We’ve listed below 6 ways to ensure your ‘text and response’ mobile marketing campaign proves to be a success. Follow these tips and you will increase your sales without expending much time, effort or money.
- Give your prospect a compelling reason to text your campaign – You want people to text your campaign so that you can note their mobile number and email address and follow it up. Well you’re not going to achieve much success unless you give the prospective customer a good reason to do that. Without incentivising them they may resort to calling you, or emailing you, but more often than not THEY WILL DO NOTHING! They will put your advert or leaflet on one side and forget about you. You have a very short window to grab their attention so make sure they do something with it. There is nothing better than offering some sort of offer or promotion by text message – have the consumer believe there is some value to be obtained by sending an SMS to your keyword and short code. By doing this they have interacted with you and are more likely to remember you. Simply asking them to ‘text for more information’, is unlikely to generate results, as there is no value proposition in that.
- Follow up – when someone texts your SMS campaign you’ll receive an alert as soon as they have done so. Make sure you follow that up. The alert contains their mobile number and email address, call them, engage them, email them. Make them understand that you care, that you want to service them as a customer. Without a follow up, the value of your mobile marketing campaign is grossly diminished.
- Store that data and use it again and again – large companies pay large amounts of money to purchase contact details of people they think might look like a potential customer. When someone sends a text message to your keyword and short code, they are expressing an interest in what you do and giving you their mobile number and email address. Store it in your database and use it in future marketing campaigns, this person is interested in what you do – do not waste that opportunity. Do remove their details from your database though if the prospect requests you send them no more information.
- Promote your campaign through social media – Social media is a great way of advertising your business if used correctly. If you don’t have a facebook page, Twitter account or Linkedin profile, then sort that out as soon as you can. Assuming you do, use these mediums to broadcast your text message campaign details. Tell people about your promotion along with the short code and keyword so that they can try it. Self-promotion through these channels costs you nothing other than a little bit of time and effort so do it. Be sure to monitor the results, not just of the incoming texts, but also ensure you keep your levels of engagement high within social media. If your potential customers ask you a question about the campaign, be certain to answer them.
- Use stickers to add your campaign to existing printed material – You can have your text marketing campaign details placed on small stickers which can then be placed on existing business cards, leaflets, brochures, or any other printed material which you have control of. Such stickers can be obtained in quantities of 1000 upwards for little more than a few pence each. This enables you to trial your campaign without the need to have existing marketing material re-purposed and reprinted. We have found stickers on business cards to be an interesting talking point, and what better than have people ask you about what it is that you do?
- Try different campaigns – You can vary your text message campaign over time to see what works best. For example, one month you may promote a discount off a product or service, the next month you could use the same campaign to offer a free tips sheet. The scope of your campaign is only limited by your own imagination and can be varied at no charge via the online portal.
Above we have made just made a few suggestions about how to use a text message service that we have found works well with our customers. We’d love to hear your suggestions.