How do you choose from all the SMS Companies out there? Follow this quick guide and you'll be 80% of the way there.

How do you choose from all the SMS Companies?

There are a plethora of SMS Companies out there. How do you choose which one is best for you?

Well, we’re one of them so why should you listen to us? Maybe you shouldn’t. But, the worst case scenario is that we’ll give you the main points on which you can judge which of the SMS Companies is best for you.

Is reliability of service important?

If it is for you then you need to ask, “how much experience do you have?”. Although the final product is very simple, you’d be amazed at how complex it is to successfully run an SMS Company and keep the service running 24/7. Experience counts for everything.

Is price important to you?

Usually the answer is yes! The main question to ask here is what quality of route do you use for your price? Direct UK networks or outside of the UK? If they don’t go direct via UK network operators, you could suffer huge delays and/or reduced delivery rates.

Do my credits expire?

This is a terrible practice by some SMS Companies – but it’s still all too common. You buy your credits and if you don’t use them within x months, they delete them! Awful – but do check with any SMS Company you talk to that they don’t do this.

Who are the main SMS Companies?

We’ve tried to do this work for you. Visit our SMS Companies Prices page and you’ll see our prices and then you can also click the competitors’ prices tab to see the main SMS Companies and their prices and what they include in their package.

Whether you are a small insurance broker or a large insurance company, insurance leads are hard to come by and can be expensive to generate.

We have well over a hundred insurance customers who are successfully generating leads using text message marketing at a fraction of the cost of almost any other method.

I thought I’d put together a quick ‘How to Generate Insurance Leads‘ article so that hopefully other companies can benefit from this approach as well.

Insurance Lead Generation – a summary of how

This is no ‘magic bullet’. In fact, it’s very simple. You are harnessing the awesome power of text messaging to fish for leads. It’s simple, straightforward direct marketing.

As in any direct marketing you need, a) a good list, b) a good proposition, c) a great delivery route (that’s the SMS sending bit) and d) a great response channel (that’s the replying to the SMS bit).

Step 1 – The List

There are strict rules on sending out SMS. The list of numbers MUST be 3rd party opted in. In other words, must have explicitly agreed to receive texts from third parties.

There is no 1 magic list of all UK mobile numbers but rather a collection of lists built by companies who have run promotions and gained 3rd party opt in permission in the process. They in turn rent these out through a data broker. When brought together the total universe size is around 14 million 3rd party opted in mobile numbers – so quite a few to go at!

You can buy lists based on the usual types of demographics and geographics – age, gender, post code, interests, etc. In general, the more selection criteria you add, the more expensive the list.

Over the years, we have worked with most of the mobile number data brokers and we have settled on the best. Contact Sara at DMRI on 0114 281 5760 or at sara@dmri.co.uk to discuss your needs. If you say you’re a Text Marketer customer, she’ll give you a 15-25% discount depending on the list you’re buying.

Expect to pay anything from £90 to £140 per thousand records depending on your requirements. We’ll come on to ROI later.

Step 2 – The Offer/Message

Remember, we only have 160 characters in a text message so you’re offer has to be punchy, relevant, to the point and easy to respond to.

It rather depends on what arm of insurance you’re in and what your company specialises in as to what you’re going to say but let’s look at some winning examples;

• We’ll review & reduce the cost of your pension – for free. Reply YES today to get a free review. Only 100 free places left.
• Hi George. I can reduce your overall insurance costs. I’m doing this for 100 people in Dudley. Reply YES if you’d like to be one.
• Sam, my insurance brokerage saves the average Dudley motorist 23% on their car insurance. Reply YES if you’d like me to review yours free.
• Dudley home insurance sale on this week! To reduce your home insurance bill now, reply YES now and I’ll give you a call. No commitments.
• Insurance is dull. Let us do the boring stuff. We’ll get you best deals for house, car and contents insurance. Call Oakey Insurance on 012345 45678.
  
• Reduce the cost of your insurance and have more money to spend on the fun stuff. Call Birchwood Insurance today and put more money in your back pocket. Call us on 012345 6789 or reply SAVE to this text.
  
• Paul, I’m a friendly local insurance broker who’s dedicated to reducing insurance costs. Can I reduce yours? Reply YES and we’ll have a quick, free review.

