Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategy’ Category

SMS Marketing in the Smartphone Era

Monday, August 30th, 2010

What’s in your pocket right now: an Android, Blackberry or iPhone? The smartphone war of Android verses iPhone verses Blackberry is really heating up this summer with some strong opinions on all ends of the court. But no matter which phone triumphs, one thing is for sure: Americans like their smartphones. Like no other time before, customers are literally becoming obsessed with their phones and all the features they provide. There’s mobile banking, mobile video, mobile social networking, facechat, apps, SMS and the list goes on. Smartphones, in turn, have shown to be hugely profitable for wireless providers, manufactures, app designers and mobile business. For mobile marketing especially, smartphones and the American fixation with these devices are providing major benefits.

People are now on their phones more than ever before. Customers doing their personal and business related activities from various locations but all on a single device. Knowing that people are likely to be spending a majority of their time on their smartphone gives marketers a perfect place to promote. There’s no guessing as to which day a customer will see your ad now. You can be almost certain they’ll see it the same day, if not the same hour, that you send it. SMS becomes especially powerful as it sends an alert to customers telling them a message has arrived. There’s no need to catch customer’s attention because the phone does it for you! Mobile has become a more central channel of communication in the customer’s everyday life. Knowing where customers are spending much of their time is invaluable to marketers. Smartphones have created a phenomenon where marketers have a good idea as to where they should send a message that’s almost guaranteed to be read.

Smartphones also come with features that benefit mobile marketers. If a company sells a product online, there’s now no delay in time to when the customer finds out about the product, through an SMS, and when they can actually see and purchase that product. Text messages can easily be sent with a hyperlink option that provides customers a direct route to a company’s website. And thanks to smartphones, the Internet is a click away at anytime in any location! In the fast-paced world we live in, there’s nothing better than when a simple message can lead directly to a sale. But company websites aren’t everything these days. Now leads can be generated from simply getting customers to go to your Facebook or Twitter, or to your Wordpress page to read your blog. Top downloaded smartphone apps are almost always social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Sending a text message to a smartphone allows the customer to see your message and then immediately log onto their social network and join your page or chat about you. Smartphones, and the apps they offer, have opened new doors to going viral with mobile marketing and social media.

The best part is that smartphone users are eager to use their phone more! People are fascinated with smartphones and after spending a good amount of a paycheck to purchase a device and plan they want to get the most out of their phone. A receptive audience is always key to a widely successful marketing strategy. You can’t produce enthusiasm about watching TV or listening to a radio ad, they way you can about using a smartphone. Smartphones have made mobile “cool” and produced an audience of eager customers.

For any type of marketing you do, it’s always most profitable when you have a clear target market and an eager audience. Smartphone have given marketers the chance at a one-way conversation with customers on a proven channel. If you’re not already using mobile as part of your marketing plan, it’s time to get in on the smartphone action. Contact Text Ripple today to learn more about SMS marketing to your smartphone customers.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing Strategy, Mobile Trends, SMS Text Messaging | No Comments »

How to Achieve Mobile Customer Loyalty with Bulk SMS Marketing

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Do you really know why customers follow your brand the way they do? It all comes down to customer loyalty. In mobile marketing, customer loyalty has proven to be one of the most essential parts of any successful strategy. Customer loyalty produces leads, energizes sales and helps you to obtain better knowledge of your customers. Achieving customer loyalty when using a channel as unique as mobile oftentimes can be challenging or confusing. Fortunately, the steps it takes to achieve long-term mobile customer loyalty can be broken down and easily put into place, making the process simple and straightforward.

First of all, customer loyalty begins with relationship marketing. Much like any interaction involving a buyer and seller, there must be a level of management over customer interaction with your brand. This initially involves research and a precise knowledge of what you need to satisfy the customer. Focusing on satisfying the customer is important because at the core of any new relationship, the customer’s needs must be met in some way. Once you are sure their needs will be satisfied, offer them something off the back to remember your brand by. The initial interaction with customers should be seen as the beginning of a long-term engagement, not merely a one-time transaction. Try to make the initial text message contact with your customer fun and engaging. It’s necessary that the customer feel as though they are participating in an on-going conversation they chose to be a part of. In this way, they will be more likely to feel attachment to your brand.

Next, after you’ve established text club members, you need to reinforce your brand’s relationship with them. Always begin with respect and ensure you send out text messages that will be both valued and useful. Much like the beginning of any new relationship, pushing too much information on customers at first can be a turn off. Instead, stick to thought-out, relevant text messages that offer advantages to your customers and emphasize the importance of being text club members. At the end of the day, you want to ensure your customers are receiving increased benefits from their choice to opt-in. This can be done in a variety of methods, sculpted specifically to your brand’s unique marketing strategy and desired image.

One of the best ways to reinforce your relationship with customers is through sending text messages that providing that little something extra. Anything from coupons to promotional offers, deals and insider incentives will be extremely valuable to your faithful customers. Special text message offers make your text club valuable to members, which in turn strengthens member loyalty to your brand.

