Category Archives: SMS Marketing

SMS related posts with regards to marketing

SMS Mobile Marketing: Car Dealership

Brief case study regarding a car dealership that used an innovate SMS Mobile Marketing approach to attract business.

The car dealership sends reminders that cars are due a NCT (National Car Test) along with a quoted price for NCT pre-check. Thus, there are a few elements to highlight:

  1. Reminder service: useful SMS reminder that a NCT is due.
  2. Call-to-action: avail of an offer, whose price is advertised in the SMS content.
  3. Automated: demonstrates the functionality of sending SMS from pre-existing software such as CRM based systems.

 

Final word on SMS Mobile Marketing and Personalization

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One of the key aspects of mobile marketing is personalization. Tailoring a message to appeal directly to each subscriber is  a growing requirement. The explosion of data analysis and the multi-variate attributes that can be associated with a subscriber has resulted in greater opportunities for marketing communication to be made more specific. SMS has to adapt to encompass this new flexibility.  There are two distinct types of personalization:

  1. Adjusting the message with a user’s personal details.
  2. Creating tailored groups specific to certain criteria using data mining, such as using SQL type language to analyse your repositories in order to retrieve valuable nuggets of data.

This post briefly outlines the differences and benefits of both. Please note, any groups that would be created or subscribers sent to would have to be registered as opted-in, within your data resources.

Category 1:

For unique messaging you may include distinctly personal items such as the subscriber’s firstname as the unique tag such as:

Hi ^ [Insert tag] Thank you for dining with SeaViewGlowBeansBurrenCafe. Please display this 10% M-Coupon at the Cashier for an automatic reduction on your next coffee.

Or you can take personalization a step further by including  multiple items of uniqueness, such a  user’s loyalty purchasing credits account balance:

Hi ^ [Insert tag]  Your loyalty credits balance is now ^^ [Insert tag]

What these messages do, is directly capture a subscriber’s attention- instead of something generic, they see their name, or whatever tag that they can relate to, directly providing them information.

Category 2:

There is so much more you can do now to personalize a message (a lot of which has been covered in previous blog posts) in order to target a specific audience and maximize your mobile marketing budget. Always with the intention of increasing your footfall and your marketing’s return-on-investment (ROI).   In order to accomplish this, you would need to analyse your own repositories (such as databases, point of sale data devices and spreadsheets) to generate lists, but it is a valuable exercise. The means of this retrieval have been covered in previous posts so will not be lingered on here.

For example, you could check for what the main item category a user purchases so you can create groups around that interest. Or you can delve into what time do they collect their coffee (on the way to work, for example between 7am-9am) or in the evening after work (5pm-7pm). Thus, you can tailor messages for those times, offering promotions for food suitable to that time period. Another benefit of personalization would be to check for location and create groups around people’s proximity to your stores. Thus, maximizing the potential of footfall and not wasting your budget.

There are literally countless way in which you can intelligently create your messages and groups now to ensure that your are maximizing the potential of broadcasts. Just remember the 3Ps: Precise (keep the message clear, direct), Personalize (make the message relevant to the subscriber), Plain (avoid SMS abbreviations, text emoticons etc.- these can lead to misinterpretation and sometimes are not translated properly on phones, in essence avoid ambiguity to maximize your message’s clarity).

Contrasts between two Mobile Marketing SMS Messages- Personalise v Non Personalise

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This week I received 2 interesting SMS alerts from businesses relating to their services. One of which clearly showed how personalisation could be implemented for a better result, while the other demonstrated how useful personalisation clearly is.

