Dr. Susan Bartell is an author of a nationally syndicated column in the U.S. and Canada, with a readership exceeding 1 Million.  She is a recognized media expert who can frequently be found offering advice on CBS, ABC, FOX, and CNN, and on shows such as Good Morning America, The Today Show, 20/20 and The Early Show, as well as on national and local radio stations across the country. She is also a trusted source in print media including USA Today, The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents, Woman’s Day, MSNBC.com, WebMD and CNN.com.

We were excited to begin working with Dr. Susan last month, assisting her in creating her text club for her latest site, 4healthygirls.com. Her fans and followers can now either opt-in via text or by entering their number on her website using the Text2VIP sign up widget.

Dr. Susan has already begun engaging your mobile club members with expert advice on developing healthy living, eating, and exercise habits, as well as suggestions on coping with the traditional stressors faced by teenage girls.  In addition, this past week Dr. Susan established a SMS Trivia campaign to engage her club members while providing nutritional insight.  Below is a screen grab to illustrate:

Contrary to some popular belief though, the significance of fans, followers and friends is not necessarily in the initial conversion. The numbers in your ‘flock’ of followers isn’t the most useful metric, not by a long shot. In a similar fashion to successful text marketing or text message advertising programs, the value is not only in understanding why a social media conversion or SMS opt-in took place, but learning about the expectations and preferences in order to deliver against them in future re-marketing and in the real world of commerce.

In June 2011, ExactTarget published a revealing study that shed light on the discrepancy between how brands and consumers interpret the act of liking. For example, when you hear the word fan, connotations of loyalty, advocacy, and passion come to mind. But, for many consumers, clicking Like isn’t a profession of affinity as much as it is a reflection of support. In some cases, the gesture is merely a move to take advantage of an offer, contest or promotion. The following is an interesting infographic pertaining to WHY brands do and do not receive ‘likes’.

According to ExactTarget, only 42% of active Facebook users view the act of a “Like” as a declaration of their devotion or support. On the other side of the coin however, 33% disagree with a Like equating to fandom. The other 25% aren’t quite sure what to think. Finding the meaning of Like is not unattainable though. Understanding what it means to different customers can only improve programming, service and engagement strategies. The reality is that people are actively Liking brands and many know exactly what they expect from the connection. Other consumers who do not know why they do so or what they expect will soon learn once they feel stream fatigue from the lack of focus in the content that flows through their timelines. To this end, and much like the suggested best practices encouraged by Text2VIP to our SMS clients, outlining a well crafted strategy for future contact with your database can end up defining the success or failure of the consumer relationship.

After using an immediate discount offer to gain thousands of mobile club members, Yogen Fruz decided to try out a different approach.  Consumers who are opting in for their program for the first time still receive a response sms which entitles them to a $2 coupon–but instead of being valid that same day–the offer is valid for their next visit.  Utilizing Text2VIP’s dynamic expiration date coding, the specific validation window is always between 4 and 6 days out, regardless of when the consumer opts-in.  This helps to retain the $ from current paying-intent consumers who are in the establishment already, but also incentivizes these consumers to participate in the program.  It’s worth noting that if your customer avatar suggests that re-visitation patterns average every “10 days” for instance, by promoting the offer validation around 5 days from today, this offer also serves to pull forward customer re-visitation.

See the call to action and text in to view the future expiration date message flow.

Even more so when they are teenagers.

By incorporating an SMS advertising call-to-action across radio channels in various target markets, prospective participants can take action by texting in, then reviewing the contact information in their return SMS and reach out when it’s more convenient or when they have more privacy to do so.  Specifically in this campaign targeted at Teenagers who smoke, at least a portion of these individuals are hearing the radio spot in a car being driven by a parent.  In some instances the parent may not even be aware their child is a smoker.  Employing an SMS vs “call us now” approach, provides the teen the opportunity to secure more information on ending their smoking activities-before sitting down with their parent to discuss.

One of their 30 second radio spots can be heard by clicking below:

Pfizer Smoking Campaign

While it’s safe to suggest that every consumer-facing business should have a Facebook presence, the reality is, many fans and followers won’t end up stopping by any more than they would any other page.  In measuring social media, the term ‘Core Fan’ has been popping up more and more regularly.  In short, the Core Fan is a follower who engages with your brand more than the typical page average.

Paul Fabretti over at Social Media Today contributed a terrific piece on this very subject today and captures the struggle many brands in social media are faced with.  His celebrity Facebook chart breaks down some very eye-opening statistics.  You can read Paul’s article in it’s entirety here.

