Mobile Marketing Coupons

Mobile Coupons, Part 1:

Igniting Immediate Holiday Promotion Responsiveness

Anyone with teen or tween kids on their family cellphone plan can attest to the popularity of text messaging. Chances are, those same parents have learned to communicate via texting as well. Recent studies are verifying that, indeed, texting as a medium and receptivity of mobile text-based offers is reaching critical mass.

In a July 2008 Direct Marketing Association study, 24 percent of consumers surveyed said they have responded to mobile coupon offers. Although this leaves about three-quarters that have not responded, there is more to consider.

“The big question is why? Why haven’t they responded yet?,” asked Eric Holmen, President of SmartReply during a recent webinar. “The biggest group within that, 33 percent, say that they would have responded but they’ve never received a text offer. So if you add that together with 24 percent of people that have been responding to text offers, you have a great universe – over half of the people with mobile phones in the U.S. – who are eager and/or have experience with responding to mobile messages.”

Separately, there is particular relevance in Mobile Coupons (or M-Coupons) for the current Holiday season. First, according to an ICOM study from February 2008, 67 percent of consumers are more likely to use coupons during a recession. Second, retailers often need to generate highly-responsive, last-minute promotional events during the Holiday and M-Coupons fit that requirement very well.

Here is the basic M-Coupon strategy, as recommended by Eric Holmen:

THE BASIC M-COUPON FORMULA

A. Focus on Your Existing Media Plans
“You don’t have to change anything in your media plan,” advises Holmen. “In fact you need to be very aware of the media plan you have and leverage that.” The good news for marketers who have most likely already set 90 percent of their plans for the Holiday…you’ll do well to use your traditional media in concert with M-Coupons. For example, radio spots can be used to announce an M-Coupon offer… “Just text ‘SANTA’ for a 15% off coupon – good only today and tomorrow!”

B. Add Mobile Sign-up to Everything
Add mobile sign up to all your media communications and in-store customer touch-points so the lure of Holiday excitement will encourage mobile marketing opt-in. “Mass media is not going to be here forever in the form it is today,” says Holmen. “So use it while you can to encourage customers to opt-in and build a text program this Holiday season, and whether you have a newspaper to work with next year or not, you’ll have a relationship with your customers.”

C. Deliver Special Value to Every Customer
Make your opt-in offers relevant to the time, place and situation. Whether in the shoe department or deli, the M-Coupon offer can directly relate and offer immediate gratification. Customers who opt-in for Holiday mobile coupons can be texted on Thanksgiving with last-minute Black Friday offers, generating instant buzz among family and friends.

Mobile Coupons, Part 2:

Engaging consumers in a long-term relationship

Yes, it was a bear of a holiday season. Although sobering for most retailers, some made the best of it by proactively reaching out to consumers in new ways – launching permission-based mobile marketing campaigns. The holidays are always a good time to build opt-in permission because consumers are eager for up-to-the-minute deals. But how should retailers capitalize on what they’ve started without jeopardizing the loyalty and trust of their consumers?

Eric Holmen, President of SmartReply, used an analogy to explain. He referred to a dating company called ‘It’s Just Lunch’ that uses a strategy of starting the matchmaking process with a simple, non-committal meal.

“And that’s how we see Mobile Coupons through the holidays,” said Holmen. “You’re just ‘asking your consumers to lunch.’ You’re not asking them to engage in a big, long-term relationship. You’re not beginning by promising big, sophisticated rewards and a mobile loyalty program.”

The question them becomes, “How do I transform that ‘trial relationship’ into a lasting one?” In this prospective relationship, marketers must now assume that the consumer will have the upper hand. Whereas at one time, TV and radio audiences had no choice but to sit through ads, now the consumer controls much of their exposure to messaging. Further, being that they’re bombarded with impositions all day long from marketers, consumers are getting very particular about which communications they opt-in to. In essence, marketers have a much greater challenge gaining access.

