Lenco Mobile Technology

Many companies find themselves in a situation where they would like to drive more products and services to their customer base via MMS, but are concerned by the number of MMS phones in their base which are capable of receiving an MMS message. And then there is the lack of education amongst consumers as to the use and power of MMS as a communication medium.

Lenco Mobile has created a mobile portal that can be used to drive the uptake of MMS as a messaging service, while increasing MMS activations within an existing customer base. With SMS dominating as a medium for messaging, Lenco Mobile set out to educate potential users as to the capabilities of MMS, by offering MMS cards that can be downloaded and forwarded to friends. Launched three years ago, the mobile greeting cards portal has been highly successful and millions of mobile greeting cards have been downloaded by subscribers.

Users are able to browse the various categories of mobile greeting cards and select a card to preview before requesting that it be sent to their handset. Users also have the ability to forward the card directly from the system to a second number, along with a personalized message that will display underneath the playing card. Every single card that is sent from the mobile greeting cards portal contains a link back to the mobi-site that cannot be removed. This ensures that every person that receives a mobile message will in turn be able to follow the link and download cards as well. This creates a tremendous viral spread of the mobile greeting cards.

Lenco Mobile has signed an international partnership agreement with American Greeting cards to deliver mobile versions of the greeting card content they own in selected territories. Access to the world famous content owned by American Greetings means that soon there will be literally thousands of greeting cards to choose from.

Case Study: Vodacom, South Africa

Lenco Mobile has developed and managed a mobile greeting card portal for Vodacom, a wireless carrier and part of the Vodafone Group. Mobile greeting card offer Vodacom subscribers the opportunity to have mobile greeting cards sent directly to their phone that can in turn be forwarded on to friends and family.

Currently, the mobi-site portal has over four hundred individual cards available for download in multiple languages. This portal has only been marketed via MMS campaigns, and has more recently been included as a reward incentive for users who have recently upgraded their contract.

The mobile greeting cards portal is constantly updated according to the current holiday calendar in South Africa, including cards for public holidays and special events.

Other categories available for browsing are:

• Birthday cards

• Romantic Cards

• Love Cards

• Pickup lines

• Sorry Cards

• Thank you

• Emotional Cards

• Congratulations

• Friendship

• Just Because

• Get well soon cards

• Fun cards

• Let’s get together

• Holiday cards, including Valentine’s Day, Christmas, New years, Easter, etc.

The mobile greeting card portal has been marketed using MMS campaigns and is now being used by the Vodacom content portal to promote music downloads and other mobile content services.  Given the traffic experienced on the portal, a mobile advertising opportunity arose, where advertising banner spots were made available at premium rates. Subscribers can opt-in to receive reminders and notifications of additional content, such as news highlights, music availability, and even whenever new cards are uploaded to the mobisite.

RESULTS

The mobile greeting cards portal was first implemented as a means to grow the MMS revenue of Vodacom, and has since grown into 1 of the top 5 Mobile Websites in South Africa, peaking at over 1 000 000 page hits in a single day!

Mobile greeting cards have been used extensively as a relationship-building tool between Vodacom and its subscribers. Vodacom is the only wireless carrier to offer free content on such a massive scale. In addition, Vodacom has experienced massive revenue growth generated by the P2P MMS data traffic, as cards are downloaded and forwarded to friends and family. Over the 2009 Christmas and New Year period, Vodacom experienced a 32.6% increase in data transfer revenue, attributed to mobile greeting cards alone!