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3 posts from March 2017

03/24/2017

The Importance of Defining Performance Goals for Text Marketing Campaigns

 

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For text marketing campaigns to be successful, they need to have strongly defined goals in place. This is important, not just in terms of planning your campaign, but also so that you have a solid way to measure its successes or failures.

 

Measuring Performance

Without any concept of what you want your text marketing campaigns to achieve, you’ll find it impossible to accurately analyze how close you’ve come to your goals. A vague idea of what you want to achieve just won’t cut it. It’s time to get specific and really think about what you ideally like your next campaign to do for your business.

 

  • Start by examining your overall business goals
  • Take a look at all of your marketing channels - what have you got covered? Are there any marketing gaps you’d like to fill
  • Think SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed


Which Data?

With solidly defined goals, you can then identify and measure your key performance indicators accurately. Make sure your key performance indicators line up with your goals. If your main goal is to convert more customers, for example, you need to single out data that tells you specifically about click through rates, conversion rates and completed sales. This focused data will help you measure how close you are to attaining your main goal.

Don’t Be Afraid of Change

It’s important to keep close tabs on your text messaging campaign’s performance so that you can identify which areas are doing well and which need adjusting. Always place your focused data within the wider context of your overall performance indicators, and be prepared to make changes. So, you might find that subscriber numbers aren’t great, but your conversion goals are reached. It’s then up to you to decide whether you want to make changes to improve opt-in performance in addition to your already achieved conversion goals.  

Measuring Return on Investment

Text message marketing is increasingly popular as it’s inexpensive, helping businesses achieve greater returns on investment. It’s important to measure the value of your text message marketing campaigns, and not just in financial terms. Perhaps your campaign has increased customer loyalty or customer engagement, which in the long run will boost profits. By having defined performance goals in place you’ll find it easier to measure your campaign’s value across more than just monetary returns.

03/19/2017

E-Commerce & SMS Marketing

 

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Email isn’t the only way for e commerce businesses to get in touch with customers. Mobile technology is growing, with consumers increasingly shopping online via their tablets and smartphones. It means you need to get mobile too, and developing a strong SMS marketing strategy is part of your future success.

Here are a few straightforward tips to help your e commerce business get all it can from the SMS marketing medium.

Make Shopping With You Easy

With consumers growing increasingly used to web browsing and shopping on their smartphones, you want to make the process as easy as possible for them so that they associate your e commerce site with a simple, satisfying shopping experience.

 

Mobile commerce now makes up 30% of e commerce business in the U.S. You can use SMS marketing to direct customers directly to your site and make it a cinch for them to redeem digital coupons and special offers. Just include a link to your mobile shopping site within your texts so they can shop for products right away.

 

Integrate With Other Marketing Channels


Create a bigger impact with your SMS marketing by integrating it with all of your other marketing channels. Radio and TV ads, billboards and posters, flyers and print ads - they can all direct people to opt in to your SMS marketing, and all it takes is the inclusion of a simple keyword and number. Make sure you add your SMS keyword details to your digital ads, websites, blogs, emails and social media to really spread the word.

 

Make Your Words Count

 

With SMS you’re limited to 160 characters, so you want your messages to be succinct and impactful. Don’t just let your customers know about your special offer or sale, but use a call to action to entice people to redeem your offer or visit your mobile web store. Use motivational verbs, strong and dramatic language, and consider a time-limited offer to up the urgency.

 

Make the Most of Mobile Immediacy


With over 90% of Americans owning a mobile phone, and most of us keeping our phones in our pockets all day long, it’s no surprise to find that the open and read rates for SMS are remarkably high - around 98%. Most messages are read immediately, making SMS marketing perfect for last-minute updates, flash sales and 24-hour time-limited offers.


Customer Updates


E commerce businesses can use SMS for more than just special offers and promotions. Because we’re all not so well connected via mobile these days, it’s a great, convenient way to keep in touch with your customers about their orders too, safe in the knowledge that they’ll actually read your updates. YOu can send receipts, delivery updates, and surveys or feedback polls to encourage customers to rate your services and products and suggest improvements.

03/01/2017

Making a Drip Campaign Work for You

 

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A well-timed text marketing drip campaign can help you engage with your audience and keep them interested in what’s going on with your business.

Drip campaigns are a great way to reach more customers ahead of a special event or sale, and are a great alternative to traditional limited time offer campaigns.

Want to get to know more about drip campaigns and they can work for you? Here’s all you need to know about this more engaging form of text marketing.

 

How Does A Drip Campaign Work?

 

A drip campaign means sending multiple messages to customers or subscribers over a period of time.

The timing of these messages is crucial in order to have the most impact and the achieve the best possible response from subscribers. Typically, a business:

 

  • Creates a keyword in the early stages of the campaign and customers opt-in to a group that's based on this keyword
  • Then sends related text messages to this target group for the duration of the campaign
  • Will use a drip campaign in the lead up to an event, sale or launch to keep interested customers up to date and to ramp up the excitement too

 

Why Use A Drip Campaign?

The primary reason that major brands choose drip text marketing is to make more of an impact on customers. With the latest figures revealing that mobile subscribers between that ages of 25 and 34 receive over 1,000 texts a month, it’s all too easy for one-off marketing messages to get lost in the crowd. Drip text marketing helps prevent your message getting lost in your customer’s inbox by sending multiple messages that act as reminders to your subscribers, who are therefore more likely to notice and remember your offer, sale or event.

 

How Do I Start A Drip Campaign?

As with most forms of text marketing, the drip technique is really simple to implement.

Make it specific - don’t mistake a drip campaign for general news and updates. A drip campaign should have a very specific goal, like alerting subscribers to an upcoming sale, event or one-off offer. You’re seeking to ramp up the anticipation of the event or offer, while also reminding recipients about it.

Think about your call to action - short and direct is the way to go. Texts offer you limited characters to work with, so you want your drip campaign calls to action to be punchy. You want your audience to know exactly what the next step is as send out your messages.
Get the timing right - get your team together and decide on timing. How much lead time do you want to give your subscribers? How often do you want your messages sent to their smartphones? Whether it’s every day for the next seven days or every hour in the next 12 hours, once you’ve decided get in touch with a mobile developer so they can get you started.