Interactive marketing system

• US 20040034561A1
• Filed: 09/12/2003
• Published: 02/19/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 04/07/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Zyzeba Holding Limited
• Original Assignee: Zyzeba Holding Limited
• Inventors: Smith, Glen David
• Granted Patent: US 8,249,920 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0203 Market surveys; Market polls
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0245 Surveys
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0267 Wireless devices
• CPC Class Codes: G09F 19/00 Advertising or display means not otherwise provided for
• CPC Class Codes: G09F 27/00 Combined visual and audible advertising or displaying, e.g. for public address
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/18 Processing of user or subscriber data, e.g. subscribed services, user preferences or user profiles; Transfer of user or subscriber data
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/042 Public Land Mobile systems, e.g. cellular systems

Abstract

An interactive direct response system combines the use of short text message systems (SMS) via cell phones (100) with a database (102) and website to enable advertisers to view in real time customer responses to a direct response campaign. Customers are invited to respond to a defined advertisement on for example a billboard by responding to a single telephone number associated with the website by sending a text message linked to that particular advertisement, i.e. a single word (104,106). A computer receives and analyses the responses and sends an acknowledgement message to the customer.

Claims

1. An interactive marketing and/or survey system utilising short message systems (SMS) provided on mobile or cell phones including in combination a means of displaying an advertisement, the advertisement inviting a participant to respond with a defined short text message via SMS on a mobile or cell phone, computerised means for comparing and matching the participants short text message with one or more retained reference records, wherein in operation, if the participant'"'"'s short text message matches any of the one or more records, information from the message is stored in a database.

2. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the advertisement invites participants to respond to a common “

reply to”

telephone number.

3. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein all advertisements associated with the system use the same common “

reply to”

telephone number but each advertising campaign uses distinct pre-allocated short text message(s) and the computerised means analyses and displays the incoming replies and sorts them into their associated campaigns.

4. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the means of displaying an advertisement can be television, magazines, newspapers, billboards films and/or the Internet.

5. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the advertisement can be broadcast on radio or other non-visual means.

6. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the computerised means for comparing and matching the participant'"'"'s short text message response is a computer database which is connected by a virtual private network via the Internet to the SMS provider.

7. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the computerised means also includes means for recording the number of correct and incorrect responses made by participants and the number of reply messages sent to the participants.

8. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the computerised means can accommodate a number of phone numbers and/or groups of reference records corresponding to different advertisement offers or surveys conducted and a record is kept of the frequency of responses to each phone number or group of records, so that quantitative data such as the frequency or total number of consumer or voting response to a particular promotion or survey can be obtained.

9. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the short text message response of a participant or consumer is a single word which can be easily compared and matched against a reference list of “

correct”

words stored on the computer database.

10. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the Internet website to which the participant is instructed to access is a dedicated website which centrally co-ordinates all incoming SMS messages and provides the participants with further information in order to continue or proceed to the next step of the marketing or survey system.