With just 16 business days between now and the Awards Ceremony for the 2011 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, which takes place in London on 3 November, its time to look at the nominees in the second category.

So lets take a look at the companies and the campaigns vying for the honours in the Most Effective Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign category. Here they are, in alphabetical order.

Found/Autoglass – Smashing the Glass Repair Market on Mobile
Following successful campaigns for Premier Inn and Flybe, Found turned its hand to windscreens, with a mobile strategy designed to provide Autoglass with an optimised presence across mobile search, and incorporate click-to-call functionality to capture motorists who need immediate roadside assistance.

The project combined simple, conversion-focused mobile web landing pages with a highly targeted mobile PPC campaign, including dynamic insertion of different click-to-call phone numbers, according to the referring search terms, and geo-targeting of ads for location-based searches.

The project represented an ideal marriage of consumer need and new technology, with the popularity of the concept proven with excellent click-to-call conversion rates, right from launch.

OpenMarket – Disasters Emergency Committee East Africa Drought Appeal
Following the drought in East Africa that left 10m people in need of food, water and emergency healthcare, OpenMarket worked with the Disasters and Emergencies Committee (DEC) to enable a SMS-based donation platform.
The solution allows consumers to donate £5 in response to the humanitarian crisis in East Africa, simply by texting one of the keywords – ‘HELP’, ‘CRISIS’, ‘AID’, ‘DONATE’, ‘HELP’, ‘SUPPORT’ or ‘AFRICA’ – to the shortcode, 70000. To date, more than £1.2m has been raised via these SMS donations since the DEC launched the Appeal in late June 2011.

OpenMarket’s CMX2 platform also allows people to opt into Gift Aid when making donations, boosting the value of those donations by 25 per cent.

Pepsico/Rabarba – Pepsi Content in a Bottle
The ‘Pepsi Makes Your Day’ campaign offered a host of desirable multimedia content, as well as free texts and talktime, in a text-and-win drive in the Turkish market. The campaign put prizes such as free Premier League Football highlights subscriptions from mobile operator Turkcell and pop music ringback tones up for grabs. Consumers just had to text unique codes found under Pepsi can lids to stand a chance of winning.

The range of content meant the campaign appealed to a wide demographic, and each participant also received 12 hours of free airtime from Turkcell. The promotion was supported by celebrity endorsements in TV commercials to raise awareness.

The four-month promotion led to Pepsi reaching its highest market share in the country in eight years.

Pharos Mobile – Burger King Monopoly Madness
Burger King and Vodafone used the fame of the Monopoly brand to create a unique promotional game that rewarded customers for engaging. Monopoly deed cards were given to consumers making purchases at Burger King, with a call to action for consumers to text unique codes on the deed cards to enter into a sweepstake. Prizes included operator products and discount coupons for food at Burger King.

The codes also tied in with the deed cards on the Monopoly board, giving consumers an incentive to collect cards. A website also gave consumers the chance to trade cards with fellow players. Consumers were also entered into a larger sweepstake, with the chance to win one of 10 cars, or one of 100 iPads.

In the fiercely competitive fast food market, the campaign delivered a 10 per cent boost in sales for Burger King.

Saudi Telecom Company/Upstream – 100 BMW X5 *100 Days
The ‘100 BMW X5 *100 Days’ was a promotional campaign undertaken by Upstream on behalf of Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Saudi Arabia’s leading telecoms provider. The campaign was the first of its kind to run in Saudi Arabia.

Made possible by Upstream’s Marketing Communications Suite (MCS), it aimed to reward and engage existing customers, increasing loyalty and reinforcing the brand’s prestige. It also aimed to increase revenue for STC, while keeping within Sharia law.

The promotion gave STC’s entire wireless subscriber base of 22m consumers the chance to opt into a trivia-based mobile marketing promotion, in which correct answers garnered credits towards digital content, and further opportunities to enter a daily draw to win a BMW X5. Consumers were engaged via messages sent to their mobile phone. The campaign ran for 100 days, with a new car given away every day, for the duration of the campaign.

Turkcell/Aerodeon/Shell Turcas – Shell FuelSave Fuels
An IVR and text message campaign to encourage users to try a new type of fuel, Turkcell Permission Database Marketing was used to reach potential FuelSave customers who were not already Shell users. The campaign aimed to explain the benefits of the fuel to the target group, and address the misconception that the fuel is only for heavy-duty vehicles.

The IVR campaign employed Turkish celebrity Burcu Esmersoy’s voice to engage potential customers. Customers that didn’t answer the call received a text message telling them that Burcu Esmersoy had called.

Calls were targeted at customers on Turkcell’s 12.4m strong database of opted-in subscriber. Strong quantitative results, coupled with good social media coverage, made for a great result for Shell.

To book your place at the Awards Ceremony, please email [email protected] or telephone +44 (0) 77696 74824. The event is strictly limited to 250 people. Tables of 10 cost £2,050, while individual seats are priced at £225.

And dont forget theres a native iOS app, a hybrid Android app, and a web app for other platforms, for the event. More details on that here.