Alexander Graham Bell once said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” He speaks truth, proper preparation will help your mobile marketing efforts to yield sales. Describing the process of how mobile marketing works with real estate will assist in narrowing down what the necessary preparation requires to create a successful marketing effort. Suppose, for example, some potential buyers find an advertised house they are interested in. After glancing at the house, they notice a sign rider saying “Text ‘A1001’ to ‘77948’ to see the specs for this house!” The potential buyers pick up their mobile phone and text ‘A1001’ to 77948. Immediately, they receive a text message back saying: 3 br 2 bath 2000 sqft 2 car garage big backyard, close to schools, all stainless appliances. See photos here: There you have it! Now the potential buyer has the housing information in front of them, and a URL linking them to your webpage where they can obtain more information. It is as simple as that. Later in the article, the instant lead generation for real estate agents after the potential buyer texts in will be discussed. Now that there is a basic framework for how mobile marketing works for real estate, lets explore the preparation of your mobile marketing campaign in greater detail.

When you initially sign up with a text marketing company, you will select keywords for each of your property listings. “Property codes” is a better fitting description when you are talking about real estate as each property code will represent a listing you have on the market. Subscribers will text this property code to receive the listing information. When setting up these property codes, it is best to make them generic (such as ‘A1001′ or ‘RM02′). This allows you the property codes to be recycled and reused when your listings sell.

Develop an effective, yet simple, sign rider that will entice subscribers to text in your property code. Present the property code, the phone number, and the a brief description of what they will get when they text in. The example used above was “text ‘A1001’ to ‘77948’ to receive the specs on this home!” This is a simple, yet direct call to action inviting the potential buyer to receive information about the listing by texting in.

This is where using mobile marketing for real estate really shines. Once a potential buyer texts your property code, instantly their mobile phone number is captured and placed into your contacts. Most text message marketing platforms will have the ability to forward new subscriber information to an email address or even to a mobile phone. This proves invaluable to a real estate agent by generating instant leads which the agent can follow up on in a very timely manner. Once you have made the necessary preparation, it is a matter of maintaining and updating the housing information within your text campaign and following up on the generated leads in a timely manner. Mobile marketing is a powerful tool for real estate agents and will continue to effectively and efficiently provide leads which will generate more sales.

Most golf clubhouses will have some kind of a pro shop annexed off the clubhouse somewhere. A pro shop to golfers is what a candy store is to kids. All the latest and greatest merchandise is available for purchase. Golf clubs, equipment, and apparel from your favorite company are all available at the pro shop. One obvious benefit clubhouses would receive from mobile marketing is promoting sales of the pro shop merchandise. The true golf enthusiast is ecstatic to hear of new discounts on golfing apparel. SMS resellers can share the power of mobile marketing with employees of the pro shop, showing the ability to put the discounts right into the golfers hand. What golf enthusiast wouldn’t like a new shirt, pair of shoes, or even a new set of clubs? Mobile marketing can entice those golf enthusiasts to visit their local pro shop before, or after, a round on the back nine.

Advances in technology have made scheduling and reserving tee times nearly effortless. Many golf courses have online tee time reservation applications allowing golfers the ability to reserve their tee time all within a few clicks of a mouse. Now that a golfer has reserved his tee time, its time to think about a reminder to the golfer about his tee time. A text message marketing platform makes it both easy and convenient for both the golfer and the golf clubhouse. Most platforms allow for scheduling text messages to deliver at a future date and time. The clubhouse, upon notification of a reserved tee time, can schedule a text message to be sent out a day before the golfers reserved tee time. The message will deliver on the scheduled date and golfers will be reminded of their tee time. This process is both easy can convenient for both parties.

As a text marketing reseller, you are probably aware of the importance of marketing for events. These events are usually a great way for drawing in potential customers. With that being said, marketing of events becomes a focus of many businesses looking to gain more customers. The same applies for golf courses. Event and tournaments are used to bring in more potential patrons of the golf course. Sending a text to invite golfers to a tournament or event on the course will draw in not only the golfers themselves, but their friends as well.

Sunnyville is located where the temperature during the summer is above 100 degrees for the majority of the season. With scorching temperatures during the summer, its hard to get golfers to come out and enjoy a game of golf unless its at the crack of dawn or just before sunset. To keep business steady, local golf courses run a “100 degree discount” to golfers when the temperature is 100 degrees or higher. Some discounts get as low as $2 for a round of golf plus cart fees. If business is low and temperatures high, golf clubhouses can use text marketing to send a message notifying golfers of the 100 degree discount, effectively boosting the number of golfers coming to the course throughout the day. As a text message reseller, hopefully this information has shed some light on golf clubhouses as a niche with great potential for use of mobile marketing. Some areas of the country are heavily populated with golf courses, others not so much. Determine the demand for text marketing in your area and look into golf courses and their clubhouses as a means of selling your product.

However, no matter how many followers you have, you will always have to combat the algorithms put in place by each platform’s team. For example, Instagram has published many updates that have drastically affected account followers overnight. The best way to combat these algorithms is to incorporate multi-channel marketing.

Multi-channel marketing often referred also as cross-channel marketing means incorporating different combinations of indirect or direct ways to communicate with your following. This can include websites, social media, physical locations, email, mobile (SMS messaging), direct mail, catalogs, and so on.