You can see how there are a few killer points in most of these winning messages.

• Personalisation – using the person’s name (using our merge to SMS feature). You’ll get the name with the list you buy.
• Locality – make the person feel local. You can merge the town name in too for larger campaigns.
• What do you get? – all offer something a person can get NOW & for free, just by replying yes.
• Time expiry/Restricted offer – only 100 places left or only available this week – create a sense of urgency.

Step 3 – Sending out the Text Message & getting Lead replies

'Fishing' for leads can be a time consuming process. SMS makes it painless, fast and above all profitable.

Here’s the easy bit! We’re a text messaging company.

You don’t have to use us of course but you may have seen that we keep lower costs for SMS broadcasting. We publish a competitor price comparison chart on our prices page so you can see what all the other companies charge. Have a look around of course but hopefully you’ll use us when you see other peoples prices.

All you need to do is open a free SMS account with us (use Promo Code INSURE when you do and we’ll put 50 free credits in your account so you can test it). When you open an account you’ll get the basic instructions. But, seriously, it’s a case of copy and pasting in the mobile numbers, writing the message and hitting send – it really is that simple!

Included in your text account is a free virtual reply number. What this means is people can reply to your messages – hopefully YES (some will undoubtedly be less ‘clean’)! All these text responses will be automatically routed to the email address you used when you sign up – so that’s where all the leads come in.

Costs & ROI on Insurance Lead Generation by SMS

So, will it work for you is the million dollar question?

Without fail, all of our current insurance customers did tests first, on our recommendation, to see. To my knowledge, to date, it has a 100% success rate.

Let’s look at what a test of 5,000 would cost;

Buy the list (avg £100/’000) = £500
Send the SMS (3.7p per text) = £185 (we don’t have any set up for monthly costs, just a pay as you go service)
Total = £685

Response rate to SMS campaign.
A tougher question because it depends on your proposition, offer, etc. But we can assume an average of 10%. So, 500 leads.

Return on Investment. Simply multiply 500 x your normal conversion rate x your average income per customer.

E.g. car insurance might be 500 x 24% x £47 =  income of £5,640, profit of £4,955  plus ongoing renewals and cross sell potential – not bad from a lead generation spend of £685.

Start an Insurance Lead Generation SMS campaign today

1. Speak to Sara at DMRI 0114 281 5760 or at sara@dmri.co.uk to discuss your list needs
2. Open a free SMS account with us (use Promo Code INSURE when you do and we’ll put 50 free credits in your account so you can test it)
3. Watch your email inbox for all those lovely leads

1. You haven’t really got a mobile marketing strategy

That sounds a trifle patronising but the reality is that the vast majority of UK companies don’t really get involved in mobile marketing in any meaningful way. We estimate that around two thirds of companies remain stubbornly in denial of the meteoric rise of the mobile phone and all its wonders and frustrations. The mobile has genuinely changed the way that we all interact and communicate and now accounts for an ever increasing slice of digital spend.

To us, it seems somewhat baffling that most companies seem to ignore the mobile phone and continue to battle away at more familiar and safer feeling marketing channels. Enough of the ranting, the simple point to make is that most companies don’t do mobile.

2. It’s not joined up

Those companies that have got involved in mobile marketing have mainly seen it as an add-on, a kind of optional extra to their main marketing stuff. Any mobile activity is often run in a vacuum and doesn’t link in any way to existing campaigns. For example, many companies will have tried sending a bulk SMS campaign in an effort to increase sales. So the marketing team will have come with an offer, compressed it to 160 characters and sent it out the door. So the customer receives a text out of the blue with no detail and no additional support material.

We’ve checked and over 95% of marketing bulk SMS campaigns do not contain a link to a mobile optimised website. Even worse, of those that do send a text containing a link, 72% of companies include a URL taking the user to a non-mobile optimised site. The eager customer clicks on the link and then waits minutes for a site to load, or more realistically, rolls their eyes and clicks away.

 3. It’s a flash in the pan

Many companies see mobile as a dangerous experiment; to be tried once or twice and unless it produces outstanding results, to be quietly filed away in the ‘we gave it a try’ folder. The trouble with that approach is that all consumers are not doing the same thing with their mobiles, quite the reverse in fact. We are all spending more and more time fiddling (often rather aimlessly) with our phones. So companies that choose not to interact with their customers via mobile will not only miss out on a tremendous opportunity but risk alienating themselves.