  1. The first SMS was sent by a garage from whom I purchased a car. Thus, they had at their disposal: the model type, age and price of the car. However, the message was regarding an offer of a maximum trade in bonus to put against a new car with a 152 plate (a type of scrappage scheme, I presume). Now, personalisation would have filtered my number out, as it clearly did not fit into this requirement bracket. The other slightly irritating factor about this message, if you wanted further details you were presented with a shortened url- fine if you have a smartphone or in an area of decent 3G coverage (images on webpage resulted in download intensive), but relegated those who had a non-smartphone to typing in the shortened url- which was obscure and would have benefited from better brand recognition by using the url of the garage. This garage would have been better served by doing some data analysis on their customers and either filtered out those that clearly did not fit the model, or to perhaps offer something else to get people into their showroom to look at their 152 range- perhaps offer a discount of a service for the car (again they have details on their system), or perhaps offer an estimated value of what your car is worth now and suggest that maybe you could look at the following new models of similar type with a reduced price tag (some type of call to action). Mobile marketing is all about opportunities, and tailoring your message to maximise your return of investment in marketing. Sending messages to incorrect lists clearly is wasting money and also losing opportunities that a more filtered, targeted campaign could benefit from. One blanket SMS in cases such as this, when the data is on hand to review, is a missed opportunity.
  2. The second type of SMS was far cleverer; it combined two modes of marketing: email and text messaging. The insurance company sent a SMS reminding me of a renewal, but in that SMS they also prompted me to read an email that they also sent which contained a clear call to action link to view the estimate renewal fee and click a button to submit payment details. So the SMS was used to both inform and push you towards a payment model. Now, many people have multiple email accounts, so they actually (helpfully) inform you in the text message, what email address the renewal quote went to, and the date of expiration of your current insurance. All very key elements and well thought out messaging.

There were interesting contrasts between the messages also, both SMS alerts used their brand name as the sender identifier, so there was no mobile number to reply to. The insurance company offered no way to opt out of SMS alerts from the message- so that must be built into your online profile settings, The garage offered a link, not very handy if you have a non-smartphone. None of them offered a contact mobile number i.e.  a number to reply SMS to. For example, with the garage you may have replied on what their estimated value on your car was, or did they have such and such in stock, or could you arrange a viewing, or what are their business times or a whole host of other consumer related communication.

Thus, the summary of this blog post relating to Mobile Marketing is. Look at how others do their mobile marketing- see what you think is better than what your company does and how you could apply those advantages to enhance your own business mobile marketing campaigns. Have a clear call to action to prompt the user. Have clear unambiguous concise text; avoid abbreviations which can lead to misinterpretation or confusion.  Do have some form of system to create 2 way dialogues between your business and your customer. You should have a straight forward opt-out mechanism. Tailor the message as much as possible- you can clearly see the difference in personalisation between the insurance alert and the garage message;  judge reaction to them after receiving (send tests to colleagues)- with the insurance one you may be curious to review their email to see the renewal quote and go further; if in the market for a car you may be interested in the scheme offered by the garage- but you may also question the validity of the message.

SMS within Politics (ii)

For years, SMS has been a robust and effective tool in both local and national politics (referenced in a previous blog post). This struck me again last weekend. Listening to one of the US 2016 US Presidential Democrat candidates, Hillary Clinton, campaign rally speech in Roosevelt Island live on CNN last Saturday 13th June, I noticed that she encouraged volunteers to participate by using SMS, more specifically: texting a keyword JOIN to a dedicated 5 code number.

Politicians have used SMS to facilitate donations, send out vote reminders and build up their volunteer base to name just a few ways in which they have adapted text messaging to their own advantage- for example President Obama used text messaging to garner donations via a keyword “Give” in the 2012 US Presidential election, a Republican candidate for the 2016 US Presidential election, Senator Ted Cruz, has used SMS to gain volunteers via keyword “Constitution”. In the recent Marriage Equality Referendum, here in Ireland, the Yes Campaign mobilised SMS as a reminder tool to vote (http://www.yesequality.ie/getmetothevoteontime/). These brief examples, from a vast pool that could have been chosen, demonstrate just how ubiquitous (and beneficial) SMS has become to increase political participation. As an aside, you’ll notice how these are also promoted via social media; blending the inherent advantages of both.

Why is SMS so useful for politics, either for pushing out updates, reminding people to vote, etc? Some of the reasons could be encapsulated from the following:

  • Supporters: Gathering and inexpensively interacting with a list of the candidate’s supporters (or those interested in a Referendum for/against) and those who wish to vote for the candidate (or those interested in a Referendum for/against).
  • Mass-Appeal: SMS can be read on any phone without special software. It has a broad network coverage reach. Text messaging spans all demographics and age groups. And critically, it is a push technology, so the message is forced onto the screen display, where recipients cannot but read it.
  • Slogan: Gain an instant way of re-enforcing core themes, as well as branding the SenderID with either the candidate’s surname or the Referendum outcome (YesForRef for eg.), instead of a generic number.

