Mobile Marketing: What is it? How can you do it?

For the uninitiated, the mention of mobile marketing suggests sending unwanted text messages to people's phones. However that is far from the reality and many companies are using SMS and mobile communications for many types of customer relationships and marketing campaigns. Many of these are common place: getting a statement from your bank, an appointment reminder from your dentists or checking in for a flight with a bar code on your phone. I have picked these because they are focussed more on the customer service side of things. However it is important to use this as an integral part of the marketing mix.

The great benefit of mobile devices is that it is something most people have with them most of the time. Not only that, but people reply quickly to SMS - a good mobile marketing campaign can generate a response in hours our even minutes. It makes mobile the most direct form of marketing.

Reducing Costs and Improving Customer Relationships
Appointment reminders are a good example of how SMS can significantly improve customer relationships and generate more business. Sending text reminders can reduce missed appointments by 40% (as shown by a Vodafone study). They can also save significant staff time in calling clients and reduce communication costs in phoning mobiles. There are many businesses that rely on clients attending appointments, not only the health sector, but also sectors such as recruitment, insurance or events management.

Better, lower cost marketing
The important principle with marketing campaigns is that they should be permission-based, well targeted, with an offer and call to action. SMS-based coupons are a good example of this. One of our clients runs a small chain of restaurants. Every diner is offered the opportunity to receive discounts offers and even free meals by registering their mobile number for SMS alerts. The restaurants send regular offers to their customers' and has resulted in an increase in table bookings.
The vouchering principle can work for many different types of businesses and can be extended to mobile ticketing for events. The airline check in systems are, in effect a of vouchering on mobile.

How do you do it?
Mobile marketing, much like email marketing requires a system in which to store contact information, send messages and monitor delivery or responses. Our SMS platform, txt4ever.com, is a web-based system which allows businesses to managing the sending of SMS and uploading and storing contacts. The user interface is designed to be highly intuitive and our costs are based on the number of text messages sent.

Mobile marketing strategies may not be suitable for every business, but there are clear benefits for many different types of companies.

If you have any questions about mobile marketing or SMS campaigns, please feel free to contact us. We are happy to discuss the possibilities without any obligation for you to run a campaign.