Unica Corp. has teamed with Mobile Messenger to let clients add messaging to their cross-channel marketing strategies.

Data from CTIA-The Wireless Association shows that 1.5 trillion SMS messages were sent in 2009 - up from just over one trillion in 2008, amounting to nearly 5 million messages per day by the end of the year. Not surprisingly, marketers are following consumers into the mobile channel.

?Unica is a leader in cross-channel marketing solutions,? said Jay Henderson, director of product marketing at Unica, Waltham, MA. ?The partnership extends our reach into mobile messaging ? a newer channel for us, and an important channel for our customers. 

?Our customer awareness, centralized decisioning and cross-channel execution can include mobile messaging,? he said. ?Mobile Messenger will help our customers with short code provisioning, message approval, mobile aggregation, message delivery and carrier relations.? 

Unica provides marketing software to clients. Its enterprise marketing management and on-demand marketing services help organizations develop customer relationships.

Mobile Messenger is a mobile messaging service provider that facilitates marketing, distribution and monetization of digital content to mobile devices.

Unique mobile messaging
According to Unica's recent global survey, "The State of Marketing 2010," more than one-third of marketers already have incorporated some aspect of mobile into their marketing strategies.

Mobile messaging can expand beyond ringtones, wallpapers, voting, polls and quizzes to also include highly personalized, timely, one-to-one marketing messages.

Through the alliance, Unica and Mobile Messenger aim to increase that statistic by introducing Unica's clients to SMS.

The joint service complements Unica's existing mobile capabilities for delivery and preview rendering of mobile email with Unica eMessage, tracking of mobile Web sites and applications with Unica NetInsight, and serving of personalized offers via mobile Web sites and applications with Unica Interact.

?We?re seeing an increasing awareness among marketers of the power of the mobile channel,? said Michael Iaccarino, president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Mobile Messenger. ?This partnership allows Unica?s clients to create a variety of integrated mobile campaigns with the applications they?ve already incorporated into their marketing toolbox.

"Mobile Messenger will handle carrier relations, mobile aggregation and short code provisioning for Unica?s clients who will then be able to tap the company?s existing solutions to plan, execute and measure their mobile campaigns,? he said.  

Mr. Henderson said that the partnership extends Mobile Messenger?s audience to traditional relationship marketers. It allows Mobile Messenger to offer a platform that can easily be integrated into the other channels that marketers are using - email, direct mail and Web site personalization. 

?The strategy is to enable customers to include mobile messaging as part of their integrated cross-channel campaigns,? Mr. Henderson said. ?Previously, this would have been a siloed non-integrated channel for most marketers.

?Now they can create simple text alerts, two-way campaigns, and complex interactive programs as part of their cross-channel marketing strategies,? he said.