By creating different avenues to communicate with your following you’ll be able to increase your sales and revenue while creating a deeper relationship with your followers by connecting with them in different ways. Depending on your business type, some of these will be more effective than others. For all business types, for your outbound marketing the 3 channels we recommend as a top priority are; social media, text message (also known as SMS message), and email marketing. Both email and text are opt-in or permission-based meaning your following would need to consent to receive messages from you on these platforms. This is similar to getting that initial “follow” on social media. Getting your followers to opt-in to other marketing platforms will allow you to engage with the followers who are most engaged with you because they want to hear from you in multiple ways which is great news for you.

By relying solely on one avenue to connect with your following, you are leaving opportunities to connect on the table which also translates into leaving revenue on the table. But more so leaves you vulnerable to the ever-changing algorithms of social media. As Instagram’s algorithm has become more of a “pay to play” platform, accounts that once did very well just by posting are now hurting because their content isn’t getting shown to their entire following. What this translates to is that you don’t own any of your social media followers. Instagram or the platform itself does. They determine how many of those “followers” will be shown your content and therefore are in charge of how many opportunities you have to engage with or sell your following. By cross-marketing your social media following and getting them to opt-in to other marketing mediums such as text marketing or email marketing you will ensure that you own those followers and you won’t have to worry about the algorithm changes affecting your ability to connect with them. In the chart below shows the read rates of text message, email, Instagram and Facebook.

Currently, SMS message has the highest read rate which makes sense due to the constant accessibility and urgency of a text versus the other mediums making it a great way to let your followers know about sales, new items, gather feedback, ask for reviews, or anything else you deem as important. As great as text is at getting your message seen, it can’t replace all of the other ways to connect. For example, you can post on Instagram 6 times a day whereas sending 6 text messages to your text followers would be too intrusive and likely cause your text subscribers to opt-out of receiving messages from you. Implementing text with email and social media will yield your best results since you will be able to connect with your followers in multiple ways.

The easiest way to get your followers into both platforms at the same time is to use text message to gather both. With our SMS system, you can have a follower opt-in to your text list which would then respond asking them for their email address (you set this up once and then it is automated). Their contact card will update to include their email address and you can set your account to link with your email provider so your email list will stay updated automatically.

When a follower texts your keyword (MYSTORE) to the short-code (21000) you can choose to have your auto-response say whatever you wish. In this example, this shows the message flow if you’re wanting to gather email addresses from each opt-in.

1- Make regular posts about it. Incentives to join your other lists will always yield higher results.

2- Put the information in your bio.

Instagram strategist and business consultant Cici @_thesixfigurechick is a pro at cross-promoting her following to both email and text subscribers. Her frequent classes and content break down how she’s managing to make one-million dollars this year utilizing cross-marketing to her social media followers. She adds her text message opt-in instruction right on her bio so everyone that visits her page has a chance to see that. She also regularly posts about her text club and hosts classes on how to be successful with text message.

If you already have an email list, send out an email announcing your new text club. Remember, incentives gain opt-ins so if you want to get a good response rate, offer something of value or do a giveaway to those who join. You want to convert as many email subscribers as you can to text message subscribers simply for the vast difference in read rates. With text at 98% and email at 6-20%, it’s easy to see why you’d want those email subscribers on your text list. This will give you a much higher chance to convert more, therefore, make more money

You can also include your text club opt-in instructions to all email signatures.

You can also install our website widget on your website. This way website visitors can opt-in directly just by visiting your site. On our widget, you can also have them input their email address, birthday, and name. You can decide which information you want to collect. As nice as it is to collect all pieces, if you ask for too much information right off, you may have less response.

If you have a physical location make sure to have print items that inform your customers about your text club. Train cashiers to offer customers to join. Again, incentives will work best. If you can offer a percentage off of their purchase to join right then, you will see a much higher response rate. The real value will be in your ability to text them in the future with specials or information, getting their repeat business, and building their loyalty to your brand. If you send physical products make sure to include a print piece with your text club on it. This could be a business card or postcard.

As you already are aware of with social media, the key to success with marketing is repetition and consistency. Continuing to grow your brand on social and consistently converting as many followers to your other marketing platforms will translate into more revenue for you and ensure the longevity of your followers.

By continually growing your own marketing lists that aren’t contingent on the algorithms of Instagram, you’ll be able to create a reliable marketing channel to your followers and therefore be able to create more growth and revenue for your brand.

Taco Bell fast food had 13,000 mobile opt-ins in the first 5 weeks Papa Murphy’s Pizza SMS ads had a 17.9% return rate Subway restaurants had a 9% SMS coupon redemption, compared to 1% with direct mail Pizza Hut Pizza mobile marketing was 142% more efficient than other marketing channels Carl’s Jr. hamburgers generated $14 in new sales for every $1 spent on their text marketing campaign As you can see, the potential with text message marketing for restaurants is very significant! It’s more cost effective than direct mail, print ads, and has up to 10X higher coupon redemption rates!!!

1- Start our 15-day free trial here. There’s no credit card required and this will allow you to test the system and how it will work for your restaurant without any obligation.

2- Upon signing up for your trial, you’ll be asked to choose your Keyword. The keyword will be the word that people text in to join your text group. A lot of people choose their business name or a word commonly associated with their business. For example, Joe’s Pizza could choose Joes or Pizza as their keyword. *Tip, avoid choosing a keyword that will auto-correct or is hard to spell.



3- Decide whether or not you’d like to set up an auto-responder. The auto-response message is the message that anyone who joins your text club will be automatically texted when they text in to join your list. You choose what the message says and you can change the auto-response message at any time.



4- Promote your text group. The true key to success with having a text message club is gaining as many members as possible. That way when you’re having a slow day or simply want to increase business, you can send out a text to your group members and get your message seen within minutes.



