We’ve built a system to get around this and it’s launched today.

You can now buy keywords on our shortocde or txtUs dedicated virtual mobile numbers and we can simply invoice you so you can pay by BACS in the normal way. Then, when a renewal is due, your system will automatically email you another invoice for the next period at which point you can either choose to cancel or pay that invoice to extend the term of the keyword or txtUs number.

IS THERE ANY DIFFERENCE?

The main difference is that you can only choose renewal terms of 3, 6, 9 or 12 months using this system (you can pay month by month using our automated card subscriptions system). As you can appreciate, this has to be done to cover the additional administration cost of handling non-automated payments.

SETTING UP A KEYWORD

• Log in to your Text Marketer account.
• Go to INCOMING SMS | ADD A SHORT CODE KEYWORD
• Enter the keyword you want to check it is available
• Click PLACE ORDER BY INVOICE and complete the details for the invoice
• We’ll send you the first invoice for payment and once paid, your keyword will be set up

This article explains how to use the incoming text feature or shortcode SMS part of your Text Marketer account. You can order a free 1 week trial of this service directly in your account by going to Incoming SMS | Add a Short Code Keyword

Your system works by texting in your chosen keyword to the number 88802, e.g. “Text CREATE to 88802″ is one of the keywords shown below. The entire message data is captured i.e. anything after the initial keyword, but, the message must start with your keyword to be allocated to your account. For example, you could ask people to text in your keyword followed by their name and email address. This would all be captured.

Garry explains how the service works in our shortcode/keyword video.

The ‘Reply Data’ Screen

Incoming texts are collected and stored in your Text Marketer account (as shown above). As well as keywords, this screen also holds information for our Long code txtUs service where you can have a virtual full mobile number linked to your account.

This gives you a quick overview, showing (from left to right): The date your keyword is due to expire, the keyword, the total number of text responses to date and then options to configure settings for the keyword and to export data in Excel (recommended) or pure CSV.

Normally you will have a stop unsubscription keyword and your keyword. But, as shown above, an account can have as many keywords as is required.

To view the data for any keyword click on the corresponding ‘Export Excel’ link by your keyword (or CSV if you don’t have Excel).

There are a number of other items of data that are also captured, these are listed below…

Column A Date of text response
Column B Time of text response
Column C Mobile Number (You will need to format this column as a ‘number’, set to 0 decimal places. Click the column header to highlight the whole column. Right click and select ‘Number’, then set to 0 decimal places using drop down arrow.)
Column D Keyword.
Column E ‘All’ Indicates that the service is set up to work on all UK GSM Networks.
Column F Shows the cost to the responder, usually set as £0.00
Column G Shows the delivery status of the autoresponse message if this has been set.
Column H Shows the actual content of the responder’s text.

Changing the autoresponse for your keyword / having incoming texts emailed to you / Autoresponding by Email

You can also change the autoresponse message for your keyword and have incoming text messages emailed to unlimited email addresses. Additionally, you can send automated email responses to incoming text messages.

To access this functionality, click ‘Configure‘ next to the keyword.

You’ll then see this screen:

Features of the Change Settings screen:

LEFT HAND SIDE OF SCREEN – Autoresponse Text Message Settings

Reply by SMS settings: This is the message that is automatically returned to anyone who texts your keyword to 88802. It can only be 160 characters maximum. If you leave this field completely blank, no autoresponse message will be returned and no credits will be used.
Sender ID: This is the sender ID of the text autoresponse message, i.e. who it appears from in a recipients inbox. It can be up to 16 numbers or up to 11 alphanumerics, including spaces.
API URL: Always leave this blank unless you are an advanced user. See using our Short Code API documentation.
E-mail: This is the field where you enter the email address/es you want each indivdual incoming text sent to. You can enter 1 email address or multiple email addresses by simply separating them with a comma, e.g. add1@me.com,add2@me.com,add3@me.com,etc. Then the text responses will be emailed to all these addresses.

RIGHT HAND SIDE OF SCREEN – Autoresponse Email Settings
An optional email autoresponse can be sent if you have asked people to include their email address in the message. In this example, we would ask people to text “CREATE demo@demo.com” to 88802 and our system will automatically recognise the email address and send the email you have created.

