Introduction to SMS Mobile Marketing
- How it works?
- Who can help?
- Whats next?
What is SMS? I question that the vast majority of readers understand what SMS is. For those new to SMS, it stands for Short Messaging Service and uses something called GSM to send and receive messages between mobile devices. What GSM is and how it works is not covered within the scope of this article, but for the sake of completeness here is its definition in Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM.So what is mobile marketing?
Mobile marketing is the use of one or more mobile technologies to promote one or more services or products. How this promotion works and what it achieves depends on the thing you want to promote, the audience you are targeting and any other marketing factors. This is discussed in more detail later in this paper.SMS and mobile marketing
Hopefully by now you understand the principals of SMS and the concept of mobile marketing. If not don’t worry just Google the term “mobile marketing defined” and explore SMS up in Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS.
I utilize Eventmobilemarketingblog.com to keep up with the enormous volume of mobile marketing news. They are dedicated to the review of cutting edge mobile related material throughout the Internet honest go ahead and add their RSS to your reader now — trust me, you’ll thank me later.Why should I use SMS for marketing?
To understand this I need to walk you through a couple of marketing scenarios. If you have ever worked with affiliate promotions or email marketing you will know that follow up and incentives are essential to success, the problem often encountered by these types of marketing is that they are difficult to measure, often rejected automatically and it can take some time to receive a respond. So how can you efficiently follow up on traditional marketing?
In fact all other forms of marketing offer opportunities to get your message out there but they are neither personal nor instant. SMS text messaging is instant; it is delivered into the hands of your target audience. Text messages are opened more often than not and the vast majority of phones only show a summary of the first line of the message. SMS mobile marketing can be personal; it can reach them wherever they are and at any time of the day.
Knowing that your audience will read the first 5 to 10 words is a great advantage because:
- You can write an effective introduction to your message body
- You can make your responses even more targeted by using exclusive terms like “Agricultural sale this weekend!” or “Are you a marketer… boo!”
- You can include personal details, such as their name, from your automated profiling campaigns — this will be discussed in my next article “Viral SMS mobile marketing”
Many customers say to me “But I have received SMS promotions myself and they were abominable!!!” My reply is “Great.” I think it is a suitable thing that the reputation of SMS is negative – if other people in your market are doing it badly then you can make an incredible impact by doing it well.Who’s it for?
Without a doubt SMS mobile marketing is the cheapest construct of viral and direct marketing available – excluding email of course. In essence mobile marketing IS for everyone, but the recipe and message flow varies greatly depending on the following;
- Who you are targeting? Because SMS is so personal you can win or lose leads very quickly.
- How noteworthy you are willing to spend? As you would expect contacting more people incurs more cost.
- What can you offer? Your products will influence your campaign strategies.
- What is your campaign designed to execute? For example text for a call back, brochure, email or a link to a WAP ecommerce site.
Starting your first campaign
It would require hundreds of pages and diagrams to cover every possible SMS campaign strategy, message flow and follow up marketing factors. Not to mention the vast array of functionality SMS mobile marketing service providers offer.
I recommend signing up for a SMS mobile marketing free trial with TheTextWorks.com. They offer three great value packages designed for minute to medium businesses within the UK so if nothing else it will be a pleasurable introduction. On sign up their support team ran me through a detailed demonstration of what the software can achieve and how it is applicable to my business needs.Portion 2: SMS mobile marketing liberation
Keep your eye out for the next article in my Mobile Marketing series “Viral SMS mobile marketing”. And I may even produce some more in the near future (hint).
Until then stay focussed and have a productive day – Phil Robinson.
Filed under Email Marketing Software by on Sep 5th, 2010. Comment. 
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