Cape Town, South Africa – March 12, 2013 – Clickatell, a global leader in mobile messaging and transactional services, today announced that Mervyn Goliath has joined its executive team as part of its ongoing commitment to deliver Enterprise-grade mobile enablement in Sub-Saharan Africa and internationally. Clickatell, the international pioneer for Business-2-Consumer messaging, today serves more than 65% of the top banks, insurance companies and retailers in South Africa as well as an impressive and diverse set of international clients. Recent expansion plans into West and East Africa as well as the launch of Mobile Transactional services and smartphone applications are just some of the signs that the management team continues to have big plans for the business as an integral player where mobile, internet and the consumer come together.

Goliath has over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications, mobile banking, payment and transaction services industries and has held and excelled in executive roles at leading outfits, including ABSA (part of Barclays), MWeb (part of MIH) and Telkom. Most recently, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Digital Banking Services for ABSA, one of the largest financial services providers on the African continent, where his primary responsibility focused on transforming the bank’s digital channels. Before ABSA, Goliath served as CTO and General Manager of Technology and Operations at MWEB and as Group Head in National Telematics and Data Services at Telkom.

“Goliath’s experience at ABSA, MWeb, and Telkom, as well as his leadership and expertise, will be invaluable as we advance Clickatell’s enterprise mobile-enablement strategy in our Pan-Africa plans,” said Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell CEO. “Mervyn is a respected industry veteran and a seasoned executive with an impressive track record. We are proud to have him join our team.”

Goliath is joining a Clickatell executive team that is already fully engaged and immersed in the mobile financial services space in Africa, the region that is leading the charge in mobile transactions and payments. Africa is the fastest growing mobile financial services market because of the technology’s ubiquity, cost-effectiveness and the unmet demand for financial services.

“I am extremely excited about the challenge and opportunity of working with Clickatell’s team of engineering and financial services experts to grow its enterprise business in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Goliath. “Clickatell’s deep enterprise and financial services experience in Africa positions us well to continue to be a technology innovator in this region. We have seen just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential of mobile financial services in Africa and I am thrilled at the prospect of joining Clickatell at this time.”

About Clickatell, Inc.

Clickatell is a global leader in mobile messaging and transaction services, which enable its customers to alert, interact and transact with their business partners and communities on the mobile phone.

Clickatell’s global footprint means that it can deliver short message services (SMS) through its next-generation Clickatell Mobile eXchange (CMneXt) to over 800 mobile networks in over 200 countries and territories, with the potential to reach 6 billion mobile phone users – more than 80 percent of the world’s population. In addition, with Clickatell Transaction eXchange (CTX), it provides the essential link between mobile consumers and their financial institution, with services like airtime top-up.

More than 15,000 enterprise, government, medium and small business customers and application developers have embraced Clickatell’s technology solutions. Founded in 2000, Clickatell is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. To learn more, visit http://www.clickatell.com/

Media Contact:  
Kevin Sugarman
GlobalFluency
ksugarman@globalfluency.com
650-433-4170

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Redwood City, CA – Red Herring’s Top 100 Americas list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.

“It is great to see the re-emergence of Red Herring, a much loved publication for many in Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs around the world. We are also honored to be one of the winners of the Red Herring Top 100 America’s award.” said Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers. “This validates our leadership in changing the way businesses engage with their customers on mobile devices, anywhere, any time.”

As mobile use continues to climb, Clickatell’s SMS Gateway is gaining more recognition as a powerful and cost-effective channel of targeted communications, marketing and customer interaction. Clickatell has expanded its offerings by providing solutions for the underbanked in developing regions such as Sub Saharan Africa.

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across North America to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Clickatell embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Clickatell should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their sector peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Americas.

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Redwood City, CA – Clickatell, the global leader in Personalized Priority Messaging (PPM) through all mobile devices, today announced the availability of the Clickatell Connect API to enable developers to seamlessly integrate SMS text messaging with their web or mobile applications.

Clickatell works with thousands of application developers across the globe and enables their applications to send and receive text messages across more than 220 countries, covering over 960 mobile network operators.