As with any marketing strategy you need to persist. A single bulk SMS does not a campaign make. Companies need to decide to embrace all elements of it, devise a long-term plan and stick to it.

4. It’s one dimensional

When most people think of mobile marketing, one thing usually leaps to mind; bulk SMS. Bulk SMS is just one of the tools in the metaphorical box that marketing departments should be considering. If you are going to take mobile marketing seriously then you need to be looking at a much wider range of ways to interact with customers. So here’s a quick run through some of the key elements that need to looked at.

Bulk SMS – Communicate news and offers to customers, prospects and staff.

Text Response – Allow customers to respond to marketing by text. E.g. ‘Text OFFER to 88802′.

QR Codes – Take customers to rich web-based content directly from your advertising.

Mobile Optimised Website – Vital. Allow customers to use your website on the move.

Mobile Payments – Allow you customers to purchase directly from the mobile site

Opt in and preferences – Capture customer and ask how they would like to receive info from you.

Opt out – Operate a rigorous unsubscribe policy. Make it easy for people to get off your list.

5. You’re half convinced that mobile is a fad.

Stan at Velocity Partners put this brilliantly. “Mobile is the juggernaut that we’re all trying very hard to pretend we don’t see.” But it’s no use, mobile is not going away, it’s actually becoming more and more important. So the time has come to embrace it, plan a detailed strategy and implement it ahead of your competitors. It needn’t be horribly expensive or suck up too much valuable time. I fear that companies that ignore it will regret it sooner rather than later.

Most companies are yet to use mobile marketing in any structured way. Many have sent out the odd bulk SMS campaign, the more adventurous may have even dabbled (usually unsuccessfully) with a QR code on their marketing materials. For most, mobile marketing remains an also-ran activity.

So using SMS as a way of communicating with customers and staff is fantastically effective. But what if anything could come and poison it? Is there anything lurking out there that could kill it stone dead.? We’ve been pondering what nasty venoms could conceivably see it off.

Increased Spam

I personally have received a bit more unwelcome SMS spam lately. It’s the usual stuff from PPI or accident claim companies. It’s not yet reached annoying levels, I receive about two or three a month, but I’d certainly be happier not to receive the drivel.

There are laws in place that should pretty much stamp it out completely. These date back to 2003 and made it illegal to send texts to people that you have no business relationship with. It looks like the Information Commissioner’s Office are starting to get to grips with the problem. The BBC recently reported a high-profile raid on a text spammers office, resulting in a £500,000 fine. That seems like a suitably stern deterrent! With a bit of luck we should see this type of spam reducing soon.

More Bulk SMS Legislation

The rules around sending bulk SMS are there to protect us from receiving SMS spam from companies that we don’t know and don’t want to know. In their current form, they are pretty robust and should prevent us from receiving unwelcome and uncalled for texts from any source.

What could put a fly in the proverbial ointment is if EU law makers decide to introduce a new layer of legislation that could make it more difficult for legitimate mobile marketers to send texts to their customers. Potentially you might be required to opt in to specific services. So if for example a company offered an SMS delivery notification service, the customer might have to specifically opt in to receiving delivery texts in addition to text offers that they had already agreed to receive.

We could end up with a complete muddle, with neither the consumer or the company properly understanding what they need to do. Our view is that the current rules are sensible and don’t require any more fortification. Let’s hope others agree.

A New Free Universal Messaging System

The number of texts being sent by UK consumers is leveling off. After 25 years or so of rapid growth, the graph is flattening out. The total dominance of SMS is being nibbled away at by other messaging apps like Imessage, WhatsApp, Skype etc. Every week there seems to be a new instant messaging tool launched. While these messaging apps are free to use there doesn’t seem to be one of them that’s being universally adopted. It’s a massive bun fight, a race to be the instant messaging winner. It’s win or lose and at the moment there doesn’t seem to be one winner emerging yet and this fact leaves SMS safe at the top of the pile, for the time being.

So the poison for business SMS might come when a victor in the instant messaging wars emerges. When we know what instant messaging product we’re all going to be using for the next few years someone is bound to find a way of adapting it for business use.

