Ifbyphone Blog

If you watched TV during the 1960s -  or AMC’s hot new show about the 1960s advertising universe, Mad Men - “David Oglivy” is a name to be conjured with.

A YouTube video of the Master at Gavin Heaton’s Servant Of  Chaos blog is a Schweppervescent trip down memory lane.  It’s also a timeless reminder for marketing folks that direct response - not general - advertising is the real gold standard. Why? Because direct response advertisers know “to the dollar” how effective their programs are.

Yet direct response advertising is a stepchild in the advertising hierarchy. But while those edgy image ads are garnering Advertising Age awards, a constricting economy means businesses will increasingly demand results in cool, hard cash. And that means….direct response.

So make it easier on everyone with a click-to-call.

Voice 2.0 Thought Leader Thomas Howe analyzed the applications available from the iPhone App Store today.  At the end of the article he paid us a compliment:

As a telephony developer, keep your eyes glued to ifbyphone - they are first out of the gate.

We’re excited that people are using our iPhone application and are generally giving it good reviews.  It has utility.  It is useful.  Tell your parents where you’re going to be tonight.  Tell your fans about your next gig.  Much of the time in this industry, the focus is on the revolution.  The revolution being defined as opening up APIs to developers so they can extend their software and business processes to voice.

Sometimes the simple things get lost.  That is why in addition to our powerful and simple API, we continue to deliver off the shelf applications:

• Click-to-Call: Simple URL link to connect business and prospects
• Virtual Receptionist: Allows companies without a centralized phone system to use a single phone system to their customers
• Verify-Me-Now: To assist in fraud reduction
• Voice Broadcasts: To help business communicate to their clients and prospects
• Lead Distributor: A virtual call center in a box (metaphorically speaking)
• iPhone Voice Broadcast: Broadcast your voice to your fans, friends, family, business associates directly from your iPhone.

And that’s just the start.  Keep your eyes here for more applications that are on the way!

Just a few days after launching the Ifbyphone Voice Broadcast app for the iPhone, today we are introducing the Ifbyphone Lead Distributor.

Basically, the Ifbyphone Lead Distributor allows Ifbyphone customers to establish a virtual call center without any start-up expense.

As an excerpt from our press release states,

The Ifbyphone Lead Distributor offers a host of productivity benefits for small- and medium-sized businesses already taking advantage of Ifbyphone’s ability to integrate Web and telephone services. The intelligent tool also enables businesses to distribute calls across traditional call centers to the appropriate call taker, regardless of location. Upon receipt of a call, the Lead Distributor evaluates the time of day, day of week, caller-ID and number of calls previously transferred to a particular location before determining where to send the call.

Here is a nice screen shot of the easy-to-use user interface:

Read more about the Ifbyphone Lead Distributor in our Press Room.

Learn more about the Ifbyphone Lead Distributor on our website.

The Chicago Sun-Times, one of the two major newspapers in Chicago, featured us today on the front page of the business section.

Click on the title below to read the article, or you can also find it in our press room.

Skokie telecom hopes to create a buzz with phone solutions

The Chicago Sun-Times also cited Jon Arnold’s comments about Ifbyphone in the article:

Jon Arnold, principal of J Arnold & Associates, a Toronto-based telecommunications analyst, said Ifbyphone’s mashups of the Internet and voice technology are turning visionary ideas into real-world applications.

“This technology is more than just putting a customer into a queue or doing cheaper calls,” Arnold said. “Ad agencies and other businesses can put intelligence into their networks that fit their needs.”

The launch of our Voice Broadcast application for the iPhone went very well.  The application is rapidly climbing in popularity, and we’ve listened to the feed back from our users.  To that end, we’re making some changes.

• Our iPhone accounts will now work forever (instead of the previous 6 months before signing up for a package).  Users can use the 100 free minutes and not pay a thing.  You can sign up here.
• We will be adding a way for you to enter your credit card information in case you want to use more than 100 minutes.  Overage minutes will be billed at $.15 per.
• If you are a heavy user, you will shortly be able sign up for a usage plan.  The plan will be $7.99 a month.  In addition to providing you with another 100 minutes, overage minutes will be billed at $.08 per.