Generating 2-Way Dialogue via SMS Communication

As you know, an important feature of all business is to ensure that there is 2 way seamless communications with your customers. Thus, reducing barriers and creating a more permeable relationship. This type of dialogue engenders loyalty, provides valuable feedback and allows you to respond to support or complaints in a real-time professional manner.  Text messaging facilitates this type of dialogue in an inexpensive and seamless manner.

However, it can also apply to a vast array of areas outside of the business sector. There has been a lot of fascinating research regarding the applications of SMS 2 way dialogue communication, mostly around healthcare. Four recently published research articles/reports, show just how valuable 2 way dialogue can be for a whole spectrum of users.

Healthcare

Synopsis: This fascinating research related to keeping in contact, via SMS, between a monitoring agency and a recipient; requesting daily information regarding elements such as the temperature of the monitored recipient.

  • Richmond, Stewart J., et al. “Feasibility, acceptability and validity of SMS text messaging for measuring change in depression during a randomised controlled trial.” BMC psychiatry 15.1 (2015): 68. Available Online: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/15/68/

Synopsis: This powerful research demonstrated how SMS can be used as a monitoring program within clinical research. It garnered similar conclusions, as the previously mentioned work, that it was effective as a monitoring tool.  For example, people engaged when asked via SMS over a 15 week period what level of depression they felt within a 0-9 scale.

Human Behaviour

Synopsis: With this extremely interesting research, Japanese students were surveyed, requesting when they rate a quick reply to a SMS is warranted and when a slow one is acceptable.

Advertising

Synopsis: This extremely relevant research proved what elements created an effective SMS for advertising. The researchers identified key areas such as the improvements of SMS advert campaigns that target groups, whose message provides clear information, the emphasis of importance of opt-in and to avoid large volumes of messages to recipients.

Other independent research regarding SMS, are cited in this previous blog.

 

Quick Tip: Creating SMS Mobile Marketing Groups

Just a brief post regarding creating mobile marketing groups: When you are gathering opt-in subscribers for your mobile list for the first time, ask the subscribers where they are located, and/or what branch/service/product of your business that they are most interested in. This allows you to create groups labelled on location (i.e. proximity to your business) and/or a subscriber’s particular items of interest.  Instead of storing all subscribers in one large group. This increases the effectiveness of your mobile marketing broadcast as you are texting people that are potentially within proximity to your shop  (for example no point sending sales offers for your Cork branch to be sent to customers for your Dublin branch) and/or are interested in the type of product/service that you are promoting. Of course, you can send to all subscribers when required, but for more specific targeted messaging, creating dedicated groups at the initial stage benefits your business in the future. It maximizes your return on your SMS marketing investment by simply focusing your messaging on interested parties and those that are within reasonable distance of your premises to avail of the offer,  such as broadcasting a redeemable SMS coupon.

Measuring Value of your SMS Broadcasts and Tweaking their Content

Measuring the effectiveness of your SMS broadcast is almost as important as sending it. Measurements provide a plethora of insights regarding your promotional SMS.

One of the most straightforward ways is to not just announce that there is a sale on in your premises on a certain date, but to be more direct and proactive with a call to action that can be quantified. This can usually be in the form of SMS based vouchers/coupons/tickets that can be redeemed at your cash/payment desk. Thus, the number of redeemed vouchers compared to the volume of  the list that you sent out can give you a direct percentage of success. There are other ways, but that is definitely one of the most crude and direct methods as it can be quantified and compared with other data such as sales revenue from a day prior to sale, or a day after sale etc.

If the campaign is not as successful as you hoped, then what can be tweaked to improve the next outcome?

  • Perhaps investigate the content of the message (is it too ambiguous, avoid text abbreviation that can be misunderstood or not understood in its entirety, text symbols that can be mistranslated on a person’s phone etc.).
  • Was the time you sent it too inopportune that people simply were distracted and ignored/deleted it (for example commuting times/meal times of 5pm to 6pm, 8am -9am)?
  • Was the offer not enticing enough or the product relevant to your subscriber base (can you refine by age/gender from your CRM systems to qualify the mobiles)?
  • Were the subscribers based in a reasonable proximity to your store (again can your CRM allow you to extract this location parameter?).

