you should be ready for it!

It makes perfect sense to allow MMS in your chatbot strategy – in customer service applications for example a picture speaks a thousand words!  Why not allow the customer to send in a photo of their incident or service request by MMS?  In the case of a broken appliance for example, it would only help with diagnosing the problem sooner.  Not every customer is going to have a messaging App on their phone but practically everyone can send and receive an MMS.

So where is MMS in your Chatbot strategy?

If you are an agency or reseller wanting to add MMS to your Chatbot then please contact us for more information and rates. We offer the best MMS rates in Australia.

To request a copy of our MMS API documentation, use our request page here.

If you have any other comments or questions, or would like to share your own successes with MMS and Chatbots, then free to leave a reply in the comment box below.

In an earlier article we discussed the use of MMS in the retail sector. Extending that thought further is the use of MMS for fashion and beauty brands.

It makes perfect sense that fashion and beauty brands, or indeed the advertising agencies that represent them, would want to use MMS over SMS.  The visual element of MMS enables them to maintain consistency of branding across their other channels such as print, social media and television. Why use plain text when you can add that ‘wow factor’ with imagery, colour and movement?

Furthermore, in an earlier blog article, we discussed how the power of imagery can help to influence consumer buying decisions.

It is encouraging to hear of numerous examples of MMS being used in the fashion and beauty industry with great results.

Key2cell are an MMS provider with their own gateway in Hong Kong who have ran some interesting MMS campaigns for beauty brands such as Paco Rabanne and Shiseido.  They have used MMS for invitations, product announcements, promotions and more.

Key2cell’s case studies are featured here;

http://www.key2cell.com/case-studies/

Image: Courtesy Key2cell

If you are an agency or reseller wanting to send retail MMS campaigns please contact us for more information and rates. We offer the best MMS rates in Australia.

If you are an existing SMS provider looking for wholesale MMS capability via our MMS gateway – to offer your own retail customers then please get in touch via our contact form.

To request a copy of our MMS API documentation, use our request page here.

If you have any other comments or questions, or would like to share your own successes with MMS in the fashion and beauty industry, then free to leave a reply in the comment box below.

When discussing the applications for MMS most customers tend to think about broadcast applications: event promotions, MMS sales offers, seasonal marketing MMS campaigns, sending vouchers, ticketing via MMS and more.

What is less well known, is the ability to receive MMS, an “incoming MMS” if you will – then do something with the images or video received.  A well-worn myth is that only smartphones can send and receive MMS which is completely wrong – even older feature phones with cameras are perfectly capable of sending and receiving MMS.

So with a suitable MMS gateway such as Thirdscreen’s, you can prompt the consumer to send a text with photo, MMS (or PXT) to a designated number which can then route the images to an email address or post the MMS content directly to an application.

Why would you want to receive MMS via a computer anyway?

Well, here are some example use cases where receiving MMS would be beneficial and help provide a better customer experience;

Call Centres – Ask the customer to send in a photo of the call centre ID under discussion. Not all customers know how to use email on their mobile phone but most will know how to send a photo. The image can then be routed directly to a customer service agent.

Events, Incident Response – Onsite concerts, festivals and the like. Event goers can send in photos of any incidents whilst onsite helping incident response staff on the ground to respond more intuitively.

Help Desk – The customer can MMS a photo of the incident they are trying to resolve. Could be eg. a photo of a broken appliance or similar.  This helps the Help Desk personal resolve the incident more quickly because they can see it! Improves customer service all round.

Insurance Claims – Ask the consumer to send in a copy of the damaged property for review. With location services enabled on the consumers phone, the location of the photo will also be tagged reducing fraudulent claims and improving consumer experience at the same time.

If you are an agency or reseller wanting to send (or receive) MMS campaigns please contact us for more information and rates. We offer the best MMS rates in Australia.

If you are an existing SMS provider looking for wholesale MMS send/receive capability via our MMS gateway – to offer your own customers then please get in touch via our contact form.

To request a copy of our MMS API documentation, use our request page here.

If you have any other comments or questions, or would like to share your own successes with receiving MMS then free to leave a reply in the comment box below.

In an earlier article in this blog we discussed the power of imagery in marketing and brand communications.

Graphics, imagery and videos are also known to trigger our emotions in different ways. In the social media world, certain types of multimedia content effect our emotions in ways that cause us to share the content.  Some content has a viral effect and may get many hundreds, thousands or even millions of shares.

Emotions can also influence what we buy and our buying decisions. Buying decisions are after all, 80% emotional and only 20% based on logic.

With the ability of MMS to include multimedia content, much like social media – it is a wonder why more brands are not using MMS to trigger emotional buying responses from consumers.  And an often overlooked feature of MMS is the ability to share the multimedia content on social media platforms like Facebook.

The following article from The Social Ms discusses the power of emotions in content marketing and is a great read;
https://blog.thesocialms.com/power-emotions-in-content-marketing-reactions/

Some of the top emotions that influence our buying decisions are;

• Happiness
• Fear
• Surprise

So we would encourage you to think about triggering emotions in your content marketing and that includes MMS of course.

If you are an agency or reseller wanting to send visual MMS campaigns please contact us for more information and rates. We offer the best MMS rates in Australia.

If you are an existing SMS provider looking for wholesale MMS capability to offer your own customers then please get in touch via our contact form.

To request a copy of our MMS API documentation, use our request page here.

If you have any other comments or questions, or would like to share your own successes with MMS or content marketing, then free to leave a reply in the comment box below.