We’re very happy people are using this application, and making it one of the most popular Business applications on the iPhone App Store.  Keep the feedback coming!

A couple months ago, when we announced that we were developing an iPhone application, we got a lot of positive press about it.  This morning, our application was placed on the IPhone App Store.  Before we knew it, people started signing up.

What does it do?  The Ifbyphone Voice Broadcast iPhone app allows you to broadcast a voice message to a group of people from your iPhone contact list.  Purely hypothetical example: you’re a sales manager and maybe you’re leaving town.    You want to remind your reps that it’s the end of the month, and to really burn up the phones.  Using voice broadcast, it’s a pretty simple process to get that message to your reps.

1. Choose your contacts to send the message to.
2. Tell us when you want the message delivered.
3. Tell us where to call you to record the message.
4. Record the message.

That’s basically it.  We’ll call the numbers on your contacts and play them the message you recorded.  You’ll be able to see what numbers were left as voicemails and which were live answers.  The thing about this application is that it’s a pretty simple to use utility.  These days there are so many ways to communicate - Instant Messaging, Skype, Twitter, Email, Blog Posts, RSS.  But short of meeting people face to face, there is no better way to communicate than by voice.

Our easy to use Voice Broadcast application allows you to deliver a message to many people using your own actual voice.  And that gets to the heart of what we’re about.  We make it easy for businesses (or people) to use phones to connect in better, smarter, easier ways than they could before.

Here are some screen shots:

Main Screen:

Setting up a new broadcast:

Select Groups:

Record your broadcast message:

Broadcast History:

You can get the Voice Broadcast App on iTunes, just click on the image below.  You can sign up for a free IfByPhone account directly through the application or by using this plugins page.

To talk to me, please click here.

Ifbyphone has recently added 2 new pages to our website, and we invite you to take a look.

1. A Press Page: Features recent articles, press releases, & blog entries about us.
2. A Plugins Page: Ifbyphone is now displaying our iPhone App, Facebook App, Joomla Module, Yahoo Widget, and several upcoming plugins for everyday business tools on a brand new page.

In addition to those two new pages, you may have noticed improved navigation to our services page on our top header, a cleaner left column on our home page, and a “Quick Reference Guide” for improved navigation and usability in our footer.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to add improvements to our website and our phone applications.

In a new post, mobile advertising guru Andrew Grill highlights U.K.-based Yell.com’s new mobile map-based “yellow pages” services.  The free-to-use (ad supported) service takes advantage of both browser and phone capabilities to offer a true Web 2.0/Voice 2.0 experience — for example, every number is click-to-call, and you can add contact info automatically to address books and send it to someone else as a text message.  Unfortunately for North Americans, Yell Group’s U.S. service — Yellowbook.com — doesn’t yet offer the service.

Ifbyphone is looking forward to attending AdTech Chicago, which starts two weeks from today on August 5-6 at Navy Pier.

Our suite of telephone application services provides all of the tools needed to integrate telephony into your next campaign.

If you are at the show, we invite you to stop by booth 410, schedule a meeting with us, or attend a seminar on Tuesday August 5th at 3:00PM given by our CEO, Irv Shapiro.

Here is more information about the seminar:

Deliver Leads The Last Mile With Automated Telephone Applications

With the explosion of web marketing and promotion opportunities we often forget our goal is not more web site visitors, it is more sales. For many companies without shopping carts, web sites are little more than expensive Yellow Pages ads. Learn how automated telephone applications are able to deliver customers the last mile from your web site, advertisement or promotion. Discover through a review of case studies how companies of every size are improving lead qualification, driving sales conversions and reducing service delvery costs with automated telephone applications. Applications for inbound, outbound and web integration with full IVR capabilities will be covered.

Travel Go, the Travel Channel’s new mobile travel information service offers a wealth of destination information to any Internet-connected mobile phone. And what’s even better is that when you’re searching for a restaurant or entertainment while you’re on vacation, the service is designed so that “one click does it all” — from finding to calling for reservations.