I have a thought.

I was just reading an article on RCR Wireless about political text messages, Obama’s in particular. In it, author Colin Gibbs writes, “But in the course of a few weeks, Obama’s text-messaging effort has grown from a national curiosity to a bona fide new way to register volunteers, create stickiness with potential voters and keep supporters in the loop.” This got me to thinking.

In two weeks the election will be over. Someone, Obama or McCain, will emerge the victor. Afterward, there will be no more campaigning, no more debates, no more rallies or fund raisers. In short, there will be nothing more to receive a text message about.

But does it have to be that way? (more…)

So, maybe the Obama VP text message didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. And maybe I’m a little embarrassed because I hyped it up. But rather than rant about how horrible it was (because that’s what I thought I’d do that Saturday morning), I’m going to try, try to be objective about. Therefore, I’m going to use a numbered list because nothing is more objective than a numbered list.

1. Sending a text message to 2.9 million or so people at 3:24 AM ET is generally a bad thing. I’m a little strict about this, so I think sending a text after 7pm in most cases is pushing it (unless it’s a severe weather warning or a snow day announcement or about a dozen other reasonable things that I can’t think of at the moment). Therefore, in my mind, any time during the dark AM hours is off-limits. You risk waking up people in middle of the night (like this guy) and losing their trust, their business, and maybe even their vote.
2. Sending a text message containing information that the press leaked hours before is generally a bad thing, too. With mobile marketing, you should try to send timely, valuable information. Therefore, if everyone already knows the information you would like to present in 160 characters on their cell phone, then you also risk losing their trust, their business, and yes, maybe even their vote.

(more…)

The key to a good mobile campaign is to offer the user something that they can only get through mobile. Whether that be a coupon or an exclusive alert, the user should feel like they gained something of value.

The reason I bring this up is because I received another text message from the Barack Obama campaign yesterday evening (in fact, it was 6:53pm ET, which is a little late in my mind, but I’ll save that discussion for another day).

Here’s the value that the message offered:

Barack will announce his
VP candidate choice
through txt msg between
now & the Conv. Tell
everyone to text VP to
62262 to be the first to
know! Please forward.

That seemed pretty cool and valuable to me. The Obama campaign is giving its opted-in users something that no one else will get, or at least it’s giving them something before everyone else will get it: information. (more…)