What’s “Marketing”!?

Probably one of the most misused terms in business is my first reaction! But, seriously, for the purposes of this article I mainly mean ‘communication’. Business people often say things like, “we need to DO some marketing”. What they mean is they want to blast out something which will get new business. That’s better described as ‘advertising’ really.

In any event. Semantics aside. What we want to look at is SMS Marketing vs Email Marketing. Or, put more succinctly, which of these communication methods is best for your business?

Truth 1: Customers are fickle

No, really. One minute they like your emails, then they subscribe to your twitter feed, then they want a call. The next week, they’re not into email or twitter because they’ve gone off the idea!

OK, this is possibly a person with an extremely short attention span but the point it is true. Any list of people is exactly that, a list of ‘people’. It’s obvious but it’s something that’s often overlooked. Companies segment people into groups to make their communications more relevant and (hopefully) more effective. That’s no bad thing, it’s the right thing to do (in fact, I wrote an article about database segmentation in 2009).
BUT (and here’s the first nugget of the truth) … ‘Customers ARE fickle‘.

Truth 2: Emails & SMS’s are very different in your customers’ eyes

We’re back into ‘human emotion’ here (starting to feel like a psychology article!). This point is important though. I only look at my emails when I choose to. I open up Outlook, hit send and receive and browse the messages I want to. If I get a text message, maybe when I’m out biking, my phone beeps and vibrates in my pocket and I’ll pull over, take off my gloves, get my phone out of my pocket and read the text.

One is passive and one is active. My phone is fundamentally a personal device of mine. If you’re going to send a message to my phone, it had better be relevant. The lesson here is, “does the message I’m going to send out fit with the channel I’m using from my customer’s point of view?”.

Truth 3: SMS’s are opened more than emails

Well, yes, of course. Stat’s vary wildly on email open rates but globally it is said that just 22% of all emails sent are opened vs 98.7% of all text messages.

Truth 4: EVERYBODY HATES SPAM!

(Forgive the shouting) … If there is a person out there that likes SPAM, I apologise. But I don’t think many people will fall into this category!?

The Mobile Marketing Association in 2009 did a study. They found that 90% of all emails received were SPAM! Wow. What about SMS? That was just 1% of messages received.

Because of the incredibly strict laws and controls now in place in SMS Marketing, there is basically next to no SMS SPAM.

I hope you’re thinking what I’m thinking!? ….. The lesson here is the same as in Truth 2 …. “if you’re gonna send a message to my phone, it had better be relevant …. and I had better not think it’s SPAM!” (I hope you weren’t thinking, “cool, plenty of room for spamming then!”)

So, come one then. Which one is best!?

Hold your horses. We haven’t got to the best bit yet.

Let’s roll all these ‘truths’ into a perfectly executed example of ‘marketing communication’

• I buy my groceries online at Sainsburys. Usually it’s a few days ahead of when it’s due to be delivered. After I have gone through the checkout they email me with a receipt of my purchase and confirmation of delivery times. Fair enough, it’s usually quite a bit of shopping and that list wouldn’t fit in an SMS. Furthermore, I actually look for the email to make sure the order went through fine.
• Sainsburys allow you to amend your order up to 9pm the night before delivery day. At 5pm I get a text. “Just to confirm your shopping will be delivered between 3-5pm tomorrow. Don’t forget you can amend your order online up until 9pm this evening”.
• Actually I did need a few other things. Off I go to give them some more of my hard earned.

Spot on Sainsburys.

You emailed me when it was relevant, after the order and because it contained a lot of information.

You texted me when it was relevant because it was a short message to confirm my delivery (sometimes I forget!) and contained a timely piece of information about amending my order by 9pm if I wanted to (I probably would have missed the email).

So, is there a conclusion anywhere in the offing!?

The ‘truth‘ is that SMS is ‘best‘ AND Email is ‘best‘ (collective groan!). What can that possibly mean?

