Mozes helps bands connect with their audiences by text

Link: Mozes, the SMS marketing company, raises angel funding
Good write-up about Mozes here on SiliconBeat:

Mozes, a Palo Alto start-up that lets you send it an SMS (text message) to get information about a person, a band or other product, has raised an angel round of $750,000. Media analyst Paul Kagan is among the investors. It is the latest move by a start-up to exploit SMS’ growing popularity, especially among youth, to help companies like Microsoft market their products.

Here’s how it works (again explained by SiliconBeat):

Two weeks ago, the Dustin Burke Band, opened for another band in Dayton, Ohio, in front of a crowd of 5,000. The band asked fans to text message Mozes — addressing the message to code number 66937, for "M-o-z-e-s". Fans simply typed "DBB" in their message, and Mozes sent the fans information about to download a free mp3, and links to the band’s Web site, and profile on MySpace and so on. Dorrian Porter, chief executive of Mozes, said about 500 people, or 10 percent of the audience responded.

10% is good — we once managed to get 21% of a 30,000 stadium event subscribe and use a mobile text to screen service.  The trick is having the lead signer of the band stop the music and address the audience directly like the example above.

‘But this isn’t revolutionary, it’s nothing new,’ I hear you call out!   Well, true.  However, what is good is the packaging of such a facility into an easy web-based administration system to help anyone – a person, a company, a team or a band, easily connect and engage with an array of subscribers.  You can buy this service from any mobile marketing company worth its salt, however you’re generally talking hundreds of dollars (if not thousands) before you get the service up and running.  It’ll be interesting to see the various service offerings from Mozes once they launch.

The Mozes service looks like it will ‘commodotise’ two-way shortcode keyword-based mobile marketing to the point that anyone can get access to it simply and easily.   I like it.

Only available in the States for the time being.  They’re at www.mozes.com.