The Weather Channel Interactive ran a successful "Win a BlackBerry a Day" promotion that showcased the ability of integrated mobile marketing campaigns to reach a broad cross-section of consumers.

TWCi conducted the campaign from May 19 to June 20 of this year. The campaign titled, "Mobile Month," consisted of ads online, on television and on the mobile Web. The ads directed consumers to enter the sweepstakes online or via its mobile Web site and two-thirds of the 700,000 entrants registered via mobile.

"Our primary goal has been to increase views on our mobile Web site and expand our footprint on the mobile Web," said Derek Van Nostran, director of marketing for The Weather Channel Interactive, Atlanta.

"We're the number-three mobile Web site in terms of traffic behind Yahoo and Google, so we're ahead of all the other content sites on the mobile Web," he said. "We want to continue to increase mobile Web usage and our unique page visitors."

By taking advantage of all channels available across the organization, including online, TV and mobile, the BlackBerry a Day giveaway resulted in increased brand awareness and traffic to the mobile Web site at http://weather.com. Sales of TWCi's downloadable application also increased dramatically.

TWCi partnered with Research In Motion to give away one BlackBerry a day for one month, for a total of 30 smartphones.

The month-long promotion resulted in more than 700,000 sweepstakes entries, which is the highest number of registrants TWCi has achieved for any of its promotions.

"We're very excited that two-thirds of all entries came via mobile," Mr. Van Nostran said. "More people were entering through the mobile Web than online, which flipped what we were expecting."

The main goal of the campaign was to bring awareness of the multiple mobile products offered by The Weather Channel, including Major League Baseball weather forecasts, holiday-themed coverage such as weather conditions at malls and hurricane coverage.

"A lot of people are not aware that you can get Weather.com on your smartphone, people have said to us, 'Hey I'd love to get weather on my phone but I don't know how,'" Mr. Van Nostran said. "Some people will stay on-deck and try to find that information from their carrier, but we want to let people know they can go on their phone's browser to get comprehensive, up-to-the-minute weather updates.

"It's especially easy to access and navigate our mobile site with an iPhone or BlackBerry," he said.

Mobile Web traffic during the promotion broke all records for the site and was 35 percent higher than usual traffic for the time period.

While business travelers have shown the best response to TWCi's mobile campaigns, the company is also targeting the "soccer mom" demographic.

"Research In Motion has seen a big shift to more personal usage of BlackBerrys as opposed to just business usage," Mr. Van Nostran said. "We've gotten a really good response from active moms who are always on the go and want to know if it's going to rain before dropping their kids off at soccer practice.

"Their kids are probably teaching them how to use their smartphone," he said.

During Mobile Month, mobile download sales exceeded TWCi's goals and hit record numbers for 2008 sales.

"Directionally month over month we grow mobile Web usage naturally, but during the campaign in mid-May and mid-June we doubled that growth rate over compared to the average 2008 growth rate," Mr. Van Nostran said. "We broke the record for unique page views in May and broke it again in June."

Research In Motion also helped TWCi with the promotion by spreading the word through their channels. The company sent email blasts to its database as well as TCWi's database.

"We used as much of our combined resources as we possibly could," Mr. Van Nostran said. "Many people still don't feel comfortable on their mobile browser, so we were very specific to overcome the fear factor for people who weren't sure how their phone works.

"We kept it simple, 'Visit Weather.com on your mobile browser for your chance to win a BlackBerry,'" he said.

TWCi says that people use each platform for slightly different purposes.

"The differences between online and the mobile Web are usage patterns," Mr. Van Nostran said. "The phone is for people in short-term planning mode, say, for people going to the ballpark that day, while online is more for long-term planning, 'What the weather going to be like this weekend, what's the ten-day forecast?'"

TWCi is betting on a coming explosion in the popularity of the mobile Web.

"I think we're still in the learning and awareness stages right now," Mr. Van Nostran said. "People are just starting to figure out that they can get a lot of the same functionality on their handset as they can online with their PC.

"We haven't hit critical mass yet, but we're getting there, and mobile Web has the biggest potential to attract consumers on the go and advertisers," he said. "Applications are great, but people are comfortable going online, and that Internet experience translates well to phones."

TWCi will release downloadable applications optimized for both iPhone and BlackBerry in the near future.

Mr. Van Nostran predicts that mobile Web usage will continue to increase as screen sizes get bigger and mobile Web browsing gets faster. In turn, that will mean the potential to reap more advertising dollars.

"Right now we're making more money on our subscription services, but in the future we're expecting a more even distribution between that and advertising revenue," Mr. Van Nostran said. "The potential we see down the road for mobile is so great that we feel like we have to capitalize now."

Large brands that have advertised on TWCi's mobile Web platform include upscale auto manufacturers such as RangeRover, hospitality brands such as Hampton Inn and insurance companies such as All State.

"We're putting a lot of resources into mobile, both the product itself and the marketing aspect building consumer awareness and establishing brand loyalty," Mr. Van Nostran said. "We were thrilled with the results from the most recent mobile campaign, and we're looking to expand on promotions like this going forward."