For businesses that want to communicate with their customers, SMS remains the only option. Research by Portio recently concluded that ‘SMS is not dead. SMS is still the king and will remain so for some time to come.’

SMS Retains the Crown?

So for the foreseeable future, it looks like SMS will retain its powerhouse status. For such a simple and arguably clunky technology, it’s got impressive stamina. It’s killer advantage is that it remains the only global messaging system. Every handset ever created can send and receive texts; until that changes, the argument for using SMS marketing will remain as persuasive as it is today.

In contrast to some of the reports in the industry press, many are still very cautious when it comes to buying from their mobiles. More than one in four consumers have used a phone to research products while in a high street shop, but just 17% of people have actually bought from a mobile website. It seems that trust is one of the main concerns, with 60% of people being worried about how secure it is. On the other hand, most people who bought things using their mobile found it easy.

The trust issue was a surprise to us. If people are happy and confident shopping on the web why would they feel any different while using a smartphone? A mobile website is after all just a website optimised for use on mobile devices. We think that perhaps consumers are worried that if their phone is lost or stolen, then the thief would be able to rack up huge purchases. Or maybe it’s in some way related to the damage that was done to the reputation of mobile payments industry by the ring tone and games club scams of several years ago. (You will no doubt remember the joys of the Crazy Frog.)

Curious too that while many of us use our phones to research products, just the17% go on to make a purchase. You would have thought that the figure would be higher even if you excluded every site except Amazon.

We tend to forget how long it takes for people to change their buying patterns. It’s similar in a way to how slow most UK companies are in recognising the benefits of using bulk SMS as a communication tool. Even though mobile marketing has been around for more than 10 years, we estimate that only about 30% of UK businesses are using it regularly. Slowly though, things are changing and we have certainly seen a huge rise in the number of customers opening up a bulk SMS account with us in the past couple of years.

Please help yourself to a free bulk SMS account if you wish. You will receive some free text credits for testing. If there’s anything at all that you think we could help with, please feel free to give us a call. Our details are on the contacts page.

E-mail by contrast has no such restrictions but as we all know, has a miserable delivery and read rate. Perhaps there might be some way of combining the power and impact of SMS with the detail and superior functionality of e-mail.

We recently ran a detailed survey that asked over 1300 people what they thought about receiving bulk SMS communications from companies that they deal with. One of the questions was specifically related to this issue.
“Would you like to receive texts from companies alerting you to offers that they have sent you by e-mail?”

We found that 67% of people said ‘yes’. This surprisingly high positive response hints at people’s frustrations that e-mails that they would like to see are being lost in the deluge that we all receive every day. So it seems a text can acts as a kind of highlighter pen or filter for our marketing e-mails, pinpointing offers that would otherwise be missed.

Using bulk SMS as a way of highlighting e-mail offers would on the face of it seem to be a fairly obvious plan. From over 10,000 Text Marketer customers, only two or three using this technique, so there’s a huge opportunity for companies to generate more response from their direct marketing activities.

Implementing this idea will take you just a few moments. Step one is to set up a free bulk SMS account. This will take you a couple of minutes and you will receive some free text credits for testing. Then it’s simply a case of uploading your customer mobile numbers and sending your SMS alert shortly after your next e-mail offer lands.

If you would like ideas on how else bulk SMS could be used, take a look at our message depot which might give you inspiration. If you’d like to discuss any element of your mobile marketing activities, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, you’ll find our details on the contacts page.

The current bulk SMS offer, aimed at customers around the Fulham site, tempts them to order with an offer of free potato skins.

Mega Deal! Buy Any Large Pizza Get 6pcs Stuffed Potato Skins & Btl of Coke FREE! T&Cs Apply Call 02087410090 & quote LPB04. Valid 11 May. Opt out: EZTW to 88802

Tops Pizza uses Text Marketer’s ‘sub-account’ tool’ which allows them to set up separate accounts for each of the restaurants. This means that each restaurant has its own login details and can run its own bulks SMS campaigns. It also means that each restaurant’s unsubscribe database is held separately.

Bulk SMS In the fast food sector is as popular and as responsive as it has ever been. As long as businesses abide by the unsubscribe regulations and present offers which represent genuine value, then SMS will continue to be a vital tool for generating more orders. Luckily for them we will always get hungry so demand will always be there.

