Tag: appointment reminders

Mobile Marketing

On-line Retailers use SMS to counter Abandoned Baskets….

An estimated £4 trillion worth of on-line shopping transactions were abandoned in 2014 by UK consumers according to Business Insider. One in four of these abandoned transactions were not taken elsewhere as individuals cancelled their shopping attempt altogether, resulting in £283m worth of net lost revenue for UK retailers.

Another study found that 68% of UK shoppers abandoned at least one on-line shopping transaction last year due to complexity or time taken at the point of sign up on a website.

Whilst Abandoned Baskets may always be a problem for any number of reasons, the trick is to engage these “nearly” customers as soon as possible after they leave you. Often people haven’t got time right there and then to finish the purchase process and save things for later, and then later never comes!

As a retailer you need to know as soon as I close my browser window and react to this by engaging with me immediately.

The problem with all this of course is that traditionally retailers have used email as their chosen method of contact, this often results in me receiving an email sent upwards of three hours after a consumer abandons a cart (so not real time) which sits in my already over crowded inbox and may not get looked at for a period of time again. This ultimately may mean that I never come back to finish that particular purchase.

To begin recapturing this revenue opportunity you should be using an SMS solution which takes simple logic to detect when a basket is abandoned and via a simple API call triggers an SMS responder message to the customers phone to ask them to complete the transaction.

To help drive your visitors to complete the checkout process you also have the option of offering purchase incentives that are easily configured to increase over time within your recovery SMS campaigns. Integrate SMS into your website and engage with both existing and new customers in real time as they visit your site.

Expand the customers shopping experience beyond the 9 – 5, beyond the confines of a PC or Laptop, to include the one thing they have with them all the time – their mobile phone.

Do You Know?

Featured image

You can use our Application Programming Interface (API) to create a call from the website back-end whenever a CTA is performed and generate an instant SMS message response for your customer.

Imagine a consumer sitting on the train and trying to buy something from your ecommerce site.

Next thing this consumer knows, it is time to get off and so the item that was about to be purchased is abandoned in the basket.

However, you have an SMS API on your website linked to Abandoned Baskets which sends a call to SMS the consumer in realtime that reminds him that this item is still in the basket. “Click on this link to complete the order” or even “come back and finish your order for £3 off p&p”

Using SMS as a real time engagement and two-way communications tool to strengthen relationships to your user base helps create better and more targeted info to a user and helps conversion.

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Marketing

5 REASONS TO USE SMS THIS FESTIVE SEASON

1. Its immediate!!

97.5% of SMS messages are read within 5 seconds of being received. SMS has an open rate of 97%;compared to email at 5%.

With SMS to Email auto responders increasing EMAIL opens when an SMS reminder is sent by over 47%

2. It’s a growing channel – (people get it and they love to interact)

42% receive a positive response from a growing captive audience, as more and more people access communications via their mobile.

SMS increases purchasing in retail, that’s a fact. Of the 29% of people who respond to SMS 49% go on to make a purchase.

3. It’s great for acquiring new customers

SMS is an ideal way to improve permissions-based outbound communication with customers.

4. It’s extremely effective

SMS over performs against other channels as a standalone marketing tool, or as part of a multi-channel strategy.

5. It’s a cross channel enabler

SMS can increase the success of other channels when implemented together. Follow up SMS to email campaigns can increase call to action within an email by up to 20%.

SME Guides to Mobile Marketing

SMS Marketing for Restaurants

The restaurant industry is fast paced and highly competitive. As a business owner you have many priorities and attracting and retaining customers is key.

SMS marketing can help you to:

  1. Create a simple campaign to acquire new customers
  2. Target offers to retain your existing client base and grow sales during quiet periods in the business
  3. Provide better service by text messaging reservations to your customers
  4. Provide a substantial return on investment compared to traditional forms of marketing – email, newspaper ads or radio.

SMS marketing is great for busy business owners to target their busy customers. A short and ‘to the point’  message takes seconds to read and can generate a response just as quickly, whereas traditional means of marketing communications; emails and newspaper advertising, even a telephone campaign, take a great deal of time to organise and can be costly too.

From around 4p per message, texting is also by far the cheapest means of communicating with your customers. Take email for example. It will take someone time to create a great email marketing campaign. Unfortunately, only 25% of emails are read compared 95% of text messages.

As well as generating more people into your restaurant, you can also use the 2Ergo Broadcast system to manage your reservations. The benefits of this are that it looks very professional, and you can reduce the number of costly no-shows to your business.

Is texting right for my business?

The simple answer is that SMS/text marketing can be beneficial to any restaurant. The real advantage of SMS marketing is that it’s cheap and scalable; anyone can do it and to any number of contacts so it really doesn’t matter how big or small your restaurant is, texting can benefit you.

Acquire more business

  •  SMS your current database, offering 10% discount this weekend only of the bill
  •  Offer extra incentives to fill up your covers, such as free bottle of house wine on Tuesday
  •  10% off all bookings for Mondays
  •  Send birthday messages to lost clients offering a free birthday drink with any meal
  • Take advantage of cancelled reservations by texting your database offering a 20% reduction off the bill if booked within 24 hours
  • Run a competition asking clients for referrals. Send out a discount text message and tell your clients they can pass it on to friends and family

Improve your customer service

  •  SMS reservation  reminders to give that extra service and reduce no-shows
  •  Generate feedback and measure service – give your customer the opportunity to fill out a feedback card and leave their mobile number. This will help you measure service and you could then offer 10% off the next visit for customers who may have experienced poor service.

Knowing what to write

Text messages can only be 160 characters (including spaces) long, so there’s no room for waffling.

It’s important that you get to the point quickly and that the client understands exactly what you’re

offering them. As a rule, you should make sure that once you have created your message, it answers

these three key questions;

1) Why you are contacting them – e.g. what offer are you making?

2) When should they act? – e.g. is there a closing date for your offer or promotion?

3) What do they need to do next? e.g. call or visit your restaurant

It’s important to keep the style of your messages friendly and chatty but at the same time, your message is clear and concise. Here are a few examples;

Example booking reminder message;

Hi Dave, you have a table booked with us on Friday at 8pm

Looking forward to seeing you then!

Giovanni’s Restaurant 01234 567891

Once you have decided on how you want to use texting in your restaurant, and the content of your texts, you can determine how often you will need to contact clients and what your average usage of text messaging will be.

Something else to consider before you embark on an SMS marketing campaign is: who should manage your SMS marketing? Who in your salon should be given the responsibility of maintaining your client database and ensuring the right messages are sent to the right people?

In truth, there is only really one answer to this question. Your client contact database, in particular the mobile numbers it contains should be be highly protected. Only the restaurant manager should be able to access this and they should have the final say on the content of messages and when and who will receive them.

Find out more by contacting us via the website http://www.crowd-connect.co.uk and lets talk!