It is very easy, especially if someone is new to mobile marketing, to over-saturate subscribers with marketing efforts. While it is good to be enthusiastic about building a business and customer base, it proves to be far more detrimental to the business to over-saturate the customers. In mobile marketing regulations, it is required to disclose the message frequency to subscribers when they opt-in. The message frequency tells subscribers how many messages they can expect to receive from  the business in a given amount of time (usually expressed in messages per month). This frequency sets the expectations for your subscribers and obviously you do not want to exceed these expectations. If you declare 10 messages per month, stay at 10 messages per month.

Keep the Business Fresh on the Mind

People are naturally inclined to forget. Keeping the business fresh on the mind of the consumers is key in any marketing effort. To keep it fresh, a business must place the offers in front of the consumer often but not too often. Also, a variety of different offers will helps in keeping a consumer interested in patronizing a business. Speaking from experience, a consumer will get very bored if the same offers are coming in every week from a business. Marketing is a constant effort to keep the consumer happy and excited about patronizing the business. Ineffective content in a message will kill the interest of the subscriber as well. Carefully consider what to offer in these messages in order to keep the subscriber/consumer happy.

The Happy Medium

Finally we’ve arrived at defining the happy medium for how many text messages per month should be sent from a mobile marketing campaign. It needs to be re-iterated that message frequency depends entirely upon what type of business it is and what is being offered. The types of messages being sent and the kinds of offers being promoted vary greatly between businesses and will define sending x number of messages as a blatant over-saturation, a well-balanced happy medium, or a pointless marketing effort. However, with that being said, our experience here at Sunnyville has shown that 1 message per week tends to be a good happy medium for text message marketing. It keeps the business fresh on the mind, while not over-saturating them. Now for a very simple formula for determining your business’s happy medium. With the right control panel, a business using text marketing will be able to track the number of opt-outs that have come as a result of their campaign. Simply put, if the ratio of opt-outs to the number of total subscribers is high (20% or higher), you are over-saturating your subscribers.

It is our hope that this article will provide businesses with a good foundation for determining the message frequency in a mobile marketing campaign. To re-iterate, it is highly dependent upon the business and the type of messages they send out, so determine carefully what will work best for the particular business.

Planning always comes first and do not discount a thorough planning session before beginning your mobile marketing campaign. There are 2 major items of importance you must define before you go looking for a mobile marketing company to use.

The first is discovering who your target audience is and brainstorming how you could go about marketing to this target audience. Ask yourself, “What kind of value can I offer to this target audience that will interest them in my marketing efforts?” Knowing this before hand will help you in selecting a mobile marketing company to fit your needs.

Once you have discovered your target audience and defined a marketing strategy for that target audience, you then need to define your advertising frequency. Advertising frequency is determining how many times per month you plan on sending your text messages to your target audience.

Selecting a Reputable Text Message Marketing Company

Advertise, Advertise, Advertise

Now that your campaign has been created and set-up, it is time to advertise. Mobile marketing does not necessarily replace your other marketing efforts such as print, advertising, or radio commercials. Rather, it utilizes your existing advertising to promote it. The key to advertising your mobile marketing campaign is to advertise by as many different means as possible. When you communicate your call-to-action in these different places, more of your potential subscribers will be exposed to your marketing efforts and be more likely to opt-in to receive your text messages. Look for our next article in this “How-To” series to explain the process of advertising a mobile marketing campaign more in depth.

Keep Subscribers Interest

Subscribers provide their consent for text messages in exchange for something of value. The value is contained within the actual messages themselves and subscribers need to continually be aware of the value of the messages they are receiving. By keeping the interest of the subscriber, they will be more likely to remain a part of your subscriber list to receive messages from you. Marketing is a constant effort to keep the consumer happy and mobile marketing is no exception. After starting a mobile marketing campaign, if you continue to provide value to your consumers, you can expect long-term customer loyalty to be the product. Consumers are happy and you’ll be happy when they patronize your business because of the value they see in your new mobile marketing campaign.

How To Gather Mobile Marketing Subscribers

The last article in this series explained the need for proper advertising of a mobile marketing campaign. We won’t say anything further on advertising. We will discuss the various methods of gathering subscribers and techniques you could use to implement them.

The Mobile Opt-In

In our previous article, we discussed much about the call-to-action and its importance in enticing subscribers to opt-in. The result of an effective call-to-action is mobile opt-ins. A mobile opt-in is performed when a subscriber responds to a call-to-action by texting a word (known as a “keyword”) to a specific text number you choose for your campaign. This, in-turn, opts them in to the specific mobile marketing campaign they were exposed to by the call-to-action. Mobile opt-ins are the easiest and most effective form of gathering subscribers because it requires little effort on the part of subscribers and business alike. Mobile opt-ins require only a “single opt-in” which means that once a subscriber opts-in via their mobile phone, they have exchanged their consent for the messages they will receive. They do not need to confirm anything further to receive messages. This is different for other forms of opting-in that are discussed later in this article.

