By Ben Tannenbaum

The iPhone can do just about everything, right? Well, it can't support MMS, but that will soon change.

While this was seemingly a small part of Apple's announcement yesterday, it is big news for marketers. MMS is essentially multimedia messages that include text, images, audio and video. So what's the big deal?

The usefulness of iPhone applications for marketing should not be dismissed, but by focusing on iPhone-specific campaigns, a brand runs the risk of shutting out key segments of its consumer-base. Short codes represent a cross-channel way to use mobile. Almost every mobile phone can use short codes.

With the iPhone now supporting it, you can safely say that MMS has achieved handset ubiquity.

By combining the ever-present nature and user-friendliness that's made SMS such a successful marketing tool -- with the ability to easily send and receive multimedia content -- MMS represents the next step in the mobile-channel contribution to interactive marketing, if executed properly.

(Full disclosure: MX Telecom is one of the few aggregators currently supporting MMS on AT&T.)

We have learned that mobile marketing is most successful when strategically used as part of a comprehensive marketing campaign. Standalone adoption of MMS marketing offers only a limited upside. However, if marketers can successfully integrate it into their current cross-media efforts, we will see the full potential of MMS realized.

The adoption of MMS is simple enough when you consider the user-friendliness of the format and the fact that it can operate on existing short codes as SMS.

The value of inbound MMS -- multimedia messages sent from the consumer to a brand -- has so far been ignored by an overwhelming majority of marketers.

Hopefully, the announcement by Apple will generate renewed interest into the possibilities offered by multimedia messaging.

There are two main areas in which inbound MMS is already influencing marketing: image recognition and user-generated content.

By combining MMS and image recognition technology, agencies can turn out-of-home, print and point of sale advertising into uniquely interactive consumer experiences.

Consumers can send MMS with a picture of a magazine advertisement and be rewarded with branded multimedia content. The same concept could be applied to bar codes at the point-of sale to trigger discount coupons.

Marketing doesn't get more direct than that.

The power of user-generated content has been widely documented and several large brands have already used user-generated content in their campaigns. Doritos crashed the Super Bowl, Skittles' homepage went viral, and numerous brands are leveraging the reach of Twitter daily.

MMS allows marketers to make use of multimedia user-generated content with a major advantage -- they can appeal for consumer participation wherever and whenever due to the omnipresent nature of the mobile device. The personal nature of the mobile phone makes conversational marketing instantly more compelling.

Best of all, the dialogue can continue. Successful mobile integration is more important than ever, as SMS and MMS programs represent the evolution of CRM tools.

How can the mobile industry encourage marketers to take advantage? One word: education.

It is hard to expect an increased number of marketers to embrace newer mobile technologies from a strategic planning and creative perspective without a sufficient transfer of knowledge.

Members of the mobile community, such as aggregators and carriers, must provide proper education to brands and agencies alike, allowing them to effectively take advantage of tools such as MMS.

Ben Tannenbaum is business development communications manager at mobile aggregator MX Telecom, New York. Reach him at .