| 25 January 2010
Text Voting and Competitions
Text Voting
and Competitions have been around for many years and
have only become an accepted "household products" since the
launch of programmes like the X Factor, Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire and Popstars.
The
idea of text voting is that the public can for
example vote for their favourite singer or
with text competitions that the correct answer
must be text in to a question.
This is simply done by the end
user simply sending a text
containing your "keyword" then their
answer from their
mobile phone - good examples are
ANSWER B or HOLIDAY LONDON.
Pixel House can now provide all of the
following:
-
set a start time and an end time and the
system starts and ends your service automatically.
-
Create a dynamic link and make your
votes/entry results publicly available to
users or forums on an ongoing basis.
-
Configure how many votes/entries each person
can make.
-
Use reverse billing between 25p and £10 per
vote/entry.
-
View all results online after closing or request the top 3 results
be sent to your mobile
automatically along with a pre-selected random
winners phone number.
-
Our system can choose a winner for you - or
simply download the results and pick them
with an adjudicator.
- Run up to 3 competitions at the same time.
Your account can easily be configured to send automated text message replies telling the end user if they are correct or not. You can also specify the reply to be free of charge* or at a premium cost between 25p and £10.
Voting by text message isn't limited to just corporate events or to TV and Radio shows - even smaller businesses like bars and clubs are using text voting for such things as "Battle of the Bands", "Miss Wet T Shirt" and "Karaoke Finals".
Many venues simply want to generate a revenue toward paying for events whilst capturing a database of mobile numbers for future text marketing. Others just wish to provide a fair customer interaction rather than having individual biased judges.
Reverse Auctions with Pixel House
More recently "Reverse Auctions" have become ever popular with radio stations as a new fun and interactive way of giving away prizes with a twist. These can be laptops, wide screen TV's or even high performance cars.
The idea of reverse auctions is that rather than putting in a highest bid as with a normal auction, you have to put in the lowest bid. That bid also must be unique one. At the end of the auction, the winner (the person with the lowest unique bid) wins the prize, by simply paying their winning bid.
The end user simply texts your keyword and a bid in pence to enter - your service will take control of letting each entrant know by text message if their bid is unique, not unique, is the lowest unique bid etc. When a user is outbid they are also notified.
Why use Pixel House for a Reverse Auction?
- We offer a unique service to check bids are fair when using premium rate (where the end user pays a fee to bid). When a bid is placed, the handset is billed. If for some reason the handset does not have enough credit, the bid is "held" for a period of 3 days in the system whilst more attempts are made to bill the handset. Once billing occurs, the bid is placed. If the handset cannot be billed after a mandatory network retry period of 72 hours, the bid is dropped. This ensures that only bids are placed where the end user has paid their fee.
- New bids cannot be placed after the closing time, but bids still active in the retry system are held for up to 3 days from the closing date to ensure the service is fair to all who take part.
- Many providers do not offer such a service and bids placed that cannot be billed before the closing time are lost. This is even if they are billed afterward, which can lead to legal issues. Our service prevents such an issue
- Finally. Anyone placing a bid is given a unique ID which relates to their mobile number. Every bid they make prompts a response or a "receipt" for that bid as a reply SMS. At the end of the auction, the results can be displayed to all who have taken part so they can see the status of their bid relative to everyone else by referencing the ID. In this way, the results can be shown, without infringing any data protection rules.
Usage
Competitions using Premium Rate Services must be operated under the guidelines and rules of the regulatory body, PhonePay Plus.
Our service automatically recommends settings to make to ensure you comply wherever possible.
Getting started
If you would like to get started with a text message competition let us know and we will take you through the various options.
Costs
From as little as £1 a day we can set up a system suited to your needs, and depending on the plan you opt for you could be earning money at the same time!
Want to know more? Just give us a call or complete the call back form, or simply text PIXEL CALLBACK to 82055 for the cost of a standard SMS message and we'll ring you back!
* Requires you to purchase credits to permit the sending of SMS messages, the text is free to the recipient but not to you.
