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

Using texting to invite your customers to recommend a friend is a very powerful way to achieve sales growth as people have been used to forwarding text messages since the beginning of texting itself.

For example, you could send out a text a few days after a purchase saying something along the lines of, “Thanks for your order. We hope you’re a satisfied customer. If you are, please tell your friends about us and we’ll reward you both with £10 off your next purchase. Your referral code is XYZ123″. (You can use our txtUs reply system for getting return responses).

This types of schemes have to be tailored for the particular business you’re in of course but, esepcially in today’s socially connected world, it can very quickly produce stunning results.

Top 20 tips to getting your member get member scheme right first time.

Offers

1. Reward both parties not just the existing customer or the friend. Both need to see benefit in the offer to make it worth their while.

2. The reward to the friend must be as good (if not better) than other acquisition offers in the market. You can’t disadvantage a new customer because they were referred by a friend.

3. Test different offers for both the customer and friend. Often cash (or vouchers) is king but you can instil relevance by relating the reward to your product eg a free upgrade, free month’s subscription etc. Whatever you go for, keep it simple.

4. Placing a time limit on the offer aids tracking, although consider also having an ongoing lower reward ‘always on’ to capture any ad hoc referrals

Targeting

5. Test the best timing to target existing customers. Try to target them when they’re feeling most positive about your product for example when they’ve just made their first purchase.

6. Target your customers that came through the referral scheme themselves – it’s most likely they’ll be possible about the scheme as they’ve benefited from it

7. Include the existing customer’s name in the text message – this will help reduce the assumption it’s spam

Customer tools

8. Make it easy for customers to refer & provide them with the tools – offer a microsite where they can enter friends’ details, make sure they can do it via their phone, via social media, SMS etc

9. Ensure each customer has a unique code which can be used to link their friends’ registrations to their account. Make sure customers know this code so they can pass it out to friends and don’t have to rely on friends clicking through certain links.

10. In your MGM campaigns remind customers of the benefits of your product or service and why new customers benefit from buying from you. Not all customers will remember why they use you specifically!

11. Keep referring customers up to date about their friend’s progress. They can help to prompt the friend to ensure they complete their registration or achieve any sales criteria to gain the reward.

12. If possible, set up a microsite that provides this progress information to customers. Give them the tools to encourage their friend to overcome any barriers to conversion.

13. Remember you are not able to retain any data about the referred friend, unless you have their consent. Any follow ups should ask the customer to enter their friend’s email address again to avoid any data protection issues.

Tracking & High value

14. If possible track referrals not just conversions – that will allow you to identify key referring customers, even if not all their referrals convert in to customers.

15. Consider rewarding customers for referrals not just conversions.

16. Measure the quality of new customers being referred to you. This allows you to identify customers who are referring the highest value friends.

17. Consider giving high value referrers an additional reward to encourage more referrals of the highest quality

18. Test tying the friend’s reward into more than one purchase – this will encourage repeat purchase and minimise ‘hit and runs’.

Finally…

19. Take a look at Member Get Member schemes outside your own market to see what innovation is going on there and adapt the best ideas for your own customers.

20. Remember to constantly review & optimise your scheme. Don’t just leave it to run itself!

Created by Text Marketer Ltd – Bulk SMS Text Marketing

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.

What’s different about texting to landlines?

The major difference is that the text is read out to the recipient. This changes the ‘tone’ of the message completely and can feel a lot more human. The current BT ‘text spokeswoman’ has a mature, calm and professional voice which can really enhance the impact of your message. Give it a try.

Timing of your text message is more critical

The landline is, of course, not with your customers all the time ….

Think about when your target audience is likely to be home and critically, when they will receptive to your message. 7.30 am when they’re getting the kids ready for school, 6pm when they’re in the middle of cooking dinner or 11pm when they’re off to bed are not likely to be winners! And although the message will queue and keep trying to deliver, don’t send them in the day if your audience is likely to be at work so the first thing they get after a busy day at work is your message.

A great way to give a new boost to response rates

When a customer's mobile number is no longer valid, you can text their landline number and ask them to rejoin your list.

It’s a fact of modern life that people change their mobile numbers on a regular basis. If you’ve been SMS Marketing for a while you’ll notice that your delivery rate to mobiles will diminish over time. But, many companies also hold the landline number for customers which hardly ever change.

