Posts Tagged ‘Customer Loyalty’

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 »

Eight Features Customers Value in a Mobile Campaign

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Text message campaigns are successful for many reasons. Sometimes success is due to a popular campaign idea or a responsive group of text club members. Other times success is generated from the type of messages being sent. The best times are when a campaign just seems to click with your target audience. The text messages excite your customers and ROI soars far above what was first imagined. In order to execute a mobile campaign that generates these types of results, its imperative to turn the tables around and look at mobile marketing from the consumer’s point of view. To be successful, one must know their audience. And in the consumer audience today, the demand is out there! Earlier this year, a study from Dialogue Communications found that nearly 70% of mobile users actually want more SMS alerts. When it comes to mobile marketing, you need to have an understanding of your customers and what they are looking for in SMS to understand what they expect from your mobile campaign. If you please the customer, results are sure to follow. Consider these eight features customers look for in a mobile campaign:

· Benefits. First and foremost, a customer is engaging with your mobile campaign because there are clear, personal benefits. Without perceivable benefits in sight, there would be no reason for a customer to give your campaign the time of day, much less engage and respond to it. When obvious advantages are provided, customers are more likely to stop and consider what your campaign has to offer. Excite your audience with details of your campaign that offer favorable features. Explain how your campaign will enhance your customer’s life or accommodate their needs. If you can, create hype about your campaign that makes a customer want to join in. Once they have joined, keep them engaged and interested by continually putting their benefits in clear view.

· Convenience. Customers want more SMS because they see the convenience text messaging offers. With a mobile campaign, you are going to where the customer already is, which makes engagement easy. SMS allows you to send alerts, without making your audience sit down to a computer to read the message. Text messages allow customers to view messages on the go and then save them for later use. Because it is short and to the point, a text message does not interfere with a customer’s day. What it can do is alert the customer to relevant happenings in your campaign that the customer could choose to engage in. Allow your customers to go on with their busy life, and use text messages to interact and help them make informed choices. When a communication method is perceived as handy and appropriate, the audience is more likely to respond.

· Immediacy. In addition to convenience, customers want to have what they want when they want it. The quicker you can provide a customer with something, the more useful it is to them. Typically an individual will assume by the time they sit down to read a mass e-mail, they haven’t been the first to hear the information. Often times, individuals will disregard much of what they read in an e-mail due to the lack of immediacy. Text messaging allows you the unique ability to connect with customers right away. Information about what is happening now is more important as it is happening than it is an hour from now. And because SMS allows you to reach a customer anywhere at anytime, there’s no reason not to notify customers as events are happening. The timelier you are with your SMS alerts, the more positive feedback you will receive.

· Reliability. As with any customer relationship, the relationship you have with your text club members relies on their confidence in your ability to meet their needs. It’s necessary that your text messages be stable and accurate. When you advertise the opportunity for customers to be text club members, you are offering your audience peace of mind. Although we live in an information society, we are becoming a culture that chooses others to choose for us. Provide your customers relevant information at times when it will benefit them most. In this way, you create trust with your text club members not only that your mobile campaign is valuable, but more importantly that each text message you send is worth their while to read.

· Value. Your mobile campaign is special and those who support you should get something special in return. Reward your customers by offering them added value and discount offers. Everyone likes to read a text that offers a little something extra. Besides the fact that you are directly marketing your service or good, you make the customer happy. Each campaign will differ in the amount of goods or services your company is willing to offer however every little bit helps. Even if you simply alert your customers to an event you’re attending where there will happen to be a bargain or discount, you are still offering a deal. Customers need to be reminded every once in a while about the benefits being a text club member provides and deals are a great way to do this. Whenever you can put the word “FREE” into one of your SMS alerts, it’s going to have a favorable response.

· Rapport. Foster a sense of meaningful connection to your text club members. Everyone wants to matter and personal text messages are a great way to let customers know that they do. Unlike TV and radio ads, text messages are sent to a person’s individual number. And these days, e-mail is cluttered by so much junk mail that individuals create separate e-mail accounts to differentiate the meaningful from the spam. With SMS, you have a chance to connect to a customer at a location in their life that remains constant: their cell phone number. Make the most of this personal connection by sending text messages that are unique. People tend to get excited when they receive a text message. Use this excitement by sending text messages to make the customer feel like they are part of something exclusive. Customer loyalty to your company will strengthen the better the relationship you create through text messages in your mobile campaign.

· Relevant Content. When you are reaching customers directly at their personal phone number, there’s a fine line between useful and irrelevant information. It’s important to not miss-use the opportunity text messaging provides by sending information that is of no use to your text club member. When you stick to practical content it engages, informs and/or entertains your customer. Adhere to content that accomplishes one of these three goals and your message will be happily received. If you start texting information that is pointless to your customer, your messages will not be liked or respected. Maintain your reputation by sending your customers relevant text messages about your campaign.

· Control. Text messages are so personal that individuals need to have a sense of control over what is coming in to their phone. Unlike e-mail where spam messages are frowned upon, unwanted text messages are simply unacceptable. Likewise, if you send messages to an individual unwilling to participate in your mobile campaign, your message will not be acknowledged and your time will have been wasted. One of the best features of a Text Ripple mobile campaign is that participants have a completely controlled, spam-free experience. Customers do not have to worry about receiving unwanted messages at any time, which leads to a high rate of customer satisfaction. Giving your text club members assurance that they have control over incoming text messages is a surefire way to keep customers interested and maintain successful relationships.