Do I not understand you can only have one ‘best‘!?

Well, each is ‘best‘ when it is most relevant to the communication in question:

• I’m happy to get a monthly email newsletter from my local restaurant but I’d need a text if they had a special deal on tonight
• I’m happy to get my train tickets in the post but I’d need a text to confirm an order code if I’m travelling in 2 hours time
• Email me confirmation of my entire order but please send a text if anything’s urgent about my delivery
• …. and so on

As with a lot of things the answer is then, “it depends”. An SMS will hit the phone instantly. It is almost guaranteed it will be read. Just make sure it’s relevant. An email is going to be an altogether more hit or miss affair (with only around 22% getting read).

When deciding which to use, I always ask myself, “would I like to receive this on my phone”, “is the time of the day relevant” and “does it come across ‘spammy’ at all”.

If you want to find out if you’re customers are happy to receive text alerts, try a bit of Customer Research by SMS first.

Using an SMS marketing company to send text reminders delivered a resounding success in reducing the number of ‘no shows’. SMS marketing enjoys open rates of over 98%, compared with e-mail where you can expect just 20% of recipients to read the message.

Sarah Barker who looks after the workshop bookings at Business Link commented:

“We’ve had a huge success with our first campaign – thanks for the help getting it set up.”

By using the merge to text tool, the message had even more impact as it was tailored to the individual recipient and included the deligate name along with the date and time of the event.

SMS marketing can be used as a reminder tool in a wide variety of ways and is an incredibly powerful way of getting your message straight into the hands of your customers.

Setting up an SMS marketing account is free and there are no contracts or monthly fees to pay. Free credits allow you to test the service before committing any funds. Call us on (0117) 205 0202 if you would like to discuss how SMS marketing could work for your business.

With read rates of over 98%, using SMS marketing was an obvious choice. Having built up a list of several hundred mobile numbers over a few weeks, he was ready to begin SMS marketing in earnest.

The first message that he sent, let people know that he was planning to send them news about the latest offers, giving customers the option to remove themselves from the list. About 3% of the recipients opted out at this stage.

The first SMS marketing message was to remind people about the now legendary £3 lunch deal. A choice of nine subs and a drink for just 3 quid. The message went out at about 11:30 AM, just as people were starting to feel a bit peckish. The response from this campaign was in Andy’s words, ‘overwhelming’. Overwhelming both in the sense that the number of people turning up was impressive but also overwhelming in that the staff could barely keep up with demand.

“We were a bit worried that we had underestimated the level of response. The last thing we needed was a queue of hungry customers that we couldn’t serve efficiently. We were so surprised about how many people came in just because they had received a text. Now that we have proved it works we will be using SMS marketing as a major part of our marketing from now on.”

If you haven’t tried SMS marketing before feel free to set up a free account. It will come with 10 free text credits so you can test the service at no cost. Please feel free to call us on (0117) 205 0202 if you would like to chat.

SMS Campaign Delivers 600% Return on Investment

Text Marketer works with a number of bike shops who use sms as a way of communicating with their customers. There is simply no more effective way of getting service reminders or sales offers to customers. Unlike email where you might expect around 30% of the messages to be read, with a bulk sms campaign, 98% of texts that land on mobiles are read and the vast majority within 5 minutes or so.

Response rates to sms marketing campaigns are also around 5 times higher than any other form of direct marketing. (Source – Mobile Marketing Association.)

Swinnerton Cycles in Stoke On Trent has recently use Text Marketer’s SMS software with remarkable effect. With the onset of Autumn, most cyclists start to think about gearing their bikes up for winter to make sure they’re as safe as possible. With this in mind Swinnerton Cycles sent out a bulk sms campaign to its customer base with a simple, low cost gear and brakes service offer.

