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4 Black-Belt SMS Marketing Tools

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By Emma Rose Smith


SMS marketing can also be a professional, cutting-edge way to connect with customers and get more ROI from advertising.

SMS marketing (the original type of mobile marketing) lets customers and organisations communicate through SMS. It's pretty easy: organisations create advertising which uses an SMS marketing call-to-action (something like 'text CAR to 19 33 33 for a test drive') to encourage audiences to respond by SMS. The customer then receives an automatic thank-you text from the organisation, which sets up a dialogue that can be continued in future marketing communications.

With us so far? Excellent.

The next most important thing to know is that there are many ways to use SMS marketing. These range from competitions, surveys, and coupons to recruitment strategies and question/answer forums. However, the common consensus is that there are 4 best ways to use SMS marketing. They are as follows:

1. Send out mobile coupons

One of the most popular tools of SMS marketing is the ability to send mobile coupons to customers, by text message. Mobile coupons are easier to use and have a more targeted audience than print coupons, so they have a higher redemption rate. The Brisbane Boat Show used our SMS marketing when they decided to offer mobile coupons to customers, and achieved a 72% redemption rate. This is a great result, especially when compared to the average print coupon redemption rate of 2%!

2. SMS to win campaigns

SMS marketing is also popular when it's used to enable SMS entry into competitions, surveys, and giveaways. Instead of making customers fill out a paper form (which then has to be arduously collated), businesses encourage text message entries. This makes it as easy as possible for customers to enter the campaign, which usually increases the response level by 2-3x. Leading Edge Computers used our SMS marketing in their computer giveaway, and received 3x the response they usually get for paper-entry giveaways.

3. Push texts/ subscriptions

SMS marketing also includes push texts and subscription SMS, which is where the game starts to change. Contrary to many assumptions, SMS marketing does not have to start with advertising. Organisations can also send out regular texts to their database of customers who have already opted in to SMS communication. This type of SMS marketing is a more immediate and concise alternative to an email newsletter, and can be used to send updates, news, appointment reminders, etc (even nightclubs use it to inform patrons of upcoming events). But remember: customers have to be able to opt out if they wish.

4. SMS for info campaigns

This is probably the original form of SMS marketing. It tries to get around the problem of limited advertising space, by sending product or service information to customers via SMS. Instead of overloading the customer with unwanted information, organisations can use SMS marketing to send out requested details. Box Hill TAFE Institute used our SMS marketing to do just this, and sent 2011 course information to potential students who requested it.

Interestingly, they ran the same SMS marketing campaign through 2 channels (TV and shopping centre tele-screens), and found that one was getting nearly 15x the response of the other. This figure would still be unknown if it wasn't for SMS marketing, so Box Hill might have still been using advertising channels that weren't right for them. SMS marketing's measurability makes it attractive for SMEs wanting to find out if their advertising is actually working.




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