How Restaurants Gain Text Message Group Members The best way to get people to join your restaurant’s text club is to use an incentive to join. Everyone enjoys something to sweeten the deal. You could offer to comp the sodas on the ticket, 10% off, a BOGO offer, or whatever works best for your establishment. The better the offer, the higher the response will be. We recommend offering something that will seem of high value to your customers but is a low cost to your business to give away. Sodas are a great example. Printed Materials in Your Restaurant: This is one of the quickest ways to gain opt-ins to your text group. Place your opt-in instructions on table tents, flyers, on receipts, and business cards Train your servers or cashier to offer the incentive to join to each customer while they are paying Place your opt-in instructions on all of your social media and make regular posts about it Put instructions on your website or use our web widget to gather opt-ins from your website automatically If you do print campaigns, place your opt-in instructions on those. You can even make the offer a text in to redeem for better results

Another great perk of using text messaging software is that you have so many features built in to optimize your restaurant’s results. Send messages on demand or schedule messages days, weeks, or months in advance to automate your marketing and messaging. Go through the calendar and set up all of your holiday & specials texts at once and then rest assured that your text will be sent to all current members of your text list on the scheduled date. Drip messages are another way to automate your restaurant’s marketing. A drip message simply means messages that are scheduled to go out based on the date someone joined your text list. For example, all members could receive the 10% offer joining your text club. Then you can set the next message to go out 5 days later with either another offer or just a reminder of what your weekly specials are. Each person who joins your club will receive that second message 5 days after they joined the club. You can set as many drip messages as you’d like. This ensures all members of your club receive the same messages at the same increments of time, based on the time they joined. The inbox is a great way to automate customer service. The inbox feature is 2-way text enabled so if a customer texts your club back asking what your hours are or if you’ll be open for Thanksgiving, you have the chance to respond via text message which has become the preferred method of contact for many. Our inbox feature can alert of the message to your personal cell phone or email. Use our message templates to save messages you may want to send out another time to save time having to re-enter the text information. The dynamic date feature is great for restaurants that want to offer coupons via text message. The dynamic date can be entered into your text message, for example, Recieve a FREE breadstick with purchase of a slice and a drink expires +7 days. The +7 days is the dynamic date. Our software will automatically calculate what the date will be in 7 days from the time you sent the text message so that you can ensure that it will be set to expire in 7 days from the time they received the message.

Make sure to send something of value. When your customers sign up to receive texts from you, they’re allowing you to contact them on their personal cell phone. Make sure to think of what types of messages/offers you’d appreciate from your favorite restaurants. It doesn’t always have to include a discount. Don’t overdo it. Make sure not to spam your customers by texting them too much. We recommend 6-8 texts a month for restaurants. We find that a lot of our clients that are restaurants send 1 message per week and see great results. If you’re new text bulk text messaging all of this can feel overwhelming but we promise once you get going it’s a lot easier than it seems. We recommend if you’re new that you utilize our complimentary Customer Success Managers to help you set up your account and go over ideas on how to integrate texting for your restaurant so that you know you’ll be set up for success and save time. More Mass Text Messaging Statistics 10x the redemption rate of print coupons 90% of customers part of a text club felt that it was valuable 70% of US consumers say they’d like to receive offers via text Over 6 billion text messages are sent each day in the USA Text messaging is the most common cell phone activity Texts have a 45% average response rate versus email has only a 6% response rate Conclusion SMS Marketing for restaurants has been proven to be highly effective. The sooner you start and the better you promote it, the better your results will be. Text messaging is only growing in usage and popularity every day. Utilize that fact to generate more revenue and customers for your restaurant.

We all understand that text message is a great way to communicate. It allows the message receiver to respond at a time that is convenient for them but still gets the message across. In fact, 98% of all text messages are read and 90% of those are read in 3-minutes or less. Utilize those results for your salon and get better results versus email or print efforts.

It is against regulation to just add your customer’s phone number to your text list without their permission. You can get permission from them from your regular cell phone, emails, in person, etc. A great way to start is just by asking each client as they are getting ready to leave if they’d like to receive appointment reminders and specials to their cellphone. If they say yes, you can give them the opt-in instructions. The opt-in is simply texting your chosen keyword to the five-digit number provided by us. For example, you would say text SALON to 21000 and when the client completes that step, they will automatically be added to your text group. Another great way to gather opt-ins is to put the instructions on all of your printed materials like the back of your business card, postcards, you can print something to place on your stations, social media, email/newsletters, the more places to get your instructions out there, the better your results will be.

A great way to get people to join your text list from printed materials or social media is to offer a special. For example, you could say “Join my text club and receive a 10% off your next visit.” This gives people an incentive to join and once they are in your group, you’ll be able to continue to market to them and get them to come in more frequently for services. *Tip, you can add an expiration date on all of your text message coupon offers.

As with any marketing, you don’t want your messages to be annoying. Send messages that are timely and have real value. Most people will appreciate an appointment reminder, discount offer for a service they use, or an occasional message about a new product or service. There are many text messaging uses but be sensitive to the number of messages you are sending in a month and also the time of day that you are sending the text message. Anyone who is part of your text group can opt-out at any time by replying STOP to the message which is great because it is automated and you won’t have to deal with removing people if they have moved or no longer want to receive the text messages.

We’ve mentioned a few of these throughout this article but here is a list of ways salons can use our text message system to save time and generate more revenue.