“Winter Service Check – 1 Week Only – Starting 19/9/11, Brake & Gear Check only £20.00 Book now on 01782747782. Only 100 Spaces Available. Swinnerton Cycles”

It’s a simple offer that was surprisingly effective. Within a couple of days of the message going out, the workshop had booked 42 services, generating a minimum of £840. On top of this, customers will be spending considerable sums on accessories such as lights, batteries, jackets etc. So the total spend  figure will be significantly higher. The total cost of the text campaign was just £126 so for every pound spent on text messages, an absolute minimum spend of £6.66 was generated. (We’ll update these figures when we have the results from accessories sales.)

Try SMS marketing for free – Send 100 texts at no cost

Why not find out how sms marketing might work for your business and set up a free account? Use the code CYCLE in the promo code window and your account will come with 100 free text credits.

We’re always on hand to help if you need anything, so please call us on 0117 2050202, we’d love to hear from you.

How could you use SMS?

There are countless ways that you could use sms marketing to generate business, here are few examples.

• Great value service offers.
• New range of bikes now available
• Offers on clothing and accessories
• Ice warning alert for commuters
• Your bike is now ready to be picked up
• Workshop opening hours
• Event notifications

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.

Using Text Marketer’s ‘Quick Campaign’ module you can save your thumbs a lot of stress by sending text messages straight from your desktop.
Keeping in touch with colleagues has never been easier and with you’ll make significant savings on your telecoms bill.

Business 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

Many nightclubs are aware that they could be making more from their mobile marketing campaigns. This brief guide provides an overview of the main issues to consider.

Automate the process of capturing mobile numbers.
Many clubs still collect mobile numbers by sending someone round the venue with a clipboard. This is expensive, time consuming and prone to errors in transcribing. Customers are also often unwilling to give out their numbers.

Create a Text Club with real benefits
By creating a ‘text club’ that new members can join by simply texting in a keyword, you remove completely the need to manually collect numbers.

A text club needs to have real value to the customer rather than just being a way of inviting people to new events. It should have a wide range of benefits that might include the following…
· Free Queue jumping passes
· Free VIP entry
· Free entry into regular prize draws
· Regular drinks offers
· Invitation to write reviews
· Customer surveys

Ensure that all promotional activity supporting the text club mentions that the club is free and that the customer will not be sent any chargeable messages.

Promoting the Service
To generate maximum possible sign up, promote the text club via all the marketing channels that are available
· Text-enable promotional fliers
· Promote via the website
· Use posters within the venue
· Publish using on site screens
· Encourage sign up on the door
· Promote using any local advertising campaigns

Coach Nightclub promotes their text service by inviting people to join by text or by submitting their number to the web site. Their mobile database contains approximately 9000 mobile numbers.
Planet Love incentivises customers with a text to win competition, giving players the chance to win 1 of 10 pairs of tickets. This competition generated over 1200 entries in 3 weeks

Sending the Text Campaigns
You only have 160 characters to make your point, so keep you messages simple. Don’t use too much ‘txt speak’. If you use too many text abbreviations you run the risk of confusing your customers.
The text should aim to generate excitement and offer a clear reason for the customer to turn up.

Timing
Aim to get your message to customers at a time when they will be making plans for the evening. Too early and the message will be forgotten, too late and other arrangements may have already been made.

How Frequently?
Common sense applies here! If you send too frequently then you run the risk of annoying your membership. To infrequently and customers begin to forget who you are. Weekly text campaigns strike about the right balance.

Now I’m not really the target market for Frijj, (a chilled milk chocolate drink) but this mobile marketing campaign really caught my eye and is without doubt one of the best text to win competitions that I’ve seen in a long while.

Frijj – On Pack Promotion

Creative Impact – Score  9.5 /10

"Win Warren" - The work experience boy

It’s hard to imagine how Frijj could have created more impact than with their Win Warren mobile marketing promotion. By texting in the code, you get the chance to have Warren come round your house and do anything you want him to. What, Anything? Who’s Warren? Well there he is, staring gormlessly out at you from the pack. With his dark circled eyes and spotty face, he’s a highly desirable, multi-skilled all rounder, who’ll sort out all your domestic chores.