Let’s review… “SMS” stands for Short Message Service. When a text message originates from a “short code-5 or 6 digit number” it is processed in essentially the same way the texts sent to and from your friends and family are, through a dedicated SMS messaging gateway. These messages are therefore trackable. (Just ask political Rep Weiner) But each cell carrier also maintains an e-mail to cellphone gateway as well. These messages are not delivered with the same priority of true SMS incidentally. This means your cellphone has an e-mail address and anyone can send a text to you via e-mail if they know your number and the carrier address. Example; if you’re a Verizon subscriber your address would be your phone number at vtext dot com. The net result, spammers and scammers can send you anonymous texts for free and without oversight and accountability. Welcome to the Wild West of SMS.

However, you can defend yourself from spammers by simply blocking ONLY text messages that originate from the internet. Many cell carriers provide this option of blocking their e-mail-to-mobile gateway. You will want to be sure not to request blocking ALL texts as that would include your friends, friendly, and businesses sending you legitimate coupons you’ve opted-in for. Simply specify “e-mail generated SMS”.

AT&T Customer Service: 800-888-7600
T-Mobile Customer Service: 800-866-2453
Verizon Customer Service: 800-275-2355
Sprint Customer Service: 888-211-4727
Nextel Customer Service: 800-639-6111

After calling your cell service provider to complain, to report cell phone spam you can file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). You can access the online complaint form here.

Footnote: If you DO receive a text from a short code, you can remove yourself by replying STOP to these texts. This is an automated process required by the cell carriers when a short code gets provisioned.

If you find this useful or have additional questions please leave us a comment!

Once a business or brand has successfully compiled a substantial opt-in database, the use of “Split or A/B testing” can be a useful tool in gauging the effectiveness of offers, time of delivery, and consumer engagement.  Split testing in marketing is a method by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of other-variable test groups to measure the impact on response rates.  Specifically in text marketing, variations of offers, redemption windows, and even content layout can result in varying response.

Take the example of “Joe’s Cafe”.  Joe has 2,000 text message club members and might typically send out an offer along the lines of, “15% off a purchase of $50 or more”.  As with any marketing channel, response will likely fluctuate if this offer was sent back-to-back weeks.  Maybe it’s raining one week, or maybe there is a stock market event affecting consumer confidence another week.  By splitting Joe’s database and sending “10% off” to 1,000 members of his list  (group A) and simultaneously sending the other 1,000 members (group B) a “15% off” text offer, an opportunity is presented to see if a meaningful difference in the number of responses warrants adjusting future offers.  If an equal number of texts were redeemed in each of group A and group B, one could extrapolate that Joe needlessly gave an additional 5% discount to group B.

Incidentally, Amazon.com pioneered the use of split testing in the web e-commerce space.

Too often small business owners fall into the “rut” of marketing behaviors (sms, print, radio etc) which don’t shed light on consumer influence and behavior.  Mixing it up, evaluating the response, then re-targeting is one of the regular practices employed by savvy business owners.  Slit testing is a great instrument to accomplish this.

Codes can serve numerous purposes and direct consumer action in various ways.  At Text2VIP, we’ve begun including them on all client call-to-action signage.  This further serves to stimulate the curiosity of potential SMS Marketing subscribers, and provides a quick and easy way to pre-populate the SMS feature on the mobile device-making it easier to opt-in.

Below is an example of a text message marketing call to action featuring both the traditional keyword an QR code.

]]> http://www.text2vip.com/mobile-marketing-qr-codes-incredible-growth/feed/ 0 http://www.text2vip.com/text-message-advertising/ http://www.text2vip.com/text-message-advertising/#comments Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:32:53 +0000 Text2VIP http://www.text2vip.com/?p=520 This Mall display speaks well to the simplicity and straightforwardness of Text Message advertising.  When your target audience is a younger demographic who isn’t going to take the time to stop in the Mall to fill out a questionnaire or postcard, incorporating a mobile call to action allows you to reach them at their level and on their terms.

Similar to e-mail, legal SMS Marketing programs require the opted-in consumer have the opportunity to opt-out at any time by replying Stop, Quit, Remove etc.

Last week one of the Moe’s Southwest Grill locations Text2VIP works with sent a text blast offer to over 2,000 of their store’s subscribers.  It’s fair to assume their message was seen by nearly all of those on the list.  A quick glance at our reporting analytics shows that only 1 VIP member chose to opt-out of receiving that location’s offers in the future.  Pretty compelling I would say.