Use Varied Text Message Campaigns

There are different types of mobile campaigns that a business can run in order to entice subscribers to opt-in. Examples of such campaigns are:

• Prizes/Text-to-Win
• Text Voting
• Mobile Coupons
• Informational Campaigns

The text-to-win campaign provides great incentive for subscribers to opt-in. Sunnyville has just recently released a feature for selecting random numbers to pick as winners for a text-to-win campaign. Through the right call-to-action, subscribers will be excited to join a mobile marketing campaign in hopes of winning a prize for doing so.

Text voting invites subscribers to share their opinions with the business owner and provide feedback for a variety of different things a business owner may ask for. Combining a text voting campaign with offering a coupon for doing so gives further incentive for a person to opt-in as well as share their opinion/feedback.

Mobile coupons are discussed multiple times throughout this and many of our other articles on mobile marketing. Coupons play a large role in enticing people to opt-in and participate in your mobile campaigns. Just by reading this article, I’m sure you have noticed the number of references we have made to utilizing mobile coupons as a method to drive your mobile campaign. Mobile coupons will be discussed in greater detail in a later article.

Informational campaigns are just as they sound, informational. They provide information to subscribers who opt-in. Examples of informational campaign are real estate and automotive dealerships using the text platform to send information about their listings or cars for sale.

Existing Website

Having multiple methods of opting in will increase the likely hood of subscribers joining your texting campaign. One such method is allowing subscribers to opt-in via the web. sunnyville has a feature known as a “website widget” that is essentially a website form that collects a subscriber’s name and phone number and opts them into the service upon submission of the form, a very effective way to collect subscribers who frequent your web pages. Opting-in through a web interface, such as a website widget, requires something known as a “double opt-in”. We discussed what “single opt-ins” are in the preceding paragraphs, and a double opt-in is just as it sounds. The Mobile Marketing Association’s document on Consumer Best Practices states:

…However, when opt-in occurs via the web or other non-mobile point of origination, the content provider must obtain verification that the subscriber is in possession of the handset being opted-in to the service.

This is known as a double opt-in. Double opt-ins are accomplished by a subscriber opting to receive messages, an auto-reply message coming back to them that instructs subscribers to reply “YES” to the message to confirm their opt-in, and a subscriber replying with the “YES”.

Refer-A-Friend Program

One of the best ways to spread news of your mobile marketing campaign is by word of mouth. Ask your current subscribers to forward a message to friends, asking
their friends to opt-in. Give incentive, such as a coupon or offer, as a reason to send it. Instruct the current subscribers to have their friends who opt-in to forward the phone number of the friend who referred them. This way, you can track how many referrals each of your subscribers have given you and reward them accordingly.

Paper-Based Consent Forms

In addition to opt-ins from a mobile device and the web, a subscriber may also opt-in through a paper-based consent forms. This form of opting-in carries several different regulations that all relate back to permission based mobile marketing. When collecting opt-ins through a paper-based consent form, 2 things must be made known to the subscriber:

1. They must be made aware that they will receive text messages. This must be explicitly declared to them. A declaration of what the program is including what they will be receiving (i.e. you will receive coupons)
2. On the consent form, there must also be information about opting out (i.e. STOP to cancel), a way to receive additional information (i.e. HELP for help), and the message frequency (e.g. 6 messages per month).
3. A URL/Phone #/E-mail that will link subscribers to obtaining the terms and conditions and privacy policy of the business.
4. They must understand that message and data rates may apply. This way, if they do not have a text messaging plan with their wireless subscriber, they are made aware that they could face additional carrier charges for sending or receiving text messages

Once they are made aware of, and have consented to the above information, it’s best to have them sign off on it. Keep this information with you for proof that the people have consented to receive text messages. Most text message marketing platforms will have means to import a list of phone numbers who have consented through these paper-based consent forms. From TXT180’s experience, it is best to opt the subscribers into the service soon after they have given their consent through a paper-based form. People easily forget and if you put off adding the contacts to the system until later, most people will forget they had opted to receive those messages. This usually leads to a high number of opt-outs.

We’ve seen many different methods of gathering subscribers and the more options you have, the better. By combining your advertising and methods of gathering subscribers, you will see your subscriber-base grow. In following articles, we will have additional information about what to do after you have grown your subscriber base.

How To Create a Mobile-Coupon Campaign

The Purpose of Coupons

If you look up “coupon” in the dictionary, you are likely to read a definition that has something to do with a detachable portion of a print advertising that can be redeemed for obtaining a discount for a service or product. Now that we have crossed the mobile threshold and have seen the popularity of mobile as a means of communication, coupons aren’t detachable and are not restricted to print advertising. Their underlying purpose remains the same. Coupons are used to drive people to patronize a business and spend their money there. This should always be kept in mind when running a mobile marketing campaign. Gathering subscribers is great, but if none of those subscribers convert your text messaging offers into sales then a large subscriber base will be useless.