It is illegal to just upload a list of numbers without consent but it is easy to get consent and grow your contact list quickly. You can do this by, adding some information and an opt-in box to student forms before the school year starts. Example, at the bottom of the student registration form, add a small section that says, “Receive text alerts from our school and stay informed about tests, holiday schedules, and more. Check this box to join and fill in your phone number or phone numbers that we are allowed to text.” See our example below.

By doing this, you have explicit permission and are sure to have all of the correct numbers to text. This way both parents and the student can all receive the messages if desired. *Tip, when collecting numbers via a form, make sure to ask if the phone number is a Parent number or a Student’s number. This way you can segment the number to the appropriate group if you choose (details on groups to follow).

One of the great features about using text messaging software is the ability to create different groups that you can segment however you’d like. A lot of schools create groups for Students, Parents, and Faculty. This way you can send different messages to each. You can set up as many groups as you’d like at no additional cost.

Your messages can be sent out on demand or scheduled days, weeks, or months in advance. Schedule out messages for all of the things your school knows in advance, holiday schedules, early out dates, test dates, report card dates, dances, whatever you can think of. By setting all of these messages up at once, you can know that they are scheduled and will go out at the time and date you have specified.

There are a vast amount of ways schools and universities and use text message communication to keep your community more informed and involved.

By creating a text list for your church you’ll be able to establish different groups within your church to send different messages to. Create groups for leadership, youth groups, teachers, there are limitless options that are separate from one another. When it’s time to let leadership know what the weekly focus is, create one text message and select your leaders group, press send, and your text will automatically go to all of your leaders within that group. Send your youth pastors their own message about training sessions to keep them engaged and on the right track. Another key difference is that this group messaging is one-to-one meaning, that if you text 50 people and some of those people respond, only you will receive those replies. When you send a group text with your cellphone and people respond, all members of the group receive those replies which can get overwhelming when the group is large or active.

Churches can find many different possibilities for the uses of a group texting platform. One major usage is reminding members of up-and-coming events and items of importance. Churches can remind members of:

Bulk group texting can seem confusing at first but it’s actually really simple once you get started and the results are well worth the slight learning curve.

Below are some simple example messages of how a church could utilize a group SMS messaging service to send to members:

Text message marketing also known as SMS marketing, is a way to send bulk messages to your own unique list. With your customer’s permission, you can add them to your text group or they can text in to join your text group to receive text messages directly from you. You decide what to text them and how often, you can send these messages out on demand, or schedule them out to save time with your marketing messages.

Text messaging is the quickest way to get a message across. 98% of text messages are opened and 90% are opened in 3-minutes or less! This is the perfect tool to get your specials or new product information out to your customers wherever they are in minutes. Relying solely on print, email, or store signage can result in low response rates to your sales since such a low number of those things are seen.

If you really hope to see an increase in sales and in your customer base, it is imperative to take the time and energy to build your text club list. Any retail store or outlet can try out a variety of ways to help increase their number of opt-insPrint up flyers to place around your store. Incentives work the best to gain opt-ins. We all love a little something to sweeten the deal and it gets a lot better results. You can offer a percentage off of their purchase, a small bonus item for free, whatever suits your store the best and this offer can change monthly or however often you would like. (table tents on racks, flyer on the door, flyer in the bathroom) Train your cashiers to offer the incentive at check-out in case the customer has missed the printed materials during their trip. They could say, “I can give you 10% off of your purchase right now if you text into our text club, we’ll send you specials and promotions.” Have the opt-in instructions right by the cashier so it is easy for the customer to complete.

Once you’ve set up your text account you can send messages on demand or schedule them months into the future. It is important to try and measure the success of each of your texts. If some of the texts are seeing better results than the others, consider sending more of that type of text message and cut the ones that aren’t performing. This is something our team is happy to help strategize with you as you continue to grow your text list and try new types of messages.

As you can see, there are so many ways to use text message marketing for retail stores and outlets. Any store owner can try out the benefits of using text messaging for customers and to build clientele and increase sales by setting up a text message marketing campaign.

If you’ve been with It Works for a while, you might have seen a lull in sales, which can happen with any direct sales business. You might already have your established list of customers who are already subscribed to your It Works products sales as loyal customers. However, to be a successful It Works distributor, it is important to keep business thriving. In order to boost sales, it is helpful to employ new It Works marketing ideas and freshen up your business marketing efforts.

If you are really looking to grow your It Works business, one of the best ways to do this is to offer discounts and sales. For example, send your text marketing list a text with the following information: Get 2-FOR-1 Wraps today only! Use promo code: HappyWrapping. OR Get 20 percent off all It Works skin care products during Black Friday sale! These quick, easy SMS marketing messages to your customers are non-invasive, direct to those who already have purchased or want to purchase from you and are effective in helping to generate quick sales.

Staying in regular contact with customers can be a great way to remind them that you are still there and available to sell products. Text message marketing allows you to do this in a new way aside from social media. Oversaturation of Social Media marketing with direct sales companies like It Works happens regularly. Targeting your existing customers with new It Works marketing tips like with text message marketing is a great way to stay in contact with those who have either purchased from you in the past or have expressed an interest in purchasing products. One of the best parts of using Sunnyville marketing plans is that you know that those who opt-in to receive messages from you, willingly signed up to do so. Use this interest to your advantage. Offer deals, text about new promotions, events, etc. This is a great way to draw your customers in and encourage them to buy new products through regular reminders.

Along the previous line of thought, it is important to interact with customers. Checking in with your regulars is all part of keeping them happy and satisfied. However, text marketing plans with Sunnyville offer two-way texting. This is great when your customers need to contact you, ask questions about products, orders, get more info on how to use a product, etc. Two-way text marketing services are just another great marketing tool you can add to your arsenal as a successful It Works distributor.