Just remember the key points:

  • Keep the SMS content direct, unambiguous and relevant to your subscribers. Ensure the basics are covered, such as a sale information; ensure date, time, location/store branch are directly mentioned.
  • Personalize the message to grab and hold a person’s attention- be it by a firstname or loyalty points stored or some other relevant tag.
  • Have clear brand awareness so your customers can immediately identify and associate with your business (a sender identifier can do this or have your business name mentioned at the beginning of the SMS).
  • Ensure you send at an optimal time that does not irritate your customer base. Think of your subscriber base, and do not send before late morning/early afternoon to avoid waking those who are on night shifts and do not text after the “watershed” hours  late evening such as 9pm. Also do not send multiple messages during a short period of time as this barrage loses people’s interest and usually causes them to opt-out.
  • Create a dialogue without spamming. Perhaps instead of one message, send 2 distanced apart. Say for example 1 week to your sale you send out promotional message containing a promotional redeemable voucher, then a day before the sale you send a quick reminder, encouraging the recipient to cash their voucher.
  • Always, always only send to opt-in subscribers. Never send to a general list. Keep it legal, and do not tarnish your brand or attitude from your total potential customer pool. And always include an opt-out mechanism within your broadcasts; make it simple for people to stop receiving your broadcasts.
  • Ensure cost control also; just remember to watch your message length. This is a key factor in your bottom line margins when assessing sales from a text campaign. For example, if you are sending to 2000 customers,  a message that is even 165 characters long, then that is the equivalent cost of sending to 4000 customers (i.e. equivalent 2 messages each).

Using Mobile Marketing based SMS within your Business in 2015

There are many reasons why SMS is so prolific and enduring for businesses in 2015 despite the mass choice of new communication-type mediums. These include, the simple nature of both creating its content and the method of its delivery. As well as, of course, that it can operate and deliver on a GSM network, so can reach even the most rural or remote of areas.

The impact 160 characters makes can really have a bearing on increasing your brand recognition, the growth of your enterprise and the traction with your customer base; to name just three benefits. With the advent of Twitter, businesses have become extremely creative in even reducing that 160 character limit down to 140, to match what they have perfected on that social media medium.

SMS does not require specific software to be understood on a phone, nor a specialized app to be downloaded. One of its core strengths, is that it can easily be adapted to more modern technologies ,such as data mining, to enhance the potential outcome of any marketing message. For example,

  • When is a low peak trading window?
  • Send messages to only people within a centre radius of your business.
  • What age or demographic do you wish to send SMS to?
  • Sending a specific marketing message to a specific gender.
  • Only send to those with a certain amount of loyalty points (perhaps as a bonus for their custom, or on the other scale- prompting them to understand why their loyalty account is not currently used).

These types of areas can easily be understood and effectively extrapolated by what you already have on your own systems, be they sales or customer databases or CRM type systems. Ensure though that you filter out for exclusion those who have stipulated that they do not wish to receive marketing messages. Lists such as these can be sent by many means to mobile phones, usually by either a group software system or an email to SMS based service. Just remember to always keep in mind that each message you send reflects your business, so quality, consistency and clear company name recognition are always important, as well as a seamless opt-out list.

This can be summarized by:

  1. Who are the target audience?
  2. What type of content do I wish to include and is it relevant? Have I tested quality control by sending to a few colleagues to understand their interpretation and also its translation on different handsets?
  3. What sort of reaction do I want to prompt, namely, what is the call to action to generate a decent response, and thus an enhanced return-on–investment to my marketing campaign?
  4. Have I included an unambiguous opt-out system?
  5. Does this message accurately and fairly portray my business in a positive light? If you wanted, you could go further by increasing your brand awareness, and hence immediate message recognition, by replacing the sender identifier number with a label that is either your brand, product, name, service (max 11 plain characters).
  6. What measure of effectiveness do I wish to use in order to calculate the viability/success of the broadcast? Do I wish to track for redeemed SMS vouchers versus Overall Sales, for example?