Free E-Book

To help fast food restaurants get the most out of bulk SMS, we’ve put together a free e-book which provides a simple step by guide, along with example messages and pitfalls to avoid.

Businesses looking to try bulks SMS marketing for the first time can set up a free account. We will provide some free text credits for testing as well as support and advice. If you would like to speak with us, we would love to hear from you. Our details can be found on our contacts page.

Final SMS Pro brings the convenience of SMS customer service, branding and marketing to Magento. It’s developed from scratch to provide the final (as in ultimate) SMS solution for merchants seeking to include and extend the power of SMS to their eCommerce strategy using Magento. Combining this with Text Marketer’s low cost SMS gateway is the perfect combination.

Short overview of the features:

- Mobile number verification (Before registration or purchase)
- Sending of SMS’s configurable for any transactional Email
- Integrates into all third party extensions which send transactional Emails
- Scheduled/custom SMS’s to all customers, groups, single or backend users
- Full multi store support, incl. time zone recognition for scheduled messages
- Smart template variables and length calculation – No cropped or unexpectedly long SMS’s
- Realtime preview of actual SMS on order updates, showing customer name, etc. and comment
- Extensive logging, incl. support for delivery reports (Actual delivery to mobile) which most gateways provide
- Costs overview
- Supports Magento from 1.4.2 to the latest 1.6.2 (And of course the upcoming 1.7)

Step 1

You’ll need an account with us, so that you can use our SMS Gateway.

Open your free Text Marketer account here

Step 2 – Open an SMS account with Text Marketer

Then, you will need the Final SMS Pro plugin for Magento

Step 3 – Configure Final SMS Pro with our gateway

Simply go to the backend of Final SMS Pro and choose Text Marketer as the gateway and enter you username and password you received when you signed up for your Text marketer account.

That’s it – your Magento is now SMS enabled.

FAQ’s

How much does each text message cost?

Our prices per text are very low for a premium quality SMS gateway.
We even provide a competitor price comparison chart on our prices page.

One Ford dealership noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to catch people’s attention by e-mail and their open rates had dropped from 23% to 12% in just one year. This was having a significant detrimental effect on sales and it was clear that another communication channel was needed.

Unlike e-mail, using a bulk SMS service you can expect an open rate of over 98%, a striking contrast.

Their first bulk SMS campaign was a simple text offering the new Ford focus at heavily discounted rates and was sent to around 300 targeted customers.

Save over £4,000 on a brand new FORD FOCUS. Ring Evans Halshaw now on 0116 2426840 for details. Only 4 cars remaining. Text KCWW to 88802 to stop.

Within two hours of the bulk SMS campaign landing on the customers’ phones, the dealership had received 27 phone enquiries and had booked 12 test drives. After two weeks they had sold five new vehicles and had three prospects for used cars.

The cost to send the bulk SMS campaign came in at a tiny £11.10 +VAT and they sold over £40,000 of stock; a quite extraordinary return on investment.

This incredible success demonstrates perfectly how investing in a mobile marketing strategy can deliver unexpected results. It’s only by actually trying it that companies can discover how it might benefit them.

Set up a free account and you can try our web-based bulk SMS service at no cost. There is no setup fee, no contract or minimum purchase. We’re always on hand to advise you if you wish, you’ll find all our details on our contacts page.

Looking at the table, the average saving on a purchase of 1000 text credits is an eyebrow raising 39%. (At time of writing). This raises the obvious question: How is Text Marketer able to charge so much less than other companies providing bulk SMS services? There is a simple and logical explanation.

The cost per text that bulk SMS providers pay has dropped very significantly in the past few years. This means that if a bulk SMS provider has not dropped their cost to the end user, then they are generating more profit from every customer than they used to. We have taken the very obvious step of passing on the cost savings to our customers. This ludicrously simple plan has meant that our customers can enjoy very low bulk SMS costs without any compromise on the quality of service or the support that they receive.

Eliminate Waste

We also keep a beady eye on our costs. We have a modest but efficient office in central Bristol (which apparently looks like a prison) and we have steered clear from opening up offices throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Text Marketer only uses direct connections to UK networks, we never route our bulk SMS traffic through low-grade, unreliable international routes. We’ve invested heavily in making our service as robust and bullet-proof as possible and our servers are hosted with Rackspace, recognised by many leading brands as the most reliable server hosting service available.

