A bizarre twist on SMS marketing, SnapNow today brought to Europe an MMS picture recognition variant that’s been floating ’round Japan for years. Just like SMS, SnapNow lets marketers send responses to folk who send a message to their particular shortcode. What’s different – unlike SMS, SnapNow requires people photograph a billboard, magazine page or other ad, then send it via MMS (the server recognizes the image). In other words, not only is the process more convoluted than merely texting a keyword string to a number, it also costs more than a regular message.
SnapNow is being trialed from today with Haymarket Publishing’s Inside United official Man Utd magazine and youth style mag SuperSuper. The service comes to the U.S. in three months, I’m told.