Using Mobile Coupons with Auto-Responders and a Call-to-Action

Using auto-responders is a great way to run a mobile coupon campaign. Your call to action will encourage them to opt-in to receive your mobile coupon. Once they do, the auto-responder will trigger and send a message that can contain a mobile coupon. Once the person has opted-in, additional messages can be sent to them with additional coupons to drive them towards your business and keep them coming back.

Forming Effective Coupon Campaigns

What you offer with your coupons will determine whether or not your advertising is wasted or not. Coupons can go both ways by either not generating revenue, or by not peaking the interest of the consumer. To form an effective coupon, you must stay within the gray area of making sure the coupon is effective for the business to make money, but also provides a good incentive for the consumer. A couple of “rules of thumb” to keep in mind when forming an effective coupon campaign:

1. Don’t just give away your product. Yes, it is good to provide great incentive for people to opt-in by giving away something for free, however this isn’t making the business any revenue and the consumer is likely to just redeem the free coupon and nothing more. Combine your coupon offer with purchase of some other product that will bring you revenue.

2. If time is a factor, be sure to send your coupons at the appropriate times to increase likelihood of coupon redemption and conversion. For example, a restaurant who uses text marketing could formulate a coupon to be sent out with a lunch offer of 1/2 off an entree with the purchase of an entree. A strategic time to send those messages to the subscribers would be about an hour before lunch time. This is when people are thinking about what to have for lunch and once those coupons reach them, they can then make up their mind to patronize the restaurant.

3. Continue providing value to your customers by making your coupons valuable and worth the subscriber’s time. As mentioned in previous articles, marketing is a constant effort of keeping consumers happy and excited about patronizing a business. It has also been mentioned in a previous article titled Permission Based Mobile Marketing – The What, the How, and the Benefits that consumers essentially trade their consent to receive something of value. For them to trade their consent, make sure the messages are of value.

Mobile coupon campaigns don’t require much as far as sending the messages out. The work and effort required for a mobile coupon campaign is making sure what you are sending to them is of value to both you and the consumer. Therein lies the challenge of marketing. Hopefully this article will have given you a basis for beginning your own mobile coupon campaign. .

How To Increase Traffic on a Slow Day Using Mobile Marketing

 Text message marketing can provide a very timely increase to the traffic of your business on a slow day. There is 1 simple trick you can use to increase your traffic on a slow day using mobile marketing and, like most other text marketing campaigns, involves providing incentive to your customers.

The Right Time, Right Offer

I’d say the vast majority of cell phone users have their phones within arms length at all times. Judging by my own cell phone habits, I have it everywhere I go and rely on it for so many things that I can’t imagine what it would be like without a mobile phone. Because of this trend of cell users, mobile marketing can get your message to the customer fast with high readability rates because cell phones are so accessible now with people keeping their phones with them at all times. A restaurant looking to increase slow day traffic can send the message through their text message marketing platform at a time when people are thinking about where to eat that day. By combining this timing with the right offer, you’ll surely attract more customers to your business on that slow day.

Conclusion

Getting to your customers at the right time, with the right offer can increase your effectiveness in bringing in business. Mobile marketing provides that ability in a timely manner which will increase the likelihood of increasing your traffic on a slow day.

How To Use Giveaways to Get Subscribers

Sweepstakes, Contests, and Lotteries

People often mistake what a giveaway is classified as. There are 3 main types of giveaways: sweepstakes, contests, and lotteries. We felt it important to discuss the differences of these classes of giveaways, because there are different regulations in place for each.

We’ll begin by defining a lottery. In order for a giveaway to be considered a lottery, it contains the following 3 elements:

• Prizes
• Winners chosen by chance
• Consideration

Consideration means that by purchasing something, such as an additional lottery ticket, you have a better chance of winning. Because a lottery is defined by these 3 elements, a legitimate contest or sweepstakes must only contain at most 2 of the above defined elements. Sweepstakes and contests are often interchanged, but by their definition, they are not the same.

Legitimate sweepstakes are giveaways involving a prize that is won by chance and doesn’t require a purchase in order to enter.

Legitimate contests are giveaways involving a prize that is won by an element of skill (such as answering a trivia question). Because it is not chosen by chance, a legitimate contest can legally charge a fee for entry.

Laws and regulations regarding sweepstakes, contests, and lotteries are dependent upon state laws. Be sure to know an understand the regulations that your state has in place for these giveaways.

Giveaways on our Platform

We have recently released the ability to do a text-to-win from our control panel. This text-to-win area of our control panel will randomly select a number of contacts from a subscriber database to select as winners of a text-to-win. Giveaways are a great way of providing incentive to a subscriber to opt-in to a subscriber list. Great examples of giveaways can include cruises, electronics, gift cards, etc. Your call-to-action will specifically state what the subscriber can expect when they go to subscribe. Examples of such could be:

Text winner to 877-989-8180 to enter in for a chance to win a free iPad 2!

Very simple, yet to the point. People will be apt to subscribe to your texting list for the chance to win an iPad 2. There are state regulations that may require you to disclose that there is no purchase necessary to enter, purchasing product will not increase the chances of winning, and disclosing the odds of winning, beginning, and ending of the sweepstakes.

