Tag: mobile vouchers

Mobile Marketing

Mobile #101 – Essential Guide to Using Mobile Marketing (Series Post)

(Post 10 of 12)

Will my business benefit from a complementary mobile channel?

Mobile Marketing will help you to drive footfall, it will offer customer interaction, it will certainly offer voucher redemption opportunities which in turn can increase brand loyalty and significantly improve your consumer marketing and acquisition metrics.

However, although mobile channels provide the vehicle to reach consumers, your marketing content is king. Remember your reasons for investing – grow sales, reduce churn, increase spend, reduce costs. It’s not just about the technology, it’s how effectively you can interact with your audience. The best solutions are invariably represented by multi – channel solutions.

For example, I recently managed a content – driven campaign that was delivered by email due to the amount of copy required in the message. When supported by text message at a later point in the day to drive virtual footfall back to the email, the response rate doubled and our client enjoyed a 52% response to the campaign.

What is my mobile marketing plan?

So you understand your business strategy, objectives, challenges and goals and perhaps even how mobile marketing can help you deliver these today. But what about tomorrow, next year and in three years?

Mobile Marketing is consumer driven, with its endless and relentless appetite for content relevant to the individual at a time to suit, the challenge is to adapt and develop with your customers demands.

An effective mobile marketing supplier will be able to offer you a mobile journey that initially accommodates your immediate requirements. They will provide guidance around client engagement, regulatory compliance, database creation and development, then have the product suite to take you through a development journey, in-line with your customers expectations – incorporating content management, voucher redemption and virtual loyalty programmes.

What kind of success can i expect?

Mobile Marketing lends itself well to a B2C environment given consumers demand and reward. Customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and cross sell are leading anchor propositions. It is easy to see how retail has a great deal to gain from a succesful mobile marketing strategy.

In order to understand the art of the possible, you really should engage a partner with a strong consultative model and a robust and proven technical product portfolio representing presence and communication solutions. If customer acquisition is a business objective then a partner with opt in database capabilities is a significant advantage.

If this series has captured your attention or sparked your interest in mobile marketing, then working with a trusted mobile partner should be your next step.

 

Talk to me today and let me see if I can help you achieve more from your mobile strategy.

Thanks

themobileexpert

Mobile Marketing, Mobile Supplements

6 SMS TIPS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The holidays are fast approaching, so it’s more important than ever to keep your digital marketing program running as smoothly as Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. Over the course of nearly two decades in marketing, 10 of these in Mobile technology businesses I have been witness to the rise of mobile as a major force in the digital communications landscape.

Yet less than 50% of British businesses give more than 5% of their marketing budget to mobile communications. (Source: Forbes)

There are a number of factors in a business not taking full advantage of the mobile channel, from reluctance of senior management to take the leap through to internal infrastructure issues that ultimately need fixing before a mobile strategy can be fully realised.

However, it’s easier than you think to judge the success rates of mobile over other more traditional channels, it’s even easier to track the effectiveness of SMS in increasing open rates of an email for instance.

Mobile Messaging via SMS is proven to increase interaction, engagement and promote faster buying decisions from your customers.xmas sms

 

So… Its Christmas… and if you’re not using Mobile as part of your strategy already, then your behind your competition… the question is… what are you going to do about it…

Want some ideas to get you started?

Take a look at my six benefits to SMS Marketing this holiday season….              

Source: IPSOS Survey

 

6 Ways to gain more revenue this Holiday season through SMS marketing…

  1. Notify your customers of special offers, low prices, instore sales etc..

People respond to mobile, the average text message is read within 90 seconds of hitting a handset and is the number one channel for making purchasing decisions whilst on the move.

  1. Reminders for appointments

Run a leisure business, restaurant or salon? Use SMS as an appointment booking service and remind your customers when an appointment is due. Get the customer to respond to your reminder or booking SMS and opt them in to receiving marketing texts going forward.

