Optism™

Welcome to Optism’s first blog acting as curator for the Carnival of the Mobilists. In our dynamic industry, we’ve found that keeping abreast of what ecosystem members are saying is critical to staying on top. That’s why we published our Permission Marketing in the News blogs for almost two years! Now, we’re happy and honored to be a Carnival of the Mobilists host — and we’ve got a great collection of articles to suggest to you this week.

Our favorite comes from mobileweb company’s Martin Wilson. Martin shared his thoughts on responsive web design and why he believes it is falling far short of what people need. According to Martin, responsive web design is “a lazy way to approach mobile.” It focuses on delivering content that suits the size, platform and orientation of the device in use, rather than the needs of the mobile user. Because the content is PC oriented, it includes information that is not relevant in a mobile context and bulky graphics that bog down the mobile experience. Worse still, the information the user is most likely to be interested in, such as store locations, is often buried under pages of this unwanted stuff. Mobile, says Martin, can’t be an afterthought. It’s time for businesses to think about “mobile leading their online strategy.”

Other interesting posts from this week: Read the rest of this entry »

Two years ago, we started with a simple – but innovative – idea. We introduced a permission-based mobile marketing solution, called Optism, which put the user at the center of the experience. We asked people to tell us a little about themselves and their preferences so we could be sure that the ads they received on their mobile devices were relevant to their lives. And we gave them the ability to opt out of the service easily. We told them exactly what we were going to do and then we did it. Finally, we assured them that we would always respect their privacy.

Our solution provided a critical link between mobile operators and advertisers. Operators were able to leverage their unique relationship with subscribers to create advertising media that was more valuable to advertisers. For their part, advertisers loved being able to reach targeted, receptive audiences.

Like everyone else in this dynamic industry, we have learned from our experiences. We developed our own “best practices” for mobile marketing, based on the concept of “thinking human.” When you think human, you remember that there is a real person at the receiving end of any mobile marketing initiative and you engage with them in an open, honest and transparent way. Read the rest of this entry »

Since our inception, everyone at Optism has been focused on providing more value for our customers with a special emphasis on creating a great experience for people through our mobile solutions.

To that end, while other companies have rolled-out mobile marketing solutions which were not opt-in, Optism has been promoting permission-based mobile marketing as the best way to deliver a long-term, deeper level of engagement with people. We achieve this by providing mobile audiences with the opportunity to opt-in into a mobile  advertising service and share their interests and preferences, thereby receiving only the content they value. We believe this was a win-win-win as the results speak for themselves.

We see a similar “lack of value” focus on the right questions to ask regarding the mobile wallet. The news for mobile wallet has been mostly focused on the technology, which merchants will sign up, who will be in charge, etc.

What about the mobile wallet user?

What do they want in the mobile wallet?

We believe that one person who is asking the right questions is Omar Green, the Mobile Strategic Initiatives Director at Intuit. Mr. Green gave a talk last week at the SXSW conference, entitled Creating a Mobile Wallet Worth Having and it was reviewed by Mark Henricks from American Express Open in article entitled, A Mobile Wallet That Does More Than Help You Spend Money. We highly recommend reading this article. Mr. Green summed the key mobile wallet question as thus, “The last thing most of us need is something to help us spend money faster. We need something to help us spend money better.”

How can we spend better using a mobile wallet? Mr. Green says that the mobile wallet should be more like your financial advisor rather than your mobile ATM. He said it should alert you when you try to buy something that is not within your financial budget. Or it could connect with all your credit cards and would recommend the best one to use to receive the most points.

While we agree with Mr. Green’s vision for the mobile wallet, we would expand its scope. It should be more about helping you save time, providing convenience and hopefully, simplifying your life rather than just storing your money. It should have everything from your typical take out order at the local restaurant, to facilitating faster hotel room check-ins, to getting m-tickets for the football game that can be read at the point of entry to a stadium. It should help you reach your financial goals as well as your personal, and any other goals.

Let’s change the mobile wallet conversation and keep asking the right questions.