As previously mentioned, there is an entire world of customers outside of our computers. Attending expos, fairs even going to the grocery store, mall, park, etc. is a great way to meet new customers. Asking people if they’ve heard of That Crazy Wrap Thing is how It Works got its start after all! However, if you are out and about and meet a group of people who might be interested in learning more about your products, but you aren’t necessarily comfortable giving them your personal social media info or cell phone number, giving them a text code to your text marketing line is another great alternative. This is when business cards come in handy. Keep your short code on your business card with the the number they can text into to opt-in to your text marketing line to receive information about products, alerts, your website information and more.

If you are new to using text message marketing, it can be confusing to know where to start. Here are a few ideas to consider if you are wanting to try out text message marketing for your event, venue or concert.

Before you can begin using text message marketing, you have to know how to bring in potential customers to opt-in. In addition to spreading the word about text message options to reach out to your customers through your other marketing efforts, you can incentivize customers to sign up by offering discounts, special sales and giveaways through text message marketing to help build your opt-in list.

As you can see, text message marketing for events, venues, concerts and bands can be a great and easy way to increase sales, build a customer base and reach out to potential new customers. There are so many ways to use a text message marketing service like what is offered here through Sunnyville. The direct marketing technique is effective for a variety of businesses and services.

Because a college or university isn’t just an institution of higher learning and it’s not just a business, there are even more ways one can use text messaging technology, to advertise, notify and inform. College administrators, those in charge of student life, safety and campus happenings can utilize text message marketing to inform students and other teachers, staff and faculty about upcoming campus events, student activities, changes in schedules, holiday information, campus closures, safety issues and so much more! In addition, college clubs, sororities, fraternities, college book stores, and any other campus organization should take advantage of the ease of use SMS marketing technology provides to inform classmates about upcoming events, promotions, rush week activities, student elections, fundraisers, recruitment activities, etc.

Text messaging for universities and colleges can be extremely effective, especially given the demographic. This generation of students has grown up knowing and using text messaging as a primary source of communication. Receiving deals, coupons, information, alerts and more is a great way to reach out to those who use text messaging so regularly. With an almost 100 percent open rate, you can be sure the texts are being read by those who need the information.

To begin a successful SMS marketing campaign, the most important part is get opt-ins to your subscriber list. This is when your social media outreach can be really helpful in reaching out to your already-existing customer base, which can extend to friends and family of theirs. The more people you reach, the more people they reach, which only bodes well for your business. Table Top Tent ads on each table, fliers in the bathroom stalls, info on customer receipts and more are also effective ways to remind people to subscribe to your text message list. And don’t forget the power of word of mouth! Your employees should remind each of their patrons to subscribe. It’s easy for an individual to whip out their phone and punch in your special keyword and opt-in on the spot. It can’t hurt to provide an initial discount for those first-time subscribers: “Receive a FREE drink by opting in to our text-message marketing campaign! Text LIGHTS to 90407 to subscribe now!”

After gathering opt-ins, and continuing to build that list, it is important to establish how you plan to use SMS marketing for your nightclub or bar. Will it be a once-per week campaign? Would you prefer to only promote special events and happenings at your bar? Depending on the type of return you are looking for, you can set up your text message marketing campaigns through Sunnyville to do just that! Use your marketing know-how to choose the most effective times of day to send the message. The return rate can depend a lot on the value of the offer. Be sure you aren’t undercutting your profits by giving too much away in your offers. However, failure to send valuable messages to your customers can also result in ineffective campaigns. Test out your marketing. Try a variety of campaigns, time frames and more to see what yields the best results for your particular customer base. Try coupon offers, or simply notify your customers about an upcoming event. There are so many methods and combinations of text message marketing ideas that can be used to successfully advertise your business.

As you can see, SMS Message Marketing for Nightclubs and Bars offers any business owner a fun and easy way to reach out to customers directly. Many huge businesses have found success in using text message marketing. Sign up today to find out how SMS marketing can benefit you and your growing business!

Many non-profit organizations periodically hold fundraiser events to get money for a special project, to help with operating costs, or to fund a special event. The success of the fundraiser lies in how many people you can reach and how easy you make if for them to donate. SMS messaging makes is very easy for people to donate to non-profits, let’s take a look at how it works. First, you need to select a text marketing provider and signup for a unique keyword on their shortcode (a shortened phone number the messages are sent from). You will then tell people to “Text Donate to 77948 to help local kids in need”, in this example donate is the chosen keyword and 77948 is the phone number they text it to. Create an autoresponder message that will gives a direct link to a page where they can donate, this message is sent every time someone texts the keyword to the shortcode. Autoresponder messages are limited to 160 characters so we recommend using a URL shortner (such as goo.gl or bit.ly) and include that with a message that says something like, “Thank you for your interest in helping XYZ charity with this special project, click the link to donate now.” To gain permission to text people in the future about other fundraisers for your non-profit, asking for volunteers, or about special events in your area, they will also need to receive a legal default message. This message will say “You have opted to receive alerts from XYZ company. Up to X messages per month. Reply Help for help or STOP to cancel. Msg/data rates may apply.” By sending this message you will be constantly building a contact list of people that have interacted with your charity or organization and that have agreed to receive text messages from you. With Sunnyville the legal default can be combined with your unique autoresponder message using a feature called Optional Tagline, as long as the entire message does not exceed 160 characters.