  1. NEWS FLASH! Let your customers in on your secret… notify them early of pre-sales activity.

Send your customers an SMS giving them vital information on a pre-sales event in your store or online business. Make them feel special and offer some good deals or offers and you will gain not only price based loyalty but customer brand loyalty too.

  1. Competitions

SMS is a great way to gain instant buy in for a competition or an offer linked to a competition entry. Collect data by adding in a mobile web page as part of the sign up process. Make it a Christmas themed competition for extra interest from your customer base at this time of year.

  1. Gift Card Sales

Not sure you’re going to sell enough gift cards this year? Mobilise them by offering gift cards via text messaging…send your customers a message to get them to visit the website or go in store to purchase a gift card for a loved one this xmas. Give them a small discount code in the message that they can use at the till point to get some money off their gift card purchase.

  1. Footfall Driver Offers

SMS marketing is fantastic for driving footfall into bricks and mortar stores especially in the holiday season. Offer customers a free glass of Mulled wine with a purchase over £5 for instance or a free mince pie when they order a coffee etc..

The holidays are just around the corner and consumers are starting their quest for the perfect gifts and bargains. A well worded and timely text message to a consumer giving value can entice shoppers to buy your products or services.

“85% of shoppers are highly likely to buy from brands that offer highly personalised discounts.”

 

Good Luck

themobileexpert

SME Guides to Mobile Marketing

Beginners Guide to creating a mobile marketing list…SMEs

Every company, whatever size, started off without any mobile marketing department or without a list of mobile numbers for their customers and they had to perform data gathering exercises on their potential mobile customers.

As members of the SMe community, your small business will be in a similiar position.

You will know the power of mobile based on how you communicate with your friends and how you can recieve content and alerts from your favourite programs, sports clubs etc.. but you may not know how you can achieve this level of communication in your business (however small) with the customers you serve every day.

Whether you have a bricks and mortar store or an online business the ability to perform simple data gathering exercises to increase / or start your mobile marketing program is something you can do with very little time and effort required.

Whatever your business, product or service, you have to create something that offers the customer something special and gives added value to your customers.

Mobile Marketing allows you to communicate with your customers on a one to one, personal basis in the first instance, but it has many more benefits than just that.

It’s cost effective, meaning that you can use mobile to cut costs on call centre staff, administration roles and to some extent even the way you advertise across other channels can be streamlined to improve cost efficiency.

It’s convenient, it allows people to receive and digest your communication when and wherever they are best placed to do so and likewise they can text back whenever they want too. It is also very easy to set up and manage for your business.

It helps to increase relationship building, as you can keep your customers in the know and up to date with your business as well as ask them for their opinions etc, increasing that feedback which is so important as you grow your business.

You have the ability to mass market your message very quickly and easily making it totally personal to the end recipient.

You can integrate your mobile campaign with any other form of marketing communication, making it the most adaptable marketing channel ever.

And when your campaign is done, you can sit back and check out the results to a deep level of understanding. Or perhaps check the results as you go, using real time reporting, so you can stop your campaign and make alterations if you feel the need.

So when we start looking at building a list of subscribers for your business we can assume that anyone who joins your program or list will be specifically interested in your products or services.

Here are the 3 stages to creating your very own opted in mobile numbers list;

STAGE 1- ACQUIRE & GROW

Create a product or service that offers something special of gives added value to your customers. Bricks and Mortar stores have 2 for1’s and BOGOF’s whilst for Online Business you can use online only discounts or offers that arent available anywhere else and that the customer will gladly give his or her details to get.

*TIP* – Dont ask for more than 5 fields of information when data capturing for mobile, use Name, Address, Postcode, Email & Mobile as standard and amend accordingly, but if you ask for too many you will switch people off.

Include signage and Point of Sale for your offers to gain greater publicity and if your an online business then your primary way to gather user data is to offer a rich, rewarding & satisfying customer experience from the initial opt in point to the re-engagement communication and beyond.

