This mobile marketing guide is for everyone who is about to take their first steps along the mobile marketing path and needs a bit of guidance.
For those who haven’t started your mobile marketing adventure or feel mobile marketing isn’t for you, or might not work, have a read of these 5 great retail marketing success stories, 5 different businesses who used SMS as a marketing tool and saw huge benefits.
By following our beginner’s guide to mobile marketing, you will go from rookie to all-star mobile marketer in no time – so without further-ado…
1. Knowing what you want to achieve
With any marketing plan, you need to know what you want to achieve from it, and SMS is no different. And with SMS this can be a wide range of things, such as:
– A response – either a phone call, a text response or email
– Visits to your website
– Brand awareness
– Getting customers to enter a competition
– Purchase a product or your service
– Offer or sale promotions
– Booking an appointment
Before you start, sit down and think about this, because without knowing what you want to achieve, you won’t know if it was successful.
2. Knowing your audience
Segmenting your data into different categories and sending specific text messages to these groups will get you a much better return of investment than sending the same text message to everyone.
Men will probably not be interested in the new dresses you have in stock for example – more relevance, more response. Don’t waste money and message people who won’t be interested.
Some of the categories that you can segment your data into can be:
– Sex
– Age
– Location
– Income
– Hobbies
– Previous purchases
You can also include multiple categories when splitting your data. So sending a message to your London customers who are interested in sport, who are male and aged between 25 and 40 will mean an even greater response rate, as these customers see a personal message about exactly what they are interested in
3. The text message
The text message is key and must be just right, like baby bear’s porridge (Goldilocks reference) – making it too short and not explaining what you are selling or how to claim, won’t work.
Making it too long will mean the customer could get confused with what you are offering and may not actually read the whole message.
What you need is something in the middle, not too long or too short, explains exactly what you are selling, how to claim it and who you are. A great example of a text message that we see a lot of retailers use is;
“Great news! 20% off everything for this weekend only. Visit us at www.clothesshop.com and use the discount code CLOTHES20 at the checkout to claim. Text STOP to 88802 to opt-out”
4. Test, test, and test again
Always test the message you want to send. By sending the message to yourself and a couple of co-workers you can check how it looks and comes across, if your co-workers know what they need to do from the message and can easily see who it is from – then it’s worked. We suggest to test every single time you send a message, because for the sake of a couple of messages, why would you want to mess up sending your whole campaign.
You should also check for spelling mistakes, then check for spelling mistakes again, and just for good measure, check for spelling mistakes again. Sending a message out with a spelling mistake can turn a great professional message into a shoddy one that will be ignored.
5. Send the message – timing
Now you know what you want to achieve you have your data segmented, your message is well formatted and you have tested and checked for spelling mistakes, you are ready to send the message.
But what are you going to send it? Timing can be crucial. No one wants to buy a pizza at 9 in the morning or at 11 at night… So think about the content of your message and when is your customer going to appreciate receiving it, and likely to act upon it – then schedule to send it then!
6. Analyse your results
You have sent the message, but how well did it do? You need to know how well your first SMS campaign went, otherwise how will you know it was a success? A couple of questions you need to answer are;
– How many people received your message against how many you sent it to.
– If you had a URL, what was the click through rate?
– Was there a return on your investment?
– Did you reach your goal?
The best thing about SMS marketing is you have the ability to test everything. This is how the top companies work out what is best for them and how to get the most out of it and you shouldn’t be afraid to.
For example, did a campaign work best in the morning or evening? On weekdays or at the weekend? Which offer worked best for what segment? By testing and analysing your results, you can work out exactly when and what to send, and to how to get the absolute best results without wasting time and money.
7. Send again
So your campaign was a success, how do we know? Because we know text marketing works, that’s how. Your next step is to send another message, maybe to a new batch of customers, the same ones as a follow-up, segment them even more, whatever you feel is best for your business.
Done
That’s it, just 7 easy to follow steps and you should now know exactly what you need to do for your first SMS campaign.
Along with this guide, we have added 4 helpful articles below, these will help you going forward and should answer any questions you have about SMS marketing.
What SMS can do for your business
25 tips and tricks of mobile marketing
No one likes staring at a blank screen
Mobile marketing regulations