SMS Marketing is the use of mobile phone text to sell more product and bring customers to your business.
SMS Marketing is now used by 4 billion consumers worldwide.
SMS or Mobile Marketing (MM) is particularly relevant in Zambia and across Africa due to the high cell phone usage in urban areas and the reasonable coverage in rural areas compared to the comparatively low home Internet usage. Many Africans have multiple handsets for calling and texting outside their own network, so any data gathering needs to take this into account.
The use of text messaging has skyrocketed. People now use it for basic one to one communication far more frequently than calling and this behaviour can be harnessed. Ask your clients to respond to links to mobile websites, entry into contests, voting, signups, and uptake of special offers.
Marketing via SMS is now the most effective means of generating repeat and new business for most industry sectors including retail/consumer, hospitality, entertainment and media, I.T., manufacturing, tourism, finance/insurance, education, healthcare and NGO/Aid organisations.
In some sectors improvement in sales figures, directly attributable to SMS marketing are in the region of 30-40% whilst the cost of SMS campaigns can be more than 50% cheaper than conventional direct marketing.
For customers the key to acceptance and receptivity are opt-in programmes offering new information, coupons, competitions, event promotions and the provision of ongoing reasons not to opt out. Over time many businesses in Africa will adopt MM. Recipients will opt-out of programmes that make them feel swamped with content that is not of personal interest. Therefore a two way text dialogue with consumers is key to monitoring customer feedback and satisfaction.
Mobile marketing has become widely accepted throughout Europe, Australia and is breaking ground rapidly in the USA. In the initial period many recipients were not opted-in and reacted negatively to what was essentially spam. In the initial launch period many recipients were not able to opt-out and reacted negatively to what was essentially unwelcome spam. In addition the text content offered no real benefit to the recipient. Using SMS marketing in this way is destined to fail and furthermore damages business credibility and the bottom line. Recipients should be provided with information and actions that they want and be able to opt out easily and quickly should they wish to do so.
Understanding the difference between projected commercial outcomes and the recipients perception of the value of your promotional devices is key to maintaining a positive relationship. Fresh information is critical however repeating popular and successful promotions can also be popular and profitable.
At a higher technical level retailers will ultimately need to get POS integration in place to utilise MM to track and respond however manual database driven systems are a great way to start and test different marketing programmes.
Recipients can be enabled to nominate the type of information they would like to see. Specifically users can respond by indicating a particular interest in a field or product genre.
MMS - Multimedia Messaging Service (image messaging) marketing components can also be introduced to embellish certain campaigns however the cost of this is higher and not all recipients will have suitable handsets so some experimentation is necessary.
Tools and actions:
Offerings and notifications:
· Coupons
· Specials
· Events
· Voting / polling
· Competitions
· Tips / recipes / health
· Q & A
· Newsletter sign-up
· Flash codes
· Appointment openings
· Premium member sign-up
Customer actions / responses:
· Purchase a special offer
· Show a coupon on their handset
· Enter a competition
· Sign up to newsletter or premium membership
· Use a Flash-code to get more info on a product or service
· Go to a mobile website on Smartphone
· Go to a website on Smartphone
· Send a URL link to their email address
· Request more information
· Ask a question
· Make an appointment
· Order a tip or recipe
· Attend an event
· Indicate special interests
and more
Can you see 3 ways SMS marketing could work for your business?
