24 hours.

So much can happen. In the rollercoaster of start-up land, July 27th – July 28th was a good 24 hours for Fanminder:

• We were notified by Intuit that we’ve been invited to their 2nd Annual Entrepreneur Day on August 16th. Out of hundreds of applicant developers, we were one of 40 developers chosen!
• We just about wrapped development and QA of our integration with our newest strategic partner. The partnership launches Wednesday 7/28. More on this tomorrow!
• We received our very first product review by TJ McCue (it’s great) writing on Anita Campbell’s Small Biz Trends website.
• Our newest chain of two very large gardening supply centers, began promoting their mobile club.
• We had a great meeting with Neal Polachek, President of BIA/Kelsey Group. Scary vulcan mind-meld.

A few months’ back I participated in the Los Altos Chamber of Commerce Social Media Panel. There was a good series of discussions in this wide-ranging panel for mostly new-to-social-media business owners.

You can watch a series of mini-webisodes drawn from the session here:

http://bit.ly/socialmediavideos

Small businesses of all sizes and colors can benefit from mobile marketing. Appointment-based businesses, such as a hair salon, can send appointment reminders. Retailers can alert fans to new products or sales. And any business can communicate with its employees quickly and effectively.

The 1^st Annual Fanminder Small Business Mobile Marketing Survey¹ validates compelling benefits of mobile marketing programs to small businesses:

More than 50% of respondents were “very” or “extremely” interested in four out of the five benefits listed.

Letting customers send referrals to their friends came out on top, showing the social power of mobile marketing when customers can reach out to their contacts instantly, from anywhere. Right behind referrals were sending promotions (coupons, offers and specials) and sharing news and information.

Complete results for the five benefits in the survey are:

How do you think mobile marketing can best deliver benefits to small businesses?

¹ 1st annual Fanminder Small Business Mobile Marketing Survey analysis based on 42 responses to an online survey.

We’re very excited to share our newest feature, Fanminder Offers. It’s a frequently requested feature by customers seeking to provide trackable specials, offers, and coupons that minimize or eliminate coupon fraud.

We think Fanminder Offers is unique in the text messaging industry for small businesses. Today, almost all text message marketing providers for small businesses, are, well, just that – text message providers. But with Fanminder Offers we’re signaling that we’re becoming a very different kind of company – one focused on creating marketing programs tailored to the specific needs of local, small businesses.

So instead of just giving you a free form text box which you can fill in (important, to be sure, for all kinds of reasons), now you can set the parameters of an interactive coupon and our system will treat it as, well, a coupon! Enough blathering… read on dear customer…

Features and Benefits

Fanminder Offers enables you to send or schedule a one-time use interactive coupon, special, or offer that’s redeemed in-store by your fans. It provides automatic revenue tracking and eliminates fraud by limiting an Offer to a single use. Offers also create a sense of urgency that brings your fans back to your business by placing a customizable expiration date on the Offer.

• Offers can be blasted to your fans’ mobile phones or attached to the Welcome Message when a fan first joins your fanbase.
• Offers can only be used one time by the mobile phone that it was originally sent to, prior to the customizable expiration date.
• Offers are defaulted to 7 days to create a sense of urgency, but can be set to expire at any time.
• No integration with your point of sale needed.
• You can blast Offers to your entire fanbase, a group, or simply reward that special fan.
• Save any Offer as a Draft.
• View all Live, Scheduled, Drafts and Expired Offers in an easy to view table format.
• Get a real-time preview of your coupon as you are making it.
• Fans get the convenience of carrying your offers and coupons on their phone, so they’re available when they need them.

How does this feature work?

1. Create and send your Offer.
2. Each Offer contains a unique, 4 digit redemption code, expiration date, and instructions for redeeming it.
3. Your fans come back to your business with the Offer and pays at your point of sale. To redeem the Offer, a fan simply replies back to the text message with the 4 digit code.
4. In a few seconds, we automatically validate the redemption code and send back to the fan’s phone either a ‘Congrats’ or a ‘Sorry’ message. Fan simply shows it to the staff.

Well that’s a mouthful to say!

We’re pleased to share the results of our first-ever survey to small businesses about their beliefs and attitudes regarding mobile marketing. We conducted the survey in June and July 2010.

Mobile Marketing is here to stay.

Google, Apple, Facebook. The biggest names in consumer technology, along with an army of ad agencies, big brands, and venture capital firms are pouring billions of dollars into mobile marketing. Why?  Because every day there’s more evidence that mobile marketing widely outperforms traditional marketing. Yet even as investment in mobile marketing grows overall, small businesses have not embraced mobile marketing.

So what’s holding small businesses back?

Results from the 1^st Annual Fanminder Small Business Mobile Marketing Survey¹ provide some insight as to why. It’s not for lack of awareness, as 81% say they have heard of mobile marketing. But fully 70% of those who are aware haven’t tried it. So why? Well, some ‘mobile marketing myths’ appear to be holding them back.

What are these myths?

Of those aware of mobile marketing, but who haven’t tried it:

• 44% think that they ‘don’t have time to figure out a new technology.’ This suggests that owners think mobile marketing will be ‘hard’ to do—a time-consuming process and/or difficult to figure out. As small businesses discover simple-to-use solutions like Fanminder, this perception should decrease.
• 30% think that mobile marketing ‘sounds expensive.’ It’s true that text message campaigns can be $50-$100 per campaign or per month. However, when the focus shifts from cost to results, the power of mobile marketing becomes clear. The business results that small business owners experience with the unmatched response rates of mobile more than justify the cost. And services such as Fanminder start at just $25/month, so getting started with mobile marketing can be affordable for even the smallest businesses.
• 30% simply ‘don’t know how to get started.’ Answering this question requires knowledge of mobile marketing providers, different program options, and the value of mobile marketing.  As this knowledge reaches small business owners, adoption of mobile marketing among small businesses will increase.

The survey also dispelled some commonly-held beliefs as myths:

• Satisfaction with current marketing programs is not a barrier to trying mobile marketing. Less than 20% of respondents cited ‘my current marketing programs are working’ as a reason for not trying mobile marketing.
• Only 13% worry ‘my customers won’t like it.’ Since owners know their customers, concerns about customer acceptance seem overblown.

What other mobile marketing myths do YOU think need dispelling?

¹ 1st annual Fanminder Small Business Mobile Marketing Survey analysis based on 42 responses to an online survey.

² Nielsen, “Flying Fingers.” Nielsen website