2009 April | David Caruso

Archive for April, 2009

SMS Marketing – 9 Rules to SMS Success

With more than 94% of all SMS messages read by recipients, SMS marketing is a powerful vehicle to promote your product or services to your customers.

It is also a great way to provide value added service, such as a friendly reminder, or a simple customer recognition and appreciation tool by sending a personal thank you message.

sms-marketing There are a number of 3rd party web based suppliers that can database, manage, and send out your SMS messages for as little as $0.15 per message.

Case Study

Hilton uses SMS with success. The Hilton Hotel group has successfully used SMS messaging to increase guest numbers to its hotels and build customer loyalty.

The hotel sent out important marketing messages such as specials and promotions directly to its members’ mobile handsets.SMS allowed the hotel to get the messages out instantly and at the most appropriate time of day.

The use of SMS as a direct marketing tool resulted in a 10-25% uptake of offers sent out by the hotel and proved to be an integral part its direct marketing and loyalty strategy.

In order for your SMS campaign to be successful though – you should follow 9 simple rules.

1. Respecting your Customers

A mobile phone number is a personal connection with your customers that is why permission based contact is so important. Not only should you be adhering the Spam Regulation Act 2003 because of legal reasons, but also because of annoyance reasons. Becoming an annoyance to potential or existing customers is worse than not contacting them at all.

2. Target Your Message

Any good marketing campaign sends the right message to the right target audience. It does not matter how many free offers or the promise of special discounts, if it has been targeted at the wrong market response will be poor.

3. Give the Customer a Reason

If the customer does not have a reason to respond or react to the message, the marketing exercise is pointless. Consider whether you would want to receive the message you are sending and more importantly think about an offer that would appeal to you.

4. Virally Seeking

Viral marketing is the new buzz word in marketing. A viral message is one that is happily spread and forwarded by your audience or the market. SMS by nature is a viral medium whereby messages can be easily forwarded by recipients. If you can tap into the viral nature of the medium with a sensational message or offer watch that promotion spread.

5. Timing

Sending your message at the appropriate time will increase the success of your campaign. Consider what time of the day, what day of the week that your consumers will be more likely influenced by your message. Timing is also important in putting a deadline or call to action immediacy in place. Leave the offer open for too long and it will soon be forgotten about and not acted on.

6. Say it in as few words or less

You have 160 characters to get your message across. Use any more and the message comes in separate parts and becomes disjointed and not consistent.

7. Test test and test again

Test your message before sending it to your database. Correct any imperfections and make sure the message makes sense ‘to someone not expecting it’. A message looks and reads differently when viewing it from a mobile phone.

8. Evaluate your campaign

It is important that you consider the impact of the broadcast on your business. Did it meet your objectives, how could you have tweaked it to make it better.

9. Continually update your database

An out of date or not current database list will ensure your response rate is poor. It is also important that you respect ‘opt – outs’ or people who choose not to receive your message any longer. Besides breaking the Spam regulation Act by not complying with an ‘opt out’ request it is just poor practice, and you will be more likely to upset more people than you attract.

At as little as 20 cents per contact SMS is an effective advertising medium that can give you immediate results.David Caruso consults on effective advertising mediums of the 21 st Century.

He has successfully helped many companies integrate SMS advertising in their businesses as an everyday advertising consideration.

If you too would like to implement SMS marketing in your business and you are not sure how call David today for a free phone consultation and implementation plan and cost.

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Engaging Introductions – Anchoring your Introduction

By Mark Wayland

Try this quick test.

Write down the last 3 digits of your mobile phone number.

OK?

Now quickly estimate the date of Genghis Khan’s death.

Quickly…?

If you’re like most people, and most people are like most people, there should be a close relationship between the 3 numbers from your phone number (and I assume you got that right) and the date you had to estimate.

That is,most people estimate that GK died in the first 1000 years AD. So they write a 3 digit number for the year he died. Why? Because your brain has been anchored by the first question. GK actually died in 1227.

Attracting attention is the purpose of your introduction so it’s important to anchor the person/ people you’re talking with. To put it another way, giving people a context allows them to make a solid judgement about what you’re saying.

That’s why I start my “standard” introduction with the middle “problem” box question, “Have you ever sent someone to a training program, and then back at work on Monday morning, nothing changes?” 95% of the people I ask that of nod in agreement.

If I left it at that, well, the introduction goes nowhere. The function of the question is to anchor people’s brains and give them a context for what comes next, the higher “solution” box; “Well, that’s what I do. I make sure that there is a direct link between the investment in time and money (in training) and your return on behaviour.” That’s why we typically use Medium/ Skinny words, questions and phrases before we use the higher Fat/ Medium ones.

Here’s an example:

Anchor with “past occupation” box, “I’ve worked in the event industry for 20 years staging pop concerts all over Australia” and follow with a “present occupation” box, “now I have my own business sourcing and supplying all the merchandising items that are sold out front.”

Anchoring is the function of RRP – recommended retail price.

Anchoring is why lots of companies advertise their businesses based of past performance. The assumption is that past good performance predicts future performance. I see Neil Flett from Rogen International (www.rogen.com.au) is still using his company’s involvement in the 2000 Sydney Olympics bid as a plank in their advertising and that was work done over 14 years ago.

Anchoring is why we use testimonials or stories of recent successes. But wait there’s more. In using a 2 or 3 box introduction, matched to your audience or target group’s needs, with an anchored process built in differentiates you from the others. All too often I see businesses trying to distinguish their practices in ways that have little or no influence on customers’ buying decisions. Most often it’s all about them, not what we can do for you.

Think carefully if you claim; quality service, service responsiveness, credentials, the importance of the customers, testimonials and references in isolation, your methods tools and approaches and finally, the best price.

If your efforts are not directed towards “why should I do business with you?” your customers cannot separate you from your competitors and so the only common factor they can use is price. Then you and all the others become just another commodity.

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