So, for customers where the mobile number is no longer valid, try a separate SMS marketing campaign to their landline numbers to give a new boost to your response rates. (Tip: you could also send a landline campaign asking people to text to join your special offers list if they are still interested, using our SMS Response system).

It’s costs the same

Texting to landlines is the same cost as texting to mobiles. There are 2 critical things to do technically when you set up a landline campaign but apart from these, it’s exactly the same.

Experiment with the message

Because the message is read out, experiment with the wording and send yourself some examples. Althought BT’s ‘spokeswoman’ is great, there’s a few words she has problems with but equally there are many words and sentences that sound fabulous.

All Text Marketer accounts can be used to send to landlines at no extra cost, you will receive delivery reports as well.

So, is it effective?

In many circumstances, yes. In truth, as with all these things, it is important to test. Follow the few simple rules about testing how your message sounds when read out by BT and thinking about the timing of delivery and you could find, if it’s right for your target market, that it’s better than texting to mobiles!

The 2 easiest methods of integrating Goldmine with our SMS Gateway are using;

1) The email to SMS gateway – http://www.textmarketer.co.uk/email-to-sms-gateway/email-sms.htm
Or
2) The HTTP gateway – http://www.textmarketer.co.uk/blog/2009/05/sms-gateway/text-marketer-apigateway-spec/

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.

Step 1

Convert mobile numbers to an email address.

Basically, you just need to append “@textmarketer.biz” to the end of each mobile number to convert it to and email address to use with our system, so 07777888999 becomes 07777888999@textmarketer.biz for example. Here’s a handy Excel sheet where you can paste the mobile numbers in column A and the conversion will happen automatically in column C for you to copy and paste into your email program’s address field.

Step 2

Create the email message.

It’s mostly like creating any email message; – Enter the recipient, if you need to send the message to more than one person you will need to use the extended method.  In the subject line, use your Text Marketer username and password in the format “myAPIusername%myAPIpassword” – Write your message and simply ensure you finish the message with ##. This tells our system this is the end of the text message so it doesn’t send your signature, etc. Here’s an example;

That’s it. Hit the send button and all your text message will be sent out to the recipient immediately. Of course, you’ll need a Text Marketer account first with some credits and to get a username and password.

Note: You can change the authentication method to that of your domain instead of putting the username and password on the subject line for example if your email address is “me@my_company.com” you can authenticate against “my_company.com”. You can also change the message termination string ## to what ever you like or disable it, these changes can be made by logging in to your account and navigating to “Settings” => “Account Settings”.

SPECIAL OFFER

If you’re new to this and want to try it, use Promo Code EMAIL50 and you’ll get 50 Free Credits when you open a free account, no commitments, so you can try 50 Email to SMS’s free on us to see how easy it us. Why not give it a try? PS. There are more detailed instructions on our Email to SMS Gateway here if you want to use more advanced options.

Here at Text Marketer, stat’s are a daily routine of ours. We’re always looking at the latest trends, the newest ideas and what’s coming down the road.

In a flash of genius from one of the team they uttered, “ugh, wouldn’t it be useful to have links to all these stat’s and articles on the site?”. Thud, he was absolutely right!

Not for the faint hearted but we’ve put together links to some of the best mobile marketing articles around;

