ContactLab

Results in Industry: Marketing Services Provider

ContactLab is one of Italy's top providers of digital direct marketing services, specializing in advanced email and SMS/MMS text messaging solutions. The firm carries out direct and integrated campaigns on behalf of global brands such as Acer, Expedia, Henkel, illy and La Perla.

Challenge Summary

Growing Demand for Mobile

ContactLab strives to offer a full range of mobile offerings, including multi-channel campaigns using a combination of both email and SMS text. Most of the firm's mobile work comprises large bulk campaigns upwards of a million messages, though it frequently handles location-specific or regional campaigns with highly targeted or time-specific offers using short codes or clickable text links. With demand for mobile and multi-channel services increasing, ContactLab CTO Davide Migliavacca and his team realized in early 2010 that their existing SMS text infrastructure and capabilities were approaching maximum capacity. As such, they determined that it was imperative to put in place a new SMS text infrastructure that would enable them to:

• Meet steadily rising demand for marketing services and campaigns targeting mobile consumers with email and SMS/MMS text.
• Replace existing SMS text system with a messaging infrastructure that could support higher message traffic volumes.
• Improve the ability to meet technology and delivery constraints associated with large-scale campaigns involving time-sensitive SMS text message offers and promotions.
• Expand relationships with SMS aggregators to ensure adequate throughput and capacity for customer demand.
• Implement more effective procedures for capturing message receipt and disposition data to improve the quality of reporting for clients.

Benefit Summary

Straight to Implementation

As Migliavacca and his team began researching platforms they quickly realized that a solution was already close at hand. “We'd heard rumblings that Message Systems had a mobile product in the works, but didn't realize it was commercially available. When we learned that Mobile Momentum had launched — or was just about to launch — we stopped our search for an SMS solution. We knew Mobile Momentum was exactly what we needed.”

In fact, ContactLab proceeded to early testing with a proof-of-concept beta implementation in mid- to late-2010. Quickly realizing that Mobile Momentum delivers outstanding performance, Migliavacca wrapped up testing ahead of schedule and proceeded with plans for a full production implementation, with a single Mobile Momentum node for operation and another for failover. With their new mobile messaging platform in place, ContactLab:

• Gained the ability to automatically convert email messages to SMS to better accommodate campaign goals and customer preferences.
• Expanded its pool of SMS aggregator partners, with better match on pricing and capacity requirements.
• Broadened service capabilities to include more customized multi-channel and gateway services.
• Realized performance improvements — and boosted policy-scripting abilities — to meet more aggressive time constraints associated with mobile campaigns.
• Implemented more effective procedures for capturing message receipt and disposition data to improve the quality of reporting for clients.