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Text Blast Redemption rates

bodegahwy said:
I would be willing to give this a go and, if OK with you, I will post blow by blow comments and results on the TT. sign ups, number and content of offers, rate of use on offers etc.

We are in a town with a year round population of about 12K and we have nearly 3000 FB fans and similar number of email addresses as platform to build from.
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I’ll definitely keep my eye on this thread because I’m also interested in giving text marketing a shot. Hopefully it’s a success.
 
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Getting started. I have been traveling so it has been challenging to reach me but I expect that we will be getting launched this month. From my perspective, I am hoping to build our list to 1000 as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it is not possible to migrate the customers we already have on our POS and email program into the SMS program so we will be offering a pretty aggressive special offer program to get people to try the system for the first time.

That first order will not be a money maker as my focus will be getting customers onto the list so we can reach them with more ordinary offers going forward. I am particularly interested in linking the timing of our SMS program to things like the Denver Bronco’s games etc.

We need to produce the collateral materials. The company produces some of the materials. Other creative items are produced and provided in digital form. My plan is to use a combination of in-store signage, newspaper ads, box toppers and email blasts to reach out for program sign-ups.

Shannon has be lightning fast at responding to me and in educating me about how this works… the delays have been on my side as I was on vacation pretty much the entire time since I posted above that I would move forward with this.

More when I have info to add.
 
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Well, another couple of weeks has flown by. The good news, I spent most of it out of town fishing… the bad news is that I have been hard to reach. Shannon has been persistent and again, right on top of getting things together. I am sure she must be frustrated with my slow response. It is not typical for me but with the closing of our other business I have taken the opportunity to enjoy the Fall season.

We set up an initial “opt in” campaign which will offer 30% off a single order. The offer implies that it must be used within 24 hours but actually it can be used any time but only once per customer. The company is providing 500 box toppers and I ordered an additional 1000. Those 1500 should give us a good initial push once we start next week. We have not yet launched with the signs, box toppers, email, newspaper etc The plan is then, once we are up and running and have a list of VIP members we will send more typical offers regularly and special event messages such as for Broncos games etc.

I will be sending a couple of emails to our list promoting the VIP text program and the VIP program will direct people to our online ordering where we capture emails. In our town, the local newspaper is excellent for advertising businesses like ours so we will also place ads promoting the VIP club. In store signs will also promote it, but as the huge majority of our business is delivery, I think that will have less impact.

If anyone is interested in experiencing this from the customer side, you can sign on to the system by texting the message “SCVIP” to 51660 , You will receive an “opt in” message and going forward you will receive whatever text messages we send out. You can opt out at any time and the info to do so is included in the text messages you will receive.
 
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Finally got rolling… They sent a very useful 8 minute video on how to set up text messages. I found it very intuitive and easy to deal with. I can long in and create a text message and either send it or schedule it for a future date/time all in 2-3 minutes. I created a test message and sent it (since we have not promoted this the list is basically nobody right now) and the text appeared on my phone a couple of minutes later.

I think I am going to like this once we get a list built. I can sit down once every couple of weeks and schedule out messages into the future (as I do with facebook ads and emails) which allows me to allocate a block of time to this task and then leave it for a week or two.
 
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Apparently the box toppers shipped five days ago but they are not here yet. In the mean time I have sent an email blast inviting people to text in and done a FB post for the same thing. So far, we have 40 subscribers and have received a handful of orders. Based on one email and one FB post generating 40 signups over the weekend, we got 5 orders taking advantage of the initial offer. 3 orders called in and 2 were online.

When the box toppers get here we will start putting them on every box. I ordered enough to do all the boxes for about a month. I also have another email blast and FB post scheduled.

We are also running a newspaper ad 1-2 times per week inviting subscribers. The first one runs Thursday this week. After that, it runs either Mon & Wed or on Tuesday in alternating weeks for the next month. This is in place of a coupon we have run in the past. I think that the ad will generate orders in it’s own right due to the sing-up offer and hopefully the growth of the list will give us access to a new customer base that prefers text for contact. (I think this is a younger audience 18-35 as I do not believe people my age want to receive commercial text messages).

My first text message (promoting a lunch special) will go out today. With only 40 subscribers I am not expecting much… but who knows?
 
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Hello I Emailed you the plan It s a PDF that says Counter Launch,on October 19 with your artwork, also sent several flyers on ways to promote. I see your handouts were delivered and received by Ginger when I clicked on the UPS tracker you were supplied with, shipped from CT to CO within 6 days. I also suggest you use the wallpaper for facebook designed for you and add this image as a pop up on your website as soon as possible. The pop up has worked the very best to get subscribers. Here again is an example. http://www.johnspizzaandsubs.com.
 
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We have the box-topper going out on all boxes. That will run for about a month I guess. I have also done a couple of emails and FB posts. Right now I am not in a place where I can check the total count of sign-ups but here is the order info so far:

Total of 21 orders. 15 are the initial offer and 6 are taking up offers we sent by text. So far we have sent 3 text messages but we only have a small number of recipients at this point.

Average order received is $33.75 after discounts. This is actually slightly better than our average order during this same period.
 
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I have been using a text blast company for a year now and feel as if it is almost a lost cause. I just did a blast tonight and only received a redemption rating of 2.4%. What rates do you guys get with your text blast program?
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The only difference between a “Text Blast” and an “E-mail Blast” is that you have a higher likelihood of having your message seen with a Text Blast vs. an E-mail Blast. That said, traditional (I always chuckle when I refer to newer technology as ‘traditional’) Text and Email blast are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Changes in technology have brought about a paradigm shift in the expectations of consumers. Today’s consumers are better informed and have a wider variety of choices. Have a way to reach out to your customers is definitely important, but under what pretext that you reach out to them is equally important.

