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Veritec has introduced more reasons not to leave home without your cell phone - PhoneCodes good for tickets, gifts, coupons and receipts. In St. Paul, Minnesota, the Saints baseball club has adopted this technology allowing cell phone owners to purchase an event ticket and have the ticket (TicketCode) sent to their cell phone. On the day of the event the gate attendant scans the TicketCode from the cell phone and you are in. Other uses for the Veritec PhoneCodes technology include sending gift certificates (GiftCode), or coupons (CouponCode) for customer loyalty rewards and discounts, and as a receipt (ReceiptCode) when making an Internet purchase.
The notion of tickets and coupons by cell phone is already spawning new mobile commerce and advertising programs. One of the latest programs is dubbed qtags. With qtags, mobile phone users request and receive promotional offers, including coupons via text messaging, or vote on their favorites. qtags' GoodyBag delivers promotional offers via a spam-free, no-charge short-message program. Users text a promotional keyword to 78247 (q-t-a-g-s) and receive an advertiser's message on their mobile phone providing a special "goody," such as a coupon, unique weblink or other interactive offer. The cell phone services by qtags are offered in the U.S. and Canada, and are planned for Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. Participating companies include Hewlett Packard and Applebees.
Mobile Box Office by MobilRelay is one of the emerging cell phone services letting you use your web-enabled mobile phone to browse, buy and gain entry into events. Detroit's Emagine Novi is the second theater to offer the Mobile Box Office service, joining Emagine Canton which first introduced the program early 2006. Both movie locations are owned by Emagine Entertainment. How does it work? A bar-coded ticket is sent to a Mobile Box Office customer's cell phone, and the phone is scanned at the theater for entry to movies. So much for ticket lines. Click here for more information.
Forget the cereal boxes. And look for redeemable two-dimension (2D) tickets and coupons delivered through your mobile phone. Tickets and coupons by cell phone is a likely scenario in your future. Now businesses can offer their customers the chance to conveniently buy, receive and redeem tickets and coupons with the device they are most likely to have in their hand - their mobile phone. The 2D Data Matrix barcodes delivered to mobile phones are square in shape and made up of a pattern of smaller black squares. More compact than the one-dimensional barcodes found on cereal boxes and scanned in supermarkets, 2D Data Matrix barcodes can contain far more encrypted information, and are less likely to be misread. "Delivering tickets and coupons to mobile devices itself is not a new and disruptive concept," states Erick Rodriguez, CEO of Mobile Technology Group. "What's unique is the ability to do this consistently and accurately within a very diverse and challenging U.S. wireless market."
The Mx-Coupon application for cell phones is from MyThum Interactive, a leading provider of mobile messaging solutions and Givex Corporation, a card management company specializing in stored value transaction processing. "There is a huge market out there anxiously waiting for more ingenious ways to utilize cell phones," says Karen Budahazy, senior VP at Givex. "These consumers carry their phones everywhere. So, Mx-Coupon is always with them, adding the benefit of using cell phones as a versatile means of payment," further explains Budahazy. The Mx-Coupon Program is more cost-effective than direct mail marketing because it eliminates printing and physical distribution costs. Visit MyThum or Givex to learn more.
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