Thirty-eight percent of American mobile phone users — 120 million people — access the web via their mobile device; fewer than 30 million are iPhones or Android phones. (Mobile Access 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project). This percentage increases dramatically among the under-served 30% of the population without reliable non-mobile Internet access (Pew). The growth of the mobile web will continue to be very rapid in the coming years — and will have substantially more reach than iPhone or Android applications. According to a research report by Morgan Stanley, mobile web usage will exceed all other web usage by 2015.

This leads to a common misconception: that your organization must immediately “mobilize” its website, by creating a mobile friendly version of your existing website.

This approach misses two key facts: one, users are already using your website on their phones, and two, mobile web users have different needs than desktop users.

In reality, when planning a mobile web strategy, you should consider the following factors:

I. Web surfing behavior on a mobile phone differs from the desktop

Traditional web pages are a place where users seamlessly browse a multitude of links in a discovery process. Not so with the mobile web. Mobile web usage is relevant and successful when it can deliver the exact information that the mobile user needs or wants. Mobile browsers, even on smart phones, are not conducive to searching, browsing, or exploration. Sending someone to the mobile version of the front page of your website will likely not be useful to the viewer — or your organization.

Mobile web pages are effective when they deliver precisely targeted information. For example, simple or pre-populated forms, maps and location information, simple advocacy tools such as petitions, or simple instructions such as consumer or medical information. This is the type of content that should be converted into mobile optimized web pages and can be very effective for you and your constituents.

II. Mobile visitors have limited non-standard browsers with which to get information
Mobile phones come in all shapes and sizes. Even smart phones vary significantly. (If you have a Blackberry, try asking an iPhone user if your phone is “smart” and prepare to be teased.)

Most phones have little screens (see chart below) and render graphics poorly. Additionally, there are dozens of browsers and formats among the hundreds of makes and models. This requires building mobile web sites to the lowest common denominator. The lowest common denominator is text and images and not much of either. In some cases, it may make sense to create separate optimized mobile sites for iPhone, Android, and one for all others. This will depend on the particular use case and the audience. Media and content rich mobile sites may serve to frustrate rather than serve your audience.

III. How will I get people to my mobile site?
The technical and behavior differences between mobile phone web users and computer web users noted above impacts the ways in which your potential audience will discover the mobile site. Users rarely enter a URL onto their phones; instead, they follow links. Mobile sites are most commonly accessed via sent links (primarily text messages, Twitter, Facebook and email) and secondarily, through mobile search.

Your organization should have a strategy to engage its potential mobile audience at least via those primary channels. A successful mobile web program typically requires a call to action beginning with a text message (or Tweet or email) which conveys the preliminary information and then drives people via link to the mobile web page which has been optimized as discussed above.

The mobile web is big today and will be huge tomorrow. In order to win at the mobile web, you need to understand how it is being used by your audience and optimize your content for those purposes.

By Jed Alpert, cross-posted on the NTEN blog

We’re all familiar with getting form letters and emails that are addressed to us personally. For example, “Dear Benjamin, we have a special offer for you.” But did you know you can do that with your text messages too? When composing outgoing text message in Mobile Commons, you can add special characters to the message and it will automatically be merged with the recipients personalized information.

For example, “A special offer for you, ((first_name)). Visit any local store in ((city)) for 10% off.” will be delivered to my phone saying “A special offer for you, Benjamin. Visit any local store in Brooklyn for 10% off.”

The data fields such as name and address are automatically pulled from your Mobile Commons profile database. It’s easy to populate these fields in your database. You can import them yourself, data sync with your CRM platform, or even ask people to text in their information. Mobile Commons can automatically collect Name, Email, Address, and many, many more fields directly out of a text message.

Want to learn more about personalizing your text messages using mail merge? Just email us at info@mcom.ms.

With only 160 characters, it’s sometimes tough to fit those long URLs into your messages. Popular services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com can help shorten your long web links for you, but did you know that Mobile Commons can do it too?

Mobile Commons takes link shortening to the next level: every phone gets their own unique shortened link.

For example, let’s say you shorten http://www.mobilecommons.com. One person will get a link http://lil.ms/1ex and another will get http://lil.ms/1qo. When clicked, both links automatically redirect to http://www.mobilecommons.com. But now you can tell who clicked since each and every link is unique. And once they’ve clicked, you now know what type of browser and handset they use. If you’ve ever added links to your outgoing email messages and looked at the reports, you already know exactly how this works.