Mobile campaigns are excellent ways to engage an audience and generate a high ROI if properly performed. With studies showing increased demand for text message alerts there’s no reason to run another campaign that doesn’t include mobile. Incorporate these strategies into your next mobile campaign and you’re sure to see exceptional results. For more information about running your own successful mobile campaign contact Text Ripple, a national leader in mobile marketing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in SMS Text Messaging, Text Club, mobile campaigns | No Comments »

Using Social Media to Enhance your Mobile Marketing

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Remember when Facebook went mobile? That wasn’t just a coincidence. Mobile technology and social media are natural counterparts to each other. And when it comes to mobile marketing, social networks are valuable tools to incorporate into any successful campaign. When defined, social networks are simply online environments that allow individuals to connect and interact with each other through a variety of means. Similarly, this definition is the backbone of any type of marketing campaign: to interact and connect. Mobile marketing with text messaging gives companies the ability to directly reach an unprecedented audience. Even if customers do not have smart phones, they do have cell phones that receive texts messages. And unlike e-mails or inbox messages, text messages are usually read within five minutes. Social networks act as additional channels to reach customers. While social media marketing will not replace your mobile marketing it can be used on the side to connect and interact. If you’re still using Facebook and other social networks strictly for personal use, there’s much you’re overlooking.

Comparatively, social media marketing and mobile marketing are not that different when used for business purposes, although they do reach audiences in different ways. Social media marketing is strictly limited to the online environment. To market with social networks requires an individual have access to a computer or other Internet capable device, and that social networks are accessed often. On the other hand, mobile marketing can reach anyone at anytime, regardless of an individual’s technology. Text message marketing allows companies to market to a wider audience consisting of all individuals with a cell phone, not just those with a smart phone. Currently, less than a third of all cell phone users have smart phones. Mobile marketing with text messages provides a way to reach smart phone and non-smart phone users alike. Mobile marketing connects companies to customers much like social networks, but does so when and where social networks cannot. Both forms of marketing increase the frequency of customer interaction and ultimately, company sales. Social networks and text messages both offer ways to connect with customers and increase brand loyalty, which leads to high rates of customer satisfaction. Additionally, they both allow companies to offer added value to customers through special promotions, discounts and contests. Most importantly, social networks and text messages allow companies to market in a way which thrives on trust building and references via a one-to-many interaction. When you figure it takes just one tweet or one text to reach many audiences, they are both appealing options for improved CRM.

Of course, how companies interact with customers on social networks will differ from the text messages they send. Social media marketing heavily relies on a sense of intimacy customers feel with a product or company they follow. This type of marketing requires conversational interaction with followers - more of a talking “with” rather than “at” interaction. In social media marketing, your company must have personality to be attractive to followers. A company that shows its openness and personality through humor or other character building techniques establishes trust with their followers. This trust, in return, results in conversions. And when working with a social network as large as Facebook, with over 400 million users and growing, these trusting followers are invaluable. Ultimately, keeping customers “in the circle” of your company through social media marketing produces customer loyalty.

Text message marketing is more memorable. Text messages are sent to a customer’s personal phone number rather than posted on a public wall. In this way, text message marketing can make your customers feel as though they are your friends. The closer connection customers feel to your company, the more loyal and active they will be for it. No commercial or banner ad will make a customer feel special the way a text message will. Also, the opportunity to connect with SMS is not limited to the online world and thus has no time and place restrictions. No matter what time of day or the place a customer is at, text message marketing can always be used to immediately connect. But just like social media marketing, text messages provide excellent ways to remind a customer they are part of a select group and fuel a sense of connection to your company.

There are definite advantages to using social media as an extension of your Text Ripple mobile services. Both forms of marketing rely on a developed database of members. One of the best places to find database members is where they currently are: on social networks. Once you have accumulated a substantial number of followers on Twitter and Facebook, you already have a great target audience for a Text Ripple mobile text club. Then, while employing mobile marketing strategies, you may occasionally send an SMS reminding and encouraging your text club members to follow you on your social networks, especially at times when you are conducting an exciting SMS campaign or other marketing offer. It’s ideal to promote interactivity over the two channels to keep followers interested. Fundamentally, the more followers your company has, online or mobile members, the more effective your mobile marketing campaign is likely to be.

Viral marketing becomes easier than ever when using social media along with mobile marketing. People who use Facebook on a mobile device are actually twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users. The multiple connection platforms of mobile and online make it easy for viral marketing to prosper, turning followers into marketers and accumulating customers for your company. In fact, viral marketing happens naturally on social network sites. The average user currently creates 70 pieces of content on Facebook each month and is connected to 60 pages, groups and events at any given time. Or take Twitter where 55 million tweets are sent out every day with over half concerning a status update or personal conversation. And as viral marketing works, the more your company interacts on social networks and mobile devices, the more likely your content is to be shared by others through a Facebook “Like”, a Twitter “re-tweet” or a forwarded text message. Once again, the two forms of marketing are collaborated and customers can interact on multiple levels.

The best part is that both forms of marketing require relatively little cost. Text message marketing is the most inexpensive form of direct marketing available. And although it has the lowest cost, it shows time after time to be the most cost effective. On the other hand, social media marketing is essentially free, done on an open platform. The only cost your company endures is committing the same time and energy to your social media marketing as you would any other type.

The selected qualities each form of marketing brings to the table, makes social media a worthwhile medium to incorporate into your mobile marketing strategy. Marketing is about connecting and the more ways a customer is given to connect with your company, the more lucrative your company will be. Every connection you have, whether it be a text club member, Twitter follower or Facebook fan, we see as your next potential customer. To get the most for your time and money consider using social media as an enhancement of your Text Ripple mobile marketing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in SMS Text Messaging, Social Media | No Comments »