Stars Go Dim Mobile Marketing Campaign Success

Stars Go Dim are prolific marketers of their music and it shows: Their music is featured on the Letters to God movie soundtrack, "Get Over It" was just featured on the AOL Music homepage, and they've been on MTV's The Real World. So when they wanted to get their mobile fan club rocking, they used the Contest feature of our mobile marketing service to get the word out and build their mobile fan base quickly.

Working with Adva Mobile, Stars Go Dim designed a marketing campaign around a free giveaway of SGD Content: an exclusive Stars Go Dim USB Thumbstick with music, video, pictures and a wonderful pdf file of song lyrics and the history of the band. Only 25 of these were created, adding to the exclusive nature of the prize.

For a chance to win this exclusive Stars Go Dim content, fans had to join the SGD mobile fan club (by texting in to SGD on their phone) and click on a link to participate in the contest. The Adva Mobile Artist Portal handled all of the details of the contest, including start date, end date, fan information collection, administration of the contest and reporting. At the end of the contest, the system automatically and randomly chose winners and sent them a text message telling them they won and how to collect their prize.

The contest ran for 3 weeks and was promoted on their Facebook and MySpace pages, and to fans on their email list. Stars Go Dim now have 87 new members of their mobile club (from zero at the start) and plan to grow their mobile fan club and incorporate mobile marketing into their ongoing marketing activities. And the lucky winners have one-of-a kind Stars Go Dim USB thumbsticks with exclusive content to show off at the next concert!

Adva Mobile Introduces Freemium Payment Plan

This weekend, we are making a major change to our mobile marketing service for music artists. We're moving to a “Freemium” model. Through surveys, communications with you, interviews with others in the industry, and advisors to us, you've told us that what we do is valuable and, like other marketing services, is part of the total marketing mix that helps you make money.

For the past 15 months we've been working through our initial service, adding functionality to help artists reach out to their fans on their phones. And, everything about it has been free. Today, we're taking an exciting step that will help us support the growth of Adva Mobile.. Over 700 of you have joined our service and I am pleased to announce that all of you will continue to receive all of the services that you currently use without charge. We've upgraded all of you to our Plus service. Beginning next week, for new artists who choose to upgrade to this level, they will pay $9.95 per month. It's our way of saying thank you to the pioneers of music mobile marketing -- that's you!

Our free service includes most of the features you have been using to promote your music on mobile phones, and is certainly the most comprehensive mobile marketing platform for music artists that we know of. As you grow your career and begin making money, you'll need more sophisticated marketing tools, and for that we will now charge a small fee. Also, as your fan base grows, you'll be sending out more SMS messages. You probably wonder who has been paying for all of those messages for the past 15 months, and it has been us. For some of you who are now sending out lots of messages as your fan base has grown, we now need to ask you to pay for those messages. Again, I want to emphasize that for the 700+ of you who have joined our service, you'll continue to have your existing services, including a limited number of monthly messages, all without charge.

To see the differences between the three plans we now offer -- Free, Plus, and VIP -- go to the artist portal at www.AdvaMobile.com, login, and check out Account Services.

Thanks again for using Adva Mobile, best wishes for your careers in music, and let me know what you think of this change and any other ways we can improve the service to help you create closer relations with your fans.



Jack and the Adva Mobile Team

Adva Mobile Artist Survey Results

Many thanks to everyone who participated in our recent survey. We were very encouraged by the general feedback that you appreciate the service, see value in it, and want us to continue providing a service for you, to reach your fans on their mobile phones. We also appreciate the comments related to simplifying the experience. We will be working on that as we continue to add new features and try to make the service simpler.

Your response to the questions “whether the service was valuable enough to pay for” was encouraging. We are looking to introduce a “Freemium” model, where some artists could receive basic mobile web and mobile marketing services for free and others could have more specialized services for a small price. While some of you indicated you would never pay for it, more than 85% indicated you would pay for it, or you would pay for it once it started generating revenue for you. That’s great news for us, since we expect mobile commerce to really take off in and outside the US in 2010, and that your fans will be increasingly comfortable with making purchases for your music, tickets, and merchandise on their phones.

Shortly, we're going to introduce a paid service to complement our free service. While going from a free service to a partially paid service may be a difficult transition for some, were committed to our existing artists and you will continue to have all the services you currently have without cost. Moving to paid services is good for everyone, since it will make us stronger and more valuable to you, the artist, and to your fans. The financial support we receive from those of you who choose to upgrade to the paid service will help us build a stronger platform and provide each of you with better resources.

We built our mobile marketing platform when we realized nothing existed to help artists connect with fans on their mobile phones. Our mobile fan club service will continue to be, built with your feedback. We want to hear from you about these changes and the many future improvements we will introduce to help you expose your music to more fans, market to them, and realize your dream of creating a career in music.

Jack and the Adva Mobile Team