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SMS Marketing

Short Message Service (SMS) marketing is a fast growing and more recent addition to the range of direct permission marketing which can be used to build a stronger relationship with customers i.e. relationship marketing .

SMS Marketing allows you to use the mobile medium and wireless networks to communicate and interact with your target audience(s). In short this means that you can send SMS text messages containing your marketing messages to an opted-in list of mobile phone numbers.

The Market and the Infrastructure

In Europe there is 1 mobile phone contract for every 0.8 people, most UK adults have a mobile phone, and at least one third of UK adults own a smartphone. At least 96% of all of these mobile phones are capable of receiving SMS messages. Research figures from Ofcom show that 97% of the text messages are actually read within 5 seconds of them being received, and other figures shows that SMS messages are read within an average of 4 minutes of them being received, and an average of 1 in 3 people say that they respond in a positive way to (opted in) text messages promotional messages.

These figures coupled with the fact that we tend to take our mobile phones with us wherever we go means that using this medium can allow your marketing messages to at least be seen very almost immediately by a very large proportion of the target recipients.

The Advantages of SMS Marketing

• People can be reached wherever they take their mobile phone, and whenever they next check their mobile phone (which is likely to happen frequently).
• Messages are received almost immediately and require little effort form the recipient to view i.e. no logging in like email, no opening letters.
• SMS (text messaging) has the widest reach of any mobile technology.
• It works well for short messages and messages which are time dependent / sensitive.
• When the message is received can be timed more precisely than other media e.g. letters or email.
• You can also test and measure which days / times/ message types achieve the best results.
• Responses can be tracked and measured e.g. figures for opening and response rates.
• SMS messages can be personalised.
• It can support brand building.
• It can help to build relationships with customers (particularly existing ones).
• Messages can be organised and sent very quickly and frequently if required.
• There is a good ROI.
• It is very cost effective e.g. large numbers of people can be reached at a low cost.
• No ‘physical’ raw materials are required e.g. no paper, envelopes or stamps, so there are lower costs, now physical waste, and it’s environmentally friendly.

Some Disadvantages

• It is only really suitable for short messages.
• There may be a negative perception of marketing messages sent by SMS
e.g. recipients may be wary of it and may see it as spam.

The Opportunities for and Uses of SMS Marketing?

SMS Marketing is best used as short messages, but these messages could link in with and relate to all manner of other marketing activity.

SMS Marketing messages could be:

• Alerts for appointments, meetings, calls, webinars etc.
• Asking customers to vote for something e.g. favourite products / products options.
• Customer competitions (linked to promotions) e.g. SMS to answer a question.
• Alerts of all kinds e.g. start and end dates of promotions, new / latest offers.
• Customer reward information e.g. SMS vouchers / voucher codes.
• Reminders e.g. of bookings that have been made for them, upcoming events etc.
• Messages which direct customers to the website, blog, social media pages e.g. for new products, offers etc.
• Important short news bulletins and announcements.
• Sending directions e.g. for an event.
• Introductory offers.
• Information for staff about internal events / news.

How Can You Begin Using SMS Marketing?

Firstly, a good list of mobile telephone numbers is needed. It is not advisable to buy in list due to the issues of recipient permission being needed and possible list quality / integrity issues. Using / building your own list is preferable and it is generally cheaper, easier and more productive to market to existing customers.

Some important things to remember about SMS Marketing include:

• The network carriers set have guidelines and best practices for this type of marketing, as do the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Mobile Marketing Association.
• You need the permission of each person that you contact via SMS Marketingi.e. they need to have agreed / opted-in / asked to be contacted.

Secondly, you need to plan your campaign carefully, e.g.

• Have clear goals and / or objectives.
• Make sure that each message that you send has a clear part in the plan, and offers some real value to the recipient, is concise but contains your main messages.
• Target and tailor each message to each target group / segment of recipients.
• Give your messages a call to action, a reason to respond, or a reason to look out for the next message.

How To Make It Happen

You either use an SMS Marketing company / professional to do the work on your behalf, or many people now use online software solutions they can access from their own PC that allow them to manage and measure the whole process. These programs are similar to email auto-responders. Examples include Textburst, Firetext or Textmagic.

Prices for these packages is likely to be per text with the amount per text decreasing as the amount of text messages sent increases – typically 5p per message for small numbers of SMS messages sent dropping to 4p per message for large bulk amounts e.g. tens of thousands.

Other Important Details

• An SMS Marketing message should contain the following things:
• The name of the organisation / company sending the message.
• An email address or a number for recipients to respond to (if that is the call to action). This could be a ‘shortcode’ number or a long (MSISDN) number. A shortcode number is a 5 or 6 digit that’s easy to remember ad type in. These are typically expensive and therefore companies have the option of sharing them. They also can’t be used internationally / they are assigned to specific country. The long (MSISDN) number is a normal length number that can be used internationally and is less expensive than a shortcode number. It is however more difficult to remember.
• An option for recipients to unsubscribe – typically by typing STOP to the shortcode number.

