Punters KO fight night competition

Saturday night’s explosive heavyweight boxing match in Hamilton proved such a hit with punters at Mystery Creek and on television that a text competition held during the evening KO’d the event’s mobile marketing system.

System provider TXT2GET was stunned by an avalanche of more than 40,000 text responses from people wanting to go into the draw for one of five Samsung LCD TVs. The volume of text entries eventually caused the servers between TXT2GET and at its telco gateway provider to overload.

TXT2GET’s CEO Peter Barrett described the response to the promotion as overwhelming, and said it demonstrated the power of a text option to drive customer response to advertising and promotional campaigns. His team and the gateway provider worked throughout Sunday and today to confirm with everyone sending a text in accordance with the Terms and Conditions that they were in the draw.
``The text response was massive,’’ said Barrett, ``and reinforces why so many businesses are turning to TXT-response on their advertising campaigns.’’

``Like the night itself, there was huge excitement about the competition. Despite the condition that the contest allowed only one entry per person, we had a large number of multiple texts from individuals, some who sent as many as 70.

``The chain of systems passing and deciphering messages struggled under the load and many people did not receive texts in reply confirming they were in the competition. We have been working day and night (since Saturday evening) to ensure they receive their confirmations by e-mail and text.

``We estimate it was the biggest single night text promotion to have ever been run in New Zealand, which is a tribute to the amazing promotional job done by DUCO Events.
``People who sent multiple texts due to not being sure about their first entry can e-mail complaints@txt2get.co.nz with their mobile number and postal address for a 20c/text refund.’’

Mr Barrett said this work should be complete by tomorrow (Tuesday 6 October) when the draw would be staged and all entrants notified.

Mr Barrett reiterated that it was not an issue involving the promoters, and was a chain-of-system failure that had now been rectified. TEXT2GET apologized for any concerns caused by the uncertainty that resulted.