Make sure you include permissions and a link to a privacy policy on your website & let the customer know where they can find information relating to what you will do with their data.

STAGE 2 – MAINTAINING YOUR SUBSCRIBER DATABASE

It is really hard to “ACQUIRE” a client, but its even harder to keep them for any length of time… On the flip side you can lose a customer in 5 seconds flat if you dont keep them interested.

Send mobile exclusive deals, information, rewards, offers and vouchers to increase the value of your mobile program for your customers.

*TIP* – Make sure your content is worth sharing!! If you have great content your customers are more likely to spread the word.

Try sending messages to your customers that include a call to action. A simple text back keyword response to recieve a voucher or bring their phone into the store & show a code to the till assistant etc…

This allows you to monitor responses rates & judge the success of your offers by the number of delivered SMS messages against the number of responses back.

STAGE 3 – ENCOMPASS SOCIAL MEDIA INTO YOUR MOBILE CAMPAIGN

Call out some of your mobile exclusive offers on social media sites like Facebook to encourage people to visit you & respond to the CTA. If your an online business ensure you add your links back to your website in any socila media ads. This way you can direct them to your privacy policy, email or newsletter subscription or simply other areas of your website.

DATA SECURITY

The easiest way to start managing your mobile data, is to look at the initial data you have from your customers, this should be in the main customer database, with other information on that client. You may decide that you need a separate database for Mobile than for other communications like email, direct mail etc…

Whichever way you maintain your mobile data, you need to remember that you need an initial database of “opted in “numbers with which to start your marketing from. As you promote your company / product / offers you will inevitably receive some “opt outs” back, people who no longer want to receive your offers.

To comply with legislation on spam messaging, you must withdraw the numbers that “opt out” within a time period of no longer than 1 week later. This will maintain a healthy, concise database, with lots of live data to send your messages out to.

Manage your “opt out” lists on a weekly basis; take time to do this right, make sure you keep your lists separate, have one “opt out” list and one “opt in “ list. The “opt in “list is your “live” database and should always be up to date, as this list is your catchment area, this list will provide you with your actions, whatever they may be.

Good Luck

themobileexpert

Mobile Supplements

Mobile Vouchers

Whilst Smartphone Applications continue to hog the headlines in the mobile consumer space, over 60% of respondents in a recent industry survey said they would be happy to interact with retailers via text.

One large Mobile Operator has taken this a step further, launching SMS vouchers and messages via text to its “opted in “consumers. Using GEO – LOCATION and time based targeting, the messages & vouchers “hit” the consumers mobile as they walk past or into certain high street stores.

Are we seeing the beginning of retailers embracing mobile marketing to conduct two way communications with customers on the move?

Are we seeing plain old text messaging playing an important part in delivering this two way communication?

The answer is YES….

In a recent study by this is money.co.uk website, statistics show that people spend an average of two hours pricing up large household and lifestyle items before buying…and the average adult in Britain uses five vouchers every month to save money on food, meals out and day trips – equaling 239m vouchers used a year, or 8m a day!

The study by promo-codes found that most people believe vouchers and discount codes are more socially acceptable and ‘cooler’ than they were 20 years ago.

Customers are 71% more likely to shop with you if they receive money off coupons first. Traditional methods of doing this, (sending paper vouchers out in the post, downloading from the internet etc) involve links in your chosen message formats and this can lead to traceability issues and lack of understanding of who even opened your communication.
Mobile is totally traceable, from initial send through consumer click through action to a sales end point and it’s immediate!!

More than just a customer driver, it’s a loyalty programme, an interactive catalogue, a coupon or voucher dispenser and a payment device all rolled into one.

As retailers start to realize that the mobile channel is a great way to drive consumers through their “bricks and mortar” stores what will you do this Christmas to increase your bottom line?

Thanks

themobileexpert