Amazon is testing new waters in mobile marketing with its Text-Buy-It technology launched earlier this week. The new service allows customers to check prices from their cell-phone completely through text messaging - bypassing the need to access the mobile web (many people still don’t have web access or incur extra costs per web page viewed). Most if not all phones are text-ready and in general it’s not complicated to figure out.

Since Amazon undersells most brick-and-mortar retailers and is aggressively expanding its product line (including wines), physical stores could turn into local showrooms for Amazon’s inventory - only to help push customers towards an Amazon conversion.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Text a product name, search keyword, UPC code or ISBN number to “AMAZON” (262966)
Step 2: Amazon sends back a numbered list of products and prices matching your search
Step 3: If you find the item you want in stock and at a favorable price you can click the number beside the result to buy
Step 4: Amazon calls (not texts) you back with final details of your order
Step 5: You confirm or cancel your purchase, provide an email address and select a preferred shipping speed

While customers can’t access features that makes Amazon famous like customer reviews and cross-sell suggestions, this is likely going to be a very popular service that could really nail local retailers - the country is in a recession, businesses are already feeling the pinch and customers are more price sensitive.

No word on super-saver shipping options for multiple purchases or if purchases made within a certain time period can be combined.

We can thank Amazon for pioneering many innovations in ecommerce and now mobile commerce. This is certainly an exciting development for discount retailers like Overstock who could develop similar services. It could also work well for etailers that sell items carried by other retailers and can’t compete on price, but have earned loyal and passionate customers through rewards programs, great service or word-of-mouth (Zappos is a good example).

If you’ve been following my posts here at Get Elastic, you may have noticed I love doing “roundups” — lists of similar but different services or websites (especially Web 2.0 sites) that give a brief summary of what you can expect if you click through on the pretty little logo. You’ll also notice that I’m on a bit of an mcommerce kick lately, as I find this is such a hot marketing channel that you probably haven’t heard much about.

Last week I posted about the Moosejaw Texting campaign and Slifter, a GPS enabled local / mobile product comparison engine. Just to recap, mcommerce is hot, text messaging (SMS) is a great way to promote your ecommerce OR brick-and-mortar shop, people can now search for products with their mobile phones, compare prices and locations and get directions to retailers that have the product, mcommerce is hot, people are more likely to have a cellphone handy than be at a computer at any given time of the day, over 90% of text messages get read by their recipients, ummm…did I mention mcommerce is hot?

So today I’m providing a quick comparison of some of the SMS marketing solutions out there that can support YOUR marketing campaigns. Some SMS message services like Peekamo don’t allow for more than a handful of recipients at one time and are more suitable for personal use. So I went out and got my hands dirty to find enterprise solutions, and give you a brief comparison of what features they offer, what they cost, geographic coverage and so on.

But before we start, it helps to know what the acronyms and jargon mean:

• SMS stands for short message service. In other words - text messaging.
• MMS is the multimedia version of SMS - video, audio, pictures.
• WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol which is a mobile-based platform which accommodates the small screens and slow data rates of mobile phones so your pages display properly. Some cellphones support WAP Billing, so they can pay directly through their mobile.
• IVR means Interactive Voice Response and you’ve likely encountered it calling your ISP, bank, phone company or any other number where you wish you got a person instead of some canned options. But IVR actually makes life better, and in this case cooler - enabling mobile survey capabilities, contests and other promotions.
• Short codes are shorter cellphone numbers that are supposed to be easier to remember than longer mobile numbers. These work great for contests, if you’ve ever watched American Idol, you’d know what I mean. You could for example text the word “GETELASTIC” to 493829 (if I were running a contest and if that were my short code.)

OK, now that that’s all cleared up…here’s the roundup.

Continue Reading:
Text Message Marketing Provider Roundup »

It’s the night before your wife’s birthday and you’re scrambling to find that perfect gift, and not just any gift will do. She’s had her heart set on a rare Lionel Ritchie box set and you’ve got two hours before every mall closes its doors. If you’d hit up Amazon six weeks ago you wouldn’t be in this jam.

Now imagine you could whip out your cellphone, perform a quick search and tap into a database of over 85 million products from 30,000 retail stores tagged by zipcode. Entering a keyword, UPC code, product name or model number would deliver a list of stores by distance from where you are right now (in the McDonald’s drive thru lineup) along with prices. And you can view product images, descriptions and even pay for the product while your apple pie is being boxed. Then your cellphone gives you GPS enabled directions (unlike the sometimes unreliable MapQuest) to pick up your order.

Sound like the distant future? It’s already here. GPShopper has made it happen and introduced a new advertising channel for offline retailers (or etailers with physical stores), with top etailers like BestBuy, Toys R Us and Staples already on board.

Continue Reading:
mCommerce: GPShopper Turns Cell-phones into Sell-phones »