Coupons especially are shown to be desired text messages for text club participants. When Dominos started offering coupons for customers who opted-in to their text club, membership grew to 800,000 in only fourteen months! Research supports these numbers as well. Harris Interactive found that 66% of young adults are at the very least “somewhat likely” to test out mobile coupons and 31% would be willing to give their number out right away to receive retailer offers. Furthermore, Jupiter Research has predicted that by 2014, there will be 300 million users a year making use of mobile coupons around the world. In fact, when offering coupons at all, digital is a favored channel. Coupons.com has shown that the growth of online or digital coupons has outnumbered printed newspaper coupons by an astonishing ten to one. And with digital coupons, the preferred channel is mobile. The 2010 Local Mobile Advertising and Promotions Forecast showed that the redeemed value of mobile coupons is 25% higher than digital printed coupons. With bulk SMS mobile coupons, it’s hard to go wrong!

Another route to take is sending text messages with valuable news and information. Customers have already opted-in to your text club to be closer with your brand, so it’s only fair you provide them important information. You don’t want your text club members getting news about your brand from someone else when they have chosen to receive it from you! Keep them up to date with newsworthy updates going on with your company so as to maintain a close connection. Text message alerts are one way to provide customers valuable information. For example, if you’re having a huge summer blowout sale outdoors and weather conditions are not looking good, you can easily text your text club members updates about store openings or closings, saving your customers valuable time while reminding them of your sale. Appointment reminders are another way to provide customers information they need. Text message reminders provide a great channel to reach customers in a non-disruptive manner. Mobile reminders about appointments have seen success with many different companies including medical professional offices, tanning, beauty and health clubs, automotive dealerships and restaurants. Virtually any company that uses an appointment system can better connect with and benefit customers using appointment reminders via SMS.

Finally, remember that maintaining mobile customer loyalty is just as important as obtaining it in the first place. Customer loyalty is always best maintained through continual interaction with customers. Once you have reinforced the relationship with your text club member through beneficial text messages, you have already started the process of achieving long-term customer loyalty. Keep up the tactics you used in the beginning with continual special offers and important updates. You may choose to personalize your text messages with a simple name in the first line. Or perhaps, try to incorporate social media into your text messages with invites to join a Facebook fan page or become a follower on Twitter. The more effort put into regularly interacting with and engaging customers using a proven strategy, the more mobile customer loyalty you will receive.

Achieving mobile customer loyalty with SMS marketing is a long-term commitment for both your brand and the customer. Dedication from customers is worth the effort once you have obtained text club members that will stick by your brand through think and thin. You can’t buy customer loyalty, but you can acquire it with an effective strategy from a mobile marketing company. Contact Text Ripple today to learn more about achieving long-term mobile customer loyalty for your brand through smart text message marketing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Customer Loyalty, Marketing Strategy, SMS Text Messaging | No Comments »

Marketing to Teens through Bulk SMS

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

It’s 10PM, do you know where your kids are? No matter where they are, there’s a good chance they’re sending a text message. Text messaging has become a favorite among teens as a way to communicate, interact and entertain. Teens are just as dependent on their phones as adults and are especially intrigued by text messaging. Mobile phones, in turn, provide a uniquely personal channel to market through and are especially useful when marketing to teens. With such an abundance of teen activity happening in the mobile sphere, it’s hard to overlook the opportunity available for text message marketing. If you want to reach teens, reach them where they already thrive: texting on their mobile phone.

By the numbers, teens are using their phones for texting more than you may think. A Pew report found that teens use text messaging as the primary mode of communication. This means they are more likely to text than make a phone call, chat online or even converse face to face. Other Pew studies have highlighted the prevalence of teen texting. Of the 75% of teens, ages twelve to seventeen, who have mobile phones, 72% text. Furthermore, 54% of teens text daily, and one in three teens send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 per month. On average, a teen male sends about 30 and a female sends about 80 text messages per day. Seeing as text messaging is such a common way to communicate, it’s only natural that marketers begin to look at mobile as a platform for reaching teens.

Teens are an ideal market for text message marketing. They already understand the channel and can easily relate to messages in text format. Text message marketing does not require the teen learn any new skills to grasp the message but rather it is something teens already utilize everyday and are comfortable with. In fact, teens have adapted so well to SMS that parents and other adults have had to also adapt to SMS just to interact with their teens. Additionally, text messages are favorable to teens. They already use text messaging as a primary means of communication and thus bulk text messages go right to where they already are. There is no requirement that they be online or in front of a TV or billboard.

Text message marketing also gives teens the chance to engage. Text messages such as bulk SMS promotional coupons can easily be forwarded to others. One teen may get a text message about a great deal at a local restaurant. That teen may be inspired to forward that message to friends as a possible place to go out to that weekend. Each individual who receives the forwarded text is given a chance to take advantage of a great deal while also learning about the text message list the original teen has opted in to. Others may decide to opt in and join the list as well so they always have the most up to date information about great deals at the restaurant. In this way, text message marketing has given these teens access to the inside deals about a local restaurant, saving them money. And thanks to viral marketing through forwarding of the text, the restaurant has accomplished promotional marketing and will gain new and more loyal customers. It’s a win-win for both parties!

