New Mobile Advertising Opportunity for the Sports Industry

RainedOut now allows companies to sponsor text messages sent to their members

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Feb 25, 2010, 01:03 ET

LEESBURG, Va., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Omnilert®, LLC, maker of RainedOut, the first text message service for sports leagues and clubs, announced today a new mobile advertising medium. All RainedOut text messages will now contain a national sponsor incorporated at the end of the RainedOut notification. In a world where content is king, this opens up a unique opportunity for companies trying to reach the highly mobile sports industry. The first national sponsor is a brand from Sony called Crackle.

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"This is an outstanding opportunity for all involved," explained Ara Bagdasarian, CEO of Omnilert. "RainedOut customers will continue to enjoy our award-winning communication service free of charge, and national brands can sponsor sports organizations and receive recognition on each message."

Players, parents, and fans opt in to RainedOut for relevant content, not spam or unsolicited 'coupons,' to be sent to their cell phone via SMS text messages. RainedOut delivers time-sensitive news such as game cancellations, field changes, requests for volunteers, and much more. Each text message is 160 characters long with the last 20 characters displaying a national sponsor.

"Mobile advertising up to this point has required brands to hire expensive mobile marketing firms and slowly grow their own opt-in list," said J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., the Principal Analyst at MobileTrax LLC. "RainedOut offers one of the first mobile marketing opportunities that bring willing participants to the table – and at a very low cost of entry. This is a mobile service that every sports fan can appreciate, especially considering all the recent weather delays from the Daytona 500 to the Winter Olympics. I think this technique is going to be copied by a lot of other people in the industry."

This new advertising medium allows companies to reach hundreds of thousands of eyeballs in the sports-oriented demographic. They achieve positive brand association by supporting non-profit sports organizations across America.

Each sponsor message is read on the mobile phone – a very captive environment. Sponsors receive a fast impression – 95% of text messages are read within 4 minutes. This creates what is called 'situation-based advertising' – a day-changing event for a customer creates a new opportunity to spend time and money.

The 20-character sponsor text can be in the form of a hyperlink, so smartphone recipients can click it to reach a website or unique landing page, which further strengthens the power of this new advertising medium. Sponsors can see the results of their mobile advertising campaigns in real time. Sponsors do not have access to individual members' data as RainedOut enforces a zero-spam policy.

Current participating sports include:

Nationwide youth, collegiate, and adult league sports
YMCAs, Boy Scouts, and regional/county/city parks & recreation departments
Soccer, football, baseball, softball, lacrosse, swimming, hockey, and cheerleading
Auto racing speedways, dragways, dirt tracks, and many more

National products, services or brands interested in sponsoring RainedOut messages may contact [email protected] or call 800-230-1933 x748 to learn more. Later this year, the company will launch a sophisticated online sponsorship bidding system that will allow local, regional and national brands to bid on targeted messages.

About RainedOut

Established in 2004 and used by more than 2,000 organizations, RainedOut is the first text message service for sports leagues and clubs. This free sponsor-supported service enables non-technical people to administer and send custom or predefined messages instantly to the entire league for improved communication. It is used to cancel games, give directions, recruit volunteers, and much more. As a Web-based service, messages can initiate from a net-connected PC or from the field using a net-connected cell phone. Through one simple interface, RainedOut instantly and simultaneously broadcasts messages to subscribers' mobile phones (via SMS text message) and e-mail accounts, and to the leagues' own Web pages, RainedOut Page, Facebook Page, and Twitter Account. To learn more, visit http://www.RainedOut.com.

About Omnilert

Omnilert, LLC is the leading provider of unified mass notification systems for better business continuity, emergency management, and routine communication. The easy-to-use, self-service, Web-based system enables a single person to communicate timely information to thousands of people anywhere, anytime, on any device or service. The award-winning company's 3,000 clients include the U.S. Army, GE, Harvard University, Boeing, American Red Cross, UNICEF, sanofi-aventis, and the National Institutes of Health. Omnilert solutions are sold under the brand names e2Campus, Amerilert, and RainedOut. The privately held company is headquartered in Leesburg, Va., and at http://www.omnilert.com online.

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Ara Bagdasarian

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SOURCE Omnilert, LLC