So we haven’t taken any short cuts in providing our customers with a low-cost bulk SMS service, we’ve just passed on cost reductions that all bulk SMS providers have benefited from.

If you haven’t yet explored how bulk SMS might work for you, help yourself to a free account. You’ll get some free text credits for testing so you can see how it works before buying any text credits. Do call us or drop us a line if you’d like to discuss anything further, all our details are on our contact page.

Click the icon to download the FREE Excel Campaign Calculator

What response rate will you get from your Marketing Campaign?

I’m often asked about the relative differences between different marketing communication channels and which one might provide the best return.

Of course, there are many factors that have an effect on the success or failure of any campaign (list, creative, offer, etc.) but there are some well-respected organisations that conduct research on these things and publish ‘industry averages’.

To help you gauge a likely cost and return and compare the differences between SMS, Email, Telemarketing, Fax Marketing and Direct Mail I have built an Excel tool which gives you you the ability to change the parameters of the campaign and see the likely cost and return implications.

A quick video demo’ of how easily it works;

STEP 1

First, you enter how many people you’re going to contact, what is the cost per hour of your staff/agency running the campaign and the likely revenue you’d expect to earn from each response (averaged across all responses).

STEP 2

The areas in green use industry standard figures for costs and response rates across the channels but you can amend these should you have more relevant figures for your industry sector. In particular, if you had a large direct mail campaign, you might want to up the printing costs.

STEP 3

The results are then calculated in the red area (do not change these cells). You will see the estimated total costs & revenue for the campaign and then the likely net revenue received by you.

I hope this will provide some ‘science’ behind making decisions on what type of marketing channel has the most likely chance of success for you.

FREE DOWNLOAD

The Excel Marketing Campaign Calculator is free to download (it’s in 97-2003 format so should work for most people).

This is one of the commonest questions we’re asked by potential users of our bulk SMS service. It’s a completely understandable concern. if you’re about to upload all your precious customer data onto a new supplier’s bulk SMS system, you want to be absolutely convinced that it’s not going to be flogged onto some other company to use as they see fit.

Companies are not being paranoid in seeking assurance that their bulk SMS data is secure and won’t be passed on to any third party. So in simple terms, here is Text Marketer’s policy regarding the use of customer data stored within its systems.

We would never ever, pass on, sell or allow access to any customer data held on Text Marketer’s systems.

All data is password protected and stored on highly secure servers, hosted by Rack Space.

Customers who no longer wish to use their bulk SMS system, can request account deletion along with all customer data ever stored on the account.

So Text Marketer customers can be confident that when they load sensitive data onto their accounts, there will be no nasty surprises.

So if you haven’t already done so, please feel free to set up a bulk SMS account. We’ll give you some free credits for testing. Or feel free to call us on (0117) 205 0202.

When Alistair was assessing a number of shortlisted bulk SMS companies, he noticed a wide range of prices on offer. He also recognised that there seemed to be two types of company; those that used direct connections to UK networks and those that didn’t. With reliability being so important, a direct route was the only option for him. He commented:

“Your low prices were important but not as important as providing my business with a reliable service.”

Text Marketer provided him with a free account so that he could test the reliability of the bulk SMS system before committing. They also provided with him as much support as he needed, together with training for all the users of the bulk SMS platform. As there was no minimum order, Snap-on could start their bulk SMS marketing strategy with a small campaign to begin with, moving up to larger text campaigns as they measured the success of the activity.

Setting up a free bulk SMS account takes just a minute or so. If you can’t be bothered to watch a brief instructions video or read a short document, then please feel free to give us a call on (0117) 205 0202 and we will gladly talk you through getting your first campaign out the door.

So there are two ways that you can cleanse your bulk SMS data. The first is to clean up your data as much as you possibly can before uploading your bulk SMS list into your account. Unfortunately there is no cost effective way of telling whether a number is dead before actually sending a message to it. What you can do though is make sure that your numbers all start with 07, so they are at least proper mobile numbers as opposed to landline numbers which normally start 01. You can also check that the bulk SMS list has the correct number of characters. Any number that is too long or short will obviously be a wasted text. You can easily sort your bulk SMS data in Excel and get rid of the numbers that are not formatted correctly.

