Ask just about any consumer, and they’ve likely experienced experienced it: “Text message marketing fallout”. This is when the customer sees a compelling text message call-to-action, sends a keyword to a short code and nothing happens. Waiting impatiently for 5 minutes and with no confirmation of their sent message the customer tries again. Rinse and repeat, still no response.
This is a trend that is being seen in text message marketing campaigns time and time again. Customers quickly becoming resentful to any mobile marketing campaign because of lack of functionality.
When marketers allow this to happen it creates a community of would be mobile subscribers who rather than touting the benefits of being part of a text message marketing program, now spread the word about a texting campaign’s failure. A golden opportunity has been missed with this subscriber. Not only was the person literally saying “I WANT more information, text me!”, they were an ambassador to the mobile marketing world by already understanding the technology and having the ability to spread that knowledge to others.
There are a number of reasons why a text message marketing campaign my not function properly. Maybe the carrier is not supported, users are in an area with poor reception, or there is system wide downtime. While the excuses are convenient, the number one reason for a non-functional text message campaign is due to improper campaign management and maintenance. The creator of the campaign did not properly set up and test all aspects of the program to make sure everything is working smoothly and then continue to check it on a regular basis.
This happens frequently with fly-by-night, commodity based text message marketing applications. Where their goal is to get marketers to pay today, and not worry about a campaign’s complete functionality. The marketer that uses this program falls into the mindset that because it is a cheap price, it should be a cheap service too where inconstancy in operation is tolerated.
This should never be the case. Much like a contact form on a website, or a phone number listen in a directory it should always work, 100% of the time. Not just for the obvious reasons of a potential missed sale, but also because of the reputation that is being built around the contact mediums.
Agencies hired by businesses or experience mobile marketers know that every campaign needs to be properly monitored and tested frequently. With the ever evolving technology of electronics too many variables are at play to just set it and forget it. Additionally, if just forgetting about a campaign is their mindset then a golden opportunity is being missed to boost sales through text message marketing.
