08/04/11 by Dominic Scandinaro | Blog, Development Blog | No Comments »
Why we are confused?
If you have a cable subscription service you have likely been bombarded with Microsoft ads displaying Window’s users annoyingly exclaiming “To the Cloud!” While cloud computing is an extremely advantageous tool, it is not a generic term that should be used for all computing in 2011. Microsoft leads end-users to believe that utilizing long existing features such as Remote Desktop connections and photo editing is a representation of cloud computing when in fact it is almost the exact opposite.
What is cloud computing?
Cloud Computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or personal computer (Google). Cloud computing can be as simple as a group of friends sharing their music collection on a group of servers at a hosting facility somewhere to allow them to all have simultaneous access to the collection without having to store any of it locally on their computer, mp3 player, phone etc…
How can web applications leverage “The Cloud?”
Cloud computing facilities such as Amazon, Go Daddy, and Rackspace allow developers to run their web applications on virtual computers. This virtual computer is made up of a combination of resources. One virtual computer can be using small parts of hundreds of actual servers. If one of the servers goes down it does not affect the virtual server what-so-ever.
Some providers allow you to scale your application’s resources in real time, schedule resource adjustments, or react based on usage. For instance you can choose to start your application on a basic server. Then, as traffic and resource load increases you can set your virtual machine to automatically gain more resources from the cluster of servers that is powering it.
What does all this mean for the end-user?
The user receives a seamless experience while using the web application that they depend on. While the user is utilizing the web application a hard drive could fail or load on the web application could increase 1,000%. With a properly configured cloud setup they would not be affected as the virtual machine is scaling and adapting appropriately in the background invisible to the user.
How will Cellit leverage the Cloud?
Here at Cellit we are currently working to move our internal servers to the cloud. This will allow us to balance the load across multiple machines and eliminate unexpected downtime due to hardware failures. We are executing this in order to provide a goal of 100% uptime, unmatched scalability and throughput.
02/03/11 by Trevor Oldak | Blog, Development Blog | No Comments »
Our developers are back with more features and tools for Cellit Studio!
[Click here for Part 1 of this article]
widgit
Redeem coupons on an iPhone/iPad, android device, or on your cash register. All integrate seamlessly with the Cellit Studio platform.
Task Scheduler
Enable a poll at precisely 8:45 a.m. or change the autoreply on a keyword at exactly noon. You can receive a text message or email when the task is completed successfully, and don’t have to worry about being available at specific times to perform something that our system can do for you.
Categories
Classify your Messages, Campaigns, Datafields and Polls to allow for easy organization and navigation of your work within Studio.
Datafield patterns
Validate email addresses, phone numbers, states, dates, and other customer information to boost your customer database accuracy.
Keyword activity
See who is texting in what keywords at what time, and export it to XLS or CSV.
Feedback
Now, you can get feedback directly from your clients on what they think of your mobile club. All they need to do is text FEEDBACK to your shortcode, and their response will be stored for you to see.
Custom designs and URLs
Don’t like the colors of Studio? Want to see your own company logo at the top? Want a URL other than cellitstudio.com? We can accommodate whatever customizations that you want!
Opt-in datafields
Now, you can require further information in the opt-in process. Instead of replying YES to opt in, people can reply with their email address, or zip code, or pretty much any other information that you want.
Call us at 800-790-6597 or contact us to find out how Studio can work for you.
01/12/11 by Trevor Oldak | Blog, Development Blog | 3 Comments »
Cellit Studio is the most robust mobile couponing, mobile marketing, and interactive text messaging platform in the world. As an engineer at Cellit, one of my primary tasks is to add new features and capabilities to Cellit Studio and its underlying platform. Here are a few of the many features that we have added to Cellit Studio over the past six months.
Real-Time Charting
Now, when you launch a mobile campaign, you can see real-time data and statistics on what your users are texting in, and what they’re receiving back as responses. This data is updated as it happens. Try it for yourself! Log in to Studio, click ‘Review’, and then ‘Keyword Activity’, and then text in one of your keywords. The chart should update almost instantaneously.
What’s even cooler: Click on any day on the chart. You’ll be able to drill down to see hour-by-hour activity. All of this information is exportable to XLS, CSV, or PDF.
Mapping
When someone texts in, we can gather some basic information about them from just their phone number, such as the state from which their area code originates. Now, in Cellit Studio, you can see a map of where people are texting in from, or where the most people are redeeming mobile coupons. Are the majority of your participants from Massachusetts? Arizona? What kind of text-message marketing and mobile advertising are you doing in your most successful areas?
What’s even cooler: Click on any state in the map to zoom in and see what area codes within the state are yielding the best results.
AND/OR Rule Groupings in the Campaign Launcher
Let’s say you want to message people who were sent your last message, or people who texted one of your keywords in the past three days. Most text messaging platforms, if they can do either of those, can’t do both at the same time, and you’d have to set up two campaigns. And then you would have to worry about people who could be in both campaigns and receive the message twice. Now, Cellit Studio lets you create complex campaign recipient rules with speed and ease, so you can better target your campaigns in the most effective way possible. This saves you time and energy and increases the effectiveness of your mobile marketing campaign.
Target by Time Zone or State
Another new feature of the campaign launcher is that you can now send a message to people with area codes in a specific state. That way, your ice cream discounts can go to those in Texas, while your Alaskan subscribers receive the hot chocolate coupon. Or, you can have a campaign that goes out at 8AM AST to those in the Bahamas, 8AM HST to those in Hawaii, and 8AM in the respective time zones of everyone in between.
In-line expiration dates
Now, you can create coupons that expire at a time relative to when the subscriber receives the message. That way, someone who receives a coupon on December 6th can have it expire on the 13th, while someone who receives it on the 12th may have until the 19th. This is especially powerful when incorporated with our coupon redemption software, Widgit.
12/27/10 by Scott Dolan | Blog, Development Blog | 1 Comment »
Since it’s the end of the year, we decided to share some text traffic stats from Cellit. While none of this is earth shattering, it gives a general idea of what cell phone providers account for usage. As you can see, Verizon and AT&T are the big boys on the block. Combined, these two providers account for over 60% of incoming text messages to Cellit, followed by T-Mobile and Sprint, respectively. US Cellular and Boost Mobile were the only other carriers to show up with an overall percentage over 1%. Worthy to note is that Verizon’s figures include Alltel numbers which they purchased in 2009.
Month to month, the percentage of traffic from AT&T and Verizon is growing while traffic from Sprint seemed to be holding steady. T-Mobile and US Cellular are trending slightly downward over the course of the past year.
Month to month, Verizon and AT&T texting traffic percentages are almost in parallel with AT&T traffic increasing towards the end of the year. AT&T may have the lowest customer satisfaction according to Consumer Reports, but perhaps the demise of AT&T is a bit overblown. We’ll have to check back on these figures next spring to see if Consumer Reports is right (or if the rumored Verizon iPhone is released, that ought to shake things up a bit!).