If teens are not already part of your target audience, they should be. Most teens are fortunate enough to spend for only one person: themselves. In turn, any marketing aimed at teens influences the consumer directly. With much of their money as personal spending money, ads and coupons become much more valuable. When a bulk SMS is sent to a teen’s personal phone, they can relate because the product or service is about them individually. These messages are also more likely to be remembered and utilized because they are only the messages that the individual teen has opted in to receive. There is no process of sorting through hundreds of messages to find one they want such as there is with television and Internet ads. The message is unique to the teen and personalized for their self-disclosed spending habits.

With back-to-school season fast approaching the time is now to enact bulk SMS into your marketing strategy. The average cost for sending kids back to school is around $1,000 for high school students. Teens know what they want and know that back-to-school is the time to get it for themselves or from their parents. The National Retailers Association estimates that this year alone the average family will increase their back-to-school spending by 10.5%. National chains such as JCPenney have caught on and are already using mobile marketing to attract back-to-school shoppers. JCPenney has a huge back-to-school campaign entitled “New Look. New You!” in which teens can opt-in to receive weekly bulk SMS about fashionable clothes and styles. By marketing teen clothing directly to teens they have a much better chance at increasing sales this year.

Any marketing strategy is about successfully getting your message to the customer. When the customer is a teen, the message can be difficult to convey if you don’t know the right channel to use. Mobile is where teens are and where they are most likely to listen. Text message marketing allows you to talk to teens rather than at or down to them, which allows for increased ROI. When marketing a product or service to a teen audience, market through a channel where they already are at and are comfortable. For best results, market teen products and services though bulk SMS and a mobile marketing company, such as Text Ripple, to successfully reach teen customers.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing Strategy, SMS Text Messaging | No Comments »

More than Apps, SMS Still Rules Mobile Marketing

Monday, July 12th, 2010

With new and improved smartphones coming to the market this year, it’s hard to overlook the huge focus on mobile applications that has developed. Applications, or apps, are great for providing information, education and entertainment. However when it comes to mobile marketing, SMS remains the most powerful force. Whether or not you have an app, text message marketing needs to be the main part of your mobile marketing strategy for a variety of reasons.

Apps have network and device limitations.

First and foremost, apps have many limitations. They are not only confined to the network a customer is on, such as 3G or 4G, they are limited to the specific phone. This means your company would need to develop both an iPhone app and a separate Android app to reach, at the very most, less than 20% of mobile phone users. Then pricing comes into play. Development for multiple apps specific to each phone cuts into your marketing budget before the app is even released. And to be released, the app must first be approved. After it has been released your company must put a price on the app. Is it practical to make your app free to download after you have paid to have it created? That’s another budgeting question specific to your marketing strategy.

App store competition is tough.

Your app is then further limited because it is competing against over 225,000 other apps that may be highly rated and easier to find. Marketing your app can be a timely and costly aspect in and of itself. According to Nelson, gaming apps are the most common iPhone apps to download after Facebook. Additionally, only 1.4% of apps are used 90 days after being downloaded. Without being used, your app does no good just sitting on a customer’s mobile home screen. Strategy Analytics reported that only 4-6 mobile apps are actually used on a consistent basis. Finally, you lose stability over the path your app takes once it is available for download. Your app will always be open for others to rate, which is out of your control. Bad reviews for any reason could lead to a marketing app failure.

SMS is a common, familiar mobile feature.

On the other hand, SMS is like the app that everyone already has. Today 95% of cell phone contracts have text messaging built into the plan, making SMS much more widely accepted. In fact, smartphone users, the ones that would potentially be using a marketing app, only represent less than a third of all mobile phone users in the U.S. Unlike apps, text messages are easy to understand. They provide a quick way to receive information. In the fast pace world we live in, the quicker and easier information is to interpret, the better. Just like with Twitter, the word limit for text messages is actually an advantage because it dictates that messages be simplified so customers can absorb the information quickly.

SMS is direct and personal.

Another advantage is that text messaging is an always-on medium. Apps have to be opened to provide information requiring a customer’s time and energy. With text messages you don’t make the customer click on an app, instead you come to where the user already is – at their cell phone home screen. And because it is a personal message sent directly to a customer, there is no cluttering of your message with distracting advertisements. Text messages themselves are regulated strictly to avoid spamming activity. The more personal your marketing is, the better it will be received and acted upon. Finally text messages have technical reliability. They won’t crash the way many apps can which makes your company and marketing message appear much more reliable.

When it comes to mobile marketing, texting is here to stay. Apps may have features that are desirable to those looking for something specific such as a recipe or mobile game, but these individuals aren’t necessarily going to download a mobile app to support your marketing campaign. Make sure your marking strategy covers all the basics and includes mobile marketing with text messaging. Learn more about the benefits of text message marketing and how influential SMS can be for your company by contacting Text Ripple for your mobile marketing needs.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing Strategy, SMS Text Messaging | No Comments »