Media Source Solutions Forms Co-op Database for Mobile Marketing

Media Source Solutions Inc. has launched MC Cubed, a new division and cooperative database for mobile and other marketing channels. The database contains more than 10 million matching postal and e-mail addresses, landline telephone and cell phone numbers.

“We started getting records on May 15. By Labor Day the database is projected to have 20 million records,” says Michelle Volpe, vice president of sales and marketing at Media Source Solutions, based in Plantation, FL.

Volpe is in charge of the division that goes by the same name as the database. The main thrust will be providing cell phone numbers for text messaging offers, a popular direct marketing medium in Europe poised for growth in the U.S., according to Volpe.

Media Source Solutions’ president John Salmon compares text messaging to the way e-mail was 15 years ago, it’s new, exciting for marketers and pulling amazing response and conversion rates. “Mobile media typically achieves 60 to 90% open rates and 15% conversion rates,” adds Volpe.

The company has lined up more than 20 data sources in the publishing and travel industries that are capturing data through Web site co-registration, response from online offers and other means. Roughly 1.5 million new records per week are being added to the MC Cubed database, Salmon says.

The database is designed for multichannel marketing and use in combination with additional demographic and lifestyle data, but the main thrust for the new division will be mobile marketing with text messaging—a hybrid between e-mail and telemarketing that’s permission-based.

Young consumers coming of age have grown up using cell phones. Volpe says she has no doubts that more direct marketers will use text messages in the near future and more list companies will be providing the lists for text messaging because of growing demand. “It’s an emerging market, she says.