As well as being bold, this is an entertaining and original promotional concept that shows the brand doesn’t take itself too seriously. Quirky fun.

Entry Instructions – Score  9.0/10

These couldn’t really have been clearer. All you had to do was enter the code and the word warren to a 5 digit short code. Concise, clear and delightfully simple.

The agencies involved have really thought about trying to reduce all the possible reasons why your wouldn’t bother to enter.

Ease of Entry – Score 9.0/ 10

Entry to the text to win competition is a walk in the park. Note that they only require you to text in an 8 digit code, unlike Coke who on their recent text promotion insisted on using 12. Also unlike Coke, the code is gloriously legible – no guessing required. What a relief.

What happened Next? – Score 9.0/10

A few seconds after sending my text, came the following….

“Sorry mate, that code’s not a winner. But chin up. We’ve still got wicked prizes up for grabs. ‘Like’ Frijj on Facebook to check out what Warren’s up to now.”

That response ticks all the boxes. Firstly I’m told that I haven’t won. (Well no real surprise there.) But then I’m reminded that I’m in with a chance to win other goodies. Finally I’m directed to Facebook to continue my interaction with the brand and to find out more about the weird and wonderful world of Warren.

Terms and Conditions – Score 9.0/10

They’ve sensibly kept the on pack terms and conditions to a reasonable length and there are no nasty surprises such as hidden charges to enter.

Overall Score 44.5 / 50 – 89%

I hope this mobile marketing campaign sees Frijj sales rocket. Not only is the overall concept amusing and original but the attention to detail runs throughout the whole campaign. I’ll be intrigued to see how they follow this up.

Picture a train or bus full of commuters flicking through newspapers and magazines. None of these potential customers are able to respond to advertising that grabs their attention.

By the time they have arrived back home or the office, the chances are they will have forgotten all about the offer that they were interested in.

Imagine now that they could make an initial response direct from the page by sending in a simple text with a keyword.

Most direct response advertising encourages people to either phone an organisation or visit their web site. But when you consider where people are when they notice advertising, they may not be willing to make a call or they may not be near a web connection.

By including a text response to your advertising you allow prospects to respond wherever they happen to be. The simple result is more enquiries and more sales.

Measure the effectiveness of your advertising

Include a text response in your advertising allows you to see exactly how effective your activity is. It also lets you measure the pull of your advertising in different publications, making sure you get the most out of your marketing spend

Whether you business is consumer or business focused, by adding a new and innovative response mechanism you will see an immediate benefit.

(All together now ring ding ding ding ding.) Crazy Frog was symbolic of everything that was wrong with the premium rate mobile industry 5 or 6 years ago.

On a whim, unwary consumers would text in a code to get the ring tone or wallpaper (I know, seems unbelievable). They would then find themselves subscribed to a ‘club’ which would cost them up to £27 a month. They then spent the next few months trying to find out how to stop the deluge of premium rate texts raining onto their mobile bill.

Some recent research released by IAB and DMA revealed that the bad experiences of many consumers are having a negative impact on people’s willingness to opt in to receiving mobile marketing messages from brands. Amazingly 71% of people said that they would be wary of the costs associated with opting in to an sms alert service. This is a spectacular own goal by the mobile industry. By allowing unscrupulous premium rate sms services in the early days, it seems that the mobile marketing industry is viewed with suspicion and not to be trusted.

On a more positive note the research also showed that consumers are quite open to brands using the mobile channel to communicate with them more effectively.

The full research can be read on the IAB web site but here are a few of the more interesting findings.

Mobile Marketing Research Findings

• A fifth of consumers are already opted in to receive mobile marketing messages from brands or Network providers.
• 75% stated they would be happy to opt-in to such services, given the right incentive, such as attractive offers, money off vouchers or priority service from a brand.
• 62% said that they would open a message within 5 minutes even if it was not sent from a relative or friend.
• The research also found that opt-in consumers were 122% more likely to view SMS and MMS as a timely form of advertising communication.