Text-to-win giveaways are great ways to increase a subscriber base and interest of your customers. Pick the right offer and start watching your customer base build today!

How To Use a Text 4 Info Text Marketing Account

What is a Text for Info Account?

A text for info account is wholly an information-only account, but with one condition. Text for info accounts can only send messages via the auto-responder and have all send message capabilities disabled, save the ability to set up an auto-responder message. Text for info accounts, because they are strictly informational and not recurring, do not require any of the legal information for message compliance such as STOP to cancel, Msg&Data rates may apply, etc. 

Who Uses Text for Info Accounts?

You may be wondering why on earth anyone would want to use a text for info account if you can’t send any messages from it. Text for info accounts can be very useful when understood and applied properly. In our experience, the two niches that text for info accounts benefit the greatest are automotive dealerships and real estate.

Automotive Dealership

Text message marketing for automotive dealerships has been discussed briefly in previous articles, and we won’t go into great depth about it here. There are some great applications of text for info with dealerships, however.

More often than not, potential buyers of automobiles will avoid communication with the salesmen by visiting the car lot after the hours of the dealership. Because of this, many leads could potentially be lost in the after-hours of auto shopping. Automotive dealerships using a text messaging platform can take advantage of gathering leads from those after-hours shoppers. By using a text fro info account, an auto-dealer could provide informational texts to after-hours shoppers who text in to receive information about a particular car. The auto-dealership will benefit from this by gaining the phone number information of those who text in, providing an instant lead generation.

Real Estate

Text message marketing for real estate, just like automotive dealerships, has already been discussed in full in a previous article. Much like the auto-dealerships, a real estate agent can benefit from an instant lead generation for their properties. The potential buyers of a property can also benefit from this by getting instant information about a property when the agent isn’t around.

Conclusion

Text for info accounts have their place in the text messaging world. When doing a strictly informational campaign, it provides a full 160 characters of information, giving instant information to subscribers and businesses using it.

Text Message Marketing Decoded

Why Should You Use Mobile Marketing?

Ah yes, the all-important question of why. With so many different forms of marketing available, why would a company want to choose mobile marketing over other traditional forms of marketing? Statistics show the superiority of text message marketing over marketing efforts such as e-mail, print, radio/TV, and direct marketing. Business owners should be aware of both return on investment (ROI) and conversion.

ROI- measures the efficiency of your investments for marketing.

Conversion- Consumers that convert advertising to a sale.

The ROI and conversion rates or mobile marketing are far higher than its competition. With e-mail and print advertising in the single-digit percentiles, mobile marketing soars into the 30-60 percentile range. Text message marketing is also notorious for its great delivery time frame and readability rates. Who doesn’t read their text messages? It just makes sense.

The Text Marketing Process and Common Terms

In order to understand the benefits of mobile marketing, one must understand the process. Text message marketing uses other forms of advertising to promote it. It doesn’t stand alone, but rather is a compliment to your other marketing strategies. Subscribers exchange their consent for messages of value. Once doing this, the particular texting application will capture the subscribers’ phone numbers and store them for marketing purposes using texting. The marketer then continues to provide incentive to the subscribers and the cycle continues.

When first being introduced to text marketing, there are many terms that someone can run into that are new. We hope to define such words to make it easier to understand the process of text marketing.

10DLC
10DLC stands for 10-digit long code, or a traditional 10-digit phone number. Most text marketing service providers will be moving to 10DLC in 2021 due to US mobile carriers making the decsision early in 2021 to discontinue shared short codes industry-wide. There are several benefits to using 10DLC.  First, it's your own dedicated number for your business, no risk of having the number shut down due to other users on the same number sending non-compliant material. Second, you can use ANY keyword you'd like, since it's a dedicated number it isn't based on availablity like on a shared short code. Last, you get unlimited free keywords. 

Keyword- A word selected when signing up for a text marketing account. This keyword has a few functions:

1. It serves as the unique identifier of a business on a specific short code or for a particular campaign you're running for your business/organization.
2. It is texted to the chosen text phone number in order to gain access to the specific mobile marketing campaign. It is essential in the opt-in process.
3. On some platforms, such as ours, it is used as part of the log-in process.

Keywords should be short, clear, and specific to what your business is trying to accomplish with text message marketing.

Opt-In- The act of a subscriber giving explicit consent to a business to receive text messages. This process is most often and best accomplished through a subscriber opting-in via mobile phone by texting the keyword to the text phone number.

Call to action- A call to action is central to mobile marketing and invites/instructs subscribers to opt-in to a text message marketing program. Call to actions can be on almost any advertising medium and should be direct and clear.

Opt-Out- An opt-out is when a subscriber chooses to discontinue the receiving of text messages from a business by texting STOP in order to unsubscribe.

All of these terms fit tightly together in defining how a mobile marketing campaign works. Hopefully this article has been beneficial to those of you who are new to mobile marketing and its terminology.

