Mobile Marketing Start-up Helps Real Estate Agents Stand Out

For about a year, Seattle-based Knovolo has been offering real estate agents a text-messaging and mobile-Web service. Direct spoke with content manager Jay Holcomb to find out how the service helps agents in that beleaguered industry and what its chances are of becoming the next big thing in online marketing.

DIRECT: How does your system work?

HOLCOMB: It’s a combination of text messaging and the mobile Web. We use it to deliver a marketing message to a campaign. A typical marketing campaign delivers a message in a variety of ways: radio ads, signs, fliers. Text messaging is another way to do it.

DIRECT: How long has your company been around?

HOLCOMB: Three years. We started the real estate service about a year ago.

DIRECT: Who’s using your service?

HOLCOMB: We’ve been focusing mostly in the real estate sector so we have a bunch of clients who are real estate agents or agencies. They use our service to get their house listings on the mobile Web (at www.knovolo.com). So you have your