After building a list of subscribers for your non-profit you will have the ability to login to your account and send messages to your contacts. Perhaps you have a special holiday event coming up and need help gathering supplies, serving meals, or helping with cleanup. If you have a list of phone numbers of 200 people in your area that has worked with your charity before, imagine how great it would be to type up a short message requesting help and have that message delivered to the personal cell phone number of those contacts within a few minutes. The message can contain a link to your website where they can sign up or get more information or you can include a phone number they can call, etc. During the holidays and winter months most shelters and food banks are in desperate need of volunteers and additional supplies. An sms message is the perfect way to get in touch with people that are interested in helping your organization.

Use your sms service to send project or event updates. Again, just have individuals text the keyword to the shortcode. You can set up different keywords or use the free group option to categorize contacts so that you are only texting people involved in a specific event. Create a separate group for volunteers directly working on the project and another for community members that you want to remind about date, time, and other event details. With Sunnyville you can have unlimited groups so you can create a group for your direct staff, specific departments within the organizations, or any other criteria you choose to create a group for. Every time you create a message you select who the message will go to. Select a group, or several groups, all contacts, or all contacts that are not in a group.

The keyword is critical because it facilitates all of your opt-ins, this initial opt-in is required before you will be able to send a message to anyone. The laws regarding text marketing are very strict in relation to permission. You cannot load a list of phone numbers and start texting them right away, regardless of whether or not they are your current customers. Specific permission for text messaging has to be received from each individual phone number, the easiest way to do this is to request they text the keyword to the shortcode (e.g. “Text repairs to 77948“). By doing this they are giving that explicit permission and their phone number will be automatically added to your contact list. Once you have started getting some opt-ins you will want to decide what type of sms marketing messages you want to send. Do you want to tell customers about special deals you are offering or a new service you have added, or do you simply want to use the service to remind customers about an upcoming appointment and let them know when a job is finished?

The first tip, and basis of any text marketing campaign, is getting your clients to opt-in. The mobile opt-in gives you the required permission to be able to text them in the future. Offer some kind of incentive at your gym: a discount, free service, or free item; this is a very effective way of getting clients to opt-in. The opt-in process is very simple; advertise your keyword and shortcode along with the incentive by saying something like “Text fitness to 77948 for a chance to win a free 3 month membership” This type of gym or fitness center incentive would be used to draw in new clientele. For current customers you might give away a free massage or tanning session or offer a discount off of merchandise, personal training sessions, or other products or features.

Text marketing tip for gyms number two is that you need to make every message personal to the individual gym clients receiving the message. You can create groups that are specific to the customer’s interests. For instance you might have a group for mom’s with kids taking swim lessons, gymnastics, or other classes, another group might be for spin class participants or other popular group fitness classes. If you have a supplement shop you may want a separate group for the members that shop there. By using the different demographics you can send targeted messages that are applicable to the individual. Instead of sending a message to 500 people about a special on tanning sessions when there are really only 100 of them that regularly use the service. With Sunnyville groups are free and unlimited and easy to use. Each group will have a unique extension and you can manually add people to a group, after they have opted in, or have them opt-in directly to the group by texting the keyword a period and the extension (e.g. fitness.1) to the shortcode 77948. Check out this article to learn more about how to create a group for your text marketing campaign.

The third fitness center text marketing tip is to make sure you pay attention to the timing when you are sending out fitness center reminders or gym advertisements. If you have a 6:00 am spin class and the class members want a reminder text at 5:30 am (to wake them up and get them out of bed) then great, send it to that group. But in general you don’t want to send messages really early or really late. People will get annoyed and opt-out very quickly. Also be sensitive about the number of messages you send. If you send too many messages, especially if they are general and often not applicable to the recipient, this can also result in a lot of opt-outs. But don’t be afraid to send a message every couple of weeks at a minimum, more often during special events or promotional periods. You really want to take advantage of text marketing because it is a direct line into the hands of customers you know are interested in your message. The key is to get creative with your messages, keep your gym promotions interactive and valuable. Whether you are getting members to send referrals, using giveaways or activities to keep people coming back, or whatever it may be. The more they are involved and invested in the community atmosphere of the fitness center the more loyal they will be to your business. Keep it fun and exciting using text message marketing.

To get started you will need to gather opt-ins, these are people in your area that are interested in receiving messages from your business. Gaining this consent is typically very easy; when you signup you will choose a keyword, advertise the keyword and shortcode with some kind of incentive and invite people to opt-in. This can be as simple as “Text Bubbles to 77948 to get a free upgrade on your next wash.” By offering them something it gives them that incentive to send the initial opt-in text. When that first text is received the system will automatically capture the phone number and add them to your contact database. Each opt-in will immediately receive a legal default message letting them know they have opted to receive messages from your company, it gives an approximate number of messages per month you plan to send as well as instructions for texting help for help and stop to cancel. This message will be followed by your unique autoresponder message that can say something like, “Thank you for joining our texting list. Show this text to receive a free upgrade on your next wash. Offer expires in 1 week.” Advertise your keyword and short code on all printed advertising, websites, social media sites, at your car wash locations, or anywhere that potential clients will see the invitation to opt-in.

Once you have clients that have opted in you can send them messages at anytime. You don’t want to send them so frequently that they become annoying but simple reminders like “Salt eats the paint on your car, come in today or tomorrow for $1 off any wash” or “The forecast shows sunny skies for the next 7 days! Come in today and try out our new touch-free wash”. You don’t have to offer a discount every single time, sometimes just reminding them they need a wash and that you are the best option is enough to keep your business name at the front of their mind and get them thinking about the need to wash their car.