Mark Brill, chair of the DMA Mobile Marketing Council, said:

“It’s hugely encouraging to see how responsive consumers can be to mobile marketing messages. However, the report also highlights the importance of both directly opting-in customers, along with the need to give them the right marketing incentives.”

If you’d like to discuss how your organisation might benefit from mobile marketing, please call us on 0117 9249207. We’d love to help you put the right strategy in place.

My fear is that mobile marketing may be marching headlong down the same path that email did ten years ago. We were on the verge of an exciting new digital age, a marketer’s dream, where you could get your message into countless inboxes for more or less no cost. Now email marketing has turned somewhat sour; we seem to have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

What a frightful shame it would be if text marketing suffered the same mortal blow. As we receive more and more text messages from companies, we will inevitably become jaded and response rates will drop. As our handsets become smarter, spam filters will allow us to block messages from anyone that is not in our address book. We are far more likely to unsubscribe from lists in an attempt to keep our inboxes under control.

This rather bleak forecast could well materialise even if sms marketing isn’t misused. As the channel becomes increasingly popular we are bound to receive more texts. The only impact this can have is to reduce the effectiveness of each individual campaign.

So can we avoid mobile marketing armageddon? I hope so. The key to sms marketing remaining effective is to ensure that companies follow best practice. The Mobile Marketing Association’s code of conduct document explains all the legal issues in their rather dry document. The most important part of  ’best practice’ for any sms marketing campaign is operating a consistent unsubscription service, allowing consumers to remove themselves from the list at any time.

As an ex member of Bannatyne’s Health Club, I’’m sent regular text alerts to try and tempt me to renew my membership. I’ve probably received 8 or 9 texts in the past 6 months and not one of them has given me the option of removing myself from their list. Not only is this maddening but Bannatyne’s are wasting money sending texts that I have precisely zero chance of responding to. Bad practice, wasteful and damaging to the Bannatyne’s brand. (I’m out.)

So as the mobile marketing channel matures, we’ll have to wait and see how it develops. My gut feel is that it will continue to remain the most responsive direct marketing channel available for the foreseeable future. I hope we can dodge the pitfalls that have plagued email marketing. Time will tell.

SMS as a response mechanic is also becoming considerably more mainstream, with most charities and car TV ads having a text ‘call to action’.

One of the restrictions with sms services is that you only have 160 characters in your automated response. So imagine that you’ve just texted in to get more information about a new car. You’ll typically get a text response back with a promise to call you in the next 24 hours or so. The trouble with this is that you’re enthusiasm for more information starts diminishing more or less as soon as you’ve made your initial contact. By the time the call comes you’re probably regretting texting in at all.

What’s needed is a way of getting more information to the consumer immediately, at the point at which they are most interested, when their likelihood of making a purchasing decision is at its highest.

Innovative new sms service now available

We’ve just launched a new sms service which will address this issue. Our Text to email Autoresponder allows you to automatically despatch an email to anyone that texts your keyword and their email address to 88802.

To demonstrate how this works, we’ve set up an example. Text INFO followed by your email address to 88802. (No charge.) As well as an sms reply, you’ll immediately receive a full email from us. It’s an incredibly powerful tool. As with all our services, we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for non technical people to get the service up and running.

All you need to do is sign up for a Text Marketer account and add a free week’s trial of a keyword when you’re signing up.
In just a few minutes you will have the service working. Not only will be you collecting email data from your customers but you’ll be giving them all your contact details, straight to their phone and in box.

After the week’s free trial the keywords costs either £5.00 + VAT a month for budget keywords that start with a number (e.g 4hotels) or £25.00 + VAT for standard keywords.

If you’d like to discuss how this exciting new service could be used in your business, please feel free to call us on 0117 9249207.