Using Mobile Commons link shortener, you can now add mobile web browsing behavior to your customer database and segment accordingly. Mobile Commons is the only platform that lets you construct profiles based on all mobile behavior, including text messages, phone calls, mobile web browsing, and, for our nonprofit customers, mobile donations.

Getting started with link shortening is easy. Just enclose a URL in double parenthesis when composing any text message, for example “Visit ((http://www.mobilecommons.com)) to learn more” and we take care of the rest!

Extra Tip: Don’t forget the “http://” part. Many phones require that to make the links clickable.

AmeriCares, Catholic Relief Services and Habitat for Humanity adopt mobile for engaging supporters and fundraising

NEW YORK – March 8, 2010 – In the aftermath of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile, nonprofit organizations raced to mobilize aid and plan recovery efforts, while also raising resources and funds to support their humanitarian programs in Chile. Mobile Communications and Mobile Fundraising have become critical components to nonprofit outreach programs.

In response, AmeriCares, Catholic Relief Services and Habitat for Humanity have expanded their use of SMS and mobile marketing beyond just text-to-give to include critical, informational updates on their relief efforts to donors, as well as to bring new supporters into their organizations.

The following organizations are running Chile Earthquake Relief programs, powered by Mobile Commons:

• Text LIVE to 25383 to donate $10 to AmeriCares
• Text QUAKE to 25383 to donate $10 to Catholic Relief Services
• Text CHILE to 25383 to donate $10 to Habitat for Humanity

To complete your mobile donation, simply reply YES to confirm a one-time donation. Your donation
will appear on your mobile phone bill. All donations are tax-deductible.

“Our ability to have a dialogue with our supporters via mobile messaging allows us to have an ongoing relationship with them, beyond just making a text donation. This is especially important to organizations like Habitat as our supporters really want to be connected to our efforts,” said Tim Daugherty, senior director, Direct Marketing for Habitat for Humanity.

“The recent Haiti Relief efforts were breathtaking. Dozens of organizations were able to immediately launch a response using their mobile programs. For Chile, organizations further advanced their use of mobile SMS messaging to a highly-effective communications medium that also includes immediate fundraising,” added Anthony Risicato, CEO of Mobile Commons. “We’re extremely fortunate to work with non-profits who can have such a direct, positive impact and who continue to innovate – driving the entire industry forward.”

About AmeriCares
AmeriCares is a nonprofit international disaster relief and humanitarian aid organization, which delivers medicines, medical supplies and aid to people in crisis around the world. Since it was established in 1982, AmeriCares has distributed more than $9.0 billion in humanitarian aid to 137 countries. For more information, log onto www.AmeriCares.org.

About Catholic Relief Services
Catholic Relief Services is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. The agency provides assistance to people in more than 100 countries and territories based on need, regardless of race, nationality or creed. For more information, please visit http://www.crs.org or http://www.crsespanol.org.

About Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity International is an ecumenical Christian ministry that welcomes to its work all people dedicated to the cause of eliminating poverty housing. Since its founding in 1976, Habitat has built, rehabilitated, repaired or improved more than 350,000 houses worldwide, providing simple, decent and affordable shelter for more than 1.75 million people. For more information, or to donate or volunteer, visit www.habitat.org.

About Mobile Commons
Mobile Commons pioneers easy-to-use technology for scalable mobile marketing campaign management. The company’s award-winning mobile messaging platform helps non-profits, brands and agencies quickly launch and manage mobile marketing campaigns from one Web-based user interface coupled with powerful analytics and reporting. The platform’s user interface and APIs seamlessly integrate SMS, voice and Web applications with CRMs and databases, as well as Twitter, Facebook applications, flash widgets, and geo-location features.
Mobile Commons’ technology has powered hundreds of successful mobile campaigns in the brand advertising, agency, advocacy, political and charitable giving sectors, including Credo Mobile, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Oxfam International, Andre Agassi Foundation, ASPCA, NYC Department of Public Health, Care USA, National Association of Realtors, National Basketball Association’s (NBA’s) Sacramento Kings, DoSomething.org, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and more. Mobile Commons is also an approved provider of Mobile Giving programs, and a member of the Mobile Giving Foundation (http://mobilegiving.org/). For more information, please visit: http://MobileCommons.com or text MCOM to 30644.

Press Contact:
press@mobilecommons.com
+1.212.537.5175

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