Top 5 Text Marketing Business Types

The business types are:

1. Restaurants
2. Churches
3. Bars/Nightclubs
4. Retail
5. Salons

Each of these business types have different uses for the system and each have their own benefits. From our experience at Sunnyville, these 5 business types reflect a good portion of the total spread of businesses using text marketing.

1. Restaurants

Restaurants will usually run specials for a given week or month in order to attract more customers. Specials are often marketed through printed coupons, radio advertisements, and e-mail. Recently, text messaging has become an amazing tool for getting those specials to the customer. Certainly, this isn’t meant to replace other forms of marketing, but to compliment it. Other forms of marketing will promote its use. Where it really shines in restaurants is its timely delivery and read-rates. Restaurants can send specials to their customers in such a time-targeted fashion that it excels over all other forms of marketing for this specific purpose.

2. Churches

Churches are always looking for ways to connect to their members and keep them informed of new things. While this doesn’t have much to do with marketing, it does have everything to do with keeping the line of communication open with those of most importance in their organization. Weekly reminders about several different things are announced through text message including (but not limited to):

• Youth group reminders
• Sermon reminders
• Guest speaker announcements
• Service project reminders
• Program information
• Daily Bible verses
• Prayer requests
• etc…

Churches have several different uses for text messaging. Like mentioned above, it has timely delivery, so even if those reminders aren’t exactly on schedule, the information will still arrive far quicker to people than other forms of reminders.

3. Bars/Nightclubs

On the same subject of reminders, bars and nightclubs also have a need for keeping their patrons informed. Bars can keep their patrons informed of events and happenings through text as well as running promotions on drinks. Nightclubs have used text messaging in a variety of different ways including reminding people of events, concerts, DJ’s, and as a manner of VIP texting. VIP texting can be accomplished by having those who qualify for VIP rank to be texted special offers and promotions for their status as a VIP. Most text messaging platforms, such as Sunnyville, will have simple means to accomplish this.

4. Retail

Retail outlets use text message marketing mainly for promotional purposes such as sales and blowouts. Promotions are often accomplished through some form of a text message coupon that is redeemable at the location hosting the event. The same strategies to any kind of coupon-driven promotion apply, just in a digital sense. A great article is provided you about mobile coupon campaigns on our blog.

5. Salons

Salons and hairstylists can utilize the promotional abilities of text marketing, along with other things such as appointment reminders. Much of the demand for text marketing for salons and hairstylists focuses mainly on the appointment reminders. Something as simple as a text message with the time of their appointment can help stylists not only keep their customers informed, but can help with time management as well. Text messaging is more effective in reaching clients and can help with those who need to cancel their appointments. Without cancelled appointment notification, a hair salon can find itself wasting precious hours that could be spent with customers who need their services they provide.

Regardless if your business/organization fits within one of these types, text message marketing has some use in your organization. Companies such as ourselves are always striving to come up with new features to enhance our platform, making it useful for everyone.

SMS and MMS Text Message Marketing Options

We’ll define SMS and MMS and the major differences of both types of messaging and how text messaging works.

SMS and MMS Defined

SMS and MMS have some distinct differences in what they can contain. SMS and MMS are defined as:

SMS– stands for “short message service” and is descriptive of the strictly text-based messages that is used with mobile devices. All text messages sent from a mobile phone are considered SMS messages. Sending messages to a group is bulk SMS messaging.

MMS– stands for “multimedia messaging service” and allows for the inclusion of video, picture, audio, etc. into the text message. Whenever a picture message is sent from a mobile phone, this is considered an MMS message.

Both types of messaging are being implemented into text message marketing, more commonly with SMS, while MMS gains more ground as a valuable addition to text message marketing.

SMS Messaging and MMS Differences

There are several differences in SMS and MMS messaging.

Bulk SMS messages are sent via cellular networks and are started by the message transferring to something call a short message service center or SMSC for short. The SMSC then attempts to send the messages to the recipients. There are 2 different methods of delivery for bulk SMS messages: Store and Forward or the Forward and Forget methods.

Store and Forward will receive your message, attempt to deliver it, and if the message isn’t deliverable at the time it will attempt the delivery again at a later time. Forward and Forget will try to deliver the message and if the message is undeliverable, it will discard the message being sent.

As mentioned above, SMS messages are strictly text only. Sunnyville uses only the SMS service as our method of delivery. An SMS message can be a maximum of 160 characters whether you are sending one message or if you are doing bulk SMS messaging.

MMS messages are delivered in a completely different way from SMS messages. Much like SMS, an MMS message is delivered to something called a multimedia message service center or MMSC for short. Where MMS differs from SMS is in the delivery of the message.

If the receiving phone is on a different carrier from the sender, the MMS message is sent from the MMSC to the carrier via the Internet. Once there, the receiving carrier tries to determine if the receiving phone is MMS capable. If it is, the content is simply accessed. If it is not, the carrier sends an SMS message to the recipient phone with a URL that contains the content. The user can then access the content at a later time from a internet capable device.

