Mobile marketing can be a simple, effective and timely way to get your message out to potential customers. Here are a few tips to help you run a successful marketing campaign.
Don’t Tell: Engage
The days of one-way communication are long gone. Consumers expect to be able to engage with their favourite brands, and that’s true even with mobile marketing. Don’t think of your messages as short and snappy mail shots – try to figure out creative ways to let your audience join in the conversation.
Make Your Messages Useful
A successful marketing campaign must be frequent and consistent. Try to send messages on the same day each week so that you’re always in the minds of your customers. You don’t want your customers to forget about you, or forget they signed up for messages and then view the ones you send in a few months’ time as spam!
Make sure that the messages you send are always useful. Discounts and special offer notifications are a good start, but other types of messages can be useful too. News updates, tips and sporting results are examples of things that could go down well with your customers.
Time Your Messages Carefully
Mobile marketing is unique in that you can send out a huge number of messages in a short time period and have a high percentage of those messages read within minutes of their receipt. You can use that fast response time to your advantage. Think about the target audience for your product, and schedule your marketing so that you get the best possible response.
For example, if you are trying to reach a relatively young audience to promote a night club, send the message on Friday afternoon – that way, the club is fresh in their minds when they meet their friends after work, and they may suggest heading there for the evening’s entertainment.
In contrast, if you’re promoting a business-focused product, send the SMS during working hours, preferably early in the week, so that people have time to read, digest and take action on the message you send.
Make it Easy to Unsubscribe
You should only send messages to people that have opted in to your marketing list and you should make it easy for people to opt out or pause their subscription if they are going away for a while.
The usual way of opting out of an SMS list is to text the word STOP to a shortcode, however it is good practice to offer alternative methods too. If your company has a website, consider having an unsubscribe option on there so that people can update their preferences even if they’ve ran out of credit on their Pay-As-You-Go phone.
Run a Multi Media Campaign
Mobile marketing is an effective tool, but it is not designed to be used in isolation. Try to back up your SMS marketing campaign with other promotional efforts such as social media campaigns and advertisements in local newspapers and magazines. The more often people see your brand, the more likely they are to pay attention to it.
About the Author: This post was written by technology and marketing specialist James Harper on behalf of Collstream who can help organizations of all sizes to the most from a mobile marketing campaign.