The new Clickatell Connect API offers application developers instant signup for a Clickatell account from within their application, allowing users the ability to send SMS text messages in a far shorter time and more intuitively than was previously the case.

Clickatell’s Connect API now enables developers to let their users perform the following actions without leaving their application:

• Register new Clickatell accounts

• Complete Clickatell account activation and user verification procedures

• Requisition one or more Clickatell Messaging APIs (which could include support for sending messages via HTTP(S), XML, SOAP, FTP, SMPP, SMTP and Com Object)

• Purchase Clickatell messaging credits

“Clickatell is the only solution to offer SMS text messaging account creation via API, and we’ve gone to great lengths to ensure that any developer who wants to interface an application, site or system seamlessly with our SMS text messaging gateway, can do so reliably and simply,” said Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell’s CEO. “Our APIs are fast, simple and offer a highly scalable solution for organizations of all sizes.”

Before the introduction of the Clickatell Connect API, users of applications built by developers who were leveraging Clickatell were required to manually perform a series of steps to obtain the required Clickatell account credentials to SMS-enable their application.

As the world’s largest provider of PPM services, Clickatell is working with developers to provide organizations of all sizes with a powerful way to Connect, Interact and Transact with their customers on a mobile device. These actions could include delivering just-in-time deals and incentives, and prompt usage, consumption or purchasing. PPM involves making use of the global reach and push-messaging capability of the SMS protocol to deliver value for the sender and the receiver as a result of message simplicity, contextual relevance and time-sensitivity.

With SMS, small and large enterprises can reach customers at a far higher response rate than any other media type, averaging between 15-45 percent versus a typical 1-5 percent response rate for popular forms of direct marketing.

“Application developers are realizing that SMS text messages can reach consumers with relevant, actionable and personalized mobile information,” added de Villiers. “We created the Clickatell Connect API so that application developers could leverage the power of high-value mobile PPM messaging with increased convenience and ease-of-use for their users.”

The Clickatell Connect API is free to all Clickatell account holders and available for worldwide message sending. For more information, visit http://www.clickatell.com/clickatell_connect/

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Redwood City, CA – Clickatell, a leading mobile messaging provider, today announced that Truth On Call selected Clickatell’s total messaging solution  – global short messaging service (SMS) delivery, 24/7 live support, short code provisioning and easy-to-use APIs, to enable its mobile polling service to healthcare providers.

The San Francisco and New York start-up, Truth On Call, reaches out to pre-screened, verified physicians via SMS with multiple response or open-ended questions posed by industry device or drug manufacturers, the media and government. The industry pays to ask the questions and physicians are paid for their responses and control the number of questions they receive every month.

Truth On Call is an ideal service when range, reach and easy response are needed. Truth On Call’s application, plus Clickatell’s SMS messaging, enables the company to reach a large number of doctors, and other healthcare practitioners, almost instantly. Typical use cases for Truth On Call include a media representative looking for information for an article, or a healthcare organization that needs statistics for outreach during an emergency situation.

Currently, Truth On Call connects with physicians in the United States and the United Kingdom, and growth plans call for the opportunity to expand globally. The company selected Clickatell based on its reach of more than 815 networks in more than 200 countries.

“In the past, healthcare market research was completed via fax, email or phone and could take weeks to complete,” said Rosina Samadani, Ph.D., Founder and President of Truth On Call. “Clickatell’s broad reach gives our service the potential to connect with healthcare professionals across the globe in a matter of minutes and we’re excited at the future growth possibilities of these markets.”

“Truth On Call is revolutionizing the way the healthcare community interacts, opening up a host of new opportunities for this industry to connect with physicians and other healthcare providers in a way that has not been done before. It is exciting to be a part of such a forward-looking innovation that may impact people’s lives directly,” said Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell CEO.

About Truth On Call

Launched in 2010, Truth On Call provides earth’s fastest verified healthcare practitioner input. It is the only market research service that communicates with verified healthcare providers via text message. It provides the industry with unprecedented reach and speed in communicating with these individuals to provide critical input on time-sensitive questions. Truth On Call is available in the US and UK.
For more information about Truth On Call visit http://www.truthoncall.com/.

