SMS marketing is an exploding trend that is changing the way businesses interact with their consumers. With 90% of Americans using mobile phones, and with billions of text messages sent each month, the mobile phone has become one of the indispensable items that shoppers and travelers never leave home without.
But the ubiquity of mobile phones and their effectiveness as a marketing tool creates a challenge for advertisers: how do you get people to join your SMS campaign? What can you do to stand out from other businesses? No consumer wants his or her day interrupted by a constant stream of text advertisements, and users are thus selective about which campaigns they join permanently, and which ones they join for only a short period of time (usually to receive a specified coupon) before opting out. Businesses looking for a lasting client list might consider using SMS to build a “mobile club.”
People are more likely to join a marketing campaign that they perceive as being mutually beneficial, and one in which membership has special privileges. Instead of approaching an SMS campaign as a means to gathering names and numbers as part of a client list for your own marketing uses, create a “mobile club” for users to join. Give an incentive for joining, like an initial discount coupon to generate immediate response, and then offer all mobile club members a continuing discount for as long as they belong to the campaign. This would be particularly effective for retailers, restaurants, and chain hotels—you can build mobile clubs where returning customers are continually rewarded for their patronage with ongoing member discounts. In creating this relationship with your customers, you are also gaining their permission to market regularly to them, advertising promotions and updates to generate even more business while building brand loyalty.
Creating a “mobile club” via SMS campaign is a technologically-enhanced version of what many businesses already do. We have all had the experience of being asked by a store cashier for our phone number or email address in order to receive future advertisements. While many shoppers provide the information automatically, there is really no way for the company to ascertain that all of these people are actually interested in joining a mailing list, and many shoppers are not even aware that this is what they have consented to. Consequently, businesses tend to waste too much of their time and budget marketing to disinterested people. Others of us in the same situation, however—seeing an endless barrage of spam and unwanted promotional updates in our future—politely decline sharing our contact info. In reality, many of those people who do not give out their numbers and emails may have an interest in future discounts, but their fear of a spam deluge affects their decision. Such shoppers have much less to fear with mobile marketing because SMS campaigns require permission, prohibit spam, and offer an easy and complete opt-out at any time.
With an SMS campaign, users come to you; by creating a mobile club that rewards loyalty, you are always assured that any discount or ad that your business sends out is received only by interested members.