For example, roughly 20% of your customers are likely your “loyal” or “local” customers. Those customers statistically make up to 80% of your income. While rewarding your most loyal customers is important, you likely won’t need to send them special promotional offers in order to get them to return regularly. Tracking the visit of each individual customer to your store is the best way to know who is coming back and who isn’t, as well as who to be sending a promotional offer to and who not to.

Something we always council our clients on is not to send out promotions that serve your best interests, like promoting something that your customers are not purchasing because it’s not well-liked, but you need to move the excess inventory. Each time you send a promotion to a customer that is not to their liking, you run the risk of an unsubscription and even if you later choose to send something your customers may have wanted, you run the risk that they will never see it.
 
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We are approaching 200 sign-ups. We are done with the box toppers for now but plan to repeat perhaps in a few months. We do have a banner on our our FB page promoting the text sign up and have done a couple of email blasts cross promoting the text program.

Things I think I know:
  1. About 75% of the people who send the original sign-up text confirm with the second text and actually join the program.
  2. Also, about 75% of those who confirm and join place at least the initial order using the sign-up offer.
  3. We have had ZERO people leave the program once signed up. That is a lot better than email programs where our experience is that we loose several people that sign up after the first email or they give bad email addresses.
We are using a mix of offers to try to learn what works. Some have been offers that we generally have out there and others have been better than average offers but limited to a single day.
  1. We get 4-6 orders using the offer the same day we send the text but little or nothing in following days. Using that math, if we send 6 text messages per month I would expect 30 orders for a total of about $1000 in sales. I think that this will scale as we build the list. In other words when we get to 1000 list members I think this will be worth $5,000 per month in sales. What I do NOT have a handle on is how much of this is business we would have gotten anyway. That has to be a factor but I don’t have any insight there at this point.
  2. Better offers do not appear to generate more orders… i.e. it is the reminder that we exist with some incentive that creates action… not the value of the offer. (Will continue to track this but I find this interesting)
We have had a few confused customers that want to use the initial offer more than once but not to the extent that they are upset or opt out.
 
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We backed off the promotional activity to sign up new members over the holidays but continued to send out text blasts weekly.

This month we sent out a couple offers that we have used over the years so it is difficult to say for sure how much business came from the text blast or from other places we have used the same offer even though we had no new placements of the offer other than the text message. The offer was a 14" one topping pizza for $11.00 We got 390 orders for that offer during January.

With no promo for new text sign ups we only picked up 15 new VIP members during the month that placed a first order. The signup offer is 30% off a single order. The AVERAGE order for the 15 orders placed during the month was $74.50.

We are taking it easy on the promotion of the text program while we have a ton of tourists in town. No need to get their numbers or give them a discount but once the ski resport closes in about 10 weeks we will be back hard at it. I am planning a direct mail to 5000 local homes promoting the text sign-up. My goal is to get 250 signups from that mailing.
 
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I have enjoyed learning about this method to reach customers and have come to a few conclusions:
  1. It works.
  2. It will be worth the money when I get my list up to over 500 and will be a bargain if I can build it too 1000. In my market, I expect that it will take a while to get there, but then it is extremely cost effective marketing.
  3. It is far better than email if your target is under 35 years old.
This is worth doing if you are willing to make the investment to build up your list. This takes a bit of time and will cost you some in discounts and media to get your message out.

If any of you are interested in giving it a run, I would very much appreciate it if you would allow me to refer you. Full disclosure: They just announced a promotion and I will get a discount on my rate if people sign up… but I am not steering you wrong.
 
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Thank You for being so diligent on your tracking! If anyone would like more info based on this testomonial, please let me know:) Here is another recent great pizzeria success story[/URL] with no discount offered. Sentextsolutionsinfo.com
 
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OK… a year has gone by here is what I learned:

As I posted above in June, text marketing blows email away for effectiveness. I get far more calls per 100 text messages sent than do per 100 emails sent. I estimate that it is on the order of 5X as effective as email.

If you are in a place where you can build a sizable text list Shannon’s program works very well, provides a ton of tools and she is outstanding in responsiveness and is a source of info and ideas. A pleasure to do business with. That is the good news.

Texting was particularly good for promoting lunch specials and each message we sent generated a few orders… the problem for us is that the creating 3 or 4 or 5 slice transactions with a text blast every week does not cover the cost of the program. Even if those transactions were built up to our average ticket with regular pizza orders I can not justify the cost with the sales generated from a list of only 200 subscribers.

We were unable to build our list much past 200. Our unsub rate was around 30-35% as we got people to sign up for the initial offer but they unsubed afterwards. As a result the price we were paying was nuts for the results. I would happily sign up again for a straight fee per subscriber or fee per text that made sense but as it was the cost did not work for us and we dropped the program at the end of the year we agreed to.

Texting is outstanding for an audience between 15 and maybe 35 years old. If you are in a market where you could build a list of 1000 or 2000 or more Shannon’s program would be a killer way to go.

Last, if you do decide to work with Shannon, read the agreement carefully and make note of the auto-renew clause. I am not a fan of these kinds of things and you would not want to get caught by that if you wanted out. At the very least, make a reminder in your calendar to review the performance in time to make a decision and act on that renew/cancel provision in time to avoid being on the hook for another year if you decided not to go forward!
 
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