Getting into your customers' mobile phone address book is the 'holy grail' of mobile marketing.

People’s mobile phones are precious to them. For many already, it’s how they organise their entire lives. And this trend is surely only set to continue – well, according to every study I’ve ever read!

Getting in to your Customer’s mobile phone address book

This should be your holy grail. Most people’s mobile address books stay with them forever, moving with them as they change devices too, automatically. Most smartphones also synchronise contacts with Facebook, Google and other social networking systems.

If you can get your business name and number into their address book, there’s good chance your customer will remember you for a long time! Also, if you send them a text message in the future, it pops up as from your company name, not just a generic number – just like it does from any friend of theirs.

How do you go about this?

It’s simple. We’ve tested this on many occasions and it works.

1. You need a txtUs virtual 07…… mobile number for your business.

2. Export all your customers’ mobile numbers from your database.

3. Send them a simple message from your Text Marketer account (using your txtUs number as the Sender ID). Something like,
“Hi from Carluccio’s restaurant. This is our new text messaging number which you can use for booking or general enquiries. Please save us to your address book“.

Done.

The benefits of doing this aren’t immediate, they’re more a medium term strategy. But, from all the evidence we’ve seen, it is simply the holy grail of mobile marketing.

txtUs is designed to give a business a unique mobile number (like having a fax number) which customers and prospects can use to text the company. Texts come in as a standard email to the company and can be replied to using a standard email program too.

A phenomenal success!

See how RoughTrax have integrated txtUs into their website

RoughTrax report, “customers absolutely love the system. It means they can contact us whenever they want as they always have their mobile with them and when we reply, they get our reply instantly”. Barry, Director of RoughTrax, goes on, “we’ve really noticed a surge in enquiries since we published the mobile number on our site, good ones too! Also, the time it takes us to answer using txtUs is about 10 times less than making a phone call”.

Fully integrated into RoughTrax’s contact channels ….

RoughTrax have added their txtUs number on their web site and are now reprinting their stationery to include their new number.

A real opportunity for business to gain a competitive advantage

There’s no getting away from it, this is a new system and it takes a little while for customers to get used to texting companies they deal with. But, when they do, the results are astounding.

Not only do you increase enquiries and save costs (on calling mobile phones), you gain an advantage over your competition because people like using text messaging and they’ll stick with companies who use it.

No other company provides such a unique product for business to use text message marketing in their day to day business – at only £25 per month with no long term contracts (you can cancel after month 1 if you like), there seems little reason to not at least try it.

This is a relatively advanced feature of the system and the process outlined below should be followed precisely to ensure a successful campaign.

Overview: The step by step process
1. What is a CSV file and how the data should be formatted
2. Creating a “merge group” in the system
3. Uploading your CSV file to the “merge group”
4. Creating the campaign and inserting “merge” fields into the message
5. Previewing the campaign, editing & submitting the campaign

Step 1: Understanding & creating your CSV File

A CSV file is a Comma Separated Values file. They are easily exported from Excel or almost any other software. If you are not familiar with CSV files, you should seek technical help within your company.

Above you’ll see an example CSV file, ready for merge upload. Each line is a “record” or “row” and each bit of data between each comma is a “field”. So in each line of the example above, we have the following data:
“mobile_number,name,username,password,code”
There are 5 records in our example CSV database.

Create or export your CSV file, following the rules shown below and save it on your computer ready to upload to your account. (Step 3.)

VERY IMPORTANT - Rules for CSV files for Text Marketer:
1. The mobile number MUST be saved as the first field in each row
2. You can have up to a maximum of 4 additional custom fields in addition to the mobile number
3. There is a maximum of 60 characters for each custom field
4. Commas are used to separate the fields, do not use them in your data
5. The maximum number of rows you can upload at one time is 50,000

Step 2: Creating a “merge group” in the system

Now we have the CSV file prepared, the next step is to create a special “merge group” in your system.
Log in and go to Groups -Create a Group. Give the group a name and tick the box “Is it a Merge Group?”. This tells the system to expect a merge group CSV file instead of the normal single column of numbers used in non-merge campaigns.
Then press Submit.

Step 3: Uploading your CSV file to the “merge group”

After creating the “merge group” you will be returned to the screen above with the group you have created already selected.
Next to Select File, click the  grey Browse button.
Navigate your way to the CSV file you created and saved in Step 1.
When you have found the CSV file, double click the file or highlight it and select open.
(You will see the path to the file now appears in the window next to Select File.)
Then click Submit.
If any errors are found in your file these will be reported. If this is the case, please go back to Step 1 and see the “Rules for CSV files”. If your file uploads successfully, you will see the “Numbers in Group” for your “merge group” change from zero to the numbers of records in your CSV file.

In our example CSV file we had 5 records which we uploaded to the group “MergeData1″ so it is now displaying 5 records in that group as per below.

Step 4: Creating the campaign and using “merge” fields in the message

To create a merge SMS campaign go to Send SMS – Send to Merge Group
Then select the merge group you are sending to (MergeData1 in our example).
Give the campaign a name for your records (this can be anything useful to you but is not set as the sender name for your campaign).
Select the date and time to send your campaign and then we’ll create the message.

How To Create A Merge Message
The code you need to insert into a message to pull through a custom field is {1}, {2}, {3} or {4} where the number corresponds to the position of the custom data field in each record in your CSV file. The custom fields exclude the number column so {1} is the first data field.
If you only have one custom field then you will only ever need {1}. If you remember, in our example CSV file (from Step 1) the order of each record was “mobile_number (which is ignored for data merging),name,username,password,code” so in the message above we have created:

“Hi {1}, your username is: {2}, password {3} & your voucher code is {4}. Thanks.”
You can now create your message following this example and insert the {1}, {2}, {3} or {4} (if you are using all 4 custom fields) in your message as appropriate.
Then click Next >> Don’t worry, there is a preview screen next to check your message before it is submitted!

