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Britain's Flirtomatic extends mobile service to U.S.

Following its recent launch in Germany, British mobile and online flirting service Flirtomatic has launched a mobile beta in the United States.

Flirtomatic already claims good traction in the U.S. through its Web portal, so launching a mobile version was the obvious next step, according to the company. It will initially launch in beta on mobile, supported by the Web and iPhone platforms.

"Our strategy is pretty simple -- the U.S. has a very large active mobile Internet population, and we think that's going to grow rapidly over the next year despite the recession, driven by carrier promotions, better pricing plans and iPhone, Android and other smartphones," said Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic, London.

"And I think there's a dawning realization among consumers that they can use the Internet on their mobile device," he said. "You've got a very big market over there -- the States is a very attractive market for us to be in."

Flirtomatic isn't waiting to sign deals with carriers, although that is one of the company's goals.

"On top of that, though we do plan to develop relationships with carriers, there is now in our view a big enough off-portal market in the U.S. to achieve initial lift off, whereas that wasn't the case two years ago," Mr. Curtis said. "It does look likes it's the case now, so it's a good time to launch.

"There are more people we can reach who are browsing beyond the operators' mobile portals," he said. "The crucial thing is being able to get to those people while they're on their mobile device.

"When they're on a mobile it's the best time to sell them a mobile service, rather than making the jump from print or TV -- contextual marketing has worked very well for us in the U.K. and Germany."

Flirtomatic has a mobile WAP site at http://wap.flirtomatic.com and an iPhone application downloadable via the iTunes App Store.

In addition to the downloadable application, any consumer who tries to get onto Flirtomatic using an iPhone or iPod touch will be automatically re-routed to an optimized version of the site.

Flirtomatic has no immediate plans to launch an app for Research In Motion's BlackBerry, Google's Android or another smartphone platform.

"We are reviewing all platforms, and when we feel a platform reaches a stage when it's worth developing, we'd do that," Mr. Curtis said. "In general we're not in a rush to do apps -- we're more interested in the browser-driven platform."

According to Flirtomatic, one of the biggest carriers in Britain recently announced the top mobile Internet sites used by their customers, with Facebook coming in at No. 1 and Flirtomatic No. 2.

"Mobile social networking is driving very large parts of the mobile Internet -- it's a key driver of usage," Mr. Curtis said. "We get well over 100 million WAP page views per month just in the U.K., which are pretty large numbers.

"What we're seeing from our users is an extraordinary level of interaction, and the number of page views proves that," he said. "We ran a survey of our customers in November, a questionnaire we did via WAP with multiple-choice 10 questions to research what they like and didn't like, and we got 5,000 responses in 24 hours, which is a really high figure.

"Almost 20 percent of our users responded, and we're seeing similar response rates with marketing campaigns that clients have done through us."

Two British carriers have been advertising with Flirtomatic for more than six months.

Strongbow Cider ran a two-week mobile coupon campaign with Flirtomatic. The partners offered consumers a free pint of cider that users could send to each other as a gift.

"Consumers sent 348,000 pints, which made us the biggest cider pub in the U.K. by far for a short while," Mr. Curtis said.

The gift pints were clickable. When consumers clicked on one, it sent them through to a Strongbow-branded mobile site where they could get a voucher for a pint of Strongbow Cider, which they could show at participating pub.

Flirtomatic claims that the Strongbow campaign achieved a 10 percent click-through rate.

"There's no doubt that there is a lot of potential for brands to develop mobile as a marketing channel, especially when they've got a sticky relationship with users," Mr. Curtis said. "We can help enable those types of relationships."

Mobile flirting is contagious
Flirtomatic says that its user base in the U.S. that has grown virally thus far.

Despite the difficult time in the market and competition from social networking players such as MySpace, Facebook and MocoSpace, Flirtomatic is optimistic that it can replicate some of the success it has had in Britain and Germany.

Flirtomatic claims to have 1.3 million existing users.

Following an ad-supported model, Flirtomatic hopes to begin generating revenues in the U.S. market within six months.

Flirtomatic is now on-deck with carriers in Britain and Germany.

Flirtomatic is the first branded consumer service of Handmade Mobile Ltd.

Handmade Mobile Entertainment was formed in June 2004 by Avi Azulai, cofounder of iTouch plc, and Mark Curtis, a former managing partner for Fjord and Razorfish.

Launched in 2006, Flirtomatic is a real-time multimedia messaging platform that currently has more mobile than wired-Web-specific users.

Consumers can discover other members on the basis of their preferences, interests, location and other information stored in their multimedia user profile.

In May, Flirtomatic users were sending 1 million messages a day, generating 21 million Web page views and 130 million WAP page views.

Flirtomatic has received venture funding from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and Seraphim Capital.

Targeted at young adults -- 75 percent of users are between ages 18 and 30 -- Flirtomatic operates a free and uninterrupted service across the Web and mobile that enables users to flirt and meet new people online and via their mobile device.

"Our core audience is split evenly between male and female, and it's a mainstream demographic," Mr. Curtis said. "All economic groups are signing up for Flirtomatic.

"What we haven't done yet is any ethnic marketing in the U.S.," he said. "Initially it'll be more generic than that."