They are using their new sms service to communicate some fantastically tempting offers to encourage as many new enquiries before Christmas as possible. The current deal gives customers free sat nav on all orders before Christmas.

“Vansdirect FREE Sat Nav if you order before Dec 25th! Quote “Nav1t”. Order now for pre-Xmas delivery & Drive Now, Pay 2010! www.vansdirect.co.uk 08450210444″

The bulk sms service has no set cost or monthly fee, Vans Direct only pay for the messages that they send via their Text Marketer account. Different business sms supplier costs can also be compared on the sms price comparison table.

Please call us on 01179249207 if you’d like to find out more about how bulk sms could help your business generate more sales.

1. It’s the most responsive direct marketing channel available.

2. It will make your Finance Director smile.
SMS marketing is very cost effective.  Bulk SMS messages cost just a few pence per text and with response rates of up to 15%, you’ll get a great return on your marketing investment.

3. It will save your precious time.
How much time do you spend on the phone getting bogged down in conversations with clients of colleagues, when all you wanted to do was get a simple piece of information across? It’s incredibly frustrating. Using sms takes a fraction of the time of a phone call and costs considerably less. Your time will be freed up to spend on more productive activities!

4. You’ll be gaining a competitive edge.
The take up of companies using an sms service for their communications is still very low, our estimate is that about 32% of UK businesses are using text in any meaningful way. Good news for companies like ours but also good news for you. If you adopt a positive, proactive sms strategy, using a reliable sms gateway, there’s a good chance that you’ll be doing something that your competitors aren’t.

5. You’ll be saving the planet. Bulk sms is a green way of communicating. For every 10,000 pieces of A4 paper that your company uses, you consume 2.5 mature trees. Sending a text is virtually carbon free.

If you’re not yet using an sms service in your business, we’d love to have a chat about how it might work for you. Please give us a call on 01179249207. We’d love to hear from you.
P.S – So that you can try our sms service at no cost, why not set up a free account here and we will add 200 free text credits.

One of the main reasons that sms is such a responsive direct marketing channel is that if hasn’t been ruined in the way that e-mail has, by endless spam. Open rates for sms campaigns run at over 95%, whereas e-mail open rates have sunk to as low as 2 or 3%, (source Mobile Marketing Association).

To keep your customers happy and to make sure that you can’t be accused of text spamming them in any way, it’s a good idea to have an opt out service that allows you customers to opt our from receiving further texts from you.

How does an sms opt out service work?

The opt out service works, using a keyword and a five digit short code. Customers who wish to unsubscribe from your list, simply text a unique keyword to a 5 digit short code. Their mobile number is then captured by your account and added to your unsubscribe list.

Your account will then always check your unsubscribe list before sending out an sms campagn. This means that you cannot send an sms to an unsubscribed customer by mistake.

How do I set up the unsubscribe service on my bulk sms account?

Setting up the unsubscribe service is free and your account will have already been allocated a 4 letter keycode. Full instructions on this can be found here.

Following customer research, we have now built into all accounts the ability to upload numbers straight from Excel, without having to save the database as a .csv or .txt file.
This improvement will save time when uploading your numbers and makes sending your bulk sms campaigns even easier.

When you are preparing your database for upload, make sure that your list of numbers is in column A and that there is no column header. Duplicates and badly formatted numbers are automatically removed in the upload process.
The following mobile number formats can be processed.
07900122321
447900122321
7900122321
+447900122321
Please see our detailed instructions if you would like more information on uploading numbers to a group.

We’re always looking for ways of improving our systems and big thanks to all our customers who gave us such useful feedback. If you do have any ideas for how you think your Text Marketer account can be improved, please let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

10:10 is an ambitious project to unite every sector of British society behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions in 2010. It is supported by tens of thousands of individuals and companies including O2, Royal Mail, Ocada and Action Aid.