Bulk SMS Cost Saving

So once you have your ducks in a row so to speak, you can send out your bulk SMS campaign. So that brings us on to the second way of cleansing your data. Using delivery reports in your Text Marketer account, you can download a complete list of all the mobile numbers that you have sent a message to, including the outcome, (delivered or failed.) A ‘failed’ outcome most commonly indicates that the number is dead and if you tried to ring it you would just get a ‘number cannot be recognised’ message. Once you’ve sorted the delivery report spread sheet by ‘delivered’ or ‘failed’ you will then be able to re-upload your list knowing that all the numbers are live and can receive texts. An average bulk SMS campaign has a failure rate (due to expired or wrong numbers) of about 23%. So by spending a few minutes to clean your bulk SMS list you can make a big dent in the overall costs for future campaigns.

Have you started to look at SMS marketing as a way of increasing business? If you are new to this, you can set up a free bulk SMS account here. There are no setup costs, monthly fees or contracts and your account comes with 10 free text credits so that you can try the service at no cost. We are always available to speak to on the phone, so if you would prefer, please call us on (0117) 205 0202.

With no real signs of jobs growth, the focus inevitably turns to cost saving. Agencies are increasingly looking to find ways of trimming their spending as a way of helping them through the current slow patch.

SMS Costs Cut by 48%

An analysis of Text Marketer’s recruitment consultancy customesr has revealed that there are huge savings to be made by switching sms supplier. Taking 47 agencies who switched to Text Marketer in the past 12 months, the average saving was 31% with one company slashing their sms bill by 48%.

SMS costs have come down dramatically in recent years and it’s clear that there are significant and worthwhile savings to be made. Cost reductions within the industry have not readily filtered down to businesses, so by shopping around for lower cost sms providers, agencies can make a worthwhile dent in their spending.

Stuart Melville from Ashley Wells Recruit in Leicester commented:

“We came across Text Marketer by doing a quick search on the web. What was immediately obvious to us is that their costs are much lower than the company we’d been using before. We had been paying about 7 pence per text and we now pay just 3.7 pence. We send several thousand texts a month to our applicants, so our annual sms bill has reduced by about £3500.”

Making the Switch

Adapt users can switch to Text Marketer with a few small in account changes.

Most consultancies use specialist industry software to run their agencies, which usually have an sms sending tool within them. Text Marketer have agreements with many of these software companies so switching from one sms provider to another is very straightforward. Users of market leading Bond Adapt can integrate immediately just by making a few small change within the account. If you’d like to find out more about integrating your recruitment software with Text Marketer, call us now on 0117 2050202.

If you currently use a stand alone bulk sms system, switching couldn’t be easier. Simply set up a free account here. Use the promo code JOB when you sign up and you’ll receive 250 free text credits to trial the service. You can then buy additional low cost sms credits by credit card or by invoice.

Get up and Running in 90 Seconds

1. Set up a free account in 90 seconds.
2. Use promotional code JOB to receive 250 free text credits.
3. Login to your account and start trialing the system

Text Marketer’s job is to give you all the right tools and support to make switching bulk sms provider as painless as possible. Please feel free to call us for a chat on 0117 2050202. We’d love to hear from you.

Price was always going to be a major factor in the decision making process as budgets are squeezed ever tighter. The quality of the sms service itself was also a crucial consideration and several sms service providers were trialed during the tender process.

Text Marketer’s platform got the seal of approval for being the easiest sms service to use. From the moment the user logs in, the simple menu structure makes sending bulk sms campaigns delightfully straightforward. SMS campaigns of any size can be sent from just one screen in just a few seconds and the full delivery reporting tools allow users to track their campaigns right to the users’ mobile phones.

Text Marketer’s sms service has evolved over 12 years to be one of the most widely used in the UK.

Find out how easy Text Marketer’s sms service is to use by setting up a free account. All accounts receive 10 free text credits, so you can test out the sms service before spending any money. Text Marketer’s costs are also very low. and you’ll find a handy price comparison table that shows you what many other bulk sms service providers are charging.

As well as providing great tools at low cost, Text Marketer’s experienced staff are always on hand to help you put your mobile marketing strategy together. Please feel free to call us on 0117 2050202.

