The post-Obama effect: American retailers now discovering cellphone and SMS

I caught this at Forum Oxford, where our dear friend Faith McGary of KGB - not that Soviet era spy organization, but rather the information services company that was until recently known as Infonxx who operate directory assistance services from America to UK to the Philippines. KGB indeed..

But yes, Faith reported on a story by CNBC, that for "Black Friday" several US giant retailers like Sears, JC Penney's and Amazon - using SMS alerts to inform consumers of special offers etc. MSNBC writes:

At JCPenney's Web site, for example, you can sign up for a wake-up call for the day after Thanksgiving, as well as get "helpful shopping tips" texted to your phone throughout the season. You may want to consider putting your phone on "vibrate" at work. Sears is launching "Sears2go," for cell phone users, who want to text in their orders, do product searches or find special offers. "Say you want to get a Craftsman tool set for your friend, You text in the order and Sears will text you back when your item is ready for pickup at the store you want," said Tom Aiello, division vice president for Sears Holdings Corp. "This creates a very easy way for people to use their mobile phone to shop." Amazon.com, among others, is also happy to send you a text alert for its "daily deals," if you're not already getting bombarded with e-mails from the Internet giant, as well as other retailers.

This is great news - for Americans and the American industry. The rest of the world has been well aware of the power of SMS text messaging for this decade already - any car dealer in Helsinki Finland for example, will inform you via SMS text messaging what is the status of your car maintenance, and when it is ready for pick-up etc. Nothing new here. But wonderful to see that finally, the Americans are waking up to SMS.

And personally, I am certain, that the Obama campaign's frequent and innovative use of SMS text messaging was a catalyst to this, especially the stunt to announce his VP pick - one of the biggest news stories of the year - via SMS to his supporters, rather than via traditional news conference, went a very long way to "wake up" the eyes of miscellaneous businesses and other groups in America, to the power of SMS text messaging. But again, our regular readers all know that, we already wrote in our book Communities Dominate Brands, that libraries in Finland five years ago gave alerts that your book needs to be renewed, via SMS (and better yet - allowed the renewal process via return SMS text message). Etc.

Great news, Faith. Thanks.

Comments

[TIZVAGTHOMIHONAVAIG]

hihsobmwhlkqlhkmwell, hi admin adn people nice forum indeed. how's life? hope it's introduce branch ;)