Text Marketer’s Environmental Officer, Richard Hawley commented.
“Joining 10:10 is the latest step we’ve taken to making a contribution to the pressing issues of climate change and global warming. It’s going to be a tough task to reduce our own CO2 emissions next year but we’re determinded to do it.

We’re also encouraging all our customers and suppiers to join the project so we can all do our bit.”

Replacing paper based letters with sms is a great way of helping reduce your company’s CO2 emissions. 10,000 A4 mailings consume 2.5 fully mature trees and sending an sms is virtually carbon free.

Is using SMS right for my business?

The entire consumer finance industry is very well suited to using sms as a way of communicating with its customer and prospect base. Companies tend to be very rich is customer data and may hold dozens of pieces of information on individual customers. The potential of the mobile phone as a channel for communication is however often overlooked.

Can I use my customers’ mobile numbers for sms campaigns?

There’s an enormous amount of confusion in this area. People are worried that they might be breaking data protection or privacy legislation if they use their customers’ mobile numbers for sending sms campaigns. The rules on this however are simple and make a lot of common sense.

If your customer or prospect has provided you with their mobile number during the course of your discussions, then you are allowed to send them a text message or sms alert. You do however need to make sure of the following…

• Quote your company name in the message, so people know who the sms is from!
• Quote your business or contact telephone number
• Include a text opt out in your text (e.g ‘to stop further messages, reply STOP to this text) There is more information on Text Marketer’s opt out system later in this guide.
• You are only allowed to send sms messages on the same broad subject as your original communications. In other words, if someone rang for a loan quote, you can’t then send them a promotional text about a used car for sale!

More information is available on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

It’s not just about selling

It’s easy to think about the potential for sms marketing just in terms of selling or cross selling products. The mobile phone is in fact just another communication channel that you can use to communicate with your customers and prospects on a range of subjects and is not just restricted to sales offers.

The most effective mobile strategies combine service messages, which have real value to the customer, with correctly targeted promotional campaigns.

How can sms be used in my business?

There are of course dozens of ways that you could use sms in your business, here are just a few examples …

• Premium reminder notification
• Alerts to new or changed terms and conditions
• Statement reminders
• Loan application approved / declined notification
• Documentation request
• Courtesy / thank you message. E.g Thank you for choosing xyz for your home insurance, if you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to call us on 01234 567890.
• Lapsed prospect follow up
• Urgent policy expiry notice
• Cross-selling other financial products
• Premium renewal now due alert

Increase open rates to e-mail campaigns with sms

SMS is particularly effective at increasing the open rates of e-mail campaigns. Open rates have been dropping steadily for years now as we’re all buried under mountains of the stuff. In stark contrast, the open rate for SMS is over 98%. SMS can be used as a very effective tool to alert customers about an e-mail that will shortly be landing in their in box.
E.g – ‘News! Look out for an e-mail this afternoon containing important information about your loan with us. ABC ltd, 012345 56789

One customer saw their e-mail open rate rise from around 4.5% to 21.3% by using text as a ‘pointer’ to the e-mail.

Targeting your message to the right audience

The more relevant that you make your offer to the customer, the better the response you can expect. By segmenting your customer database into different types of customer, you can send tailored sms messages to the different categories.
Within your Text Marketer account, uploading groups is quick and simple and you can upload as many different databases as you wish.

What type of sms messages work best for the financial services sector?

Clients often ask whether we have any example sms messages that they can use as templates for their sms campaigns.

Each company will want to tailor their text campaign for their own customer base. There are a few golden rules that can help you get the best possible response from your sms campaign.

Don’t Be Tempted to Use Text Speak
Some of your target audience won’t mind ‘text speak’ but you can be sure that some of them will be incensed by it! Text speak can be confusing and projects an unprofessional image.

Don’t Cram In Too Many Points?
A standard text message is only 160 characters, so don’t be tempted to crowbar in multiple offers. Keep it simple, concise and clear.