SMS and MMS Advantages and Disadvantages

The advantages and disadvantages between bulk SMS messaging and MMS messaging are tied to the differences between SMS and MMS.

Advantages of Bulk SMS Messaging

• Easy and quick delivery across carriers
• Simple text with small data size and overhead
• Wide array of mobile and application usage

Disadvantages of Bulk SMS Messaging

• SMS delivery is not guaranteed as the messages are delivered on a “best effort” basis only
• Strictly text without formatting
• Subject to different vulnerabilities such as spoofing

Advantages of MMS Messaging

• Rich multimedia is present in the message allowing for more aesthetically pleasing texts
• Allows for transfer of data, such as ringtones, over text message
• Ability to send text messages longer than 160 characters

Disadvantages of MMS Messaging

• MMS created by one brand phone may not be compatible with another brand of phone’s capabilities
• Some phones may be configured poorly leading to the failure of MMS delivery
• Because of the large amount of transferring of MMS to different networks, sending to a large group of customers can be slow

As you can see there are several advantages and disadvantages to both bulk SMS messaging and MMS messaging. For most purposes, the SMS will suit your needs and can even apply some similarities to MMS (such as adding a link to an SMS message to access some kind of content). MMS does offer many advantages over SMS, but poses many disadvantages as well, especially with compatibility among carriers and phones. Depending on what your needs are, determine whether a platform and service offering just SMS messaging or both SMS and MMS messaging capabilities will work for you.

SMS vs SMTP Text Message Delivery

What is the SMTP Protocol?

“SMTP” stands for simple mail transport protocol and is the protocol used when sending email. It was first developed in 1992 as the method of delivery for email messages and is still used today for the same purpose. The wireless carriers have provided the ability for each cell phone to have an associated email address with it in the format of:

(10 digit phone number)@(carrier domain)

For example, an AT&T customer could use SMTP to send an email to their phone as a text message, email to SMS, by sending it to:

1234567890@txt.att.net

In comparison, this is sometimes different for SMS and MMS messages. Of course, some companies see this as a cheap alternative to sending text messages to phones.

What is True SMS (The SMPP Protocol)?

The SMPP protocol is the “true SMS” protocol and is developed by the telecommunications industry specifically for transmitting SMS messages. “SMPP” stands for short message peer-to-peer protocol and is the protocol used whenever a text message is sent from a mobile phone to another mobile phone. SMPP has numerous advantages, in comparison to SMTP, when using it as a method for mobile marketing.

Disadvantages of SMTP Protocol

While there may be an appeal to using the SMTP vs SMS protocol as the transport for text messages, there are several disadvantages that make it not-so-glamorous. While it is true that the only costs involved with SMTP is bandwidth and the time taken to update the carriers’ domains periodically, the disadvantages outweigh the costs. The disadvantages of SMTP are as follows:

• Delivery- Messages using SMPP have direct connectivity to the wireless carrier networks and therefore have the priority when being sent. SMTP messages use the email networks and therefore do not have the priority that an SMPP message does. Emails have a higher failure rate, leading to a possibility of a high rate of undeliverable text messages, a huge disadvantage if using it for text message marketing. In comparison, the SMPP protocol is far faster at delivering the messages. SMTP is rather slow in their delivery. Timely delivery for SMS marketing is critical, see some uses for group text messaging. If you are sending out a lunch special and it isn’t delivered until 9 pm it doesn’t do you any good.
• Changing of email domains- Email carriers will often change their email domains for the purpose of preventing the SMTP protocol being used as a text messaging platform. If using SMTP and a carrier decides to change their email domain, all of a sudden you have messages that aren’t being delivered until you can update the domains of the carriers.
• Two-way communication capabilities- SMPP provides full 2 way communications between phones and applications. SMTP does not provide that ability.
• Carrier regulations- The true SMS protocol was developed by the telecommunications industry specifically for text messaging. In contrast, the SMTP protocol was never meant for that. Because messages sent through short code and the SMPP protocol are regulated by the wireless carriers, all the necessary regulation is in place. SMTP is not regulated by the wireless carriers or Mobile Marketing Association and does not have the regulation like short code and SMPP do. The use of SMTP is a loophole in the carrier regulations.

When comparing SMS versus SMTP and selecting a text message provider, it would be in your best interest to choose a provider that offers the true SMS protocol as their delivery method. It will save headaches in the long run if you don’t have to worry about all the disadvantages of SMTP.

How Text Message Marketing and Email Marketing Coexist

This article will focus on how to take two of the big marketing types, text message marketing and email marketing, and build a campaign that utilizes both.

Promote Email Marketing through Text Message Marketing

Email marketing, at first, was a huge marketing push. Now, with the introduction of SPAM, or unsolicited emailing, the ability to market through email has decreased in efficiency dramatically. Most people do not read their emails, making it more difficult to catch the attention of the intended audience.

Email marketing can benefit from mobile marketing. This is usually the case with applications such as business/organization newsletters that are sent through email with new updates and information. By using text marketing to promote the sign up for these newsletters, you’ll spread your area of communication to a wider audience.