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Redwood City, CA – Clickatell, the global leader in Personalized Priority Messaging (PPM), announced today that it has won the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal Idea and Innovation award for Social/Economic Impact for providing a service that improves people’s daily lives in a significant and tangible way. Clickatell was recognized by The Business Journal at a ceremony held to honor the new directions in the world of technology and science, paying tribute to Silicon Valley’s unique position in driving new thinking and advanced technology progress.

The event was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, and featured winners from biotech, software, hardware and consumer products. “The goal of the Idea and Innovation Awards was to recognize some of the most innovative products and people here in Silicon Valley,” said publisher James MacGregor. “Several of the honorees have achieved a lot in a very short amount of time and the companies are truly groundbreaking.”

Clickatell provides a solution that enables simpler, quicker and better delivery of high value, just-in-time, individualized mobile messages such as text alerts that can significantly improve people’s day-to-day lives in terms of safety, convenience, awareness, and savings. As mobile use continues to climb, Clickatell’s SMS Gateway is gaining more recognition as a powerful and cost-effective channel of targeted real-time communications, marketing and customer interaction, and emergency use in remote areas where Internet access is unreliable or non-existent. As an example of how Clickatell is making a positive impact on society, emergency alert services like MapAlerter and Universal Alert use Clickatell in rescue efforts including incident and damage assessment, mobilization of rescue workers, transmission of emergency instructions, and managing evacuations.

Following the earthquake in Haiti, Clickatell extended free SMS messaging services to organizations providing aid and helped to reunite missing children with their families. The ubiquity of SMS allowed the lines of communications to remain open during emergency services and disaster relief efforts. The ‘store and forward’ nature of SMS meant that messages could be delivered as soon as there was a ‘window’ of network coverage — and this window didn’t need to last more than a few seconds. As a result, many organizations in Haiti were using SMS services to communicate even as the capacities of networks were stretched thin.

“It is an honor to be recognized as a leader in delivering innovation that has a measurable impact on improving people’s ability to communicate, work and live more efficiently, and stay safe and informed,” said Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers, who was at the event in Mountain View to accept the award. “We’re just beginning to see how mobile messaging is changing lives, not just for business-to-consumer interaction, but also for emergency alerts. At Clickatell, we are making it easy and cost effective to connect people, companies, ideas, and help in times of increased competition and conflict.”

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Redwood City, CA – Clickatell, the global leader in Personalized Priority Messaging (PPM), today announced the “Festive Retail Guide” to provide retailers with a resource to drive holiday sales through strategic mobile marketing campaigns. Retailers can dramatically improve customer response, retention and reach through easy and effective SMS techniques. Clickatell released the guide as a helpful tool for stores to better market to their customers this holiday season and all year round.

SMS mobile marketing is the leading channel for direct marketing to consumers because it is more affordable than traditional forms of marketing and can be targeted directly to the personal taste of the customer. SMS is capable of reaching 91 percent of the US population and has a higher direct response rate than telemarketing, email and direct mail, according to a recent study by the Direct Marketing Association. In fact, 98 percent of people will open a text message, while email messages are left unread 80 percent of the time, according to Nielsen research.

Clickatell recommends that retailers capitalize on this growing trend with meaningful, targeted and personalized communication to effectively reach customers. For emerging retailers and small to mid-sized businesses, this will prove to be an essential guide to expand their customer base.

The guide also includes details and advice on simple steps retailers can follow to:

• Create and manage a contact distribution list
• Establish customer profiles from their account histories
• Write an effective SMS message
• Measure campaign success
• Use the correct tools to send and receive your SMS messages

“As a global leader specializing in individualized communications, we wanted to share the latest in a series of best practices briefs from the field to make it easier and more cost effective to use SMS campaigns,” said Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell’s CEO. “The guide helps retailers bring customers through the door by offering deals and discounts straight to their mobile phone.”

By introducing low-cost campaign ideas in the guide, SMS messaging can be used by retailers of any size. In the critical and competitive holiday season and beyond, this is a way for brands to stand out from the crowd and build long-lasting relationships.

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