Chapter 7 – Getting an SMS Campaign up and running & The Costs

Firstly, of course, you need to have your data sorted out. We’ll assume you’ve got this but if not, it is covered in Chapter 1.

Let’s start with the costs. Always a popular topic! Text Marketer offer the lowest rates of text messaging in the UK for quality SMS delivery (see our SMS Buyers Guide to read more on quality).

Our highest cost is 3.7p per message, for lower volumes. But, you can get buy at 2.6p per message for much higher volumes. See our Bulk SMS prices page for the full sliding scale of costs.

So for example, an SMS Campaign of 1000 would cost just £37. If you compare this to say direct mail, which would probably be around £500 (or more) per 1000, you can see it is incredibly cost effective – not to mention more responsive! (There’s a great direct marketing comparison article which looks at the benefits of texting over other direct marketing and compares the costs and responsiveness and ROI – there’s even an environmental benefit of using texting!).

GETTING A CAMPAIGN UP & RUNNING

Here’s the easy bit. Sending out a text campaign is as easy as copy & pasting your numbers in the system, writing a message and pressing the send button! Most could have a campaign out within a few minutes and the messages would be on people’s phones within seconds.

As a great visual example, take a look at our videos page and watch the “How it works in 60 seconds” video.

I WANT TO GET STARTED – HOW TO …

Over the years, we’ve heard this from literally thousands of companies. But, they’re not sure what information they need. So we’ve produced a “Getting Started in SMS Marketing” page which has 5 categories of customer and the ‘basic’ information required as well as ‘advanced reading’.

This will provide all the information you could possibly need in terms of getting your first campaign out.

Don’t forget our 50 free credit offer below too – why not give it a go just with 50 of your customer base and see what the results are!?

Text messages get straight to your customer, wherever they are.

Having been in the business for over a decade now, we have seen just about every type of Bulk SMS Marketing strategy, with varying levels of success. The one common denominator between all the strategies employed is that companies who embrace this relatively new (for businesses anyway) communication channel is that they are almost always successful.

Often the first thought when people hear, “business text messaging” is, OH NO, you’re not going to be one of those spammers are you!?
True, in the past Bulk SMS for businesses usually consisted of getting a big list of mobile numbers and sending them all a spam SMS message! Nowadays though, the law and the savvy UK customer has caught up with these rogue companies and they are virtually non-existent.

In fact, here are some recent “Business Texting Fast Facts”

• 65% of people send business text messages from their mobile phone on a daily basis
• 50% of people receive business text messages from a member of their team/ department/ office
• 47% of people receive business text messages from a colleague
• 36% receive business text messages from a customer or client
• 71% of people use business texts for setting ‘reminders of meetings and appointments’
• 18% of people used business texts for ‘notifying people about new meetings and appointments’
• 14% of people use business text for ‘chasing up suppliers or new orders’
• A third of respondents (36%) said that they receive text messages from a customer or client
• 11% of people receive text messages from suppliers.

So, what are the most effective ways to gain increased sales using Bulk SMS?

In reverse order of success rating;

Number 5
Start a text club. Allow people to text in to a keyword to receive special offers from you by text message.

Number 4
Keep a customer informed during the order process. Text them when you have received the order, when payment has been taken & when it has been despatched with a delivery time estimate. This has been proven to dramatically increase repeat orders and positive word of mouth.

Number 3
Text enable your adevrtising. Allow people to respond by texting you. On average around half of respondents will choose to do so if you include a text response on your advertising and often those people wouldn’t have responded so you increase response rates.

Number 2
Text lapsed customers. Try to get a list of customers from your database who haven’t bought for X months and text them out an offer to encourage them back to you. So long as they had a good experience last time, this is one of the fastest ways to gain new sales.

And, in at Number 1 …..
Follow up your sales. Customers like nothing more than to be assured they have made the right choice buying from you. Text them X days after the sale thanking them for their business and offering a number to call if they need any help or anything further. We have seen this increase recall rates, increase repeat purchase and hugely increase positive word of mouth amongst peer groups – essentially free advertising!

Take a look at a few SMS Marketing Case Studies for other ideas but if you do only the 5 above, you’ll notice immediate results and sales increases.

Having said that, there is some common ground and also some general advice which will help you get the best response from you SMS campaigns, so here goes;

1. What do you want to achieve?

Think about what you actually want to achieve from your Bulk SMS campaign. Is it a text back response, a phone call, an email, a visit to your website, etc. This will help you in writing your message and selecting your target audience. For example if you were texting older people you might want to have a phone number to call rather than a text back response as in all probability the majority of that target market will prefer using the telephone to talk to someone.

2. Target, target and target again

There’s a rule of thumb in direct mail that has proven itself bullet proof over the decades. The list (target market) you use is seven times more important to the success of a campaign than any other element of the campaign. This is of course true when it comes to SMS Marketing.

If we sent an offer of a buy 1 lipstick get 1 free to our entire list, you’d reasonably expect a close to 0% response rate from the men on the list! A glaringly obvious example of course but it serves to demonstrate the point!

Think about the people on your list. Are there any obvious ‘segments’ you can talk to more specifically? Gender is obvious, but, other things to consider are, age, geography, time since last purchase, product categories (what have they bought in the past), spend levels (how much have they spent with you), transactions (how many times have they transacted with you or indeed have they) and so on.

‘Segments’ will of course be specific to each company but normally in a list of any size there will be some segmentation that can be done so you can target your message and your offer more appropriately to give the best chance of success.

3. The Text Message

Now that you’ve decided on what to achieve and what segments you have, writing the message should be easy enough. Just keep it short, to the point and make sure you get you call to action across clearly, i.e. what you want them to do.

Don’t forget you might want to write several versions of the message which appeal to your various segments.

• A good example of a succinct message is, “Great news! x% of all XYZ products for this weekend only. Only available online @ www.xyz.com. Use XYZ code at the checkout to claim. Hurry, ends 9am Monday!”

4. Test everything!

The biggest joy about SMS Marketing is you have the ability to test everything. Don’t be afraid to, it’s how the companies at the top find out what works best. For example, does a web promotion work best or is it best to invite people to call you or even respond by text? What time of day or night is best to send out your message? Or even a weekend? What offer works best, BOGOF or discounting.

Include redemption codes in your different messages (e.g. “use code XYZ when you call to claim your discount”) and track responses to work out which combination works best for you.

5. Remember, it’s an SMS Marketing ‘Campaign‘

Many companies like to try one SMS broadcast and if it’s successful, they’ll subsequently do another.

In common with other direct marketing channels numerous studies have shown that frequently prospects will not respond until they have seen a text a number of times. This is often simply because they do not know the advertiser, and continued exposure brings reassurance. It may also happen that your prospect is not in the market the first time your text arrives but some weeks later they are ready.

John Caples, one of the world’s great copywriters put the optimum figure at 7 times; David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy and Mather, said 5 times. In any event the principle is clear.
Repeated exposure will bring a better response.

Conclusion

Using SMS in your company’s marketing mix is essential. I don’t know of anyone who does not use text messaging, including my 73 year old father. Using these 5 top starter tips you should be able to achieve excellent response rates to your SMS Campaigns and because SMS Marketing is so cost effective, it won’t even cost much to give it a go!

Get a Free Bulk SMS account with us and get testing today – once you’ve tried it, you won’t look back!