Promote Text Marketing through Email Marketing

In the reverse order, you can promote (and it is highly recommended to do so) your text message marketing program through your email marketing. We’ve provided this as a tip for gathering opt-ins for your bulk SMS marketing. Typically, formulating an effective call-to-action as your subject of your email will help your customers recognize your intentions before clicking the delete button on their email. This is a great way to gather subscribers from emails you send to them that would otherwise be deleted because they “appear” to be SPAM.

Other Marketing Techniques Have Their Place

We are only talking about text marketing and email marketing in this particular article, but the same principle applies to other forms of marketing in coexistence. Using Facebook to promote your text marketing is great! Likewise for getting people to “Like” your Facebook page by sending them a text message. Doing this helps you establish an interconnected link between all of your marketing efforts.

Conclusion

It is very beneficial in spreading the word to as many different people as possible, which is the point of marketing. Happy marketing.

Use Groups to Customize a Text Marketing Campaign

Create a Group in 4 Easy Steps

1. Click on Groups
2. Assign a keyword extension (clients will text keyword.extension to opt-in)
3. Type out your default message (or leave blank if they don’t need to get a response)
4. Click create group

More Details About Creating Groups
In this article we will give a step-by-step explanation of how to setup and use groups with your text marketing campaign. The first step in creating a group is to click on the Group tab in the left hand navigation. In the center of the screen you will see a table showing all current groups. Click the red Add Group tab in the upper right to create a new group. First, type in a name for the group – this is not seen by the customer but used for you to identify the group on your dashboard.  Second, click the Advanced Options link to set a keyword extension, his is crucial to the opt-in process for voting, polls, or other instances in which you want clients to be added directly to a group by sending in a text. The format for the opt-in will be keyword-extension. For example, if your keyword was testing and you assign the group an extension of 1 people would text testing-1 to be added to that group. Keeping the extension simple is best because it leaves less room for error. (Make sure you do not put the keyword with the hyphen in with the extension – only the part that will come after the dash).

If you are using groups to run a text to vote campaign you’ll want to create a group for each option. For a talent show, assigning extensions of the numbers 1-10 will make the voting easy, each contestant is assigned a number. Putting the name of each contestant as the group name will make it very easy to see the name of the person who won. The Description field is optional but will let you add more information about what the specific group is for. Maybe you are using different groups for a specific time period and you want to put in a date range. Or you have multiple business locations and want a staff group for each location, the description field can define which location the group is for. There are many options and scenarios.

Next, you will see a box that says Group Auto Responder. You can leave this box blank if you don’t want to return them anything or you can put a simple message like “Thank you, you have been added to the Staff text list” or “Thank you, your vote has been counted for contestant number 3”.

Handling duplicate contacts:

• Ignore, is the default. This means they will not get a message back every time they text in to the group – only the first time. Ideal for voting or coupon offers.
• Allow, if you set this to allow then people will get the auto responder every time they text in. Great for real estate or a link to your app or website.
• Send keyword alternate message. When setting up the Autoresponder message there is an option to set an alternate message, this message will be sent when someone that is already in your databases texts the keyword a second time. This message can be something simple like “Your number is already on our list, watch for future specials”. Selecting this option will return that same alternate message if someone opts into the group more than once.

Hide on Widget 

Sunnyville website widgets have the options to enable a group select feature, if you check this box it will hide this group from that list – great for a staff group.

Forward options

To get an instant notification of new opt-ins to the group you can check the box for Forward Opt-ins to Cell or Forward Opt-ins to Email. If you forward those to a cell phone it will use 1 message from the balance, forwarding to email is free. You can copy multiple emails or cell phones by separating those with a comma.

Edit or Delete Groups

Now that you understand how to create a group we’ll discuss a couple of other options relating to groups. From the Manage Group page you can Edit or Delete any group. Click the Edit icon to change any information related to the group or click the Delete Icon to delete the group completely. Deleting a group will NOT delete any contact numbers from your account because all numbers are copied into your main contact list.

Add Numbers to a Group

As mentioned previously, people can opt into a group directly but you also have the option to manually add people to a group. Going to the Add Contact page, located under the Contact (Search) menu, after inputting the name and phone number, check mark the box(es) for the group you want the number to be added to.

To copy numbers that are already in your contact list into a group go to the Contact (Search) page and select the number(s) to be moved and then use the drop down arrow next to the Action box on the right side above the table, select which group you are moving them into and click Go. Another option is to click the Edit icon next to any individual number and use the check boxes next to the groups listed to add or remove any number from a group.

Make Live Events Interactive with SMS Messaging

Liven Up Your Event with SMS Messaging

• Receive immediate SMS feedback from guests
• Receive real-time questions
• Send announcements or schedule changes
• Do giveaways and announce the winners live

Using sms marketing at your live events is a great way to get feedback, send promotions, run contests, and keep patrons up-to-date with everything that is happening at your event. For the most part, everyone has their cell phone on them all the time and they read their text messages within a matter of minutes. Sending out timely reminders is a great way to keep in touch and let your audience know about any changes, special events, and more.