Additional Information

• Proximity Marketing allows message to be broadcast to mobile users who are in a specific geographic area – a kind of geo-targeted SMS Marketing. This system relies on GSM technology.
• Location Based Services also allows targeted advertising messages to be sent to the mobiles of people in a specific geographic location. This uses GPS tracking.

Want more information?

We can help you with your digital marketing. To start the ball rolling, register now at http://www.mklink.com/getstarted

Until next time,

Mike Knight – mklink.com

See our Sister Blog…

http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=72

See you soon,
MKLINK

http://www.mklink.com/newsletters_11_03_2012.html

Enthusiasm is everything…!

Mike

Checkout this article on our sister blog : http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=58

MKLINK

Article at our sister blog here :
http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=47

Until next time,

MKLINK

What is TweetDeck And Why Should I Use It?
http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Want help? Get your month trial : register at http://mklink.com/getstarted

Let’s start off with the problem. With so many people Tweeting and posting to Facebook, (potentially about you or your business), it’s important to know what’s going on. (Ideally, without going mad or wasting too much production time)

Take an analogy of CB radio, very popular in the 70′s and 80′s and still around today. All the airwaves are filled with “chatter” yet you need listen to one person to know what’s being said. Imagine trying to listen to hundreds of people at the same time – very confusing!

Of course with Facebook, Twitter and the like, that’s exactly what you’re doing and so given that we’re business people, we need a way to organise this and make it easier to manage.

Tweetdeck was invented as a way to keep your sanity and basically keep things in one place.(It was then bought out by Twitter directly for nearly £25 Million)

First of all the application itself; you can download it to your computer and run it from your machine or you can use it online. The latter option obviously means you can access your account from different computers, like being able to access webmail or other cloud based applications from different locations.

Currently, the two main things you can load are facebook and Twitter. Although I’d be surprised if LinkedIn and other Social goodies weren’t added as an upgrade soon. Straight away you can see what’s being buzzed so that you can be alerted to stuff as it happens and react accordingly.

Tip : Complain about BT on Twitter and see how quickly they react!

Once you’re in, you can add “columns” to your ccount and each column can be a stream from an individual twitter or facebook wall to a filtered search for a particular keyword – perhaps a product name or company name.

Using these columns you can follow multiple accounts or see your messages or output filtered streams of information.

For example, you could have one column set aside to display all the buzz about the keyword “South Cerney Angling Club”. If you were a member or a fisherman or a journalist or a local farmer – to see what’s going on.

It’s all about enabling different stakeholders to narrow dwn the focus and see(hear?) whats being said about particular topics.

(Note, you can also use Google Alerts for some of these functions as well)

These columns then let you see in real time what’s currently “trending” ie being posted, tweeted, retweeted etc.

At any time, you can jump right in and reply to a tweet, send a private message, follow someone, unfollow them and do everything you could in Twitter directly. Again, I’m hoping this functionaility extends entirely acroos Facebook and LinkedIn, rather than just the partial integration they have now.

Retweeting other people’s content is also ridiculously easy and this tool saves you having to trawl through all their content.

By the way, here’s a tip if you want to be seen as proactive, simply use the search function and use the question mark “?” function to search through posts of people or businesses that you’d like to help (potential clients etc). This will bring up all their questions that they’ve asked – and of course you can now answer them – again without having to trawl through everything.

Organising people that you follow into groups is also a real time-saver. here are some suggested groupings you might like to make :

[Personal-Friends/Family]
[Personal-Hobbies/Interest]
[Personal-Other]

[Business-Suppliers]
[Business-Colleagues/Staff]
[Business-Clients]
[Business-Competitors]
[Business-Leads[]
[Business-Other]

This way, not only are you alerted as usual when someone posts something but it also lets you know which group they are in – saving time and hassle. Great for keeping an eye on employees, competitors, family members – you name it.

To Recap, Here’s 8 Quick Features/benefits of Tweetdeck

1 – Keep Everything in One Place.

2 – Enables Photos, URL Shortening etc via external services (e.g. bit.ly)

3 – Track those your replies (the ‘@’ on Twitter) plus your direct messages too.

4 – Keep things organised into groups and columns.

5 – See and react to tweets and Facebook updates immediately.

6 – Manage Multiple Twitter accounts if necessary

7 – Filter out hashtags (#). Again this is a filtering/screening boon.

And of course, it doesn’t cost you anything…

Let us help you manage your web marketing – either training you or getting it done for you : http://mklink.com/getstarted

Until next time,

Register at http://mklink.com/getstarted
Mike Knight – MKLINK

p.s. If you can see why now is a great time to make sure your web marketing works, is up to date, get in touch today….

How to make the most of your PC in terms of accessibility add-ons and features.

Full article here : http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=44

Until next time,

Mike Knight.

Check this out on our sister blog all about usability.
In this article, we look at the common ground between people, SEO spiders and screen readers…

http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=38

Until next time…

Mike

…with some details on our sister blog :

http://www.usableusability.com.au/blog/?p=34

See you soon,

mk