The TV remote control and the washing machine are always mentioned as some of the most glaring examples of dire software implementation . (My colleague recently bought a new washing machine that has just one button in the middle labelled ‘wash my stuff’. Genius.)

So bulk sms providers have a delicate line to tread. There are all sorts of clever tools that we have in our toolbox. So how do we present these in a way that’s going to prevent our customers from hurling their computers out of the window in frustration?

Our starting point was to try and identify a typical user of a bulk sms service and tailor the user experience around them. We then immediately ran into trouble because our customers range from techno uber-geek at one end to… (how to put this politely) card holding member of the Flat Earth Society on the other. There just isn’t such a thing as a typical customer.

So we then decided to look at what most bulk sms software users would want to do the very first time they opened up an account and logged in. In almost all cases, people just want to see the thing working. They’ve just set up their bulk sms account and they want to send themselves a quick test message. Nothing fancy, just a test to check it works.

One Screen is Plenty

We then set about making the process of sending a quick test as easy as possible. ‘Quick Send’, as it’s imaginatively called, is what emerged. It’s the starting point and hub of our sms software. When you first login to a Text Marketer account you get taken straight to Quick Send. This allows you to send bulk sms messages from just one screen and with delightfully few clicks.

To get a bulk sms campaign landing on as many phones as you wish, all you need to do is the following:

1. Paste your mobile numbers into a box
2. Write your message
3. set the sender ID, (who the message is from)
4. Press submit

In all it takes about 15 seconds. By making it easy for people to get going, we hope to demonstrate that using our bulk sms platforn as a daily tool isn’t going to be a chore.

Help yourself to a free account to see what we’re talking about and send yourself a test message. (You’ll get 10 free test messages.) If you get lost or confused, then we’ve failed but we expect you’ll find it a walk in the park.

We always available on 0117 2050202 if you need back up.

I had a rant about Bannatynes who also committed the cardinal sin of not including an unsubscribe option on their bulk sms activity. The Information Comissioner’s Office, whose job it is to set out the rules on this, state very clearly on their website, that you must…

“give them the opportunity to opt out of receiving further marketing messages each time.” 

So I’m curious to understand why Orange believe the rules on mobile marketing don’t apply to them. It’s possible that when you sign up with Orange, there’s a clause, buried in the depths of the small print, that gives them permission for all time to push you bulk sms messages. Or perhaps they would argue that the messages aren’t mobile marketing, but are merely information bulletins that customers would find useful.

Whatever their reasoning, I do wish they’d stop. If I had the energy, I’d switch networks, but realistically that’s not going to happen. Being on the receving end of sms ‘spam’ makes you realise how important it is to give customers the chance to unsubscribe.

So a heartfelt plea to all our customers and users of bulk sms marketing tools. Please, for pity’s sake, include an opt out on your mobile marketing campaigns or risk seriously aggravating your punters.

For Text Marketer customers, if you haven’t yet discovered how your free opt out tool works, please find more information here.

If you’re new to this and would like to explore how sms marketing might work for you, feel free to set up an account. You’ll get 10 free text credits and of course a free unsubscribe tool.

An sms service is the most efficient way of making sure that important information or instructions get to the right people immediately. 97% of all texts sent are opened, with 83% being opened within the hour. Compared with email where as little as 35% of messages are read, using an sms service you have the best possible chance that your message is getting to right people immediately.

Using delivery reports, Text Marketer’s SMS service allows users to check the delivery of their sms campaigns. Each sms campaign automatically creates a delivery report which can be downloaded to an Excel or csv file. The report lists all the numbers that were sent to and provides an outcome against each. (Delivered or failed.)

Increasing numbers of UK businesses are starting to use an sms service for all kinds of communications. Bulk sms has traditionally been seen as a marketing tool, a sales channel to get offers out to large numbers of prospects or customers at low cost. While this is indeed very effective, there are a wide range of other applications for an sms service.

One of the main attractions with using an sms service is that there is no set up fee, monthly fee or contract, so you can get started at a very low cost, without the need to have a specific budget for the activity.

If you’d like to see how using an sms service might work for you, then you can set up a free account here. You’ll also receive 10 free text credits to test the service. please feel free to cal us on 0117 2050202 if you’d like to discuss how sms might work for you.