An easy way to get additional opt-ins is to do a giveaway. You can do something as simple as a chance to win a free premium car wash. To do this you would setup a group and create an extension, such as the word win, and then instruct people to “Text Bubbles.win to 77948 for a chance to win a FREE premium car wash.” This will copy all opt-ins to a separate group. At the end of the contest period you can do a random select from that group and choose how many numbers you want to receive the winning text. That text will let them know they’ve won the free car wash and tell them how to redeem it. As you can see, there are many different options for using text message marketing to advertise you car wash. Statistics show that the redemption rate on mobile coupons is much higher than any other type of coupon. Most people have their cell phones on them at all times and will read your text message within a matter of minutes after you send it. The coupon remains on their phone so they don’t have to remember to bring it with them and they can use it at the time that is most convenient for them.

Let’s say you choose tanning as your keyword. You would then advertise saying “Text Tanning to 77948 for a buy one get one free session” or whatever type of incentive you want to offer. By them texting the keyword in you are receiving their permission to text them in the future. Each person will receive a legal default message immediately following the opt-in. This message gives your business name, an approximate number of messages you plan to send in a month, and the legal instructions of text help for help, stop to cancel, and message and data rates may apply. The default message will be followed by your own unique autoresponder message, which can give them instructions on how to redeem the offer you were advertising. If you didn’t offer an incentive but told them to text for appointment reminders, updates, future specials, etc., you can combine those two messages. This would still include the legal information but you customize the first part of the message with your business name and a personal message, something like “Thanks for joining our text list. You’ve requested mobile reminders from The Med Spa.” Then, the frequency and text help for help, stop to cancel. Msg & Data rates may apply will be added to the end of the message. The entire message has to stay at or below 160 characters.

Med spa appointment reminders can be sent on a one by one basis with the persons name and exact appt time or to a group as a general daily or weekly reminder. How you want to handle this will depend on the number of reminders you need to send and how much time you want to take sending the reminders. Creating a template as a saved message will make it easy to quickly load the message individually and then add in the name, date, and time. Another option is to add the numbers that have an appointment that day, or week, and sending a more generic reminder that says “This is a reminder about your appointment at the Med Spa this week. If you have questions or need to change your appt call 888-555-1212” or have a message go to the group. Keep in mind every text is limited to a total 160 characters with the last 15 being reserved for the legally required “Stop to cancel” at the end of the message.

Promotions can be used to draw in new customers or invite previous customers back. You may choose to do different promotions for different advertising. For example, for those people that are already customers or that have opted in to your campaign, you might want to target with a promotion on the same service or a complimentary service to what they have used before. Whereas a general advertisement might be more generic like “Save 20% on any service” or “Buy one laser treatment area and get a second area free”.

Use mobile marketing to do a med spa loyalty program. This could be done by having clients send a specific word each time they buy one qualifying service and then after the 5th or 10th, or whatever number you specify, they will get a free treatment or service. Check out how to setup groups for an idea on how to do this without buying a lot of extra keywords.

Use your mobile marketing campaign to send out discount offers to med spa clients that haven’t been in for a while. When finances get tight people will often stop the luxury treatments out of necessity. A gentle reminder of what they are missing and offering it to them at a discount could be the perfect incentive to get them to schedule their next visit. With mobile marketing the sky is the limit. You can run contests or polls, offer giveaways or other incentives to get the initial opt-ins and then use the text message to keep your brand fresh in their mind.

A popular option for car dealerships is to use the text for info feature. Text for info differs from the regular text marketing campaigns in the sense that you are not gathering permission to text people in the future. People are texting in to get one-time information from you. This option is perfect if you want people to be able to walk on the lot and text in a keyword to get information about a particular car on the lot. Let’s take a look at how this would work. If you choose the keyword auto then you could set up a group for each individual car and update the information as it sells or you move it from the lot. This article tells you how to set up groups. Each group can have a unique autoresponder message set up that will be returned to the recipient within seconds. When you create the groups you will assign an extension to each one, this could be a letter or number – something simple that will be easy for people to text in. If you assign the first group an extension of 1 you would then put signage on a car saying text Auto.1 to 77948 for more information on this car. You can then return a short message with details about the car. Using text for info on your text message marketing campaign doesn’t give you permission to text them in the future so all ‘send message’ features will be turned off on the account, the phone number is recorded, however, and you could have someone calling those leads that request info on a particular car to see if they have questions or would like to test-drive the car.

Another way to use text message marketing is to send out text promotions for specials at your car dealership. Remember that a text for info campaign does not establish permission for you to text them in the future so if you want to use the service to text out promotions or service appointment reminders you will need to establish that permission through a regular text marketing campaign. With a regular text marketing account a legal default message is sent immediately following the opt-in, letting them know they have opted to receive messages from your company. Recipients only get that message one time and as long as they do not opt-out of the campaign you have the rights to text them as often as you would like to. Every time anyone texts your keyword to the shortcode their phone number will be added to your contact list. You can create separate groups if you want to have a group for staff and another for current customers that are using your service department, or even groups for those interested in a particular car brand; the options are limitless. Using groups is particularly helpful if you want to be able to send out notices to a specific group. An example might be sending a reminder to the staff that all sales people need to arrive early for a special event, or a message about a service discount or promotion to owners that will be needing to schedule a maintenance appointment. Your account will also have a master list of all phone numbers so you can send a message to everyone if you are having a big Labor Day or Memorial Day sale or other special event. When scheduling the message you can choose certain groups or even all numbers that are not in a group (this would be good if you just have one group that is only employees and you don’t want to send the promotional text to them.) As you can see, there are many different ways you can use text message marketing for your car dealership.

