Tag: SMS

Mobile Marketing

Mobile #101 – Essential Guide to Mobile Marketing (Series post)

Post 1 of a series of 12 – Introduction to Mobile Marketing

This blog and everything I talk about here should provide company owners and senior managers with simple steps that they can take before investing in a mobile channel strategy, either independent or as part of a multi channel plan.

Consumers are now truly mobile in their browsing and shopping habits. They increasingly expect companies and brands to deliver mobile – enabled services that meet their needs regardless of what device they are connecting on.

All customer focused businesses need to be aware of the many challenges that come with the development of mobile strategies. These can include mixed and confusing messages, claims of astonishing achievements, a lack of technological understanding and the added complication of where to turn for expert guidance.

The starting point for all businesses is to understand that the rush to engage with consumers using mobile technology involves more than the development of an App or loyalty program. As I will explain throughout this post series, its important to develop a fully considered mobile strategy before starting any technical development and companies that take a considered long term approach tend to out perform in the increasingly important mobile space.

Mobile is ubiquitous, it has taken less than 20 years to revolutionise the way we communicate with each other. It offers instant gratification, constant contact and an immediate payment system.

However utilising its fantastic power to gain brand loyalty from your new and old customers alike is a tricky business. Get it wrong and you will struggle to ever get it right again. Get it right and you will grow revenues, gain brand loyalty and acquire new customers.

Over this series you will learn the types of questions to ask prospective mobile partners, questions a senior manager should ask their sales and marketing or commercial teams and questions that senior management should ask before adopting a new mobile channel strategy.

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I hope you enjoy and learn from this series

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

Mobile Marketing

Using Mobile for New Customer Acquisition

The mobile phone is increasingly central to consumers lives with SMS in particular continuing to grow at an unprecedented rate. The mobile phone is the perfect mechanism with which to engage the consumer, particularly as it is location independent and the one device most of us carry with us 24/7. Capturing data from the consumer whether for research purposes or as a registration process enables offline advertising to have a call to action that can be responded to immiediately.

Invite your customers to text a word to a shortcode thenImage by return the customer can recieve some promotional content such as link to a mobile website or a data capture page to capture contact or demographic information including an email address so you can engage them online.

The mobile phone is an ideal medium through which to interact with consumers for market research purposes, SMS gives immiediacy and delivers the richness of an internet experience via rich media mobile web pages. In most instances this delivers a much higher response than email to internet based communications, data that is captured in this way can then be delivered real time messages.

For any form of consumer registration to a new service,mobile can achieve the same result as a live operator at a fraction of the cost. Mobile can be particularly effective when the information required is routine and requires no human interaction. Also where required mobile responses can be set dependent on the type of trigger sent in from the customer, leading to messages that are full of value, personalised and relevant to each of your customers which in turn will increase loyalty and encourage ongoing two way customer interaction for your brand.

Mobile Marketing

Choosing your Mobile Marketing platform provider

When you start to choose your mobile marketing platform you will be faced with a number of different choices, there are bulk sms providers who have web based platforms that can provide you with cheap messaging rates for outbound messaging but dont offer an opt out function or inbound responses.

There are also some sms marketing agencies, who use an agregator platform to run their sms campaigns but have to pass the extra cost on to the customer and most still dont offer opt out functionality as standard.

Then there are the aggregators themselves, who own the platform technology your using, have opt out functionality as standard and also have inbound response functionality across a number of other mobile message types like MMS for instance.

One of the best I have worked with is the Campaign Manager Platform from 2ergo plc, one of the countrys biggest mobile aggregators. Campaign Manager is a fully convergent marketing platform and offers the user outbound / inbound SMS, email, vouchers and has optional Mobile Site creation functionality too.  It also has smart messaging technology, to allow the user to set several different responses to each mobile message they send and can manage responses based on a bespoke dynamic logic system.

The platform is built to global standards and operates in many countries around the globe and has automatic opt out functionality via subscription groups as standard.

Message throughput is good and downtime is less than 0.027 % this year, they are also ISO 27001 certified and campaign manager operates on a secure https domain.

Below is a video of Campaign Manager in action;


If you would like to arrange a demo for your company, please fill out the form below and click submit and someone from 2ergo will call you back to discuss your needs.


Thanks

themobileexpert