“Busy consumers will only maintain a certain number of business relationships,” according to Holmen. “Retailers with express permission are locking in the opportunity to be one of the elite few their customer is allowing into their inner circle, providing them with a first-mover advantage that can last a lifetime and expand out to their friends and family.” SmartReply makes the following recommendations for building and maintaining and effective permission marketing program:

RECOMMENDED STRATEGIES

1. Utilize retail stores as data-gathering vehicles. “Instant” in-store offers, for example, can be a great incentive for gaining opt-ins.
2. Give customers opt-in choices. Allow consumers to express how they want to receive their messages and what type of content is most relevant to them. Let them guide YOU.
3. Create the least amount of steps possible for opting in. It’s tempting to try to gather a lot of demographic or preference data at once, but keep it to the bare essentials while staying compliant with standards.
4. Separate permission by channel. Many will refuse to grant permission all together if they can’t control their choice of delivery media.
5. Keep your message consistent, but vary the offer. Be creative, but don’t let your essential brand message become distorted.
6. Have a separate opt-out option for each channel. Just because they’ve decided they’re getting too many emails doesn’t mean they don’t want to be contacted via text message or direct mail.
7. Start asking for permission now. Remember the early adopter principle: the ability to gain entrée into their ‘inner circle’ gets considerably harder as time goes by.

source: RetailWire & Smart Reply

Hasil SMS Polling Gubsu – Harian Global

SMS Polling Pilihan Gubsu
Mulai hari ini, Harian Global publikasikasikan polling Pilihan Gubenur Sumatera – GUBSU
Pembaca atau masyarakat dapat ikut partisipasi dalam polling tersebut untuk melihat favorit Gubsu:

Harian Global dapat menggunakan teknology SMS 3910 untuk program polling tersebut. Dan masyarakat yang ikut partisipasi dalam polling tersebut akan diberikan hadiah hadiah menarik setiap minggu dan hadiah utama pada akhir periode undian.

SMS Polling Gubsu

SMS Polling Pilihan Gubsu
Mulai hari ini, Harian Global publikasikasikan polling Pilihan Gubenur Sumatera – GUBSU
Pembaca atau masyarakat dapat ikut partisipasi dalam polling tersebut untuk melihat favorit Gubsu:

Harian Global dapat menggunakan teknology SMS 3910 untuk program polling tersebut. Dan masyarakat yang ikut partisipasi dalam polling tersebut akan diberikan hadiah hadiah menarik setiap minggu dan hadiah utama pada akhir periode undian.

 

 

 

SMS Iklan di MEDIA IKLAN

SMS Benefits

USES & BENEFITS OF SMS Marketing

What is SMS?

SMS refers to “Short Message Service” and involves the delivery of text messages to mobile handsets. SMS is a general name for the technology that enables users to send and receive text messages via mobile phones.

Currently, SMS has an extremely high consumer usage, but a low business adoption. In otherwords, while billions of SMS messages are delivered between individual consumers each month, the use of SMS as a part of business and marketing strategies is (relatively) low. But this relatively low business usage is changing rapidly, with more and more organisations realising the benefits of SMS, and using it as a new media within their traditional marketing communications strategies.  The reason for this increase in business usage is clear – SMS is an extremely cost-effective, high-response-rate vehicle, which can help to acquire and retainconsumers, sell and promote products, drive loyalty, and reinforce branding efforts.

Standard communications mediums available to marketers and advertisers are usually rated on three factors:

Reach, Cost and Effectiveness / Retention

The table above shows the comparison of the benefits and costs of the different medium of marketing according to Reach, Costs and Retention. SMS marketing has the best characteristics of High Reach, Low Cost and High Retention!

USES of SMS Marketing

Building Customer Database Accurately.

By using SMS marketing technology, you can easily build targeted customer database accurately and on autopilot! All you need is a media to communicate and incentive for customer to register their phones with you.

You don’t need employ and train staff to collect mobile phones for you which can be inaccurate through recording error and customer not giving the “real” number. Simply provide an incentive to your targeted customers and they can register their phones on their own through our SMS marketing system with ZERO recording errors.

Increase Traffic & Sales – Promotions E-vouchers & E-Coupons

SMS marketing is perfect for local or national retailers wishing to promote products or services, provide incentives and increase customer loyalty and retention.

Retailers can send SMS messages to their opt-in subscribers with coupon code inserted directly into the SMS message. Customers can come into the stores and present their coupons right on their cell phones for redemption.

When they arrived at your store, they will buy more than what you have offered!

Improve Customer Relationship Management

Keep your customers informed through SMS about special events and promotions, since they keep their mobile phones with them all the time whenever and wherever they go, they will not miss your important message and will be satisfied with your services.