Mobile Marketing Statistics, Articles and Musings

• Text messaging in the US hits 4.3 Billion SMS every day
• 975 million mobile web users expected by 2012
• 19% of internet users now use status updates – mobile dominates
• Over half a billion people to use mobile money transfer services by 2014
• 30% of consumers communicate with brands via social networks
• 70% of print publishers step up mobile efforts
• Mobile marketing budgets growing at 26%
• DMA: ‘mobile will be the fastest growing platform for the next five years’
• IAB: ‘Mobile marketing ‘will be the best platform for younger consumers’
• Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012
• US mobile advertising spend 2008 – 2013
• How Much Does An iPhone User Spend On Apps? $80
• Americans Spend More Than 4.5 Hours per Month Browsing on Smartphones, Nearly Double the Rate of the British
• Average iPhone User Downloads 9 Games, Spends $7 On Them
• Android and iPhone usage patterns nearly identical
• Data Revenues Will Push Mobile Biz Past $1 Trillion
• Mobile phones to overtake PCs for web surfing by 2013
• 85% of US Internet users have cell phones – spending on mobile tech increased in 2009
• One Third Of U.S. 11-Year-Olds Have Cellphones
• Gartner: Consumers Will Spend $6.2 Billion On Apps This Year; Only $600m From Ads
• In 2010 the cellphone market will grow by 9.3 percent
• iPhone And Android Now Account For 81 Percent Of Smartphone Web Ads In the U.S.
• Revenue from mobile apps set to quadruple from 2010 to 2013
• 76% Of Users Don’t Use The Mobile Web
• Americans Sending 4 Times as Many Text Messages as Brits
• Mobile Advertising Grows By 41% in 2009
• More Than Half Of Mobile Pageviews Are To Social Networking Sites
• 2 million mobile tickets have been redeemed worldwide
• Facebook dominates UK mobile internet engagement
• One third of phones will use accelerometers in 2010
• Gartner: Mobile To Outpace Desktop Web By 2013
• 80% mobile websites attract global audience
• Mobile shopping will balloon to $119B by 2015
• Mobile marketing to reach $24B in five years, says study
• 300m fewer female mobile phone owners than male around the world
• Mobile gambling estimated to grow to USD 16.6 billion by 2011
• Mobile MVNO revenues expected to rise to USD 67.4 billion in 2012
• 68% of Americans get news and current events information on their cell
• Juniper Forecasts 15bn Mobile Tickets by 2014
• There will be 288 million mobile VoIP users by 2013
• 30.8% of smartphone users accessed social networking sites in January 2010
• Juniper Research: Mobile retail market to exceed $12 billion by 2014
• LBS Revenues to Top $12.7bn by 2012, says Juniper
• ABI Research: Enterprise mobile data revenues to hit $43 billion by 2014
• Mobile apps industry to hit $17.5B by 2012 with 50B in downloads
• Shipments of GPS-enabled handsets increased 92% in 2009
• Google sites accounted for 9% of all mobile internet page views by US users on Opera
• Mobile apps to generate $1.6 billion in revenue in 2010
• Mobile advertising spend to rise 80 percent in 2010
• Mobile Web users increase to 69.9M: Study
• Mobile Data Traffic Expected To Rise 40-Fold Over Next Five Years
• Mobile Web More Popular Than Reading
• Study: 80% Of SMS & MMS Users Report Dropped Texts
• 29% of all parents don’t allow texting during family meals. 36% of parents of teenagers don’t allow texting during family meals.
• 10% of Under 25s Think It’s Okay to Text During Sex
• Mobile Barcode scanning up 700% in 2010
• Mobile will consume 40bn gigabytes of data in 2012
• Record 77 Million Smartphones Shipped In Q3 2010, Growing 78 Percent Over Last Year
• 6.1 trillion text messages to be sent in 2010
• Mobile ad revenues to hit $3.5bn this year, $24bn by 2015
• 49% of Small Business Owners Use Smartphones
• Survey says that 20% of Americans are planning to switch to prepaid in the first half of 2011
• Only 4.8% of U.S. retailers have mobile-specific Web sites
• Research: 500M Consumers Projected To Use Mobile Health Apps On Smartphones By 2015
• App Store Tops 300,000 Applications
• Facebook generates 25% of all US pageviews in one week – excluding mobile traffic

Businesses across the country are gaining a competitive advantage using SMS. Text Marketer are committed to bringing them all the lowest prices.

As part of our Best Buy Guarantee we guarantee to bring customers the best Bulk SMS Prices always. Today, after substantial negotiations with the networks, we have managed to make a significant reduction in our text message marketing costs.

Our biggest reduction is to our ‘headline’ starting price, down to 3.7p from 4.82p for bulk SMS purchases of 1-9,999. This is almost a 25% reduction in that price which will positively affect the majority of small business text marketers.

All our other price bands have been lowered too so everybody will benefit.

Nobody beats us ..
We have conducted a comprehensive review of the entire marketplace and are pleased to announce that Text Marketer’s Bulk SMS prices are the lowest in the UK – to prove it, we’ve published all our competitor’s SMS prices on our site. Our Best Buy Guarantee commitment to our customers means we will continue to strive to bring them the best deal.

