I just set up my mobile marketing campaign and would like to use my experence with my growth I have my shrtcod,my keywor and sub keywords. From there I am seeting up subscribtions,textnvoit,contests and whatever your mind can think of. I currently have been involved with email marketing and found that media is being lost due to spamm.
Whats nice about ssm is that our customers opt in to our mobile marketing number to receive latter discounts -this then becomes a captive audiance . I will let everyone how I am doin this and the true results in s months.Including the doqens of companies trying to take your money to do this. Hold off, I will have much to say in 1 moth.
I am actually meeting with a guy today to discuss this very thing.
He is offering a one year subscription with up to 1000 messages for $299. How does this compare to what you are doing?
I tried text marketing a few years ago, and it was a huge bust. I couldn’t get but 30 or 40 people to sign up for it despite thousands of box toppers. After a while I just quit doing it - I don’t know if the company I used is even still in business.
I’m not a user of twitter yet, but doesn’t twitter basically do the same thing for free? I thought all these kids get a text message on their cell phone every time someone they follow tweets or twits or whatevers. Is that not how it works?
OK, just finished up meeting withhim and saw the responses here.
The deal is $299.00 “subscription” which includes first 1000 messages, after that $60.00 per 1000 messages (.06 ea).
I am not into Twitter but I guess I should look into it since it is free.
I gave him some questions to get answered, it looks like I have some research to do as well.
I don’t know what he has to offer you, but you can beat that easily online. $60 per 1000 messages with unlimited time to send them? Or $60 per month, includes 1000 messages?
Question to ask: do incoming messages count? If they do, you will be paying .24 every time someone signs up, because the signup sequence will require 4 texts total.
299 for 1000 texts is no deal. I am using optit @.02/text plus $20/month 1 keyword and unlimited sub keywords.
I text all the time as most of you do and everyone else and thats why I feel this is the future. It use to be that we wouldnt leave our house without our keys, now its that little computer(phone). Have you ever left without your phone and felt disconnected from the world and had to turn around to get it? Face it, we live in that kind of world now. Just look at all my typos in my first message…I’m use to my smart phone correcting everthing as I text.
Actually we all need to be looking at apps as this is the next evolution in smart phones.
Interesting fact…nearly 100% of texts are read within 20 minutes as compared to 6% for emails-think of the power you have with texting.
I know that I am the first in my area to have a shortcode and I like it.
With twitter there is absolutely no reason to pay for sms marketing.
The twitter deal looks like this:
$.0/message
$0 sign-up
$0 monthly fee
infinity subscribers
Will your text plan update your facebook page too? for free? Twitter will.
what do your customers have to do to subscribe?
simply type: FOLLOW Pizza Boy(or whatever your shop’s name is) and send it to 40404
By paying for a text plan, think of the market share you missed by not using facebook or twitter. Texting is kind of the future, but it’s just a SMALL slice of the pie. Do it right, do it free, use twitter.
p.s. I do not work for twitter:) just trying to help.
I had no luck with SMS advertising, but of course your mileage may vary. It was extremely difficult to get people to sign up for (even giving out a free appetizer for signing up) and then the redemption rates were minuscule. I’d send out 400 texts and maybe get 1 redemption - and sometimes none. It took 5 months to get those 400 subscribers.
With e-mail, I have signed up 2,000 people in the past 9 months, the redemption rates are around 3% and it costs a flat $30 per month.
An awful lot of people are now using smart phones and that’s only going to increase… they’re getting their e-mail on their phone anyway.
Incoming messages and welcome message are not counted. $299.00/year = $25.00/month so pricing is comparable to much of what you see online. Optit appears to be cheaper.
I read a bit about twitter on their site and decided to try it from a customer end. I signed up to follow a company that I deal with for VW stuff from my blackberry. I got a message asking me to sign up or provide account info. Instant turn off but I followed through and it only made me create a screen name, which I did. Then I got a message saying Congrats, you are now on twitter. That was yesterday at noon, as of 9:30PM today i had yet to recieve any tweets from that company even though I have seen them post dozens since then. I resent the text “follow chircovwparts” and I started getting tweets from them. Kind of a PITA. the messages I got yesterday should have told me to resend the follow message. I would be concerned that my customers may do the same and think that I was just not sending anything out.
I am honestly considering using both and seeing which one catches on, if either. twitter is free but if it is not as effective at getting the message out what could it be costing me? On the other hand, if twitter works well than I would be throwing money away to pay for the same type of service I can get for free. Both are delivered as SMS text to the customer so that would be the same.
I have resisted email marketing because I get so annoyed at the stuff hitting my box, all from people I do or have done business with. Office Depot, Sams, Intuit, Dynovite, Thompson Cigars, Tiger Direct… Some more than once a day. I ussually sort mailbox by sender about once a week and block delete these. Even though I opted in on all of these I ussually delete them without opening. I don’t want my customers looking at me that way.
Well, yes and no. I receive spam texts all the time and twitter becomes spam when it’s used as such.
When your twitter account texts an update to someone, it’s because they subscribed to your updates in particular. So it’s literally coming from someone they know, not only that but they’ve made the request.
From you customers point of view, the only difference they’ll see is in the copy of your ad:
if you use twitter version:
“text “FOLLOW pizzatimepromos” to 40404 for special offers”
if you use your service:
“text 111111 for special offers”
Also from what I understand there are less steps for them to go through to sign up.
And you’ll see a difference on your balance sheet at the end of the month.
Just take a few days and moll it over, think about what you want to do with texting and think about how it can be done with twitter. If it seems like it will perform the same function as you are after now, then go for it.
I’m happy to answer any questions. I don’t want to be coming across in the wrong way.
I’ve had limited success with SMS marketing, mainly getting people to opt in. BUT I firmly believe in trying to do a little of everything is a much better solution to overall marketing. So my marketing includes:
Leaflets (door hanging)
Direct mail for new customers (addressed to the customer)
Direct mail - lapsed/soon to be lapsed etc
Facebook face book + facebook advertising
email (email addresses captured on online ordering)
SMS from opt in’s.
Google adwords
I could only rely on door hanging if I had to choose just one but at least this way I get good exposure all over the place!
The real advantage of SMS and email is that you can do it at very short notice. Had a very quiet Friday night - need to get rid of some food then send an email and text around 5pm on Saturday with a special and you’ve a lot more chance of getting rid of it!
I just got my first “I called because I saw you on Twitter” new customer tonight. In the period of 1 hour they mentioned my store 5 times. Not bad for free access.
Correct if I’m wrong but you have to be searching for a business or person on twitter first in order to be found. How did this person randomly find you?
The use of hash codes plays a big part. I have followed the key people in my city as well as the the media outlets. Most of these people have followed me as well. Several have used #FF (Follow Friday)to recommend others follow me. I currently have over 100 followers from my city.
We personally have been having a hard time getting our customers excited to follow us on Twitter. The few people that are following us on Twitter seems to be “junk mail” followers who are only automatically following us because of a keyword we have tweeted. We have a bigger customer interest on Facebook.
Zero responses to texts so far.