Step 5: Previewing the campaign, editing & submitting the campaign

Once you have clicked Next >> you will be given a preview of up to the first 20 merged messages.
This allows you to check the messages look OK.
The message box also re-appears so you can make amendments to your message if it doesn’t look right. If you do make amendments in the message box, click Preview >> afterwards to preview the first 20 messages again with the amended message text.

IMPORTANT – Information on credits usage with merged campaigns
Merging data can and will produce different message lengths depending on your data  (if someone has a long name for example).
This can have the effect of using more credits for a particular message. Therefore this screen also shows you the total credits required for the campaign and the total volume (or, number of mobile numbers you are sending to).
Should these numbers differ it means that some of your data fields are pushing the total character count in those messages over the limit.
You can either choose to accept this and submit the campaign or you may wish to trim the message (remember to hit Preview >> to reload the new message) until you are happy with the credits required number.

In our example everything looks fine with 5 credits needed to send our 5 text messages so we can now Submit the campaign.

You will then see your normal campaign log screen with the campaign details. If you are happy with this then simply leave the campaign to process. If you are not happy, hit the Abort? link next to the campaign to abort.

I don’t want to send long messages, does it affect me?
No. Apart from some slight changes to the character counter in your account.  you can still send messages up to 160 characters for 1 credit, as normal.

I do want to do this, what do I need to know? What’s different?
If you want to use the long message feature (aka Concatenated Bulk Text Messaging), there are 2 main differences to be aware of:

1. Concatenated messages cost 1 credit per 153 characters. The reason this is reduced from the normal 160 characters is to allow for the ‘invisible glue’ code in each part of the message which is inserted so that the phone knows to join these parts together once it hits the phone (see illustration below).
2. For the first 24 hours or so in your delivery reports, you will receive a report per part of the concatenated message. For example, if you sent a full 612 character (4 part) message, your delivery report would show 4 reports per number. For your convenience, within around 24 hours, our system then ‘cleans’ your delivery reports to show just 1 outcome per mobile number.

What’s this ‘invisible glue’? Why do I only get 153 characters per message credit in a long message?

Previously you could only send 1 x 160 character message to any phone. As the medium exploded, people wanted the ability to send longer text messages and the networks responded by creating the ‘concatenated text message’. Due to the limitations of text messaging, a long message of say 612 characters is still sent as 4 individual messages. But, when our system tells the networks ‘these are 4 parts of 1 message’ they insert some code into each part which in turn tells the phone to display this as 1 message, instead of 4. This code takes 7 characters of ‘space’ in each part of the long message.

Example of the 'invisible glue' needed to ensure a long message is displayed as 1 message on the phone

I use the SMS Gateway. Can I send ‘long text messages’?
No problem at all. We have updated the SMS Gateway Integration document to reflect this change.

We hope this enhancement will help to increase the effectiveness of your SMS Marketing. If you are reading this and don’t yet have an account, why not get a free Bulk SMS account and have a free trial.

This is quite a major technical update to the system but as so many customers responded positively, our technical team has been busy making all the necessary changes for both web based Text Marketer accounts and the SMS Gateway.

We estimate this significant enhancement should be available in all customer systems within a week but we thought we would release a sneak preview of what you can expect to see very soon.

How will this affect you? FAQ’s

• Do I have to use this feature? Although your system will be able to send concatenated messages, you can still simply send messages up to and including 160 characters for 1 credit.
• I use the SMS Gateway, can I use text message concatenation? Absolutely, this feature is already enabled on the SMS Gateway. Contact us for more details.
• How will it affect my delivery reports? If you don’t send concatenated message then there’s no change. If you do, for the first 24 hours or so after the campaign, you will see multiple delivery receipts for each ‘section’ of the message per recipient. E.g. if you send a 640 character message, then you will receive 4 delivery receipts for each number sent to. From the network’s point of view you have sent 4 messages to that number (although the recipient receives it as one message). After 24 hours or so your reports will automatically be ‘cleaned’ so that you just have 1 response per number sent to, as usual.

Do I need to do anything?

No. As soon as this enhancement is available it will automatically appear in your send screens.

The critical difference when using an SMS Gateway is that you send each message uniquely, not as a batch. This gives you control or merge capabilities. A classic example would be sending bank balances by text message. Each one would have to be unique and this is where SMS Gateways come in.

You need a small amount of technical knowledge to integrate with our SMS Gateway, but we have helped as much as possible by compiling articles on how to integrate an SMS Gateway which should help you along.

One of the most popular web languages to use is PHP. To assist PHP programers wanting to integrate their applications into our SMS Gateway we have compiled the following;

• SMS Gateway Specification – Inlcuding PHP Code examples
• A simple send class example in PHP 5 for sending text messages through our gateway
• Receiving SMS via a Gateway. A PHP 5 Class code example for implementing listeners.
• Delivery reporting on our SMS Gateway. Collecting reports.
• Using an SMS Gateway with Short Codes

As well as giving unrivalled levels of support, we are also proud that we have the cheapest SMS Gateway product in the UK. This means the lowest per message price!
The quality of our gateway second to none with direct connections to Vodafone. You can get a free SMS Gateway trial here and test the quality with no commitments.