Just in time for Christmas ..
Christmas is an exceptionally busy marketing time for companies but we have managed to get this price reduction in in time for companies to make maximum use of cheaper bulk text marketing – boosting ROI’s across a broad range of SMS Marketing activities.

If you want to take advantage of the lowest cost Bulk SMS in the UK then get a free text marketing account today with 10 free credits.

If you’re an existing customer then no need to do anything. These new low cost SMS rates have already been applied to your account and you’ll benefit from them on your next purchase.

As a company, we are committed to bringing all our customers the lowest possible prices on Bulk SMS.

If you don’t like reading, simply try our demo to see how this works;

Text INFO and your email address to 88802 and see what happens (no charges of course!)

For existing customers, this facility is now available in your account & the instructions and screenshots have been updated.

For new customers wishing to trial the service for free, sign up for a Text Marketer account and add a free week’s trial of a keyword when you’re signing up.

The marketing applications for this unique service are endless. Imagine you can automatically send any email you like including offers, vouchers, job information, etc. to people who text to you. You also capture their mobile number and email address for future use.

Have you tried the demo’ yet? We think you’ll be impressed!

The Mobile Marketing Association recently released data on the ‘read rates’ of SMS, 97% of text messages are opened, 83% in one hour but typically within 4 minutes.

So, if you want your customers to get your messages – texting is the way to go.

Using our Email to SMS Text Message Gateway you can simply reformat your alert emails from your system/s so that they go out by text message.

Here’s some great examples of using Email to SMS:

1. Ecommerce order confirmations - sending a text doubles confidence rates in the order process.
2. Despatch confirmations – when a package is sent, send a confirmation text with tracking info. This can reduce ‘where’s my order’ calls by 50% or more.
3. Email merge – send personalised text messages in bulk using simple email merge tools freely available (such as this one).
4. Staff alerts – if the alert is urgent to your staff or colleagues, send it by text, it’ll be there immediately, wherever they are.
5. Systems alerts – many different online systems have email alerts when there are problems. Great if you’re sat at your computer but if you’re not, also configure systems to send an Email to SMS alert for backup.
6. Customer/patient appointment reminders – many companies, health services, gyms etc. send appointment reminders by email and many just don’t get read and the appointment is missed. Using our Email to Text service ensures your reminder is read, hugely increasing the chance the appointment will be kept.

There are of course many other examples of how you could employ Email to Text within your business.

You can try it out all automatically online. First set up a free Text Marketer account (includes 10 free text credits) then read the Email to SMS instructions and send your first text out through the gateway. ‘Simples’.

More information on pricing, etc?

If you have any general questions about pricing, setup, payment or almost anything else, try the Text Marketer Help Centre.

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.

Sales increased over 19% by simply sending a follow up thank you text message to customers.

Further to our article, Top 5 Tips for increasing sales using Bulk SMS, one of our customers RoughTrax (a mail order supplier of Toyota Hilux parts) decided to follow our Number 1 Tip …. follow-up text messages to customers after a sale.

We asked Barry Hemmings, Director at RoughTrax how it worked for him and these are the figures he gave us;

• We send out around 1,000 orders a week and followed up each an every sale 2 days after delivery with a text.
• At that volume, using Text Marketer’s Bulk SMS system, it cost £49+VAT per week
• About 10% of the customers we sent a text to called back up and made additional orders.
• RESULT: 19.23% increase in the total sales value of those customers we sent the text to – Fantastic!

There are other advantages to doing this too – positive word of mouth increases when you follow up a sale with a thank you message – resulting in more sales from brand new customers.

RoughTrax sent the following message, “Thank you for your recent order. If you need anything in addition within 7 days we will give you a 5% discount. Regards, RoughTrax. 0117 986 9065.”.

Why not test the same concept on a group of your customers for a few weeks and see if you can achieve the same fabulous results? You can get a free Bulk SMS account here and our minimum purchase is only £10+VAT (giving you 204 text message credits) – why not try it on 204 customers for example!? If you had a 19% sales value increase from 204 customers, would it be worth more than a tenner?

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.

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!