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Omnilert, LLC, a company that provides unified mass notification systems for better business continuity, emergency management and routine communication, recently launched a new mobile advertising medium. Omnilert’s RainedOut text message service for sports leagues and clubs will now contain a national sponsor at the end of the RainedOut notification.

 

Players, parents and fans opt in to RainedOut for relevant content to be sent to their cell phone via SMS text messages. RainedOut delivers time-sensitive news such as game cancellations, field changes, requests for volunteers and more. Each text message will be 160 characters long.

 

Out of these, the last 20 characters will display a national sponsor. The new advertising medium allows companies to reach a large number of eyeballs in the demographic. They achieve positive brand association by supporting non-profit sports organizations across America.

 

The first national sponsor is Crackle, a brand from Sony. According to Ara Bagdasarian, CEO of Omnilert, the new mobile advertising medium provides a great opportunity. Bagdasarian noted that RainedOut customers will still continue to enjoy Omnilert’s communication service free of charge. National brands will now be able to sponsor sports organizations and receive recognition on each message. Moreover, sponsors receive a fast impression with 95% of text messages being read within 4 minutes.

 

The 20-character sponsor text can also be in the form of a hyperlink. Hence, smartphone recipients can click it to reach a Web site or unique landing page. Moreover, sponsors can see the results of their mobile advertising campaigns in real time. However, sponsors do not have access to individual members' data as RainedOut enforces a zero-spam policy.

 

According to J. Gerry Purdy, the principal analyst at MobileTrax LLC, RainedOut offers one of the first mobile marketing opportunities that bring willing participants to the table at a very low cost of entry.

 

RainedOut is a free sponsor-supported service that enables non-technical people to administer and send predefined messages instantly to the entire league for improved communication. The service is used to cancel games, give directions, recruit volunteers and more. RainedOut simultaneously broadcasts messages to subscribers' mobile phones and e-mail accounts and also to the leagues' own Web pages and the RainedOut page, through a simple interface.