Mobile coupon statistics show that the response rate is 10 times that of print coupons. Combine these statistics with the fact that the average person checks their phone 150 times a day and then ask yourself how can my insurance agency benefit from text marketing. As an insurance agent there are a lot of ways you can use mobile marketing to increase your customer base and to keep in touch with your current customers. In this article we will look at the 4 steps insurance agents are using mobile marketing to increase business.

Gaining new insurance customers via SMS is how you make more money. Think about what you can offer that will grab their attention and get them talking to you. Can you offer the lowest rates on home insurance? Will you give them a free quote to lower their current insurance rates? Do you offer specials for good students, muti-line, or good drivers? Everyone wants to save money. In your current advertising add a line that says “Text Quote to 77948 to reduce your insurance bill today!” (In this example Quote is the keyword, you choose your own unique keyword) Make the ad relevant to the demographic that will see it and then follow up with each individual to see how you can meet their insurance needs.

Individual messages can be used to send a very specific reminder to insurance clients. You may want to send a message when a payment is due, new policy options are available, or if you need a client to contact the office directly about a claim or other issue. You can also shoot out a quick text message asking them to give you a call to discuss something on the account. To send an individual message just click on Contacts (Search) and then enter the name or phone number and click Search Now. Next to the the phone number you will see three icons. The middle icon looks like a closed envelope and is the Send Message icon. Click this icon and type your message. You can send it out immediately or schedule it for a later time. Be sure to include your name or agency name so they know who the message is from and include the best way for them to contact you. If possible, personalize individual messages with the customer’s name. For example, “Hi Jenny, this is John at XYZ I noticed we could save you money on the insurance on your 2010 Honda Accord. Call me at 123-456-7890 at your convenience.”

Another option is to send a text message to a group of people. Perhaps you want to send a special offer to a specific demographic, or you want to send a payment reminder to everyone that has a payment due that week, or maybe one of your agents has left the company and you want to let his/her clients know who will be taking over management of their account. Whatever type of message you are sending, the group option will let you choose any number of recipients and then send a message to all of them at the same time. To send a message to a specific group just go to the Send Message page; in the Choose Recipients box check mark the groups that you want the message to go to. You will see a total number of contacts that are in those groups listed below. Type your message in the box to the right and then send your message immediately or schedule it for later the same day.

A third option is to send a text message to all insurance clients that have opted into your campaign. This is a great option if you have some news or promotion that you want to make all clients aware of. Maybe you are offering a new type of coverage or your office has moved and you want everyone to be aware of the new location. Whatever the message is, a text blast is the fastest way to get that message to all of your clients within a matter of minutes. To send a text blast to all clients just go to the Send Message page and select All Contacts in the Choose Recipient box. Then type your message and send it immediately or schedule it to go out later the same day.

Scheduling messages for a future date can be done for any of the above options. The Scheduler will allow you to select a group, or all contacts, to schedule a message to. These messages can be scheduled as a one time event or as a recurring option. You can have numerous mobile marketing messages scheduled to go out; in fact, you can schedule all your messages for the whole month or even multiple months. The messages will be queued the morning of delivery and will pull the current contact list at that time. To schedule a message for a future date for an individual contact you will need to go to the Contact Search and schedule it through the Send Message icon, as detailed in the Individual Messages section above. You will not be able to schedule individual messages through the scheduler. Remember that all clients must opt-in before you will be able to send them any message. Invite people to opt-in by having them text the keyword you choose to our shortcode 77948. If you want to group your contacts you can create the groups ahead of time and give the specific details required for them to be added directly to a group. To be added to a group directly they just need to opt-in using the format keyword.keywordExtension. For example, if your keyword is insurance and you choose 1 as the group extension you will then have clients text insurance.1 to 77948 to be added to that specific group. You can also manually move a number into a group after the optin. Check out our video tutorials to see an example of creating groups.

The first thing you have to do is collect phone numbers. It is really easy to collect the phone number using our text marketing software. Upon signup you will choose a keyword, for example if the dentist’s name is Dr. Brown maybe you’ll choose Brown as the keyword. To collect your patients phone number and add it to your contact list you need to instruct the patient to text the keyword “Brown” to the short code 77948 (the shortened phone number that we use for our text marketing platform). You can also have them send their name with the keyword, if you plan to personalize the messages or want to be able to easily find their number by searching a name. Make sure you set up your inbox to receive messages before having them text in their name with the keyword.

There are different options for sending your message. You can send one message to everyone that has an appointment the following day by selecting those numbers and putting them in a group. After you have the numbers in the group just go to send message and select the group. This message could contain a generic reminder saying something like “You have a dentist appointment with Dr. Brown tomorrow. Please call us at 888-555-1212 if you need to reschedule or have any questions”. If you want to send a more personalized reminder you can save a template with the basic outline of the message and then manually type in the person’s name and exact appointment time.

You will also have the option of scheduling appointment reminders for days or weeks in advance. Our scheduler makes it very easy to select a group of contacts and schedule a date and time for a message to go out. Having your secretary schedule the reminders for the next week every Friday afternoon could be a simple and effective way of managing the time it takes to make sure every client is reminded of their specific dental appointment. The contact group will load the day the message sends so you can edit the group at anytime prior to that, if an appointment is cancelled or changed.

You can also use the text messaging system to send out notices about appointments that open up. If you keep a list of people that are waiting to get in, or that would like to know if an earlier appointment becomes available, when you have someone cancel you can quickly send a message to that group of people and let them know that an appointment is available and have them call to schedule it.