Active: Set this to Y to activate an email autoresponse
Email Reply: This is where you put the body of the email autoresponse. It can be plain text or full HTML
Subject: The subject of the email autoresponse
Sender Name: The name the email comes from
Email Address: The reply-to email address

Sending out a text campaign to all responders to your keyword

Your Text Marketer account automatically creates a group that contains the mobile numbers of all the people that have texted your keyword to the short code.
The label for this is ‘Short’ followed by ‘_’ then your keyword.

So if your keyword is brochure, the name of the group is ‘short_brochure’

Go to Send SMS, and then select Send to Goup .

Select the group that you wish to send to using the drop down arrow.

Give the campaign a name in the Campaign Name window. This is not setting the sender name but is for your own records. Your delivery report will be named with whatever label you type here.

With the message, you have a choice. You can either type a message directly into the Message Text window or you can select a message from the Message Library using the drop down arrow to access the list.

You then need to set the date and time that you wish your campaign to be sent on.
If you would like the campaign to be sent over the course of the day, you can select an end time for the campaign. The text campaign will then be sent out evenly between the times selected.

When you’re ready, press Submit.

You’ll then be taken directly to the SMS Activity Log, where you’ll see your campaign queued and waiting to go. The date and time of the campaign is indicated on the left hand side.

If you need to stop the campaign for any reason you can hit the Abort link any time before the campaign is submitted.

When your campaign has been submitted, the entry in the SMS Activity Log will turn from red to grey, indicated that it has been sent the networks.

You can also set the sender name for your campaign; this is who the message is from and appears on the recipients’ phone as the message header.
Go to Send SMS – Default Sender ID – Click in the sender window and type the sender name. There is maximum of 11 characters including spaces. To set the sender name, press the Submit button.

Simple really, study after study has shown that you if you give people the opportunity to respond by text message, they do! In fact, on average, around half of people will respond by text who otherwise wouldn’t – resulting in a 100% uplift in advertising response! That’s why all the big companies do it.

Isn’t it expensive?

Traditionally, yes. But, here’s the good news – we offer this text response service to any UK company 100% Free.

Why would you do that!? Surely there’s a catch?

For over a decade we’ve been helping businesses benefit by adding text message marketing into their mix and we’ve found that once companies find out how effective it is they increase their activity and volumes of Bulk SMS.

As the UK’s lowest cost, dependable Bulk SMS supplier (we even produce a Bulk SMS competitor price comparison chart to show price differences) we therefore hope that if you choose to have a free text response keyword and it works for you, you’ll naturally use us for Bulk SMS (although there’s no commitment to do so).

What could I use a free text response service for?

There’s the obvious for advertising purposes to gather responses but once you have the free platform you’ll discover a whole host of other uses as well as being amazed how much customers enjoy interacting with you by text message.

For example, on a free keyword HOLS for a travel agent one could consider;

• “Text HOLS and your email addres to 88802 and we’ll e-mail you our latest holiday offers”
• “Text HOLS and your favourite country to receive text alerts on holiday deals for that country”
• “Text HOLS OFFERS to receive text alerts on all our holiday deals”
• (From a simple question), “Text HOLS then A, B or C and receive a £50 discount voucher if you get the right answer”
• “Text HOLS and your planned next holiday date and we’ll contact you then to advise of our best deals”
• “Text HOLS WIN to enter our prize draw for a free holiday”
• and so on …..

If you’d like to see how quickly and efficiently the service works, text DEMO to 88802 and you’ll receive on of our standard welcome Text Marketer messages.

How do I get the data from people responding?

You get all the incoming data, their mobile number, date and time of the message and the full content of their message.

There are 3 ways to retrieve that data;

• You login to your free SMS account and download all the data to a spreadsheet
• And/or, you can have each and every response emailed to as many email addresses as you like
• And/or, if you’re a bit more technical, you can integrate into our SMS Gateway to receive the data directly to your web application. This will allow you to do clever things with the responses.

I hope that gives you enough information for now and some ideas.

Why not try a free keyword on our shortcode and see if it works for you, there’s nothing to lose and a huge amount to gain!