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Describe your company and what role does it play in the mobile marketing ecosystem?
Poynt is a free location-aware local search application for BlackBerry®, iPhone and Android smartphones. Poynt connects users to local businesses, retailers, movies, restaurants and people, as well as provides the best nearby gas prices, whenever and wherever they are needed. With nearly 4 million user’s globally performing over 20 million monthly searches, Poynt’s unique approach to local search doesn’t stop with the discovery of local businesses. From inspiration to action, Poynt helps transform the mobile device from a communication tool to an entertainment and utility tool. Poynt provides users with seamless device integration and offers a unified experience, making it extremely easy to use. Directories, such as Superpages.com and reservation utilities such as Opentable are better able to extend their reach to people continuously on the go and leverage off of the mobile device as a leading marketing channel.
How does your company add value or differentiate itself in the marketplace?
Poynt differentiates itself in 3 key areas: first our content partnerships with companies including Yellowpages.ca, Whitepages.com, Superpages.com, Opentable.com, V-enable, Cinemasource, Thomson Local (UK) and Suchen.de (Germany) populate a robust data base providing our users with the most accurate and localized information. Secondly, Poynt is fully integrated with smartphone devices such as the BlackBerry®, whereby users can add search results to their contacts or calendars and send results and invitations via BlackBerry® messages. Poynt utilizes augmented reality and the call gesture feature technologies of the iPhone as well as the widget program and voice activation for the Android (where available). GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities mean that you do not have to enter your search location; finding the nearest theatre or restaurant is as easy as one click. If you want to search from a different location, you can simply select any location you choose. In other words, we leverage off of the core device technologies for the most unified experience.
Finally, Poynt is available in seven countries around the world including Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The expansion of Poynt’s global footprint is a result of our relationship driven philosophy. We consciously enter into a relationship with our users, and at every opportunity, we elicit their feedback and suggestions, evaluate and act on them, and let them know that their contribution directly affected the path the application took. Our customer service team even follows up with a link to download the latest build. The exceptional relationship between the development and marketing teams ensures that the user is always at the forefront of design decisions, from providing a simple way to provide feedback from within the app, to the ability for users to forward Poynt to a friend. As our user base continues to grow and new markets considered we are actively building the best partnerships with content providers. 
What advice would you give to someone who is new to mobile marketing?
As with all successful marketing campaigns, they need to be integrated. Using the mobile channel to reach customers should be part of an overall brand building and growth strategy. Multiplied Media participates in co-marketing with device partners and is active in the blogosphere in order to reach additional target users. Through Twitter contests and other web-based competitions, Multiplied has helped foster Poynt’s viral growth. The execution of our branding campaigns have seen the greatest results virally, using word of mouth and social media to engage and excite customers to download the Poynt app. This is a salient point in how our campaigns have been executed, since the battle of a brand is won and lost with the customer, Poynt’s brand has organically grown because of its usefulness and simplicity.
What is the one thing you wish you would have known before getting into the mobile marketing industry?
I think the best way to answer this question is to look at patterns in consumer behavior as they correlate with new marketing opportunities driven by technology. The growth of the advertising industry can be measured against the impact of new media channel innovations such as radio, television, the PC and now mobile. Advertisers need to be flexible in order to respond in a timely fashion to where consumers are making themselves available. Understanding where consumers engage with their content, how to reach them in a manner that speaks to them – ie. personalization, and staying relevant, is essential to understanding the immense value of mobile marketing. Further, mobile provides unique opportunities like never before to truly to interact with consumers in a socially relevant manner. Regardless of where a person is located, mobile devices facilitate communication, transaction and information. Understanding how to leverage the uniqueness of mobile is essential to creating a successful mobile marketing campaign.
Would you like to mention one of your successful campaigns? 
Our current campaign focuses not on Poynt as a utilitarian app, but on the “Get There” moment that Poynt helps create. It’s not about finding a running store to buy a pair of shoes; it’s about crossing the finish line of your first marathon. It’s about dad and son staying out late for the release of the latest 3D movie while mom’s away, not about finding the movie and buying the tickets in Poynt. This campaign ran on both AdMob and Quattro, and has, to date, increased download rates tenfold. Since the launch of the campaign we have seen an increase of 347% in downloads. We are also running our Get There Contest on Facebook , asking users to submit photos of their favorite “Get There” Moment using Poynt.
What are 3 three things one should do to ensure a successful MM campaign?
Campaigns, mobile or otherwise, should always be relevant and non-invasive to the user. In other words do your homework to ensure you are targeting the right audience for your product, service and price point, as well as understand what consumer trends are influencing the market. Ease of use is another key aspect to implementing a successful campaign, making a service easy to use, an application simple to navigate or a data rich download not churn or lead to “bill shock.” A bad experience will be talked about more than a positive one will! Finally, know your goals, what are you trying to measure? Be clear on your assumptions and make sure that you have a reporting mechanism in place so that at the end of the campaign you can analyze your data. Data is essential in that it tells the story of what materially happened throughout a campaign.
How does Mobile Marketing Association help you drive your mobile strategy?
For Multiplied Media, being a member of the MMA, is about positioning ourselves as thought leaders in the location aware services space and therefore our participation at a higher industry level so that we can help significantly shape specific regulations to ensure healthy consumer adoption of local search applications. Our second objective is business development as we feel membership to a global organization will enable new opportunities for both our current and future market deployments. And finally, success breeds success, and we feel that surrounding ourselves with industry leaders in the mobile marketing space is essential to keeping abreast, competitive and relevant.
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