Hewlett-Packard?s Web-based photo-sharing and photo-printing service Snapfish is letting customers navigate its Web site on their mobile phones and share their photo albums via SMS.

Internet infrastructure provider and aggregator VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media has partnered with mobile marketing services provider iLoop Mobile to provide an SMS marketing platform for enterprise organizations such as HP. By combining VeriSign?s mobile aggregation and mobile enterprise services with iLoop Mobile?s mobile marketing technology platform, the two companies are offering a single platform for businesses to launch mobile initiatives worldwide.

?Snapfish has 18 million technology-savvy registered users worldwide that log-in to their photo-sharing site,? said Tilak Kasturi, vice president of strategic accounts at iLoop Mobile, San Jose, CA. ?HP is looking to extend photo-sharing with an SMS mechanism letting users share photo albums with friends and family via a link to a mobile Web site sent via SMS.

?Snapfish by HP?s initial target includes 20-plus countries such as the U.S., Europe, India, China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region,? he said. "These are already existing registered users with an existing presence online, which they can now extend to mobile.?

HP is the largest technology company in the world and operates in nearly every country. HP specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, storage and networking hardware, software and services.

Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise servers, related storage devices, as well as a diverse range of printers and other imaging products. HP bought Snapfish in 2005.

VeriSign provides global application services that deliver text messages, multimedia messages and mobile content across carriers and mobile devices throughout worldwide.

ILoop Mobile offers an integrated self-service SAAS platform for creating and managing all types of SMS marketing campaigns, mobile Internet sites, mobile-enabled Web sites, IVR, mobile advertising and other mobile initiatives.

The combined VeriSign/iLoop platform is optimized for a variety of different brands and organizations ranging from advertising and direct marketing agencies to media, entertainment, professional sports and Web entities.

The offering is packaged in marketing services platform packs that are preconfigured for customer acquisition, sponsorships, customer loyalty, promotions and cross-selling campaigns.

?Snapfish by HP now has one dashboard to manage all of their global deployments, so they don?t need to deal with multiple aggregators,? Mr. Kasturi said. ?We?re also providing a future-proof solution?today it?s photo-sharing, but tomorrow they could extend it to loyalty-driven mobile marketing activities, which is another key reason why our offering was attractive for Snapfish.

?The partnership with VeriSign allows us to offer packaged mobile marketing solutions for messaging in key markets, driving customer acquisition, sponsorship, customer retention, promotion and cross-selling,? he said.

HP has joined a growing list of customers and is currently using the integrated offering to power its mobile marketing campaigns and initiatives to its 80 million registered Snapfish users worldwide.

The service, available now in select countries, will let customers to navigate the Snapfish Web site on their mobile phones and share photo albums to mobile phones through SMS messages.

Snapfish by HP users are technologically savvy and the photo-sharing service is always looking for new ways to interact with those users while they are on the go. The company?s goal was to provide a secure and reliable method for users to send pictures using their mobile devices.

VeriSign and iLoop Mobile are powering the mobile photo-sharing service through mobile sites, Web sites or a downloadable iPhone application.

If a Snapfish user has photos in his Snapfish account and wants to share with friends, the user can send a ?share? message to friends? phone numbers through the Snapfish Web site interface or the Snapfish mobile site interface.

The friends receive an SMS alert notifying them of the message and linking them to a mobile site to see the pictures.

Snapfish is also planning to embed photo sharing via SMS functionality in additional upcoming mobile applications.

VeriSign claims that its recent mobile messaging index demonstrates that people continue to value the ubiquitous nature of mobile messaging as a communications tool, which opens up new ways for businesses to reach and better serve their customers.

?This partnership with iLoop is targeting enterprise and brand customers wanting to create a better dialogue with their consumers in the mobile channel,? said John Mavraides, vice president of business development at VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media, Mountain View, CA. ?On the marketing side, we?ve seen a lot of companies try one-off mobile marketing campaigns, but it?s hard to get real ROI or a long-term success story that way.

?Our goal is to move mobile marketing from niche one-off deployment to a core part of companies? overall marketing strategy,? he said. ?The value of this partnership is bringing together two strong companies that have been in the mobile space for years.

?One of the main drivers is to push mobile marketing up to the same level as traditional channels such as TV or print, to get mobile marketing integrated into brands? overall marketing scheme.?