It’s always nice to come across use-cases for SMS beyond the basic confines of marketing, and a perfect example is the increased usage of the medium for appointment reminders.

Headrush Hair Salon, an up-scale and high-traffic salon in the U.K, enlisted the help of TextMagic to introduce SMS reminders to cut down on no-shows and reduce the standby time for their stylists, helping curb the untold amount of revenue lost during idle time.  With over 4,700 clients total, no-shows had become a huge problem.

“TextMagic has improved our amount of no-show clients who may have forgotten the date and time of their appointment, therefore leaving a stylist in the salon with sometimes up to 2 1/2 hours of down time, which is clearly bad for business and profits.  We calculate that our number of no-shows has been reduced by approximately 70% since we’ve been using TextMagic and we expect this number to improve further as we obtain more clients’ mobile numbers.”

With SMS being inexpensive, easy to implement and having the ability to reach anyone quickly and easily no matter the type of device, it’s no wonder SMS reminder solutions have proved so successful.  Nearly every use-case I come across is deemed a huge success, with ROI that goes above and beyond most expectations.  As the concept makes itself known, wide-spread usage in a variety of industries will begin to take shape, for good reason.

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ChaCha, the mobile question and answer startup out of Indiana, has partnered with Localeze to offer local business listings on its homepage, adding to its massive Q&A database that’s growing by leaps and bounds and users flock to the service.

The new functionality and content on its homepage provides in-depth information about more than 15 million businesses across the country, allowing visitors access through a search bar and through a direct listings page.  In both cases, they will be served a full content page that includes Google maps, directions, phone, and other contact information. Additionally, unique to ChaCha, questions and answers related to the business can be found on the content pages. Business listings can also be viewed by category and or state and city on ChaCha.com.

This is a unique integration being that ChaCha has grown into a localized service, with a majority of the questions it receives being related to local information in one form or another.  Integrating mass local business listings with its unique human-powered content should provide a unique service to users, especially now that ChaCha is publishing its answers and being picked up through search engines.

“Our goal at ChaCha has always been to provide the most accurate and comprehensive answers to our audience. This is a natural extension for our answers service, providing a way for users to instantly find and contact the businesses that interest them without additional navigation or having to deduce which search results link will provide relevant information,” says Scott Jones, CEO of ChaCha.

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TargetSpot is a startup that’s carved itself a unique niche by inserting ads in Online audio streams.  Building off its experience, the company today announced a new mobile advertising platform aimed at taking the ads it serves to mobile devices, and integrating mobile’s enhanced targeting capabilities along the way.

The new platform will serve up audio ads to mobile apps on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry smartphones, and is starting things off with a partnership with Slacker Radio.  The two have worked together since 2008 monetizing Slacker’s Online streams, but will further its partnership by expanding ads into Slacker’s mobile apps as well.

Mobile ad inventory from the likes of Slacker and other streaming music providers will be available to agencies and large advertisers through TargetSpot’s full-service account management team.  Brands will gain access to a “highly captive audience of on-the-go consumers,” with effective device, geographic and demographic targeting in place.

This targeting capability combined with the audio-based format provides a unique opportunity for advertisers, one that’s been previously unavailable.  Streaming music, especially to smartphones, is a rapidly growing consumer segment that’s historically been inherently hard to monetize.  Having the ability to insert ads targeted to a users location, device and demographic information is a powerful tool, especially when combined with the captive nature of audio-based ads.

“We all see the mobile marketplace is growing rapidly.  Slacker, for example, has seen enormous growth since entering into the arena, with more than 50% of its audience listening through a mobile device,” explained TargetSpot Co-President of Sales Andy Lipset.  ”What is significant about this announcement from an advertising standpoint is that this is the first time that audio ads will be served dynamically into the mobile platform.  The game changer is that we will be able to reach listeners with audio ads on their mobile devices based upon their location, device or select demographics.  TargetSpot advertisers will not only reach a listener at their computer in the office, but now on the go, whether the listener is on the 405 in LA stuck in traffic or walking down 3rd Avenue in Manhattan streaming Slacker on their mobile device.”