You do not have to worry about not getting hold of your customers and human miscommunications from your telemarketing or letters not reaching your customers on time.

If you are a restaurant owner and you have a new special menu set you want to promote immediately! What can you do? Placing an advertisement on the newspaper may not be targeted if your customers missed it! Keeping your customers informed is the best sales strategy a restaurant can ever have since it is easier to attract your current customers to try out your new offer than begging new customers to try it!

Increase Interactivity through Quiz

Develop a fun quiz and interact with your customer. If you are a media company like radio stations and newspapers, you can create quiz to keep reminding your customer about your company while they are busy having fun with your quiz.

Research & Survey

Want to know how many users of your products in the market compared to your competition, the market share of your product? Use SMS marketing technology to carry out your survey.

Create a lucky draw program as an incentive to attract customer to participate in your survey. Ask them to send/SMS to you the brand of a product they are using and instantly you will know your market share in your segments.

And best of all, you don’t even need surveyors to carry out these surveys for you which may not even be accurate if they are not conducting the survey properly. This can be done on autopilot, all you need is a media to communicate your survey program!

As a BONUS, you now have a database of the mobile phones of targeted customers of your competitors to call up to make sales. You can be sure these phone numbers are accurate since they are registered by the system (not by form filling which can have writing errors) and targeted to individual and personal (not an office or home number) which you can contact directly.

You can even create promotional programs to attract these markets to switch brands and buy from you by sending promotional coupons to their mobile phones! (don’t even need telemarketing!)Increase Interactivity through Polling.

You must have seen American Idol or Indonesian Idol! Just look at how enthusiastic these people are to participate in polls. People like to participate in polls and they like to see their opinions counted for.

If you are a media company, this is ideal for you to create interactivity with your customers. They want to see their voices heard by you and shared with everyone. They want to know what other readers opinions are. Satisfy them and interact with them, create polling with our SMS marketing technology and you will automatically create a database of active customers!

Fan Club!

Maintaining a fan club can be fun and profitable! If you have a product, services or a fan club that have a community of loyal members, they want to be kept informed of any activity, news, tips and events that occurred. They hate to miss any of these! Keep them happy and start communicating with them through SMS!

If you are a speaker, lecturer, consultant, your fan club want to be kept informed of what you have to say. Satisfy their needs and build yourself a long term profitable fan club!

Suggestions & Comments for Customer Service + Privacy

We know how important it is to listen to our customers. Customer complaints sometimes do not reach the management. Customers cannot find the media to log their complaints, lazy to fill out forms and forms don’t reach the management especially if you are a national companies with branches in remote areas.

The solution: Set up a private SMS Inbox with your company name so that customers can SMS their complaints, comments and suggestions to a private number which will be logged online through the internet. You can now check these comments whenever and wherever you are and make sure your customer service manager never miss dealing with any customer suggestions.

BENEFITS: Why Use SMS Marketing Technology?

Deliverability:

As 94% of all text messages are read, your marketing message will be seen by virtually all of the subscribers in your campaign.

Qualified Recipients:

Since your subscribers have opted-in to receiving your offers and promotional messages, you know they have an active interest in your business, and your products.

Flexibility:

With text messages sent and received within minutes of starting your campaign, you can use mobile marketing for ad-hoc purposes, such as driving traffic to your store on slow nights (“Make a purchase within x hours, and receive a xx % discount!”), or clearing out overstock items before end of month. This is the new “Blue Light Special”!

Range of Use:

Mobile marketing can be used for a wide range of purposes: announcing new product, one-day specials, new store openings, special events…etc.

Subscribers can be treated as an exclusive group for offers and information that only they have access to, increasing loyalty, purchases, and speed of communications.

Cheap Cost:

Since your SMS are sent to targeted customers, you can be sure it is the most cost effective media you can use. Just compared to other media on REACH, COST and RETENTION and you are sure SMS marketing is the winner. (see table above)

If you are setting up a MEMBER by SMS system, the costs of SMS marketing is ZERO and you can at the same time charge a membership fee for profits!

Contact US to help you tailor your Nationwide SMS Marketing Campaigns

or try out our system, with the SMS membership program by Macan Group Supermarket

Register your mobile phone using the instruction below and see SMS marketing in action!