Technology

What are core engines?

mDirect core engines are programs and applications that allow users to build, publish and manage mobile SMS campaigns, mobile sites and mobile applications. In addition, mDirect core engines resolve the mobile device differences and deliver your mobile message, application, or content in the Mobile Device Specific Format (MDSF) of the receiver. These engines drive mDirect products and ensure that the SMSs, internet enabled mobile sites or any other lifestyle or business applications are compatible with specific mobile devices (handsets).

What is the mDirect Control Panel?

Texting
mDirect Control Panel is the feature rich and intuitive User Interface (UI) that allows you to manage all your mobile needs – campaigns, content, WAP/Mobile Sites,Messages, or Applications from this single window.

How many phones, brands and mobile device platforms do you support?

mDirect supports a large number of mobile handsets and brands. Click to view the complete list.

Can I integrate the Mobile Site or Application into our enterprise servers and databases?

Yes. You can. Support from mDirect Professional Services team is available for custom database and enterprise level integration issues if they occur.

Setting up an Account

How do I get started with mDirect?
It’s easy! Get started in 3 simple steps

Register your Keywords/Short codes
Purchase Message Blocks as required
Make payment
Log on to www.mdirectcentral.com and start managing your campaigns & content!

What are keywords and Short codes?

A keyword can be mapped to a unique product or service that is being marketed through a mobile marketing campaign
A short code is a short number that is used to send out and receive text messages. Short codes are easy to remember and
can be mapped to mobile campaigns.
A short code can have multiple unique keywords associated with it.
A short code can be used by multiple businesses as long as they identify unique keywords to represent their products services.

Example: When you see a newspaper advertisement or a billboard with “SMS PBEACH to 223344”, PBEACH is the keyword for the campaign and 223344 is the short code.

What are message blocks?

Message blocks are the fixed number of messages you can send out our receive during a marketing campaign.
You can purchase any number of message blocks and use these messages to support multiple campaigns.
A single message block can be used across multiple campaigns.

When I receive responses for my campaigns, are the SMS/Text messages considered for message block count?

In some countries, incoming and outgoing messages are charged whereas in others they are not. Please contact mDirect to find out about charges in your country.

Should I open separate accounts for mDirect Text, Site and Application?

No. You can use the same account for mDirect Text, Site, and Application.

mDirect Text

Can I get response for my SMS/Text campaigns?

Yes. You can choose Interactive Text Message campaigns. Your responses can be integrated with backend databases. Please contact mDirect Professional Services team to find out about how they can help you integrate your databases into an interactive campaign.

How can I manage a Text/SMS campaign?

You can manage your Text/SMS campaigns from the mDirect Control Panel. Details of messages sent, time, success/failure, responses received (for Interactive campaigns), reports, and so on are available in the Control Panel. You can also change and edit content for the messages using mDirect templates. mDirect can also help you set up and manage campaigns, as well as create new content templates for you for a fee. Contact mdirect.

mDirect Sites

How are Mobile Sites built?

WAP/Mobile sites are built using XHTML or WML scripts. The mDirect Mobile Site interface, allows easy configuration of the building blocks of a WAP/Mobile site – the header, the footer, body, images, and labels. A lot of mobile browsers are now supporting HTML and some of the latest Web technologies. mDirect is continuously focused on building engines to suit the latest mobile browsers.

Do I have to host Mobile Sites like Websites?

Yes. Mobile Sites have to be hosted on servers so that they are accessible on the Internet. Web servers configured for Mobile platform/WAP can host Mobile Sites. mDirect can help you host your mobile sites on their servers or can help you configure the mobile sites on your own servers.

How can we access Mobile Sites?

Mobile sites are accessed from the mobile browser by typing the URL for the mobile site. URLs are registered similar to Website URLs. mDirect can do the needful for you if required.

mDirect Application

What are the mobile platforms supported by mDirect Applications?

mDirect Application is compatible with most of the mobile platforms like J2ME, RIM, Flash Lite, Windows Mobile. Engines for BREW, Palm, and the all new Android from the Google OHA are currently under development. This is an evolving list and mDirect strives to update it regularly.

What is the development platform for mDirect Applications?
mDirect Application supports the following development tools for different mobile platforms:

J2ME for JAVA and RIM supported mobiles
Flash Lite for Flash supported mobiles
Visual C++ or Visual Studio.NET for BREW, Palm, Symbian and Windows mobiles.

How can customers download our mobile Applications to their mobile handsets?

When your mobile application is published, customers/users can download the mobile application from the URLs mentioned in the Text message/Mobile Site. Applications can also be transferred via Bluetooth.

I have a WAP Site. Do I require mobile Application also?

WAP Sites are adapted for your mobile handset and give your customers a clean and simple experience while mobile applications reside in your handset and the interactive experience is rich, fast and easy. Further, with mobile phones having almost all the features of a personal computer, you can provide many types of applications to your customers like games, learning solutions, and information/data sheet downloads to name a few. These applications can be offered to mobile users without compromising on the Web 2.0+ experience of the Internet.

Campaign Management

Do Mobile Campaigns require Mobile Sites?

Mobile Campaigns via mDirect Text is an effective marketing medium to showcase your products or services. Yet, they contain limited information. mDirect Sites help you to create your own sites for the mobile platform with complete information and features just like any Website that is accessible in the Internet. Further, mDirect Sites are smaller & cleaner than Websites while being effective. Mobile Users can view Internet pages or shop online on their mobile phone while on the move.

How do I launch a campaign?

Launching a campaign is very simple with mDirect Control Panel. You could launch Text campaigns, Mobile Site campaigns, Mobile application campaigns or a combination of the three. Here is how you go about each of them -
Mobile Text
Select the template, create your messages, add contact numbers, and publish. Your campaign is launched!
Mobile Site
Select the template, create your content, register a URL, and publish on the mDirect servers. Once the site is launched, you can setup a text campaign to market your Mobile Site.
Mobile Application
Select the template, create your content, choose the target devices and publish on the mDirect servers. Once the application is launched, you can link it up to a Mobile site and also setup a text campaign to market your Mobile application.

Content Management

Why do I need templates?

Templates help you to create content for your Campaigns, Sites, or mobile Applications easily. mDirect offers a wide choice of templates for campaigns, sites, and other applications. There are also exclusive templates to cater to specific industries or business applications.

Do I have the freedom to modify mDirect templates?

Yes, very much! You can use the templates as is, modify/customize them to suit your needs or create brand new templates from scratch. If you want, mDirect, through its professional services division can also create or customize templates for you and manage your content for a fee. Contact mdirect.

Professional Services

I have seen and used mDirect templates, but our business requires a custom solution. How do we go about?

mDirect Consultancy and Professional services is the answer. With many man-hours of expertise in developing solutions for the mobile domain, and a team of qualified Business Analysts, Project Managers & Software Engineers. mDirect can create mobile solutions for any type of requirement. Contact consultancy@mdirectonline.com.

Can I create custom applications without using the mDirect platform?

Yes, very much! If you want, mDirect, through its professional services division can build custom mobile applications for you. You can bank on mDirect’s experience in building a mobile platform and device specific authoring and publishing engines to create your own unique mobile application or solution. Contact consultancy@mdirectonline.com.

If you have any further questions, please Contact Us