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Millennial Media, coming off yet another strong growth year in 2009, announced this morning that its acquired San Francisco-based TapMetrics, a mobile analytics startup focused on application usage and user behavior.

Focusing on mobile apps, TapMetrics allows developers to analyze all aspects of their applications- tracking analytics, reviews, revenue, and more from a simple Online dashboard.  The company’s offerings fit well within Millennial’s thriving development community, and will provide developers with a unique insight into how their apps are performing.

“The market has recognized Millennial Media as the leader in mobile advertising.  As a result of their deep commitment to advertisers, they deliver the best business partnership and monetization for mobile companies – particularly developers,” said Chris Brown, Co-Founder and CEO, TapMetrics. “What is exciting to us is that Millennial Media now has the only scalable solution for developers that doesn’t contain an operating system bias, making Millennial Media the natural partner for us.”

With the inclusion of TapMetrics, Millennial can now offer developers capabilities such as real-time analytics, user interaction data, feature and version adoption, device types, crash reporting, review tracking and a competitive ratings system, while integrating seamlessly with Millennial’s existing solutions.

We reported recently on Millennial’s 2009 “Year in Review” that included some huge numbers in terms of the growth Millennial has experienced over the past year.  The company’s brand business grew 756%, while its performance business grew 171%.  Non-U.S. impressions increased 175% year over year, and the average deal size increased 353%.  With numbers like this, it’s only natural to begin a growth-by-acquisition strategy, though I’ve always thought Millennial would be the one to get acquired.

“When we raised our growth round of financing in November, we stated that we would make investments to accelerate our growth,” said Michael Avon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Millennial Media. “We are acquiring TapMetrics, because the company shares our approach to serve the needs of developers, regardless of mobile platform.  In addition, TapMetrics’ data and analytics capabilities complement our company’s own focus and development plans.  We continue to actively evaluate other potential acquisitions to further expand our business.”

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There’s been many attempts by many companies to solve the problems facing mobile barcodes, and the many aspects limiting its mainstream existence, but Neustar has made key progress with its announcement of a Mobile Barcode Clearinghouse service to finally solve interoperability issues with the concept.

During Mobile World Congress, the company debuted its mobile barcode clearinghouse services alongside a unique 2D barcode campaign in cooperation with Visa.  With its new clearinghouse services, Neustar aims to provide a method for companies that produce and distribute barcode readers to interoperate with other companies who create barcode campaigns.  The link between the two have been missing, and is a primary limiting factor to mobile barcodes seeing mainstream adoption.

This coordinated approach allows each of the participants to benefit from the efforts of the others, including participation from barcode leaders NeoMedia, 3GVision, Mobile Data Systems, and Mobile Discovery, who are all using the Neustar clearinghouse.  The clearinghouse is open to other industry players who wish to benefit from the mass market and scale that can be achieved through an open, interoperable approach.

This is a key progress point for mobile barcodes.  In the past, when a company wanted to introduce mobile barcodes (or any aspect of which), they basically had to start from the ground up.  The result was a fragmented marketplace filled with varying barcode technologies (2D, QR, JagTag, etc.) along with varying barcode readers.  In the end, consumers have never been presented with a standardized, easy-to-use mechanism for mobile barcodes.  Neustar’s new clearinghouse service is setting the stage to bring this to reality.

“With our Mobile Barcode Clearinghouse, Neustar can provide both campaign managers and Mobile Network Operators with a rich new approach to accessing mobilized content and services,” said Diane Strahan, vice president at Neustar. “Barcodes offer direct response accountability through measurable ROI and enable advertisers to adjust their content based on near real time tracking of each campaign’s performance. For consumers, barcodes offer an exciting ’shortcut’ to accessing rich content, helpful information and m-commerce.”

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