You could even consider SMS as a green technology, as it cuts down on distribution of leaflets, tickets, coupons etc. Again adding not just a positive reflection on your company but also a tangible cost benefit to your company’s marketing operation. And reduces the disposal clutter of your customers- remember SMS is a push technology so they are instantly aware of your message unlike mass marketing postal mail (for example).

And finally, another benefit for your business, is that it allows a degree of flexibility and spontaneity, unlike other methods, SMS can be sent immediately in an ad-hoc basis (for example when you wish to offer a discount coupon that has a limited timespan for use, during times of poor trading).

SMS- Viable Communications Tool 2015

According to the latest Comreg Report that was published on the 12th March 2015, Irish Communications Market Quarterly Key Data Report Q4 2014, SMS volumes have increased from Q3 2014 to Q4 2014 by 2.7%. There are a bewildering, but always fascinating, level of new concepts, technologies, ideas and services launched and fermented at an almost daily rate. Finding a role for existing technologies, such as SMS and Email, to gain traction above this “noise” can be challenging. Often technologies that are ubiquitous can be simply disregarded, as they work away in the background. So what factors cause SMS to remain standing out as a feasible and useful tool for promoting and communicating? What are the elements that makes it such a globally enduring phenomenon?

  1. Impact: It is proven through multiple statistics and measurements that people read their text messages almost instantly. Messages are pushed into their awareness.
  2. Reach: SMS is agnostic when it comes to handsets, locations, devices, operating systems and demographics. It can cost-effectively target a level of users like nothing else.
  3. Access: People of all ages are able to read, understand and respond to text messages.
  4. Traction: People actively opt-in/sign up to loyalty programs such as receiving daily deals, sales coupons etc. Why? They see a benefit. Equally, they understand that they can seamlessly opt-out of any group with little effort or hassle.
  5. Broadcast: Any business, regardless of size or marketing budget, has the ability to create text messages and send group broadcasts to a dedicated list.
  6. Technology: There is a vast array of technological methods to enable and facilitate businesses send SMS, These cater for what suits their infrastructure, budget, time and skillset- this can be anything from sending SMS from their email environment to an online group messaging service (such as provided by the main operators).
  7. Interactivity: Businesses can communicate in real-time with their customers, it may be simply asking for their confirmation of a proposed delivery date to requests on service satisfaction feedback. The method of these replies is also diverse to suit a business’s requirements, from storing replies online to having them within an offline/online email account.
  8. Cost: All aspects of sending messages can be monitored; length of messages can be controlled (very important, as 160 characters is considered 1 SMS, however between 160 and 290 characters is 2 messages, so just going over 160 by 1 doubles the cost of each message to each recipient), volume of messages can be assessed (usually the more you purchase from a provider in a bulk package, the costs go down), ROI (Return-On-Investment) can be analysed- number sent out (number of coupons cashed in, number of replies garnered, how many delivered/failed to be delivered etc..)
  9. Flexibility: There are endless ways and combinations to effectively use SMS within a business for external communication such as for mobile marketing and for internal communication. External communication: From sending out tickets to events (displayed at the door for entry), to coupons (cashed in at the cashier), to updating customers on delivery times, confirm meetings, inform an opt-in list of upcoming sales, send scheduled alerts at less peak business times to drive and hence promote custom. Internal communication: As well as this, SMS can be used by businesses to cost-effectively maintain internal communications- such as server or system monitoring via SMS alerts, or updating on-the-road staff regarding destinations, future client meetings, service requests, client meeting cancellations etc.

Brief Overview of SMS based Mobile Marketing

Mobile Marketing consists of many strands, but the core is always to generate new custom in your business and subsequently, interest in the product/service you are offering.

Mobile Marketing, with regards to SMS, consists of many features including:

Within these blog posts, you can read about how to write effective content, what your aims should be when creating a campaign, controlling cost of your mobile marketing broadcast , how you can use your analytics to create smarter more targeted marketing etc.

SMS based Mobile Marketing is used by business for many reasons, including:

  1. It is a push technology, meaning a user is instantly prompted to read the message when it is delivered.
  2. It is an inexpensive communications medium.
  3. Robustness; text messages are not software dependent for delivery or abilty to be read- it is a standard feature on phones.