Check it Out: Cloudy With a Chance of Coupon

"Because it's an emerging technology, I look at it as we're on the leading edge. It's going to take a while to get consumers to embrace it [mobile messages]. I always say the first 500 were the toughest 500 to get signed up. "

Effective Online, Too
While ideal for brick-and-mortar retailers because of time relevancy and weather accuracy (in most cases the alerts aren't triggered until a few hours before, or even during, a weather event to avoid missed forecasts), Pettyjohn says the service isn't limited to that channel. Aisle411 has added a feature called "Click-to-Phone," whereby consumers can click on a particular offer, enter their phone numbers and hit "send" to immediately get text messages tied to the products they were looking at online. The goal is to drive online researchers into stores.