can work wonders for your business, it can drive sales, help market your business, allow you to interact with customers better, along with many more ways.
Here are some facts to back it what we are saying . . .
Mobile marketing is 6 to 8 times more responsive than email (Cellit)
91% of adults have their phone within arm’s reach 24/7 (Nielsen)
98% of all texts get read compared to just 22% of emails (Frost & Sullivan)
Now before you get excited by the prospect of SMS marketing and the wonders it beholds, we must warn you that if you aren’t careful, it can come back and bit you on the bum (not literally).
Below is a list of the 7 deadly sins along with an infographic that covers the basics of what NOT to do when you’re are setting up your SMS campaign and sending those messages.
If you would prefer to watch a video, head over to our video page where you can find the Seven Deadly Sins of Mobile Marketing video.
Sin 1. Forget a call to action
Having sent out a superb offer, cunningly targeted and with real appeal, you forget to tell the customers what they have to do next or include any contact details. So the eager customer is hooked and wants to take you up. But he can’t. There’s no reply option, a number to call or website to visit. A splendid own goal and the type of mistake that you’re only likely to make once.
Sin 2. Forgetting to test and check
On more than one occasion though we’ve had panicked managers on the phone asking (more in hope than expectation), whether it’s possible to recall a campaign once it’s been dispatched.
So the golden rule is to send yourself and your colleagues a test SMS. Pretend you’re a customer receiving it. Does it make sense? Are the details correct? How could it be improved?
Sin 3. No option to unsubscribe
A short cut to the gates of mobile marketing Hades is to fail to offer your customers a way to get the hell off your list
By omitting an unsubscribe option, you’re not only infuriating your clients but you could also find yourself in hot water. Eeks! (Text Marketer customers have use of a free unsubscribe service which comes with every account.)
Sin 4. Treat everyone the same
Targeting and customer segmentation has long been the bedrock of any direct marketing campaign and quite right too. What’s often missed though is that with mobile you can segment your customers into far smaller and precise categories – meaning a more personalised and better message.
Sin 5. Overloading customer
You can so easily undo all the good that you’ve done for your business and brand by pushing your luck.
The logic goes that as they’ve responded once, then surely they’ll be up for a similar offer a couple of days later? Unlikely. Having won trust and confidence, it’s all too easy to blow it by blasting out a similar bulk SMS message that worked so well last time.
Sin 6. Focus only on selling
Although mobile marketing is the most responsive direct marketing channel, you can do much more with it than just sell your wares. You can gain so much more trust and authority by mixing up your messages with other information that might actually be useful. So instead of just seeing your SMS service as a route to sales, you should also view it as a way of ‘adding value’ to what you already do.
Sin 7. Develop a pointless app
99% of apps are useless and get used just once. This was the stark finding of Blackberry, who reported that the vast majority of the 200,000 odd apps are rubbish. Every company and brand it seems, have felt it an imperative to launch an app and be seen as a front runner in new technology.
Unless your app is providing something genuinely useful to the customer, then it’s really not worth going through the pain, cost, and distraction of developing something that most users will think is pants.
