Skopje, Macedonia
2008 – 2012
I was 21 and still at university. I had read that mobile marketing worked everywhere in the world and did not exist here, so I spent a year planning one, borrowed €3,000, and started the first mobile marketing agency in Macedonia. It ran for four years under me and two more without me. This page is what is left of it.
The work started in October 2007 with a business plan and research, four months before the company existed. The numbers came after it was registered, from people on all four Macedonian operators. Everyone on the list signed a paper form that allowed commercial messages, written to satisfy the personal data protection directorate.
The form asked for gender, age, city, faculty, year of study, marital status and interests. Fourteen characteristics in all. That is why a campaign could go to 907 women instead of to everybody, and why a drinks brand could say one thing to people aged 18 to 30 and something else to people over 46.
There were two services and they had different prices. Brands rented my list at 7.50 MKD (€0.12) per message. Companies that already had their own list paid 3.00 MKD (€0.05) to send through my platform to it. The second one was cheaper because I owed those subscribers nothing.
In April 2009 the World Bank asked me to explain myself in writing. I was 22. Here is what I wrote, uncorrected:
“At the University I got paperwork on topic ‘Mobile Marketing’. While I was making research for the project I’ve realized that this idea function in the world but in Macedonia still doesn’t exist. I had a whole year just planning and making researches and defining processes. And after everything was planned, only one thing left: To have enough courage to start the company.”
Global Forum Innovator application, April 2009
I had planned on €5,000 to €6,000 and started with €3,000: a €1,500 bank loan, €1,000 of my own savings, and €500 from my brother as a flexible loan. A lawyer friend and an accountant friend did what they do, and the software I had been quoted €1,000 for got built with friends for €200.
For the first eight months there was no office. I made calls from public phone boxes and sent offers from internet cafés. In September 2008 I moved into the YES Incubator, which is where the company started behaving like one.
“If I would fail to develop the company I would have to work for one to two years to pay back my debts. With 23 years I would be free again to try with another new company.”
The same application. That was the whole risk calculation.
The list grew, so a single subscriber figure would be a lie. These are the numbers as they were recorded at the time, each one with where it came from. Denar amounts are converted at the euro peg, 1 EUR = 61.36 MKD, which the denar has held since January 2002.
On 28 May 2009 infoDev, the World Bank’s programme for entrepreneurs in developing countries, named eleven Global Innovators for that year out of its network of business incubators. AdvertSMS was one of them. I was 22 and the only winner from Europe.
In October 2009 I flew to Brazil to present it at the third infoDev Global Forum on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In February 2010 they published the whole story as an interview, which is still online and still says more about the company than anything I could write now.
infoDev, infoDev Announces Winners of Global Innovators Contest 2009, 28 May 2009. The February 2010 interview is here. Both pages are read from the Internet Archive, because iDISC itself is gone.“Danco Dimkov knows this well – his company, AdvertSMS, is revolutionizing marketing in Macedonia. Using popular text messages, AdvertSMS connects businesses and consumers in a more engaging fashion than ever before.”
The reference list of March 2011, as it was written then. Car dealers, faculties, language schools, night clubs, a farmers’ federation and the incubator that housed us.
Client logos as they appeared on the AdvertSMS website and in the reference list, 2010 and 2011.
160 characters, Macedonian, sent to a slice of the list rather than to all of it.
„Има денови кога секоја жена се чуствува напнато, нервозно и со јаки болки. Во тие тешки денови единствено КАФЕТИН менструал може да ви помогне. Алкалоид-Скопје“
There are days when every woman feels tense, on edge and in real pain. On those days only Kafetin menstrual can help. Alkaloid Skopje.
To women, 14 to 40„Најдоброто пиво за на журка!“ / „Одморете од напорниот работен ден, и уживајте во нашето ладно пиво“ / „Ние почнавме со вас како први корисници и сакаме да останеме со Вас“
The best beer for a party. / Rest after a hard day at work and enjoy our cold beer. / We started with you as our first customers and we want to stay with you.
Same beer. Ages 18-30, 30-45, and 46 up„Имате уште неколку дена пред испит а сеуште немате започнато со учење? Потребно ви е чудо? Burn е чудото за Вас! Зголемува енергија а дава концентрација“
A few days left before the exam and you still have not started studying? You need a miracle? Burn is your miracle. More energy, more concentration.
To students, faculty by faculty, timed to each one’s exam weekCampaign examples published on advertsms.com.mk, 2008 and 2009.
The regulator required written consent, printed and signed, from day one. Every person on the list signed a form: 2,500 of them by April 2008, over 7,000 in 2009, more than 10,000 by February 2010. Collecting those signatures was the hard part of the work, and it is not what ended the company.
In 2012 I got a job offer and took it. That year I was building another company’s office in Macedonia, and I handed the day to day to Filip. He and my partner Petar kept pushing. It slowed down, and then it ceased to exist. Invoices trickled on for a few years after that.
Later the regulator allowed people to subscribe online. I do not have the date for that. Ten thousand signed forms became something anyone could collect with a web form.
The phone was changing anyway. In September 2011 Balkan Insight reported 878,300 Facebook profiles in Macedonia, a country of 2.1 million. Viber had launched in December 2010, WhatsApp had reached Android in August 2010. A brand could now reach the same people for free, and the platform did the sorting for them.
Four years, one list, and ten thousand signatures nobody needs any more.
AdvertSMS was never wound up. In 2017 the same legal person, same tax number, was renamed BIZBI SOLUTIONS DOOEL. So the company I registered on 12 February 2008 as a 21-year-old student is, on paper, the company I run now.
What carried over was not the technology. It was the method. Build the list first, then talk to it, and know enough about the people on it to say something different to each group. I sell that for a living now, to businesses in thirty countries, and I learned it selling text messages at 7.50 MKD (€0.12) each.