In the real time world we live in receiving SMS promotional messages is a normal activity. If your in the Fast Food industry or the high street retail services industry you already know that SMS is a great tool to gain more footfall for your bricks and mortar store or to increase on-line orders through promotional codes to enter into the website to get money off your purchase or free delivery.

Using SMS promo codes you can acquire new customers very quickly and easily. Put a code on the website  or near the till in your store and give people a reason to text in to it for a reward or an offer.  Each person that texts in can get the content and be added to your database as a new customer.

However..acquiring a customer is the easy part.. its keeping them that is the problem in today’s multi-channel world. Their is a formula for this that we can use and it can be written in the following way.

The first part of this formula is Engagement (EN), you have acquired your customer but what next? If you do nothing for the next few months then you wont begin to establish a relationship with your new customer. On the other side, if you do too much you run the risk of annoying them and turning them off instead of on to your business.

Try sending one offer each week to start, use a split channel method using SMS and Email for example to send each offer or reward. Ask your new customer what channels they prefer to be marketed on and use these to avoid your communications being ignored.

The second part of this formula is reward (RD), you have acquired your customer and your beginning to talk to them regularly but what about??? Its no good sending them regular communications if you don’t actually know what they should receive or more importantly what they want to receive.

Regularly sending a customer a reward or offer via SMS has proven to add up to 47% additional revenue against a similar offer on website or via a paper voucher.

Customers expect you to communicate with them and they want you to, providing you know enough about them to give them the info, rewards or offers they want and don’t operate a “spray and pray” policy.

So.. your communicating regularly, you have me engaged and your sending me the rewards and offers I like!! Brilliant. But how do you know what I do with the rewards and offers your sending me??

The final part of our equation is reporting (RP) this is critical to understanding your customers and their participation and action after you communicate to them.

Understanding your customers and what they want, what they like to receive and what they don’t like is critical to your mobile strategy and choosing the right rewards and offers for them to increase your revenues.

Having great reporting is key to the secondary communications phase between you and your customer. Event reporting allows you to trigger new communications and offers to compliment what your customers have already used from you.

thanks

themobileexpert