Date published: 01.09.08 - not release date

Comic Relief selects smARTebusiness' ‘Find Your Nearest' SMS service for Sport Relief 2006

Sport Relief, an initiative of Comic Relief in association with BBC Sport, is using the smARTebusiness mobile-based ‘Find Your Nearest’ service. By simply texting the keyword MILE and their postcode, viewers of the BBC trails have been notified of their nearest Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Mile. This solution has enabled Sport Relief to make the trails on the BBC interactive, while delivering a personalized service to the viewer. The service was launched at the start of May this year and has since provided over 30,000 people with their nearest Mile event location.

By becoming interactive, Sport Relief has made it really easy for a viewer to get involved with the Mile events. Every viewer with a mobile can find out where their local event is being held, and receive a dedicated URL for that event in the bounce-back text message. By providing them with details of how to enter, direct to their phone, the barrier to entry is reduced.

"It's been great working with smARTebusiness on the 'Find Your Nearest' project. With their help we've added a new interactive dimension to our mobile campaign and enabled 1000's of people to find their nearest Sainsbury's Sport Relief Mile just by sending a text message"
- Amanda Horton-Mastin, New Media and Development Director.

The ‘Find Your Nearest’ service covers all service and delivery costs despite the inbound message from the user only costing 25p. With over 250 locations of events across the UK, many being organised after the launch of the service, Sport Relief found the user control interface immensely useful to be able to directly update the dataset driving the responses. As the weeks have gone on, Mile locations were added, deleted and updated so that the information sent to the end user was accurate and effective.

The control panel also has an integrated reporting system that was used to provide daily reports for Sport Relief so they could get immediate feedback about response rates.

“The transition to interactive digital marketing enables traditional marketing content such as TV and print to raise the bar in terms of relevance, conversion and impact rates,” says Mark Hammersley, Director of Operations for smARTebusiness. “’Find Your Nearest’ is one of our services that seamlessly compliments and enhances offline calls to action.”

SmARTebusiness worked with Sport Relief to define their specific business requirements and then designed, developed, tested and deployed the solution working with iTouch, Comic Relief’s mobile marketing partner.

‘Leading the market with two way digital communication’

SmARTebusiness is part of the smARTstudiosuk group of companies and specialise in promoting companies digitally through e-mail, SMS, and internet based marketing. SmARTebusiness’s clients cover a range of industries including construction, telecommunications, IT hardware and fast moving consumer goods.

Comic Relief was set up in 1985, to use comedy and laughter to get serious messages across, raise heaps of cash and give everyone a great excuse to have some fun at the same time. Over the years, many 100's of celebrities have given their time and talent to help Comic Relief raise over £400,000,000. Along with Red Nose Days, Comic Relief also organises Sport Relief, and this year’s event, on July 15th, is the third time the charity fundraiser has taken place.

Press Contact:

Contacts
Ian Hammersley
MD
SmARTebusiness (SmARTstudiosUK Ltd)
Tel: 0161 953 4230
Email: ianh@smartstudiosuk.com