As you know, each person must opt-in to receive messages before you will be able to send any information to them via an sms message. By having each person text the keyword to the text number they will automatically be added to your campaign and you will then have permission to text them in the future.

How to Use SMS Marketing for Live Events
How you use sms marketing for your live event will depend on the type of event you are hosting and the information you need to get out. If the event requires pre-registration you may want to promote the event and offer a discount off the registration by having them text the keyword to the text number. The autoresponder could then return them a promotion code that they can use during registration to get a discount.

If you have a club that has regular events that don’t require registration you may just be sending a reminder about an upcoming event. Using an sms message to send a reminder a few hours prior and maybe offering a drink special to early-birds can be a great way to keep the event fresh in their minds and bring more people in earlier in the evening.

Using SMS Messaging to Interact with the Audience During Live Events
Another popular way to use sms marketing is to have the audience texting in live responses during the event. This could be anything from song requests to questions for a live speaker or voting on a particular option or preference. Inbound sms messages are free, so it doesn't cost you anything to hear from  your guests!

Running a text poll, sms voting, or giveaway is another fun way to interact with the crowd and keep the event exciting. A simple way to do this is to setup groups and then instruct the audience on how to vote for a specific option. This can be used in a simple format, such as text vote.a, vote.b, vote.c, or vote.d for your choice, or for a giveaway you might set the keyword extension to be win and then you’d have them text event.win to your text number (in this example event is the keyword and win is the keyword extension). You can then use the random select feature to choose however many winners you want to select – the winners will receive a message that you can customize to let them know they are the winner and what they need to do to redeem the prize.

With Sunnyville your account comes with one free keyword and unlimited free groups, or with your own dedicated 10-digit number you'll have unlimted free keywords, which will simplify the process even more. This will allow you to group your list by demographics, classes, days, or whatever criteria you choose. You will always have the option of sending the message to your entire database or you can select one or more groups to send the message to.

As you can see, there are many options for using sms marketing during a live event. After the event you can even use the service to send a link to a survey where participants can leave feedback about their experience.

Text My Customers – 3 Ways to Get More from Your Advertising

What is SMS Marketing

SMS (short message service) marketing, also known as text marketing, is the ability to send marketing or other short messages to your customers through a text message. Any sms marketing campaign is strictly an opt-in service, meaning every person has to give explicit permission for you to text them before you can send them any message via text. The easiest way to obtain this permission is to have them text a keyword to your text number. This can be done by advertising “Text Church to Your Number (877-989-8180, for example) for a daily Bible quote”. This simple message tells the subscriber what to do and what they will receive. Many businesses will use a coupon, discount, or free item to entice the user to opt-in. When the individual sends this first message the sms marketing system will collect their phone number and add it to your contact database so that you can send them other messages in the future.

3 Tips for SMS Marketing Success

The fact that sms marketing is permission based means the contacts list you build is a very rich medium for successful marketing, these people have made the effort to specifically request messages from your business or organization. You do have to keep in mind that they can request to stop receiving your messages just as easy as requesting them.

1. The best tip for sms marketing success is to make sure your messages have real value. That doesn’t mean you have to give away something free every time; put some thought into what your contact list will find valuable. Maybe you’ll be sending notices about schedule changes or appointment reminders, or maybe you have a weekly special or monthly highlighted product. As long as your messages are sent at an acceptable time of day and are not too frequent that they become bothersome, your clients will be happy to receive your messages.
2. The second sms marketing tip is to be flexible, adapt your campaign as necessary to fit your audience. Request feedback on what your clients like or don’t like and what they would like to see you do, then make use of the suggestions and find ways to turn their ideas into money-making opportunities. Just keeping them engaged in your business and invested in your brand name is going to help your bottom line.
3. Our third sms marketing tip is to link your text message campaign with your other social media efforts. Here again you are keeping your customers engaged in your business. Each medium can be used to drive traffic to the others; you can use a Facebook or a Twitter post to invite followers to text your keyword and be added to your text list or use your text message to invite clients to follow your social media account or join your live event. One option would be to have a giveaway; clients enter by texting in a keyword.

Integrate SMS Marketing with all Other Advertising

You will get more from all of your advertising if you integrate text marketing into it. Take a look at all the different marketing strategies you currently use, perhaps you do newspaper or other printed ads, marquee advertising, business cards, in-store ads, etc. Wherever you currently talk about your business add the “text keyword to text number” verbiage to keep people engaged with your business and to give them an immediate call to action. If they do something now and get a reward now, a text with a coupon, etc., they are already investing their interest in what you have to say.
Following these few simple sms marketing tips can help you get more from your advertising by texting your customers. Sms marketing is easy to use, it is very affordable, and most importantly, it is very effective. So much of printed advertising is wasted but if you can use your printed ads to drive more traffic to your text campaign you will be getting a lot more bang for your buck!