Tell Your Audience Who You Are.
This may be obvious but don’t assume your customers will immediately know who the text is from. Within your Text Marketer account, you can change the sender ID so that the customer knows who the message is from before the text is even opened.

Have A Strong ‘Call To Action’.
Ensure you make it clear what you want the customer to do. Don’t just quote your phone number but ask the customer to dial it. E.g Call us now on 080012345678

Use An ‘Attention Grabber’
Start your text with an attention grabber that will arouse curiosity and induce the customer to read on. This is normally a single or couple of words, often in capitals. The word ‘news’ is particularly effective.

Can my customers reply to the texts that I send them?

Yes. Your account has a 2-way element that allows you to receive reply messages from your text campaigns.
To receive responses you require a unique keyword that is applied to your account. The customers then replies with the keyword as the first word of their reply text.
Replies are stored in your Text Marketer account and can be viewed live. You can also choose to have the responses e-mailed to you or sent to a web address if you wish.
Text Marketer will provide you with a text response number that you need to set as the sender name so that people can reply.

160 characters isn’t very much to get our message across. Can we send a longer text?

Yes. You can send a text of up to 614 characters or 4 standard text messages. If your message contains over 160 characters it will use more than 1 text credit. Longer messages arrive on the mobile phone as 1 message.

Is there a best time of day to send out my sms campaign?

To answer this question you need to think like a customer. For most working people the only opportunity during the day to sort out personal finance issues is during the lunch break. Aim to have your sms campaign arriving between 12pm and 2pm. If possible, avoid Mondays as this has been proven to be the least responsive day of the week.

How can I tell if my messages have been received?

For each sms campaign that you dispatch, a delivery report is automatically created. This lists all the mobile numbers that you sent to and provides an outcome against each one. (Delivered, undelivered or pending.) Messages that are ‘undelivered’ indicate that the number you have attempted to send to is incorrect or is no longer active.

You can remove the ‘undelivered’ numbers from your database so that you don’t send a text to inactive numbers again; this is a great way of cleaning your data and saving money on future campaigns.

How can my customers opt out from receiving further sms promotions ?

Allowing people to opt out from your bulk sms campaigns is crucial. There is nothing that will irritate your customers more than making it difficult for them to unsubscribe from your sms alerts.

Text Marketer have built an opt out service into the standard sms marketing account which comes free for every customer. There is no set-up or monthly fee for either the account or for the opt out system.

The system works using a keyword that the customer texts in to a 5 digit short code. An outbound text with an opt out might end with the following…
‘to stop texts, reply STOP’
When the customer sends their reply, their mobile number is then stored in a database in the customer account. Every time an sms campaign is sent, the system checks the opt out list and deletes any numbers that appear in the opt out database. So, if someone has opted out from receiving texts, your account will not permit any further messages to be sent to that number.

Can I put a text response option on my marketing and advertising campaigns?

Yes.
If you give people the option, around half of them will choose to respond to your advertising and marketing by SMS.

“Nearly 50% of the total response was by sms, which was far higher than we expected. Overall response was higher too. Thanks.” Marketing Manager, Mortgage Advice Services

Boost your green credentials

Using text as part of your communication strategy can project a strong environmental message. The financial services industry pushes billions of pieces of mail through the Royal Mail every year. Some of this paper mountain is unavoidable but the industry could be one of the worst culprits for wastage and environmental damage.

The figures are really quite sobering and by using sms where possible to replace mailed items the saving could be very significant.

SMS Marketing for Growth

Embracing mobile marketing as part of your strategy for growth makes perfect sense. Bulk SMS costs are the lowest in the industry and you can test your sms generates a response before rolling out a larger campaign. Most financial services customers find that sms marketing is so effective that they continue to use it as a vital route to generate new business.

Setting up an account is free and your account comes with 10 free text credits.

We’re always on hand to answer any queries you may have, or come up with ideas on how you might use sms marketing as part of your strategy for increasing bookings. Please call us on 0117 9249207, we’d love to hear from you.